christmas – Web Services

How do I know if it’s Christmas?

Posted on December 24, 2010December 24, 2010 by Andy Davies

Its Christmas eve. Are you excited? In less than 24 hours Santa will have been, scoffed his mince pie and glass of port 😉 and gone on his merry way.

So just how long do we have to wait for Christmas?

If you Google “Christmas countdown” there’s a whole slew of sites with count down clocks (including some really old ones that I suspect were written as “my first javaScript program”). One of the best, and very popular within Web Services, dedicated to the Christmas countdown has to be isitchristmas.com. Quite simply, every visit is met with an emphatic “No” until Christmas day. For rss die-hards there’s even a feed. You just know you’ll have to get the laptop out tomorrow just to see that is, in fact, Christmas. I’m sure, ~~yule~~ you’ll fit it in despite the present opening, bucks fizz, snowballs, Christmas breakfast, table laying, bird roasting, gut-busting pudding, family rows, tears, Queen’s speech, 3 o’clock film, mince pies, flat batteries, karaoke, Quality Street, After Eights, home-made sloe gin and droopy paper hats.

That’s for tomorrow. If you’re a believer (and you’ll only get a stocking full of sprouts if you don’t believe) or you have kids, you may also be interested in tracking Santa’s progress. You’ll also find games for the kids to play.

Happy Christmas from Web Services, Edge Hill University. Now where did I put those humbugs?

We’re back, ready for Round Two!

Posted on December 1, 2010November 29, 2010 by Mike Nolan

A year ago the Web Services team stared blogging every day during Advent and the pain of that followed by blogging every day for 125 days apparently hasn’t put me off trying it again.

I have no idea where we’ll go with it but last year we covered everything from open data to environmental issues. I’ve got a few ideas for things to blog about but I’ll be writing fewer posts this month so there should be a bit more variety.

So subscribe to the feed or sign up keep an eye on GO for new posts and let us have your feedback in the comments!

Electronic Waste or e-waste

Posted on December 20, 2009July 20, 2010 by Elaine Beesley

Day 20 “Electronic waste” can be defined as all secondary computers, electronics, mobile phones, and other items such as television sets and refrigerators, whether sold, donated, or no longer wanted by their original owners.

E-waste is one of the fastest growing types of waste, much of it ends up dumped in Africa and Asia. Take a look at Greenpeace’s electronic waste trail map.

The United Nations tells us some, 20-50 million tonnes of electronic waste – or e-waste – is produced every year. The recycling of electronic waste in developing countries such as India causes serious health and pollution problems because electronic equipment contains some very serious contaminants such as lead, cadmium, beryllium and brominated flame retardants. Exposure to these dangerous chemicals is rewarded with as little as $3 per day, picking through these parts leaves people, many of them children, with constant cuts, scrapes, watering eyes and headaches.

Even in developed countries like our own, recycling and disposal of e-waste involves significant risk to workers and communities and great care must be taken to avoid unsafe exposure in recycling operations and leaching of material such as heavy metals from landfills and incinerator ashes.

We all want to be part of developing technology so we owe it to ourselves and our planet to recycle responsibly. Manga-Fu and PDC are two companies within the UK that can help you recycle that unwanted IT and Electrical equipment. So if you get a new mobile or computer for Christmas, think twice about what you will do with the old one!

Green is the new White!

Posted on December 8, 2009December 8, 2009 by Elaine Beesley

Liverpool city centre is to have the city’s Greenest most environmentally friendly Christmas tree ever to celebrate the city’s Year of the Environment. The project comes after the city has basked in the lime light as European City of Culture and also enjoyed its Bicentennial celebrations.

Thursday 19th November 2009 saw Liverpool’s greenest Christmas tree unveiled.

The tree, takes centre stage in Church Street, the city’s main shopping street and is decorated with miles of eco-friendly Christmas lights. A record-breaking 9000 eco-LED lights are helping save energy and reduce the tree’s carbon footprint considerably; the tree also has 298 baubles decorating its branches. The eco friendly lights are also making their debut in the Cultural Quarter and will illuminate the streets all the way to William Brown Street and the sparkling new Liverpool One development, a major part of the new look Liverpool City centre.

The tree has been sourced from the sustainably managed Kielder forest in Northumberland, saving even more energy from previously Scandinavian sourced trees. The tree is part of the city’s best and greenest ever Christmas light show, with 4km of cables illuminating a staggering 139500 individual eco friendly lights, the lights will also entertain record Christmas crowds for the rejuvenated City where hundreds of thousands of festive visitors will celebrate the Christmas period.

Amongst the special displays this year are the Go Penguins Winter Trail, 2010 Shanghai EXPO display and Bold Street traders amongst many other superb displays, all in all the City despite having more lights than ever will use 44% less energy than just 2 years ago in 2007. A massive positive step in the right direction for a city determined to make Liverpool’s Year of the Environment make a real difference.

Culture

Heritage

Christmas Tree

Blue Coats

Lord Street

Ballbells

Happy Green Christmas.

Xmas Digital Art Wallpapers

Posted on December 3, 2009July 20, 2010 by Janeth Howarth

We are very close to the Christmas holidays again and I thought it’s about time to decorate my desktop while counting down the days. I’ve been browsing the web to see what is available and I found some awesome designs from VLADSTUDIO, which offers the usual kind of digital art given away as desktop decorations. Just to keep you and I on the Christmas spirit.

Download instructions are pretty obvious, and there are plenty of resolutions to choose from. The low quality wallpapers are free to download, the quality is good enough, but if you prefer the high quality you will need to register on their site. Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600×1200px.

These are for personal use on your desktop only! Do not use for anything else without the authors permission!

Snegovick

Christmas Nights

Christmas Volcano

Christmas Train

Waiting For The Miracle

Christmas Ice Skating

Snow Man Snow Child

Christmas Bag

Siberian Winter

A Small Gift For Christmas

Waiting for the Spring

Where Christmas Gifts Are Born

Welcome to 25 days of blogging

Posted on December 1, 2009December 2, 2009 by Mike Nolan

Regular readers of the Web Services blog may have noted that post frequency is a little biased towards me… well over the next 25 days, more of us will be blogging about a variety of topics in the run up to the Christmas break.

From my point of view this is a purely selfish measure for a couple of reasons. Firstly it takes the pressure off me to write posts. Secondly, for the last couple of years my annual online advent calendar has failed due to lack of motivation – this will solve that by making it everyone’s problem!

So what are we going to cover in the next few weeks? Well, we don’t know yet as not everything is written but it will probably be like a year’s worth of blog posts compressed into under a month! Hopefully we’ll cover updates on some of our current projects, future plans, things we’ve been looking at and maybe a few things just for fun.

Much of what we write will be scheduled, so don’t feel sorry us – no one will be logging in on Christmas day to update the blog, but that also means we may not react to comments as quickly as normal.

If you’ve got any ideas for things you’d like to hear about or suggestions for fun and festive things we can post, leave a comment, or if you don’t want to spoil the surprise for others, drop us an email at webteam@edgehill.ac.uk. We may also be joined by some special guest bloggers from outside Web Services, but you’ll have to wait to find out who!

Finally, if you’re unsure whether it’s Christmas yet, check out www.isitchristmas.com – bah, humbug 😉