Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Personal

‘Free’ Electricity

Pretty amazing that Tom Evslin living in Vermont used NO electricity in Feb and March except that generated by his solar arrays.

“Note that there are NO charges for
kilowatt hours because our solar arrays generated more than we used,
even late in the Vermont winter”

Be interesting to find how much they cost and what their output is.

Art of the book

Firstly a disclaimer – Mia is my eldest sons wife 🙂 so this post might be biased a little 🙂

Mia does the most amazing bookbinding ever (this is NOT bookbinding as the normal person would imagine), in fact, it is more to do with sculpture as in 3D works of art. She produces the most original books, scrolls etc imaginable. They are exactly the type of objects that will become family heirlooms, so would be ideal as wedding, baby books for the sort of people who appreciate fine art and don’t mind spending the sort of money for a truly unique item. They would make an ideal special gift for that unique person in your life.

Mia has won numerous international exhibitions and had her work displayed at The British Library, London (2005 The Designer Bookbinders annual competition, 1st prize ) plus numerous other exhibitions

To see amazing examples of her work visit her new website. Leijonstedt – commission handmade books, custom-made anniversary gifts, wedding books and collector bookbindings

This is another example, the photo doesn’t really do it justice, of my sixtieth birthday present from Mia, Nick & Isla 🙂

Speed or lack off :-(

Oh dear whilst trying to increase the display speed of this site by eliminating all the external RSS calls to Friend Feed and Profilactic and then running a speed test

The test came up with:-

  • TOTAL_HTML – Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 2 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization.
  • TOTAL_OBJECTS – Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 56 – consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
  • TOTAL_IMAGES – Warning! The total number of images on this page is 39 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
  • TOTAL_CSS – Caution. The total number of external CSS files on this page is 5 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external CSS files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed CSS for high-traffic pages) on your pages.
  • TOTAL_SIZE – Warning! The total size of this page is 1721970 bytes, which will load in 353.68 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services.
  • TOTAL_SCRIPT – Warning! The total number of external script files on this page is 9 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external script files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed scripts for high-traffic pages) on your pages.
  • HTML_SIZE – Caution. The total size of this HTML file is 66227 bytes, which is above 20K but below 100K. With a 10K ad and a logo this means that your page will load in over 8.6 seconds. Consider optimizing your HTML and eliminating unnecessary features. To give your users feedback, consider layering your page or using positioning to display useful content within the first two seconds.
  • IMAGES_SIZE – Warning! The total size of your images is 1519785 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
  • SCRIPT_SIZE – Warning! The total size of external your scripts is 120042 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your scripts for size, combining them, and using compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents.
  • CSS_SIZE – Warning! The total size of your external CSS is 12398 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your CSS for size by eliminating whitespace, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate.
  • MULTIM_SIZE – Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 4K.

Guess I will be heading over to Elance to get a coder to tidy it up for me for a tenner.