ed_pete

Goto the EDF Home Page. Click on RSS link for your chosen section. The address should appear in your browser address bar, e.g. http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/rss.php?5 for "General ED issues / gossip". Select the address and do a control-c, or right-click copy. Go to the Wordle web site, click on Create, in the box entitled "Enter the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed." do a control-v, or right-click paste. Click "Submit" and see what happens.

Have you ever seen those word clouds on websites ? Well I've discovered that you can create them using Wordle. You can point it at an RSS feed and it will generate one for you automatically. Here's one from the Lounge.

Try looking here.

From Southwark Website: Give and Take Day - Do toys, kitchenware, baby items, small electrical appliances or unwanted presents clutter your cupboards? Are you looking for something useful for free? There will be a Give and Take Day on January 24 2009, at East Dulwich Community Centre, 46-50 Darrell Road, London, SE22 9NL. It's a great opportunity for you to clear out unwanted items in the new year and get something in return, for free.

Headline figures for the UK as a whole are relatively meaningless because of huge regional variations. The same applies to the London wide numbers. The closest the Nationwide figures get to SE22 is Southwark as a whole, which again, given the size of the borough and different types of property are only vaguely representative and show average prices down 8%.

This is also being discussed here.

SW - sadly I can't argue against waiting for the next garden waste collection day which this year follows twelfth night (5th/6th Jan)...

Assuming that the bins at Sainsburys are still out-of-action (as you posted above) then you could try PM'ing Recycling Jenny (who also posted above) as suggested by PeckhamRose though she works for Tetra Pak and ACE UK, not Southwark Council. Failing that you could email [email protected] or phone them on 0870 442 6000. Lastly, there's a Tetra Pak recycling bin in the Forest Hill Sainsburys car-park so you could try that one.

See above - pretty much the same as last year, accept the dates have moved on to January 5 to 31 2009.

Santa was very generous this Christmas and endowed the ed_pete offspring with a Wii. As there seem to be a number of fellow Wii owners in here I thought I pose a question: I'm going to connect it to the internet and given the choice, is there much difference in performance between a wired and wireless connection ? I plan to download the browser app so I can use it to access the EDF from my Wii. Is wired best for web access or would the wireless performance be OK ? (It's OK on laptops in the house). Would online gaming (assuming we get that far) be better wired or wireless ? All advice gratefully received.

I tend to agree - the 2010 target for cyclists is 12 "seriously injured or killed" however the document goes on to say that "The increase in casualties should be seen in context of the growing popularity of cycling. Since 2000 there has been an 83% increase in the number of people making cycle trips each day."

The other day I received a questionnaire from Southwark Council asking me for views on their Road Safety Plan. What is the Road Safety Plan I hear you ask - well to quote from draft consultation document: "This road safety plan is primarily aimed at reducing road deaths and casualties and making sustainable transport safer and more attractive. In doing this, it will help to achieve wider council objectives such as encouraging shift to more active modes of travel, tackling issues of obesity and addressing issues surrounding climate change." ..and specifically for cyclists.. "Of all people injured on Southwark?s roads, 18% are cyclists and the vast majority of cyclists injured are males aged between 25 and 59. Cyclists are the only group of users to suffer an increase in the numbers who have been injured or killed on Southwark roads and therefore cyclist safety is paramount to the concerns of the council." If you are interested in reading the draft Road Safety Plan or getting a copy of the questionnaire then you can access it here.

I don't drink that often Mark, and locally even less so I am probably not the best person to ask. However, judging by the popular use of the :)-D smiley, I'd guess there are plenty of others on the EDF you could ask...

Does this need updating at some point ?

According to this site engineering work is taking place between November and May 09 on the Crystal Palace transmitter but there is supposed to be no effect on digital reception.

Freeview boxes also vary in quality. Until recently our Philips Freeview box (fed from a rooftop aerial) connected to our kitchen TV regularly froze and had to be turned off/on again to reset. I've switched to a Sony VTU-D800U - which seems to be considered "the daddy" of set-top boxes - and so far its worked perfectly. Regularly available on ebay for ?40-50 as people buy new TV's with in-built tuners. Can also be bought new for arounf ?80.

Analogue or digital, i.e Freeview ? Analogue is far more forgiving on signal quality.

I'm not an expert but I believe it's common misconception that the proximity of East Dulwich to the Crystal Palace transmitter should guarantee a good digital (Freeview) picture. With digital tv the signal quality is as important as signal strength and that is affected by the quality the aerial, cable and connections. In my case the strength of the signal was too high for my Freeview box decoder, which I cured using an attenuator - a gizmo that lowers the level of the signal. This could be worth a try if you are confident your aerial and cable are OK. Loads of information out there about digital tv and reception issues all over the internet - this site I found reasonable accessible to the layman.

I bought I an iPod iTouch recently and have struggled to get it to talk to my home wireless LAN running WPA/WPA2 encryption. There seems to be an issue with which characters are valid for inclusion in the encyption key. For example "EastDulwichForum" would work fine but "3.5!@^1>i[?+o?/m" won't work at all. Anyone else experienced this kind of problem ? BTW - I was somewhat miffed that one of the attractions of the iTouch was the ability to download applications however this is not possible unless you upgrade to the iPhone version of the operating software - v2.1 - at a cost of ?5.99. You are even prompted to do this the very first time you connect it to iTunes. Surely the version in the shops should already have been upgraded ?

Pebs - take a look at this thread. Another forumite has done just as you are proposing and used their own engineer / broker to reduce premiums.

Blokes who shave their hair off and then grow beards ,let's face, it just looks stupid. And, fat blokes who grow beards in an attempt to hide their fat faces. And, any bloke with a pony tail, especially balding ones.

As I cycled past the Peckham Academy this morning, I spotted (at least) two table football's in the playground. My, how things have move on since my day.

Sean - I get sweaty, especially in the summer and am lucky enough to have an employer that has showers and lockers, albeit slightly inadequate for the number of cycling employees (all men, bar one occasional lady). The logistics do take a bit of getting used to - ensuring the right clothes & shoes are in the right place at the right time etc. Personally I don't claim that cycling is quicker, for me it roughly works out the same as if I went by train. The best bit is not being stuck to a timetable, I know that when I leave in the morning I'll be at the office in 20 - 25 minutes and the same when I go home. As I travelled by train (I believe you're a bus person) I never got to read that much anyway, the journey was too short.

To any ex-NTL Virgin Media broadband customers. NTL/VM used to have a method of setting up additional email boxes and managing the setting/passwords for each one. Recently they have changed this to "Selfcare" (which looks like and ex-Blueyonder system). Although I can log into Selfcare, I can't manage any of the mail boxes anymore. Has any else tried and succeeded with this ? BTW, I called VM support who said I would need another "master" email address created - I don't want a new email address but they did this anyway, needless to say it didn't solve the issue. A week later they called me to ask if it was now fixed - I responded by asking why they were asking me and to call me back when they know it had been fixed - I'm still waiting.

Threads that go over one page - let's face it, life is too short to read through pages and pages of turgid shite.