As you may have noticed I am currently experiencing some problems with photos - namely that none of them are appearing.

It seems as though the photos have been deleted from the server for some reason. I will endeavour to find out what has happened to them and will re-upload them shortly.

Update: After re-uploading everything and changing passwords, everything is working as it should again. If anyone spots anything wrong, just give me a shout.

A few days ago I finally got around to adding the latest blog entries to the front page of the site to help people find the latest content on here.

I don't have much time at the moment with exams and stuff but one of the first things I'm hoping to do afterwards is creating the Sun Sneezing page that I've been meaning to do for a while. There have been quite a few people interested in it, so I think it would be a waste if I didn't set it up, even if it is a long time since I promised it first time around!

This week I have added some new photos of London to my photo gallery. They range from flowers and phoneboxes in Russell Square gardens to the Centre Point building on New Oxford Street and the British Museum along with a couple of others thrown in for good measure.

Also, just a quick reminder that as I put new photos into the galleries now I will mention it my blog and may not necessarily mention it in the news section as well. Soon I will add the latest blog entry titles to the front page of the site in addition to the latest news item, as that seems like the logical thing to do.

On Friday last week I began experimenting with a new part for the site, a blog. Blogs, or web logs, are regularly updated web pages that allow the author to write about topics which are of interest. It is now at a stage where I am happy to launch it and welcome in visitors stopping by to see other parts of my site.

In the blog I will be writing about topics such as photography, geographic information, web design and development and any other things which take my fancy along the way. As I write, the latest entry in the blog is about the recent release of Churchill: The Hollywood Years, a movie which I was an extra in back in 2003.

The news section of the site will now only be updated with actual news about the site itself whilst anything else will be written about in the blog.

Apart from one photo, it's been almost two years since I added any new photos of London to my London photo gallery - there were a few special features created, but that's it.

So when I went to Greenwich yesterday with the rest of the students off my MSc course, I thought it was about time to take some new photos for the gallery. I've uploaded seven new photos, including my first ones of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

One of the new photos is a photo of Tower Bridge. This isn't just any photo of Tower Bridge though, it's a bit of a special one. The day that our boat travelled underneath just happened to be the first day in many years that the bridge had stopped working. It had locked in the open position (just slightly - so you can't tell from the photo) and was causing traffic chaos.

Having spent time the other day working on a new site search for my site I have just uploaded details of how to create your own search system using the Google API and PHP. I hope it is useful for someone else.

I have implemented a new, improved search system today, based on the technology Google use to search billions of pages across the internet. Google supply a piece of software to developers that lets them harness the power of their mighty search engine to put to their own uses, and that is exactly what I've done.

You can now search the whole site where previously you could only search certain sections. Where a thumbnail preview is available - such as for photos and for websites in my web development portfolio - it will display it for you alongside the results. If you misspell something, the system will suggest an alternative (although only if there is a near enough alternative which Google can find in their dictionary).

Please do try it out, it can be very handy if you're looking for something in particular. For example you could find out about my time at Reuters, learn more about the churches I've taken photos of, find out about my nightmare of a Halloween or anything you want.

I have today added an news feed to allow people to keep up to date with what is happening here at dankarran.com using their favourite news reader programme.

For those of you looking confused at the moment, news readers are programmes that go out onto the internet for you and pick up any new articles from news feeds you are subscribed to. These could be online news sites such as the BBC or the Guardian, they could be people's weblogs (blogs) or any other things which offer you the ability. If you are new to news readers, check out Slate.com's article How To Speed-Read the Net for further information.

With it being the Chinese New Year I spent some time on Wednesday wandering around London's Chinatown district to absorb some of the atmosphere and take some photos.

Most of the photos - which I have added to the existing Chinese New Year photo gallery - are taken along Gerrard Street in the heart of Chinatown. The streets are adorned with lanterns, kites and other decoration along with plenty of people celebrating the Chinese New Year.

Today marks the first day of the new year in the Chinese calendar. Happy New Year! This year - 4702 in the Chinese calendar - is characterised by the Rooster.

If you are interested, I have in my photography galleries some photos of previous Chinese New Year celebrations from London in 2003.