Category: random thoughts

Some jokes

Inspired by the best Edinburgh Fringe joke results, I came across these one-liners

A mate of mine recently admitted to being addicted to brake fluid.  When I
quizzed him on it he reckoned he could stop any time….

I was at a cash point yesterday when a little old lady asked if I could
check her balance, so I pushed her over.

A new Middle East crisis erupted last night as Dubai Television was
refused permission to broadcast ‘The Flintstones’.  A spokesman for the
channel said. “A claim was made that people in Dubai would not understand
the humour, but we know for a fact that people in Abu Dhabi Do.”

My daughter asked me for a pet spider for her birthday, so I went to our
local pet shop and they were £70!!!  B******s to this, I thought, I can
get one cheaper off the web.

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarves are not happy.

I start a new job in Seoul next week.  I thought it was a good Korea move.

I was driving this morning when I saw an RAC van parked up. The driver was
sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable.  I thought to myself
‘that guy’s heading for a breakdown.’

Trains get an upgrade

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?

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Lend your Kindle books

Users of the Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

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.

Family Tree

Great Grandfather

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

  1. TNG – software used to build the site. Requires PHP Hosting.
  2. MyHeritage – Desktop software, free version, used to produce printable vertical family trees.
  3. EzeePlan – very helpful printers who produced a 2x A0 size print on a single roll of paper. Very good value too.

Bye Bye BST

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….