About

the author

Can't be bothered to write this yet. Google me ('benedict prescott' works quite well for older stuff; mostly postings to techie mailing lists) or read the stuff in site, then join the dots.

thewatertower.org.uk

The site went live on Tues 24th April 2007. Right in the middle of the local elections for Bournemouth Council.

It was procured to replace thewatertower.org, because I got fed up with edited pages with notepad on 25th July 2004. Which is more or less when I got elected onto the Council (in a by-election)

WHY 'thewatertower.org'?

My original explanation for the site name, 14th September 2002, was ...

When I set up my LAN [yeah - I've got a LAN :o)] GNU/Linux and Windoze wanted to know a domain. I wanted something more interesting than 'home' or 'lounge' [you get the picture?] so I went for 'watertower'.

At some point I thought that would be a cool domain to stick a site up on that had nothing to do with Water Towers. (like 'amazon' has nothing to do with books).

mission statement

'why did I bother?' I asked myself when I set up thewatertower.org

tWTo is all about putting something back. I've done tons of cool stuff after digging for it on the web. Here I 'add some value'.

If you've spent hours reading google results and it still doesn't work and / or make any sense, perhaps I've been there and at tWTo it'll be clearer. I hope the universe plays fair and indexes me as applicable.

Are you trying to get a hand rolled Linux kernel to boot?

Tough. I haven't figured it out either. However, as with most things I learned a lot watching it break, so keep at it. You never know when it will come in useful.

tWTo mission statement ends.

Old news

I brought various 'news' items across from thewatertower.org that were still interesting ...

Sun 25th Jul 2004:

Does parliament.uk exist?

Interesting article off The Register which shows that the Internet isn't as simple as it looks.

Tim O'Reilly on theft

Of www.ora.com prominence, this article looks at the practicalities of selling books when people keep nicking your work.

Tue 30th Mar 2004:

The ultimate boot CD

I discovered this years ago, and it remains a key tool for fixing/troubleshooting people's kit, including my own.

Tue 9th Mar 2004:

Short links from tinyurl

This is a good idea. You can put a shortcut on your browser to generate a short link to any web page, and it'll be available for ever (the link, that is, not the page!)

Fri 25th Jul 2003:

Iraq

Some first hand accounts of life in Iraq post 'liberation'.

Mon 21st Jul 2003:

Postscript errors

Someone give this man a medal. And another one to the PageMaker mailing list member who posted it.

Sat 15th Feb 2003:

Census 2001

Census stats are out. Darth Vader would be best advised to steer clear of Brighton and Hove, where the Force is particularly strong.

Earlier Stories

Complete archive on the official site