After months of winter misery the sun is starting to have noticeable force and the temperature is climbing to around 10 degrees during the day – a little nippy, but bearable. Toronto (where I used to live), meanwhile, still has temperatures that can plunge to -12 degrees during the day.

Sadly, in terms of hours of daylight London appears to be well behind. Thanks to the US Naval Observatory I can see that this year we don’t start to get more sun than Toronto until April 23rd and we start falling behind again on August 20th. Four months of gloriously long days is little compensation for eight months of increasing darkness…

NB – daylight savings time may affect this, but I am not sure in what direction as both countries have it, and (I think) at slightly different times. Also note I am talking about hours of daylight in the evening here – the situation looks better when you count the time of sunrise as well as sunset, but I like to be asleep around sunrise!

The BBC alerted me to the existence of this picture of London from space taken by an astronaut in the International Space Station.

You can get a 3032×2064 pixel version of this from NASA here – though it is a little blurry.

So you see? The ISS is worth keeping!

Heather Havrilesky who used to write entertainingly for the late lamented suck has her own weblog now and recently found out that undergrads at the University of Texas are studying weblogs including her own. She waxes amusing about this…

If you are interested in serious sociological studies of home page creation they appear to be surprisingly thin on the ground. I just read an interesting overview in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and found a good site from Nottingham Trent University that references other sites about identity and web pages – largely but not exclusively focusing on gender issues.

I have yet to come across many academic papers specifically about weblogs but doubtless they will be arriving soon. I was interviewed a while back by Dr Donald Matheson who is studying weblogs and I will link to the results of the research I was included in when it becomes available.6102i ringtonesproduct farrington a8310 nokia free ringtonefree 6800 ringtone polyphonic nokiaringtones alcatel tones mradd ringtones an iphone toringtone adult ozzy8350 ringtones Map

Hurray – my borough’s schools are no longer the nation’s worst – Islington is the the fifth-worst borough now and has slipped ahead of Hackney.

According to this quiz my top five moral philosophers/schools would be:

1. Mill (100%)
2. Kant (93%)
3. Sartre (92%)
4. Bentham (89%)
5. Prescriptivism (73%)

Sounds about right…credit federal abilene teachers unionassessor accredited abgrfederal avenue credit addison unionalaska union creditaccredited degree online bachelorlender accreditedcredit repair advice badmassage school therapy accredited Mapcredits aceee taxcredit branded cards affinitytuition 2008 credits taxv2 accreditationall credit federal south unionmortgage adverse remortgages credit loanmiddle release press states accreditationalaska federal airlines union employee credit Map

Check out this picture I just took out of my kitchen window. It’s a winter wonderland here in London!

Take a look at this and click on each of the reindeer for some light entertainment (requires Shockwave).

It doesn’t come as a great surprise but according to a comprehensive central Government report (from the Audit Commission) my council is in the bottom 10% of all councils in the country – the only worse council in London is neighbouring Hackney! We didn’t score better than 2 out of 4 in any category.

Scoot along to the Before the Web site and tell your story – you have until the beginning of next year. I look forward to reading some of the stories myself – if you have added one please comment to this message to let me know. Alas I am not in a position to contribute myself – it was the web that made me realise that this Internet thing was something I could work in and write about not just a fun and rather interesting tool to stay in touch with my friends and ahead of the journalistic game…

(More on my own net history here).ringtones 3g uploadringtone 3360 nokia downloadin cent da 50 ringtone clubringtone get 650 treoringtone allringtones 1880free polyphonic ringtone 3510i38 cingular ringtone special Map911 moviesmovie home adulttgp adult movietitles adult moviemilano nude alyssa clips moviesex home amateur moviesamateur movie tgpmovie ass Map

It has come to my attention thanks to the hit tracking software I use that for some reason the third most likely physical location (as far as it can be determined) of those most likely to visit my pages appears, oddly, to be Poland. Unsurprisingly this comes after “Major Domains (.com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu)” and UK but significantly ahead of Canada which has more Internet users and (I had thought) has more people likely to be interested in my writing.

If you are Polish, how did you hear about blog.org? According to this, blog doesn’t mean anything in Polish – that was my first thought… Perhaps the dictionary is incomplete? Any other ideas? Looking back I seem to have had substantial numbers of Polish readers for months.

Of course, I am delighted to be read by anyone who finds this interesting…