Jane B

I went away for a week's holiday to Herefordshire and district this month. The main event was the Malvern Spring Flower Show, which I try to go to with my sister each year. Apart from the show we visited a couple of stately homes, and it was just the right season for tulips. So follow this link: Tulips on Flickr for a selection of the best photos - I took dozens.

A possible apocryphal story today - a Quaker meeting wasn't given permission to build a meeting house because the neighbours were worried about the noise from services.

Our family has no connection to the Titanic, but there was a strange eerie coincidence. Several years ago my brother and I went to see one of the Titanic exhibitions which displayed articles that had been brought up from the wreck.
As you entered the exhibition you were given a 'boarding pass' with the name of a member of the crew or a passenger. I had a woman who survived the sinking, my brother had a carpenter from Cornwall who didn't.

What was strange was that in February 1913, just ten months after the Titanic our grandfather sailed to America en route to Canada ... and he was a carpenter from Cornwall.

Not sure if this is due to the cold weather, but walking back from meeting this morning I saw a Little Egret in a stream. What's really strange is this was in the middle of town with houses around. I can remember when they were incredibly rare, and it was still startling to see one.

Well, since I didn't know that the European equivalent of 999 is 112, I thought I'd share this link.

Since it's absolutely perishing at the moment, I was thinking back to when I was warm in the summer. And the warmest time was in Boston, so thought I'd post a few pictures to bring a bit of sunshine - like Morecambe and Wise! When I came back in June I posted some pictures of the WAFA Show we went to, but we also visited around Boston. We stayed with some friends who took us on some trips, a great treat since we couldn't have managed that ourselves. Theoretically I could have hired a car, but driving in Boston just looks insane, so it wasn't going to happen. Having a local driver meant we could get out of the city, and then look back at the Boston skyline:




( more pictures after the cut )

From frivol

"I'm running a test (not really - it's just a meme) to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don't just post a word and not copy - that's not as much fun!"

No obligation, anyone. :)

Just been to see the new silent film The Artist and found it unique and very witty. From the opening credits, which use the same typeface and format as the old 20s and 30s films, you're drawn into the world of the silent film. After a few minutes you forget it's in black and white, and when they do use real sound it's startling and discordant after the music of the soundtrack which has been doing so much to tell the story.

There are lots of call-outs to old films, the star "George Valentin, played by Jean Dujardin, is a combination of John Gilbert, Rudolf Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks. You get a Keystone Kops moment, a bit of swash-buckling, an actor disappearing into quicksand, a call-out to the first sound scenes in "Singing in the Rain" with the fixed microphones, and a very clever dog, like the terrier in the 'Thin Man' films. There was also a cheerful dig at the historical inaccuracy of the old films, where after a sword fight with costumes reminiscent of the Three Musketeers, Napoleon suddenly stands up :-)

They have a lot of fun with the idea of talking in pictures - the opening scene shows the hero being filmed in a scene where he is fiendishly tortured, and the intertitle (a word I never knew before!) comes up with "I'll never talk". But he does, right at the end, and with just the right words.

This is interesting to try out: Does Google Accurately Guess Your Age and Gender? And the answer is 'No' - brought to you by a 65+ male!

Here's an fascinating article about attempts to build a tunnel under the Thames.
I would probably have found it of interest by itself, but it also sheds a bit more light on a local hero from my home town in Cornwall - Richard Trevithick. It strikes me that he was a bit like Charles Babbage who came up with the idea of a computer; the resources of the time were not enough to accomplish his ideas.
Makes you wonder if there are geniuses out there nowadays who look like failures because the facilities to implement their ideas just aren't available at the moment.

I've just seen someone's post about the National Geographic's Genographic Project and it reminded me that several years ago I took part in this. IBM was providing support for the project which meant we could get the kit for a cheaper price than on the website.

So I took the cheek swab and sent if off, and found our maternal family is part of Haplogroup H, which is basically your bog-standard European. All our ancestors hung out around the Mediterranean during the last Ice Age and then spread back up when the temperatures rose. Since I'm female they can only test the maternal DNA, and I'd need a male relative tested to be able to find out if the paternal side is any different. I wonder if they're still doing the cheap kits ...

If you've already failed to keep your New Year Resolutions then here's an easy one that you can do in 5 minutes: Join the Organ Donor Register and don't forget to tell your next-of-kin.

If you're not in the UK it should only take a few seconds Googling to find your donor register ... and you're never too old. They may not take all of you, but there's still bits of you they can use, if you die in your bed at the age of 102 :-)

I used iPlayer to download and watch Great Expectations last night, and enjoyed the adaptation. There was some alteration to some of the secondary characters like Molly, and pruning of some plot details, but in ways that aided the story and didn't jar - for me, anyway.

I liked Gillian Anderson's performance as Miss Havisham, and found the choice they made about her costuming very interesting. It appears that the starting date for the book is about 1812, but they seemed to set it in mid-Victorian times. This meant that they could give Miss Havisham a Regency Style dress that produced more of an impression of a young bride. Her hairstyle was still fairly neat at her introduction but degenerated as the years passed, which made a clever shortcut for her mental state. There was also a different take on the 'fire' scene which worked very well with how they'd told the story.

I think it was the first version I'd seen where Pip was prettier than Estella!

I usually end up playing some sort of game over Christmas like Farmville or Castle Age, but this year I bought one. Not that expensive since it's an old release, and I certainly got my money's worth since I spent about 20 hours playing it (off and on - not non-stop!) I finally finished it today and can now stop battering my keyboard :-)

It's called Portal and consists of the player moving about a maze by shooting portals in walls. For example if you had to get over toxic water, you'd shoot a portal either side on the walls either side of the water and just avoid it completely. It's not very violent since there is nothing alive in the maze so the only thing you destroy are robots, and there's a wonderfully villainous AI (artificial intelligence) called Glados that you get to destroy at the end. Since it's spent the whole game trying to mislead you, dropping things on you, trying to shoot you or drown you - the ending is very cathartic.

I had to cheat a couple of times in the beginning of the game to work out how to do things but you pick up all the techniques you need by the later more challenging levels. Although I did look up a couple of things towards the end to make sure I was using the right method. Without a mouse some of the manoeuvring can take a while, so I didn't want to spend a long time doing the wrong thing.

Still, great fun, and I have some challenges and advanced games I can come back to another time - perhaps next year.

I happened to be passing past Winchester Library (now the Discovery Centre) recently, which is a lovely building which used to be the Corn Exchange. I wondered if that was why there was no mention of John Passmore Edwards on the walls. Every library I went to in my youth (Camborne, Redruth - where I had a Saturday job, and Truro) all had the title of Passmore Edwards Free Library.

I looked him up when I came home and discovered he was a West Country worthy, which is why so many Cornish libraries bear his name. He was born the son of a carpenter in Blackwater, between Redruth and Truro. He went on to become a journalist and MP, and a practical and generous philanthropist.

He died 100 years ago this year, so this update is a small commemoration of his centenary, and a thank you to someone who was so important to my early life, and getting me where I am today!