My photos from Hangzhou and Shanghai are finally online! It’s taken me five months to upload just 72 photos, but as usual they are labelled with extensively researched captions…

They have credited the photo to “http://jonathan.rawle.org/gallery/using/”, which is actually my page of terms and conditions for using my photos. At least they have included an acknowledgement, and the Graduates’ Review counts as a non-commercial publication, so I’m happy for them to use the image. I only wish they’d asked me for a higher-resolution version, as it’s quite pixellated if you look closely.

The new layout is much wider, which means anyone with a resolution of 800×600 will see a horizontal scrollbar. That was quite a hard decision to make, but from the stats, very few visitors use such a small screen these days. The page header is now much shorter, meaning less space at the top is wasted. The layout has been specifically designed to allow 500 pixel-width images to be displayed in the content.

Other new features include:

• Upgrade to Wordpress 2.3
• Tag support (once I start to add tags to articles!)
• e-mail notifications for both new posts and comments
• Integrated Google search

and various other minor enhancements I’ll leave you to discover!

Please note that several of those features should be considered beta tests at this stage. Do let me know if you have any problems using any part of the site.

Now all I need to do is get back to writing new articles…

In some ways, the world wide web has moved on a lot since I first started using it. Web 2.0, blogs, RSS, etc. simply didn’t exist back then; internet shopping was seen as a risky business, limited to a few specialist retailers. But other aspects of the web are still the same: it’s still possible to find plenty of weird and wonderful websites on whatever subject interests you, and to access information in a way that simply wasn’t possible for the average person in the offline world.

How will the internet evolve in the next 10 years? Both e-mail and the world wide web have remained popular because they are free to the end user, and are based on open standards. The challenges that will face the internet in the future are issues such as net neutrality, digital rights management, and attempts to introduce proprietary standards – all things that could damage the internet as we know it, and hamper its future development. As the internet completes its transition from an academic network to a global medium, let’s hope it continues to be enhanced by the best practices of the commercial world, without gaining the worst.

David Gaukroger taught my GCSE music class at King Charles I School, Kidderminster, in 1993–94. There were only seven of us in the class, so I wonder if he remembers me?

I thought I’d e-mail Evening Concert presenter Nick Bailey with my little story, and after the piece had finished he read my message out on air! It’s good to know that, despite requiring only a little talk between long pieces of music, the programme is presented live, as I’ve already tested several times with my e-mails!

Romany Wood is a piece for strings, narrator and children’s voices, with text by David Carr. The project has two aims: to encourage children to participate in music; and to raise money for children’s charities in the UK and abroad. Supporters of the project include Howard Goodall (composer for Mr Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, Blackadder, etc.); the patron is Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music. A Royal Gala concert is planned for next year.

Sir- I agree with Ken Livingstone (Letters, September 11).

In Boris Johnson’s native Oxfordshire, where bus services are operated by a number of different companies, I often find myself waiting for a late-running bus. In the meantime, I have to let another bus, which is going to my desired destination, pass me by, carrying at most two passengers. The reason is that I have a monthly ticket for one operator’s buses which the others will not accept.

Whenever I visit London, it is refreshing to be able to use my travelcard on any bus that happens to be going in the right direction, or indeed on any Tube or DLR train. Londoners may complain about their transport system, but perhaps they should first try using public transport in other parts of the country.

Any move to further deregulation would be a disastrous step in the wrong direction.

Jonathan Rawle, Didcot, Oxfordshire

I should first add that they do edit readers’ letters: I actually wrote, “I have to agree with Ken Livingstone,” which subtly alters the emphasis. After all, there are probably issues on which I don’t agree with Ken, and agreeing is not a decision I take lightly!

They also left out my remark that the system of buses in London is the same as that found in other European cities, with the implication being that the UK is the only country where different bus companies operate with completely separate timetables and ticketing systems. (Is that actually true, I wonder? Does anyone know of a city on the continent where buses are like those in the UK outside London?)

The bus routes in question receive around £220,000 each year in subsidy. At the very least, it should be possible for passengers to travel on any subsidised bus. Given that the services are already quite infrequent, it’s ridiculous to have a system where passengers aren’t able to make full use of the buses that are on offer. It’s a waste of public money.

• Ken Livingstone’s original letter
• Boris Johnson’s blog: London buses

Highlights include photos of the castle from various vantage points; the monuments on Calton Hill; several views over the city from high points, including Arthur’s seat; and photos from both outside and inside the Scottish Parliament. There is also a whole series of photos taken in North Queensferry of both the Forth rail and road bridges.

In all there are currently 29 photos, so take a look at them now!

China isn’t the only country that blocks access to Flickr. Other states such as Iran and the United Arab Emirates don’t allow their citizens access to the website. Fortunately, an Iranian, Hamed Saber, has written a Firefox add-on, Access Flickr, that will allow the site to be accessed from all these countries.

A while ago, I began using the Flickr API to display Flickr photos from within the photo gallery on my website. Unfortunately, that meant that users without the Firefox add-on could no longer view all the images on my website either. Interestingly, the Chinese block appears to work simply by blocking DNS lookups to the Flickr image server. If the server is accessed by its IP address, it works fine. Access Flickr ensures that the IP address is always used. For the sake of users without the add-on, I have now changed my gallery to perform the DNS look-up first, then reference images by the IP address. This should allow at least users in China to view my photos as they could until this month. If anyone has any issues with the gallery following this change, please let me know.

Some articles appear to suggest that it’s ironic that Flickr has been blocked in China in the same week that they added support for seven new languages, including Chinese. In fact, they have added support only for traditional Chinese, with the target markets being Taiwan and Hong Kong (where Flickr is still accessible). China, where simplified Chinese is used, was never the intended market. More significant is that the block occurred at around the same time that shareholders at Yahoo, Flickr’s parent company, rejected plans to oppose internet censorship in China. Some people predicted bad things would happen when Yahoo bought Flickr. If using a Yahoo service makes my photographs less accessible to any potential website visitors, I may have to have a rethink and keep my photos elsewhere.

• Related article: Chinese censorship in action

• 42 posts (two of which were later removed)
• 124 comments on posts
• 35,000 spam comments automatically filtered
• 12,000 blog post page impressions (excluding the homepage)
• Most popular post UK music industry silences radio for overseas listeners with 57 comments
• 50 incoming blog links recorded by Technorati
• 220 photographs in my gallery

To celebrate the site’s first birthday, the software on which it runs has been updated to Wordpress 2.1 (a process that went quite smoothly). Also planned for the coming months is a new theme that will hopefully make better use of space, and which won’t be so closely based on the Wordpress default theme. But as it took me six months to release the current version of the site, it may well be October before you see any changes!

As it happened, Tony Blair was in the area that day to visit the Diamond synchrotron. On Greenpeace’s website it said he was in the area “coincidentally”. But you do have to wonder if they had inside information.

Greenpeace claim that Didcot power station is the second most polluting in the UK, and that two thirds of the energy is wasted as heat from the cooling towers. Their idea of localised generation where homes can be heated using the excess two thirds is reasonable, but this wasn’t really emphasised in any of the reports in the media – the nature of the protest overshadowed the most important part of their message. And as the Prime Minister said on the special local news programme that evening, he couldn’t just shut down the coal-firied power stations overnight, and any savings in CO₂ emissions would soon be wiped out by growth in the developing world. Those countries need to be brought on board if we are to fight climate change, and they aren’t going to stop building polluting power stations just because we’ve closed ours.

The following day, the power station’s owners, npower, were granted a High Court injunction, ordering Greenpeace to leave. The protesters were swiftly arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage, although thanks to health and safety rules, it seems unlikely their punishment will be to clean up their graffiti.

• Greenpeace’s photos from the top of the chimney: 1 2
• Tony Blair responding to Greenpeace on Central News