Here we witness the true power of modern technology being harnessed for truly pointless ends. It amused me for 20 minutes.

It goes like this:

1. Point camera at compressed compost pellets
2. Add water (that bit's quite low tech, actually)
3. Mix to a Beethoven classic
4. Blog it for the world to admire

Bonus points to anyone who can identify what the tray is sitting on.

We've been running a youth club at our local church for the last couple of years. Here's a wee short we put together this weekend:

Disclaimer: all images and audio blatantly ripped off from 'tinterwebs.

What do you get when you combine the above three elements, several scripts found in the far corners of the internet, free location-aware image hosting from Picasa and a few hours of meddling?

Something like this.

Click on an album to see the images displayed on a map. Zooming in shows more pictures, clicking on any thumbnail shows that particular picture.

Last week some time, the BBC news led with their usual story; a UK soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. The second story was that a strike in that country had "accidentally" killed 12 civilians.

Today it gets better. A strike yesterday killed 33 civilians and no fighters. The only mistake here was that there were civilians found dead after the strike, not that there were lots of people killed. Quoting from the BBC again:

The Nato commander said in a statement: "We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives.

"I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.

"We will redouble our efforts to regain that trust."

Assuming he speaks for our country, are we as saddened by these 33 lives as the 56 killed in London two and a half years ago? It's to be expected that we're unlikely to reach the level of news saturation reached then: pictures of buses ripped open, closed underground stations, blood soaked rags, stretchers. But are we likely to ever hear about this again?

Let's raise the stakes. If the London bombings had been carried out by an official government, say of Iran, would we have been satisfied with a "full investigation" and efforts to "regain trust?"

We don't have the trust of Afghans. We haven't had it for a very long time. Launching airstrikes at convoys without checking who is in the vehicles, followed by putting it as the third story for a day or so on our news, depicts perfectly why we will never again have their trust.

If even one of the types of atrocities committed in Afghanistan were committed by a foreign government on UK soil, we would be more likely to talk about invasion and occupation than allowing them to "regain our trust." And that sentiment would not fade for several generations.

Where to start?

I started by creating this figure, a simple chart to display the European regulations regarding emissions from diesel lorries and buses. The reduction in allowed emissions is striking, but crucially doesn't cover CO2 or fuel consumption.

European Emissions Standards for Lorries and Buses

I've been doing a bit of work tidying up this site, as all but the diary had long been neglected. I've completely changed the photos section - have a look at it if you like.

While uploading some pictures of St Peter's Seminary, a modern ruin not far from Glasgow, I stumbled across a set of pictures of it on flickr shortly after it opened in the mid 1960s. So for comparison to how we found it in 2005, here are a few similar angles.