Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column

Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column, London

This is a photo of Trafalgar Square taken from the entrance to the National Gallery. It's a fantastic vantage point, showing you from Nelson's Column all the way down Whitehall to Big Ben.

I took the photo Easter 2009 during a visit to London with the kids.

Funny, this is the one area of London I gravitate to whenever I'm in the city. I remember drunken stumbles down by Embankment tube station, and afternoons meandering through the National Gallery.

Not-So-EasyJet

I've written here in the past about being obsessive about missing flights. And in my long career of taking flights for business purposes, I missed my first flight on Friday morning.

And not to do things by halves, I missed my second flight later that same day.

Missing the first flight was entirely due to the freak weather conditions around London at the end of the week. Snow? In winter? They never saw it coming.

The Grand Canal, Venice

Venice's Grand Canal as seen from the Rialto Bridge

Looking down from the top of the Rialto Bridge in Venice...one of my favourite photos from our holiday.

Sacred Heart Church, Omagh

Front of Sacred Heart Church in Omagh

A photo of Sacred Heart Church in Omagh - we spent some time there a couple of years back and I got this picture. I've given it a slight boost in Photoshop.

Here's a bit more information about the church:

Antrim Round Tower

Photo of the Round Tower in Antrim

The Round Tower and Bullaun Stone are impressive reminders of Antrim’s ancient monastic settlement. The tower was built around the 10th century as a bell-tower for protection from raiders and is known locally as The Steeple. It is 28 metres tall and is one of the finest of its kind in Ireland. The monastic site was burned in 1147.

Nofollow List - An alternative to Drupal's spam link deterrent

Something I've hated about running community sites on Drupal is the cursed Spam Link Deterrent filter.

The idea behind this filter is that it applies rel="nofollow" to any links in user-generated content. And the reason this is necessary is that when you have a membership site and you allow users to create content on it, you inadvertently attract spammers who want to drop links back to their own site.

London's White Tower (From an angle)

Windows of the White Tower in the Tower Of London

A shot of the side of the Tower Of London's White Tower. I took this one when we were in London back in Easter 2008 - I never really got a chance to upload some of these at the time.

Since we're going to London again in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping to build up my portfolio of photos of the city. I think I've fallen in love with London again.

Comments closed (due to spam)

This is just a short note to say that I'm closing comments on this site for a little while. Over the last week or so, I've been deluged with spam, despite having Drupal's highly regarded Mollom module installed.

I'm not going to bother fighting spammers by moderating comments constantly. Even when reporting spam comments to Mollom, the same stuff just keeps coming back: mostly Tiffany jewellry and Ugg boots spam. If I can't see the benefit of reporting spam to Mollom, then why bother?

What to do instead?

Cyclops Pumpkin

One-eyed pumpkin lantern

OK, this is my favourite pumpkin from this year's batch so far - the cyclops. I'd have preferred a taller pumpkin to work this on, but I'm fairly pleased with the result, especially the carved teeth.

Vampire Pumpkin

A pumpkin lantern with pointy teeth

This one's to my own design - a kind of devil-vampire face I sketched out before I started carving. Unfortunately, the features are quite small and they don't let the light out in quite the right way.

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