Webs Wonder Design

Whilst in Newcastle Emlyn I called in on John. It was one of those warm dry days of spring before our “second winter” of the year started in July. He ushered me out to his patio overlooking the winding River Teifi, offering a seat before pouring bowls of very expensive black tea from his newly acquired silver teapot. I lifted my Lumix L1 and caught him about to sip. Click the image for a larger version.

Reflections in a silver teapot

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I notice that the famous London home of our Supreme Leader has a new website, oddly referred to as a “Beta” - software speak for “not finished yet”. In these days of financial hardship maybe the reported £100,000 price tag wasn’t sufficient to test it properly before going live. It certainly still needs some attention because their HTML code currently fails the W3C validation test and the site doesn’t yet contain the most basic hidden <META> description and keyword tags.

I wonder if the developers New Media Maze were asked to read Guidelines for UK Government websites - an excellent series of documents published 8 years ago. Sadly (especially given the deluge of money wasted on other IT projects) they are no longer maintained but the “best practice” they contain is still as relevant today.

At the time the guidelines were being put together I was maintaining the website for the Welsh European Funding Office and I remember attending a meeting with a very informed and focussed Neil Pawley, an “E-Envoy” from Westminster who was putting together the guidelines. Neil stressed the importance of government websites setting quality and accessibility standards. What has happened in the intervening years which has made it acceptable to release this Number 10 “Beta” live to the public?

One missing feature of the site could save tens of thousands of sheets of paper and loads of ink and energy. A print style sheet allows a rendering of a web page specifically for printing purposes. It can be designed easily to exclude unwanted navigation and shrink images and fonts. Go to File > Print Preview on this page and see how it can be printed on 2 sheets of A4. Think of the ink and paper you would use to print this page, yet using a print style sheet it uses a single page of A4. The Home Page of Number 10 uses 5 pages of A4!

Despite the many shortcomings of this site I am excited by the fact that www.number10.gov.uk is using my favourite Content Management / Blogging platform - WordPress. WordPress is Open Source, which means that the software powering is free, which should make Gordon Brown’s ‘Prudence’ very happy. The developers have even based their layout on a free template “theme” - “Networker” by Anthony Baggett of www.antbag.com. How do I know this? Well just look at Number 10’s CSS style sheet and all is revealed. - www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/themes/networker-10/style.css

Confirmation of the WordPress theme’s origins can be found by looking at its screenshot file. I wouldn’t call this a rip-off as some commentators have done. All the developers have done is to base their screen layout on someone else’s CSS code. Had they used AntBag’s graphics and colour scheme that would be different. With all such adaptations, there comes a point when so little of the original code and design remains, that it becomes in effect a new theme. Should Anthony Bagett have been given credit for the theme? I’m not sure. At least New Media Maze haven’t tried to hide the origins of their theme, which you could either regard as honest or foolish, given the attention it has received. NMM certainly can’t be unaware of the protocol on these matters, as they have used WordPress for their own website for at least a couple of years.

I have been a WordPress enthusiast since 2005 after a long search for the ideal Content Management System for the small businesses and organisations I work for in West Wales. WordPress makes it simple for the owner maintain their own content and is flexible and customizable for the web developer. It is updated regularly and there are hundreds of “plugins” to extend its functionality.

I’m delighted that our Supreme Leader agrees that WordPress rocks, However I can’t help but be disappointed by the way he has allowed it to go live prematurely. It gives the impression that WordPress is difficult to do correctly, when it isn’t. But then again, I suppose if I were getting £100,000 for a website and using free software, maybe I would need to give the impression that it’s harder work than it really is ;-)

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65mpg in a 1996 Polo Diesel using simple fuel saving driving techniques…

I think the increase in oil price over the last year is a really good thing. A long overdue dose of oil reality which will do more to shape our thinking about energy conservation than any number of timid increases in Car Tax, green marches and magazine articles by worthy environmentalists.

Even better for the environment and the future of the UK economy would be for petrol to reach £1.50 a litre this year and £2.50 by the end of 2009. I should be careful what I wish for. If the US and Israel decide to attack Iran, this could really happen.

In oil we are moving from a buyers market to a sellers market. We have reached, or we are very close to “Peak Oil” - “The Big Roll Over“. The point at which, no matter how hard we pump, output will decline because the geology of oil dictates it. In an age where demand is increasing that means only one thing - much higher prices, and higher prices means if you don’t get more mpg from your car, you will pay much more.

Sales of gas guzzling cars have taken a nose-dive over the past few months. People are driving more slowly, making fewer journeys and lift sharing. How to save fuel has become the main topic of conversation in pubs around the land. Parting with £60-£100 when filling up has really brought the message home that oil is a finite and precious commodity. Yippee!

Peak Oil. 1 Barrel = 35 Imperial Gallons = 159 litres

In order that I wouldn’t be left out in the pub conversations, I decided to try some “hypermiling” in my 1996 1.9 diesel Volkswagen Polo with a mere 190,000 miles on the clock. Do I need to buy a new or young second-hand car in order to get economical driving?

All the reading I have done would indicate that the least environmentally damaging thing I can do is to keep my Polo going for as long as possible, rather than buying a new, if more fuel efficient car. The reason is simple. Building a car uses loads of fossil fuel. Even that beacon of “green” motoring the Toyota Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of petrol in its manufacture. That has to be “paid back” in saved fuel in order to justify the initial fossil fuel expenditure.

My 1996 1.9D VW Polo

I decided to visit my mum in Leicester, a 215 mile journey from south-west Wales through mid-Wales to Shrewsbury then on to the M54, the M6 and the M69. I filled up right to the brim as you should do with these tests and set the trip-meter to zero. I’d read up a bit on how I should be driving for maximum fuel efficiency and used various techniques to increase my MPG. I don’t have any fancy MPG readout on my odometer, so I couldn’t monitor my techniques as I went along for efficiency. I just had to do them and hope they worked.

• I pumped up my tyres to a the maximum recommended for speed driving or heavy loads
• I used 5th gear as much as possible
• I kept a very light foot on the accelerator
• I kept below 60mph on motorways and below 50mph on other roads
• I used the brakes as little as possible
• I maintained a good distance from the vehicle in front and watched their brake lights so I could coast to a stop rather than brake
• On long down hill runs where I could maintain a speed of 50-60mph for a mile or more (very few in reality), I went into neutral and free-wheeled
• I followed high-sided lorries on the motorway to reduced wind resistance, but I always stayed outside the minimum stopping distance for a given speed and therefore within the law
• Because starting the engine uses the same fuel as 6 seconds ticking over, I turned off the engine if I was likely to be waiting in a queue or at lights for more than that period.

More detail on these hypermiling/ecodriving techniques can be found on Wikipedia and www.hypermiler.co.uk. You can also get 100 tips at www.ecomodder.com

So I travelled the 215 miles to Leicester, did 20 miles during my stay, then drove the 215 miles back again. Then I used the car until I’d nearly run out of diesel and had done 571 miles in total. I filled up again with 39.9 litres (8.79 Imperial gallons). I achieved 65mpg, an improvement on the 62mpg I achieved using the same techniques a fortnight ago on the same journey. So I’m getting better at it! Without hypermiling I get less than 50 mpg, depending on how badly and fast I drive.

So I have my answer. There’s hypermiling life in the old car yet, so no need to get rid of it. My aim is to reach 70mpg, but to do that I’ll maybe have to stick exclusively to motorways, be more aggressive in applying the techniques and perhaps add a couple of less conventional ones (getting out and pushing?). I wonder if anyone has managed better from a Polo of the same vintage as mine?

Do let me know.

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