All thriller – no filler
The Russian International News Agency has donated 100 historical photographs of the Second World War from their archives to the free image site, commons.wikimedia.org. You can view the first batch of images at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:RIA_Novosti
Here’s a small selection of the highlights.
Very surprised to find I was seated in the “entertainment” carriage on my journey to Taunton today. Entertainment on long train journeys used to be provided by snogging teenagers or dribbling grannies, but now First Great Western has airline-style video screens on the seat backs. Mains sockets were also available at each seat for your phone-charging or kettle boiling pleasure.
More Ryan air style, most of the content is paid (£1.75), but there some free stuff so you can see what you’re going to get.
Well done train company! Can we have it on the tube?
As Jeanette is in middle of creating a cookbook at the moment I thought I’d list some places you can get a book printed (obviously this is for short runs)
Useful site: www.thebookstore.co.uk (contains information about self-publishing)
can now ‘lend’ their books to other Kindle users, it was announced today. The new feature allows e-books bought for the Kindle platform to be lent out for 14 days, delivered by email and springing back to their owners automatically after the period is up. The books can also be read on free Amazon e-book readers for PC, Mac and Mobiles. Amazon explains how.
I’ve started work converting my fathers spreadsheets of our family ancestry into electronic (and searchable form).
There’s been a huge amount of interest and development in online tools for tracing genealogy over the last 10 years, indeed it’s something the internet was almost made for. Unfortunately so far, little of the digitised data is freely available online (though freely available in public libraries). It seems as though the agencies which held the data have allowed monopoly providers to sell the data in return for their financial contribution to digitising the data.
The exception I’ve found has been Google Books – digitised versions of out of copyright books.
Searching on Google for unusual names, or a name with a date if you have it can also be fruitful. I found a website about a particular village where an ancestor had been the vicar and there was lots of additional information there.
List of Useful Tools
Walking back to Waterlook station from Chinatown, after our weekly Chinese School trip, we crossed Hungerford bridge and I took this shot with my phone camera.
I don’t know who first came up with the idea that when the clocks go back at the end of British Summer Time that “you get an extra hour in bed”. They certainly didn’t have children. For us it was an hour less in bed. The kids still woke up at their usual time – as per their internal body clocks – whereas as we adults have gone to bed an hour later so got an hour less sleep. I’m on day 3 at the time of writing and there’s still no sign of their body clocks adjusting….
There’s something very John Majorish about the National Trust. Good to see they keep to the traditional (and proper) naming for their conveniences.
At a recent conference in Brussels I came across some unusual objects, the purpose of which I wasn’t too clear on. Can you work out what these are for? Please use the comments, and I’ll update the captions when we discover what these things are. You can click on each photo for a closer look.
