I received an email that my hosting plan was having some features “bumped up.” This happens from time to time and is always a perk. For instance, today I learned that Lunarpages upped the storage space on my plan from 250GB to 350GB.

Sweet!

Additionally, my bandwidth was upped from 2,500GB to 3,500 GB/month.

Wicked Sweet!

Who is my awesome host, you ask … Lunarpages.

I was revisiting their Education Program page. I had promised to send the link to one of the teachers at Jessie’s school with LP’s contact info. I was surprised to learn how much the school pages get … other hosts give “donated” accounts far less features than even the most basic plan!

Basically, LP provides free web hosting for educational purposes to all K-12 public schools in the U.S. (Private schools, colleges, churches, non-profit organizations, day cares and public schools outside of the United States are not eligible.) It’s open to any district administrator, school principal, classroom teacher or PTA representative. Schools and districts are invited to take advantage of the service to create websites for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to:

• Increasing visibility for the school within its own community and beyond
• Facilitating communication between teachers and parents
• Sharing information between schools within a district or classrooms within a school
• Providing valuable information about daily schedules and events
• Serving as a bulletin board for homework assignments and class projects

A quick run-through of perks: a free web builder, free unlimited phone and email support, unlimited email addresses and FTP accounts, 500 MB storage, and 20 GB data transfer for each new account. There are no restrictions on the use of the account, provided it is opened by a public school official and is used for educational purposes. Education Program participants are entitled to a free domain. Additional domain names after the free one are $7.95 per year per domain.

As with all “freebies” there are, of course, a few requirements and restrictions. For instance, this program is not eligible for the the CoffeeCup Software promotion. You can find a brief outline here.

Anyone interested in this program is encouraged to contact Lunarpages. For more information or to sign up for the program, school officials and teachers should contact Lunarpages by calling 1-877-LUNARPAGES (586-2772) or email education@lunarpages.com

I <3 LP.

It’s nice to finally see it in print.

Ocean currents to blame for warming: expert

The United States’ leading hurricane forecaster says global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming. William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, also said the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.

Speaking to a group of Republican MPs, Dr Gray had harsh words for researchers and politicians who said man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for global warming.

“They are blaming it all on humans, which is crazy,” he said. “We’re not the cause of it.”

Dr Gray said in the past 40 years the number of serious hurricanes making landfall on the US Atlantic coast had declined even though carbon dioxide levels had risen. He said increasing levels of carbon dioxide would not produce more, or stronger, hurricanes.

Dr Gray, 77, has long criticised the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.

Earlier this month, he dubbed former US vice-president and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore “a gross alarmist” for making the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped focus media attention on global warming.

Yesterday, Dr Gray said that politics and research into global warming had created “almost an industry” that had frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices.

He said research arguing that humans were causing global warming was “mush” based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.

He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.

“There’s no way that doubling CO2 is going to cause that amount of warming,” he said.

Dr Gray also said warming and cooling trends could not go on indefinitely and believed temperatures were beginning to level out after a very warm year in 1998.

It seems the search and spam bots are showing my site a lot of love lately. I’ve noticed several “obvious” search results in my Search Meter logs: viagra, phentermine, tramadol, “buy hydrocodone,” home furniture, etc. — and who could forget the exploit bots, LOL

p0hh0nsee%\') UNION ALL SELECT 1 2 aid pwd 5 6 7 8

Give it up, fellas. Wrong blog software, dummies. Don’t you read headers?

Of course not all of my searches are by bots. I can usually tell by IPs if it’s someone I know and it’s interesting to see what people search for.

I’ve recently seen a few searches by (who I suspect) are my ex’s associates searching for any mention of him in my archives.

Like I’d be stupid enough to post his real name. Gimme a freakin’ break.

I ran across an interesting article on That’s Fit’s feeds:

Reversing Alzheimer’s memory loss may now be possible

Alzheimer’s is one of the more frightening conditions that can affect as us we age. However, recent research suggests that there’s hope — finding that it may be possible to regain lost memories.

Using both mental stimulation, and a drug that encourages growth of brain nerve cells, scientists have been able to reverse memory loss in mice. The rodents had a condition similar to Alzheimer’s, leading researchers to believe that these methods could also be used in humans that have lost their memory and ability to learn.

While this is exciting news in itself, what’s most interesting, is that the mere possibility of retrieving these memories suggests that they were never “lost” in the first place — but instead rendered inaccessible by brain damage.

Meaning, that with improved technology, the disease may not only be preventable — but also reversible.

Too bad this technology wasn’t around 30 years ago.

I’ve had a couple relatives on my mother’s side that had Alzheimer’s. One was a well-to-do aunt who lived in Mtn Brook. She was a sweet lady when I knew her, but that was after the disease had already set in and robbed her of her memories. I’m told that she was “something else” in her younger years. Either way, I was fond of her. She often spoke of her “Disney vacation home” — apparently she and her family had a summer home somewhere in Florida and went to Disney World several times each year. (must be nice!)

Anyways, this article is great news. My family’s medical history is littered with heavy cancer on both sides, add high blood pressure and strokes on my mother’s side, and the slight chance of Alzheimer’s. Hopefully by the time I’m old enough to get it, it may no longer be a threat.

Now, if only we could be so lucky with the cancer thing …

For those of you who run a blog and are looking to optimize it for better SEO/M, you might find this article helpful: The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs. Actually, Mr. Pearson’s blog is usually chocked full of help blog and SEO type stuff, so if that’s your bag, you might want to bookmark it.