Today the BBC Trust annouced that they are officially backing a new free-to-view satellite service in a joint venture with ITV. The decision to approve this proposal was reached after several months of public consultation, of which I voiced my support directly to the BBC in April. Freesat will rival BSkyB’s own “Freesat” service and I can foresee that Sky will withdraw their service in the coming months.
The decision was approved due to overwelming public support and market analysis that indicated that there would not be a detrimental effect to existing cable and satellite operators in the UK. The provisions of the agreement require the BBC Trust to maintain suffient control over the joint venture; other networks using the service are not subsidised by the TV Licence; and the operations of BBC/ITV Freesat are kept seperate from the existing Freeview digital terrestrial service.
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27.Apr.07 
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Today marks the first anniversary of Polaris Digital Limited, which was registered with Companies House on April 18th 2006. It is still here and as you can see we have had a bit of a go at our logo and brand in general as we focus on our core values. All sounds very serious, but believe me it isn’t. All of this goes hand in hand with our new web presence that has been promised for months and will finally be arriving next month.
What is digital horticulture? We like to think of it as taking an idea and placing it in a digital environment where it can grow and evolve into something beautiful. One example of this might be our PDnH Server (PDOS/01) that has been in development for over a year now (and show’s no sign of stopping any time soon). Initially it was built to run our web site, but now it has expanded to run several more. With each new challenge it encounters, the feature set gets a little richer. Today PDnH Server is a completely alien animal from the first version and we are boldly heading for our first version 1.0 release by the end of September 2008.
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18.Apr.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Well you may have noticed that Soup of the Day is currently experiencing a small lull in regular postings. This seems to be a general lull across all web based projects I am involved in or quietly watch from afar. However silence on this blog means that lots and lots is going on behind the scenes and most of which I can’t talk about quite yet.
Polaris Digital as a limited company has completed its first year and is still alive, which I am extremely proud of. There have been good and bad times, but this is a massive learning process for me and each little mistake ensures that I know much more about how business works and how to manage work and life effectively. The biggest thing going on with Polaris Digital at the moment that is unclassified is our new web site, which is getting ever so close to launch. In the mean time a new holding page is going to replace the main site from next week.
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13.Apr.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)
For the past month there has been the strangest noise coming from the Champagne province of France. For the past five years the sound of heavy machinery has been the status quo for residents along a 500 kilometre corridor from Paris to Strasbourg, but the noise of rushing air and metal on metal has just started to thunder from the new Ligne à Grande Vittesse (High Speed Line) called LGV Est (High Speed Line East). The locals in the area have been warned to expect this from their cousins along the LGV Atlantique corridor from Paris to Tours, where in May 1990 a modified TGV Atlantique unit 325 set a new world record for a manned train (wheel on rail) of 515.3 km/h (320.3 mph).
Fast forward to today and a consortium of SNCF, RFF and Alstom have pushed their own world record even further with a new unit that reached a rocketing 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph). To put this in some perspective, in 2003 a Japanese magnetic-levitation (Mag-Lev) train set a record of 581 km/h (361 mph) which means the specially adapted TGV unit was within a whisker of going faster than even a Mag-Lev train. Many sources have stated that Alstom were confident they could have beaten the Japanese record and we are only left to speculate why they didn’t go for the ultimate prize. But they have broken their own record for manned wheel-on-rail speed and that certainly shouldn’t be ignored.
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03.Apr.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Some of you may know that Siân and I are currently growing a lot of vegetables and fruit. Well when I say ‘a lot’, it should say, ‘as much as we can fit in our flat’. Siân has always had a hobbit like facination with gardening that I must admit I did not share until recently. However since I have been growing a Cactus my interest in horticulture has begun to perk up.
The 2007 crop includes the Chilli’s that are my responsibility, Potato’s, Tomato’s and Onions. This pretty much is our horde for this year, but if successful we will hopefully be able to grow more next year with the addition of an allotment that we’re hoping to gain this summer. Once we have a fully cultivated allotment space, we hope to grow more vegetables and fruit for 2008 onwards, reducing our need to buy vegetables from the supermarket.
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02.Apr.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)
Unfortunately this weeks CATE challenges have left me scratching my head and wondering how on earth I’m going to able to achieve any of them. Add to the fact that I seem to have worked myself into a cold and not much was done at all this week other than lay on the sofa playing PlayStation.
Challenge : Got to brick a cistern or two
Put quite simply this challenge is impossible for either myself or Siân to do as our toilet cistern tanks are embedded in a wall and have no access to them what-so-ever without taking a sledge hammer to the wall. As much as I’m fond of CATE challeneges, breaking the wall down seemed one step to far. So sadly our cistern system is exactly the way it was when we moved in. But on a plus note, our toilets are eco-toilets anyway, flushing with less water than the average toilet flush.
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02.Apr.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)
