I’ve just spent the afternoon with the wonderful celebration piece A people’s history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today that was published last Friday on the Guardian Technology website. What’s amazing to me is how recent it all really is! I started at Swansea University in 1985 and electronic communications was a difficult issue then. I remember the protocol wars of 1986 when JANET wanted to use X25 when the US was about to standardise on TCP/IP (I recall the our LIS wanted to toe the party line, but that Computer Science wanted to go the Internet route); I remember trawling Gopher for software to download using FTP and putting together tar files from shell archives of multiple USENET messages.

The BBC encourages the sharing of this video from Dame Shirley Bassey’s recent appearance on the electric Proms. So here it is, with the “Girl from Tiger Bay” (which Shirley is of course) composed by James Dean Bradfield, who’s playing guitar. It’s a good song! Enjoy! http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf

Clive on Learning: E-Learning Debate 2009 as mentioned by Jane Hart, a recent debate at the Oxford Union “This house believes that the e-learning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow.” has been summarized by Clive Shepherd. The debate (including video clips of the speakers is here: www.epic.co.uk/elearningdebate and there’s a tweet feed here. Which side would you be on?

http://youtube.com/v/vmaUW86RqbY Giving lectures on code is pretty tedious for both students and staff and it occured to me that more interactivity is required. So I wondered if I could liven up my JavaScript lectures by using Firebug’s JavaScript console. As you can see from this quick “proof of concept” video that I [made with Screenr](http://screenr.com/juH), it might just work (and will require little extra effort on my part). I’ll blog again about how it went!

Today I attended a pleasant hour at e-learning and cakes. Saw a demo of QR codes and Paper Show two technologies that have real potential (although I will have to think more about how to use the former than the latter). If nothing else, QR-codes may convince me to actually try the mobile internet! (A nice side affect of using the mobile internet is that I might be able to use TwitPic to get my photos off my phone!

I have just uploaded an updated version of my Health and Safety and Project Planning presentation to SlideShare. The soundtrack is a bit School-of-Engineering-at-Swansea specific, but if you can make use of the slides, please be my guest. [H&S And Project Planning](http://www.slideshare.net/cpjobling/hs-and-project-planning-presentation “H&S And Project Planning”)http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=hs-and-project-planning-1223491503611174-8&stripped_title=hs-and-project-planning-presentation View more [presentations](http://www.slideshare.net/) from [Chris Jobling](http://www.slideshare.net/cpjobling).

While working at home I wondered why I couldn’t connect to the new Plagiarism Awareness site recently announced by RSC Wales. Later I decided I’d do some work on Blackboard and found that I couldn’t connect. Odd, I thought! So I did a ping/traceroute and discovered that the Swansea.ac.uk domain is cut-off from the Internet (see Twitpic image below). My only choice is to walk in to work! A couple of minutes later

Appropriately enough added to my own [posterous.com](http://posterous.com) blog posting about Sidewiki. Unexpected, but perhaps not suprising, was the discovery that as a Google “customer”, you can post your comments to your Blogger blog(s)! Twitter, Facebook and other social sharing possibilities surely must be close behind. in reference to: > “In the latest update of the Google Toolbar (IE and FireFox …” > - [Google Sidewiki – Half baked but crispy](http://cpjobling.posterous.com/google-sidewiki-14) ([view on Google Sidewiki](http://www.

http://youtube.com/v/AusOPz8Ww80 I have a lecture next week which will discuss HTML markup. I have lots of notes and examples for XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2 which I think students should read through for some deeper learning rather than be presented in a lecture. I have instead decided to show [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siOHh0uzcuY). On searching,I also found this presentation from Google I/0 2009 (the Google developer’s conference) which talks about what’s coming next!

Last year I started my photo a day project with a snap of the flooded path from the University (where I work) to Brynmill (where I live). Here we are in a new year and once again it’s raining and the path across Singleton Park has become a river. A day to be enjoyed by only by Labradors. Autumn has come early this year and I’m wondering what happened to the summer!

Year 2: 1/365: Saint Barbara Originally uploaded by Chris P Jobling It would appear that I am addicted! After taking a couple of days off from my first 365 photos project, I am, like the best American television series, back for season two. So here is the first upload from a second year of “a photo a day”. The image, of Saint Barbara, parton saint of artillerymen, military engineers, miners and others who work with explosives …, and also of mathematicians [Wikipedia]

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpjobling/2780567935/ “photo sharing”) [Day 1: Another rainy day in August](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpjobling/2780567935/) Originally uploaded by [Chris P Jobling](http://www.flickr.com/people/cpjobling/) My first year’s “photo-a-day” project ended, as it started, on a rainy day in August. In between, there were many highlights such as Shane Williams’ testimonial with the Ospreys, the Great Dorset Steam fair, Queen Nefertiti, Parties, Christmas in Berlin, a holiday in Yorkshire and the U2 concert in Cardiff. There are also lots of self portraits, pictures of the cat and images of furniture and furnishings that fill in when no other inspiration beckoned.