Planning laws and the way planners interpret them need to be reconsidered

I believe there should be planning control to protect the land from being over developed and turned into one mass of concrete.  This is to protect us all. Too large a proportion of hard surfaces that do not absorb water causes problems with climate and flooding.  So planning control is good.  Also to protect the country from becoming one homogenous mass of the same steel framed boxes and indistinct shells.

Meanwhile there are many people facing poverty, caught in traps unable to afford a home of their own, ending up in over crowded soulless spaces.  I believe that any dwelling created by the person who then lives in it from locally sourced materials, unique and individual, should not be judged on the same criteria as a developer coming in to make profit and leave.

If this story is correct, that as of the 1st August 2013 Pembrokeshire County Council's enforcement say the property must be demolished within 2 months because,

"benefits of the development did not outweigh the harm to the character and appearance of the countryside".  The planners have gone mad.  To destroy this beautiful property would be a travesty and the planners involved should be ashamed. It should be considered a temporary structure and be given a length of time that it can be there.  I would suggest 25 years.  That is time for the family who live there to grow up and leave to make homes of their own and then the elements that last that long can be reclaimed for another structure.

Microwave Raspberry Sponge in a Plastic Pan

I've never made a cake in the microwave before, but I foresee I will be making more. I made this from ingredients I had in to use them up and it turned out so well I am recording the recipe since I heavily adapted it from a number that I found.  These are the amounts I used:

Ingredients

2.6 oz butter (all that was left of a packet - out of date)
2.6 oz caster sugar (ie same as butter)
2.6 oz SR flour - wholemeal best before March 2013
1.5 oz ground almonds - use by last week - was aiming for 1.3 oz but slipped
0.5 tsp baking powder (just in case SR flour had no R left)
1 med egg
Bit of milk
6.2 oz raspberries (picked last night, washed and left in fridge) with teaspoon of sugar

Method

1 Put raspberries in plastic microwave pan and mashed down a bit with potato masher and sprinkled in sugar and stirred that in a bit.

2 Softened butter by cutting up and putting in warm water then draining off warm water. Added sugar. Beat with electric whisk.

3 Mixed together flour, almonds and baking powder. 

4 Beat egg in a cup. 

5 Added egg and flour mix into bowl with butter/sugar and mixed more with electric whisk.  Added a bit more milk to get to right consistency (soft dropping).

6 Spooned mix onto fruit in the pan.

7 Cooked in microwave on high for 5 mins (= 3+1+1 as wasn't really sure how long - that seemed to be ready, solid sponge come away from the sides a bit).  Put lid of pan on to start but then sponge rose and lifted it so took it off mid way through the cooking.

If I was doing it again.

I'd probably use a bit less fruit and not add any sugar to it.  Should work with other berries.
Would perhaps go for 2.5 oz of each thing that's at 2.6 oz, so slightly less sponge mix for that size pan (felt a bit scary when rising as might go over top of pan)
Maybe add cinamon to the dry ingredients or vanilla?
Maybe not need baking powder if SR flour within date, could of course use white instead of wholemeal.

Worth trying with jams and syrup but maybe syrup would explode?

Verdict

Taste 5 stars
Ease of make 5 stars

Cancer is a nasty piece of work

I've just stumbled upon a news item, which was dated 3 April, that Iain Banks had announced he had terminal cancer, and was unlikely to live for more than a year.  I thought reading it that they'll have told him he may have up to a year, but really it will be 2-3 months. So I searched "Iain Banks health news" and sure enough he died on Sunday 9 June. 59 is too young to die.

I was watching an episode of Frankie the other night and a patient who knew she had terminal cancer and thought she had a couple of years and was planning to live them to the full was informed that it was worse than she thought and she only had a few months. So that upset her, but she was stoic about it and thought she'd better get on with living to the max.

People seem to imagine, and film/TV perpetuate this myth, that when you're told you have a couple of months to live then you're the same degree of well and then suddenly you drop dead.  Er, news flash: you generally discover you have a disease like this after having lots of ill health and misdiagnosis and pain and misery. You die, because between the point of getting the diagnosis and the end, you just get more and more ill/frail/sick until your body packs in its basic functioning all together.

My message to myself and anyone reading is DO NOT put off living your life to the max and doing what you want to do until you are told you are on a count down. We're all on the bloody count down.  You need to be doing it now as later you won't have the energy.

Book 'Outside Looking In' Issuu Experiment

Open publication - Free publishing - More bernard young

How to layout poetry in Wordpress the way you want

This is the div trick I used to left indent poetry and group verses (better than tables for accessibility).  An annoying thing with both Blogger and Wordpress is that they like to correct things for you, thinking they know best what you wanted.  If you know HTML then better to go into the HTML or TEXT option and edit there.  But beware, don't flick between the two or all of your changes will be undone with auto correcting.

The code in the image box below, gives the formatted text that follows it. If you want to see the code more clearly, click on the image to enlarge it. I know this is not accessible for people with screen readers but only way I could get the code to show and not be acted upon and really this is a note for myself but sharing in case useful to anyone else.

After I’d biked around the loch ten times
and run up and down a couple of mountains
I sat down here to catch my breath.
I whipped out my camera
to capture this wondrous moment.
This is how the world looked tonight
in this glorious natural light.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was, though,
that the view didn’t transform itself
into a more serious and highly processed black and white.

And the full thing with image can be seen here:
http://bernardgrownup.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/a-photograph/

SEO Resources

Just doing a bit of research on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so thought I would list some useful links here.

My favourite bits from 55 Quick SEO Tips: 

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

My favourite bits from 21 Essential SEO Tips and Techniques: 

2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.

A bit at a time

Yesterday I went to talk to Phil and Bill at a community arts project in my local area, Gortonia, about possibly volunteering.  Phil is the artist and creative force behind the project and Bill is on the management committee and both are also involved in the Community Interest Company (CIC) that they have set up to make some money to fund the project.

There are lots of things I could do to work with and help this project. And it ticks lots of my boxes. Now I find the issue is how to focus on the best thing to do to help and be most effective.

What I am interested in is marketing and promotion online. I read a great blog post the other day, which I picked up from twitter: "Living Self-Employed Online: The Manual They Forgot to Give You." Naturally I retweeted and was pleased so see a recently picked up follower favourited my tweet.

I particularly like the "Just Get Started" idea which really applies to anything daunting and that you put off.  I made it the subject of my photo today... my approach to gardening.

The "View anything Public as Marketing" section is also making me think a lot.  This is the new online world, marketing a bit at a time in lots of places.  But it also made me think about how one manages one's online presence and identity, since this can have a negative as well as positive impact.  It is the well discussed problem of how much you reveal and what that says about you.  Does it give the world an impression that you don't want to give?

As I sent links to Phil and Bill of my myriad of online projects and activity spaces, I did have a little twinge of doubt.  Do I really want them to see all this stuff about me?  But whilst I believe that we do show different aspects of ourselves to different people, and there are things to keep in private, I think if I am putting it out there online and people think badly of me, fuck 'em! I'm too long in the tooth now to pretend to be something I'm not.