Author Archives: JamesH

Out on the highway – Street Gliding the Everglades Headwaters

After 10 days of ferrying the family around theme parks and shopping malls ‘Dad’ was given his day in the Florida sun to use as he wished 🙂

Now that my eldest is increasingly making her own way in the world, I doubt that we will head state-side on a family holiday for quite a while now so I thought I’d go for a full-on American experience and decided to hire a Harley Davidson for a day, head down south for some alligator spotting in the swamps and then have a go at firing some weapons at a gun range.

Street-Glide-2014I’ve never ridden a Harley before and as I’m fast approaching 50 and the age at which my family seem happier for me to own another bike then it was a good opportunity to experience what this style of ‘laid back’ classic motorcycling has to offer.

The bike I chose was the 2014 Street Glide model which is the latest output from Harley Davidson’s ‘Project Rushmore’ – an initiative from the iconic company to incorporate over 100 renovations into their 2014 product range that are based on close collaboration with customers.

The guys at Harley Davidson in South Orlando were very helpful to this HOG world newbie, giving me the full run down on this new machine and some of its ‘awesome’ features, such as the on-board infotainment system that includes bluetooth connectivity.

A few circuits of an adjacent car park to familiarise myself with the basic controls and handling and I was ready to get out on the highway.

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Postcard from North America – The worst and best of US

I’m writing this half way through a family break in the United States.

After good and bad experiences heading to Florida via Washington and heading home via Montreal on our last visit – well documented here – we opted to keep the flight costs down by travelling via Toronto this time.

fatUScop1The hop across the Atlantic with Air Canada was, we all agreed, the best long haul flight any of us had experienced with attentive cabin crew who kept us well fed and watered and excellent in-flight entertainment that made the seven plus hours literally fly by. Being able to link my new hearing aids directly to the audio output meant I could hear the three recently released movies I chose to watch very well – in fact probably the best I have ever heard such things as I was able to cut the cabin noise out virtually completely.

I had no problem hearing John McClane and his son swearing at the Russian mafia as they blasted their way across Moscow, leaving many vehicles written off in their wake, or Will Smith guiding his real life and fictional son across the hostile environment of an unfamiliar planet they had crash landed on – which is Earth 1000 years after we’ve irreparably damaged it and moved on, or indeed hearing Brad Pitt saving his wife and daughters and the rest of the human race from being over-run by the fastest moving zombies I have ever seen.

So having spent the best part of six hours watching heroic parenting and gaining expert guidance on how to save your offspring from all manner of nastiness this world might have to throw at them now and in the far future it was somewhat ironic when less than an hour after stepping off the flight I had to stand powerless with teeth gritted as a man much younger than myself treated my kids with rudeness and contempt.

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Walking the walk with Drupal Commerce

When a fair chunk of your household income is dependent on an eCommerce solution, any decision to make changes should not be taken lightly. bump_delivery_final1 (2)The online gifts business my wife established in 2008 has grown steadily through the recession of the last 4 years and the eCommerce website I built for it originally has been surprisingly and thankfully very robust. It was built using Joomla with the Virtuemart shopping cart module on a $3/month hosting package from Siteground.  There has only been one small outage on the hosting service during this time and only occasional minor issues with the website itself.  We have very much taken a ‘if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it’ approach.

However, as the business has grown, ambitions have expanded and the online world evolved in new directions such as mobile and social media, the limitations of the Virtuemart solution, in particular, have become more and more apparent. Also, as eCommerce development is central to what I offer in my fledgling consultancy business – Webwiser, I feel it would be hypocritical for me to recommend a solution to fellow business owners and entrepreneurs that I wouldn’t be prepared to stake my own livelihood on.

I first started experimenting with Drupal Commerce in late 2011 and since then there have been some significant developments … Continue reading →

Lean, green and keen at Grand Designs Live

GDL_kevin3If you watched Gogglebox this week – the programme that watches people watching TV that currently follows the latest series of Grand Designs in the schedules – then the most memorable comments came from the posh couple who watch their telly in their 17 bedroom mansion through an alcoholic haze. In a hilarious moment Dominic observed that the long black gloves worn against a black dress by one of the characters in Downton Abbey made her look like she was missing most of her arms. In a not so hilarious moment Stephanie described Kevin McCloud as an ‘arse’.

Kevin McCloud is a personal hero of mine since watching the first series of Grand Designs back in 1999 and so I was suitably offended on his behalf. Two days later I came face to face with the man himself on the opening day of Grand Designs Live at Birmingham’s NEC.

The first encounter was while waiting at the entrance to the event with a vast crowd eager for the show to open. A giant image of Kevin stares down at you as you enter a calming blue tunnel to the atrium of the event from where you can choose to explore the wonders of Build, Interiors, Bathrooms, Kitchens, Gardens and Technology each of which was guaranteed to bombard the senses with grand and beautiful designs and some very clever ideas.

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Artificial photosynthesis – an A* idea

photosynthesis

Spending time this year helping my eldest daughter revise for her biology, physics and chemistry GCSEs has rekindled my interest in basic scientific principles.

One that crosses over all disciplines and came up repeatedly in the revision notes is photosynthesis. It is such a fundamental process in our daily lives and sits at the heart of the climate change challenges we are facing increasingly as our CO2 emissions continue to climb to ever more unpredictable and potentially dangerous levels.

This week a new report highlights that European forests are reaching saturation point as efficient CO2 sinks and calls on governments and forestry commissions to recognise the issue and take appropriate action. This is yet another scenario that highlights the complexity of climate change science but also prompts some to take a pessimistic view on the future, particularly on matters where politics are involved.

One recent view that created a lot of commentary and debate is that of Professor Stephen Emmott whose short but blunt book 10 Billion has clearly polarised opinion.  I was inclined to take notice of his views as the area of research his laboratory focuses on is artificial photosynthesis and the more I understand about this, the more it looks like one of the better potential answers to climate change challenges.

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