Brian's Place

Welcome to Brian's home page!

This site is a way of sharing information, photos, recipes and opinions with family and friends (and with anyone else who would like to drop in and become a friend!).

There are some common themes to the topics on this site:

One theme is the enjoyment of life in the laid-back, community and family oriented spirit that one finds in Mediterranean countries (and elsewhere, luckily).

Another part of enjoying life is keeping the brain active. Playing games, solving puzzles and trying to understand some intriguing aspects of the universe we live in are all part of this. Collectively I group these under "Mind Stretchers".

Learning to fly a plane (at home, on a PC simulator) can become a life-time hobby, and a very mind-stretching one at that. Being physically confined is no obstacle to exploring the world in quite a different way, and you will make many on-line friends as you go along. I introduce you to this hobby, and point you at some good places to get started.

Another theme is enjoyment of, and respect for, the planet on which we all live. There is very little preaching going on here, just some hopefully useful and interesting information on environmental issues and related technology.

The books, movies and TV shows that someone likes can tell you something about that person. There are a couple of sections in which I ramble about some of my own favourites, under various categories. Many of the entries relate to books or movies that came out a long time ago, and may be less familiar now. Most of the entries came out of conversations on a walk or drive with a friend or family member.

I also provide some help with computers, divided into general information, trouble-shooting and web page creation. Most of this is just a matter of pointing you at other people's excellent work.

A feature of this site is the effort put into providing a large number of (hopefully) useful or interesting external links. You will find these scattered throughout most of the pages, often with a quick summary of the links in the right hand panel.

I would like to offer a special note of thanks to the folks behind Wikipedia, the greatest free knowledge resource in the world, and to everyone who freely contributes to it.

If you follow the links on this site, you will be visiting Wikipedia quite often!

This site is relatively new, and is evolving in a kind of top-down manner. Expect changes and additions almost anywhere.

If you like this site, please share it with your friends. Have fun!

• Navigation
• As you would expect, the buttons on the left-hand side panel will take you to each main page (some of which have several sub-pages when you get there).
• To see what's new on this site, click the "Latest Updates" button.
• The right hand panel contains (hopefully useful) links of various kinds. You will notice that different kinds of links have different colours - you'll get the idea! If you can't distinguish colours, I have tried to use helpful tooltips as well if the colour is significant.
• The Google Search box at the top has SafeSearch switched ON by default and opens in a separate window - just close that window when you are done to return to my site.

• Eyesight Friendly!
• This site has been designed so that you can increase the text size if you need to, without wrecking the layout.

• On Internet Explorer 7 you can adjust the text size from the Page menu, probably near the top right hand side, or press the ALT key to see the old menus near the top that you were used to (and then select the View menu).
• If you hold down the CONTROL key and move the mouse wheel, you may or may not find that you expand the whole page, rather than just the text. This depends on your browser.

• Input Always Welcome
• I am most interested in any comments, inputs or suggestions that you may have. Please click this icon to e-mail me.
• I will always answer e-mails (apart from requests for computer trouble-shooting - sorry!).
• If the result of your e-mail is an update to this site (no promises!) then I will always mention your name/moniker unless you ask me not to.

• Are You Using Internet Explorer 7?

• Did you know that you can automatically open a number of tabs when IE7 starts up, each with its own different home page?
• If there is a collection of pages that you always open up each morning (for example) then this is really useful.
• To set them up using IE7, just go to Tools, Internet Options, General Tab, and then type a number of lines into the Home Page box, one line for each URL address. (You can probably do a similar thing with other multi-tab browsers.)
• If you really like this site, you could maybe make it one of your many home pages (I would be very honoured in that case!).