Stephen Fry - recently self-outed techie - has posted a rather excellent bit of text on world-wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee this weekend. Erm, I think this used to be called his "Guardian column" or something like that ;-) But anyway, whether you read it in the Guardian or on his blog, it's well worth reading if you're not familiar with this rather inspirational pioneer.

I did find it rather funny though that Fry points out that the omnipresent acronym for World Wide Web, WWW, is significantly (3 times) more syllables than its expansion. Perhaps this is one of the first acronyms designed purely for ease of use on computers (especially since it's the same key three times), rather than to save time in speech...

After my little foray into the land of GNOME over the last month or so, I've finally got my KDE desktop back and pretty much configured on my home PC. Mmmm... hopefully without sounding too weird about it, this feels much better....

A few people have expressed dissatisfaction with the default KDE look, and I've always indicated that I tend to tweak the layout quite heavily. So, here's a screenshot of my current set-up.

There's nothing out of the ordinary KDE stuff going on here. But, for those unfamiliar, there are a couple of Konquerors (one in web-browsing mode with three tabs open, the other looking at some picture files), Amarok (the KDE music player) is in its xmms-style mode, and Yakuake (the quake-style terminal program) is rolled down and just visible at the top of the screen. I tend to have my Kicker (the taskbar thing) occupying the left border of the screen, which works much better in this day of widescreen monitors. There are a few other minimised windows on the current desktop, but nothing on the second. I have a few shortcut buttons, the K menu (depicted for a bit of fun by the gorilla guy) and then some other stuff, such as Kontact indicating how many emails I've got, sitting just above the clock and deleted items widget.

Anyway, so there we go. Perhaps a little boring for a blog post, but now we know. :-)

This Saturday, apart from being my birthday, is also an international day of action on climate change. There will be, amongst many other things, a demo in central London, which quite a few of my friends from a variety of different backgrounds are going to. There's more info on the demo and the campaign against climate change more generally on the website of the Campaign Against Climate Change.

The government here in the UK is now committed to some sort of climate change bill this parliament, thanks in no small part to the dedication of groups like Friends of the Earth, though as described, amongst other places, in George Monbiot's book Heat, most scientists appear to agree that far far more than what is currently on the table will be required in order to avoid starvation, suffering and migration on a scale never before seen in human history.

The government is also unfortunately, in my view, engaged in the diversionary tactic of passing the responsibility of action required back onto us. Of course it is vital that we all begin to understand our role in building a different kind of society, with an economy which is not reliant on high levels of carbon emission, and the government has an important role to play in this. However, though I hope to be proved wrong, it seems that initiatives like their television advertisements and "carbon footprint calculator" are droplets of change when compared with the carbon legacy ocean created by airport expansions, road building and support for expansions in fossil fuel extraction and new coal-powered electricity generation.

Incidentally, I just calculated my carbon footprint (to whatever accuracy can be determined in five minutes by a small flash animation with rather limited questions and answers). Apparently 9.84 tonnes of carbon are emitted each year in my name. Anyone know what 9.84 tonnes of carbon looks like? Sure sounds like a lot of pencils... Calculate yours here.

I'm a couple of days late with this post, but voting has now closed for Brummie of the Year 2007, and the winner is John Tighe, of the Spotted Dog in Digbeth! Congratulations John!

For those not familiar with John, his pub was served with a noise abatement order after over 20 years of being a lively and popular venue in Digbeth, prompted by complaints from residents of newly constructed city-living apartments. The campaign to keep Digbeth vibrant is ongoing. Keep up the good work folks!

Just beaten into second place, was serial blogger and key figure in Birmingham's creative scene, Pete Ashton. Well done mate! Somehow though, I don't think he'll mind coming second to John...

Full details of the poll is on the organiser's website: Birmingham, It's Not Shit.