The old MG has to go, I have spent a fortune on the thing since 1986 when I bought it, I had a complete body rebuild done in 1989, at a cost of over £5,000, and after using it for years as a play car, I started to use it daily after returning from the Far East in 1993.
Although this may seem a little off topic, the proposed acquisition of Sun Systems by Oracle, will bring MySQL under the control of the world’s largest provider of closed source databases. MySQL is probably the leading open source database system on the market and is used by many sites around the world. For example this blog which is Wordpress based uses MySQL as do all Wordpress blogs, regardless of who hosts the site. Similarly my Parlington history site uses MySQL for certain aspects of its functioning. If MySQL is absorbed by Oracle and becomes a propriety format, the world will change, many, many blogs will be affected and the whole culture of the Internet will be damaged.
During a weekend trip to London, for me it was important to make a visit to Marble Arch, one of many, to view again this edifice built in 1828 to a design by John Nash to form an entrance to Buckingham Palace. It was moved in 1851 to its present location, nearby the location of the then removed Tyburn Gallows.
The stone, Portland Limestone, is clearly much more durable and impressive than the stone used on the Triumphal Arch at Parlington. But it is significant that this arch which was like Parlington, modelled on the Constantine Arch adjacent to the Coliseum or Colosseum in Rome. One advantage that the arch in Parlington has, is the opportunity to photograph it without any people!
I am regularly asked by friends, “email that link won’t you”, so here is a list of bookmarks I use from time to time on subjects of interest, some of these you may find interesting, but more than the “Steve Davies” [former Snooker Champion] sense of that word! The links are on the Bookmark Sharing Page, in the column to the right.
A reader of the Country Life magazine sent a letter to the editor about a painting they had of Parlington, a water colour, I was later contacted and asked if I could supply a picture for the magazine for their response to the the reader. The picture below is of the item in the September 2nd 2009 edition. The reply was provided by a Mr Scott of Merseyside. I requested that the magazine publish my web site address to accompany the item, this they did as you can see in the image of the magazine page below.
Last weekend, Sunday 16th of August, my wife and I took some time out shopping in York, I also managed to persuade her that we could re-visit the Railway Museum! Not that I am a latent train spotter, or anything like that, but I like to keep abreast of any new additions or discover things I had previously overlooked. Of course now that the government has made such visits free the attendance figures are I’m sure much greater, so we braved the crowds swelling the various halls. However I think a fee would not be amiss, it might jolt them back into the real world, where you have to pay for your amusement. Yes I accept that there is always a case for allowing disadvantaged people to partake of such attractions at a discount, but really everything needs to have a value or they become abused. Just a token charge would go some way to making the place a commercial activity. Anyhow I digress this post was not a moan about the government, although that would be easy, but many others are setting it out chapter and verse on this appalling administration, this time next year we will be moaning about the other lot! You know the so-called, “Conservatives”. Will they do any better, not a chance!
I rather like the ease with which you can add content using Wordpress, however I was not happy with the standard interface design and although there are lots of templates which can be applied, I wanted the design to reflect that on my main Parlington Site. So I have now amended the template to my own design, which is close to the main site style.
Having set up the Yorkshire Speakers Directory a few months ago I wanted to add more to the site so I decided to put a bookshop in place for local books and things of local interest.
It seems that although a reasonable number of visitors pass through this site and the average time spent on the site is around 6 minutes (which is good for a web site), few people make any comments!! I set the site up so people could get involved, but that is not happening, it’s just me stating this or that. I had hoped for more.
If you are a visitor, and you have something to say, please get involved.
To cut down on the burden on my servers, I am delivering some of the content via Flickr, where I have almost 1,000 images stored, Generally they are a larger size than I would produce for my sites so if your interested click on the Flickr Badge lower down the page on the right.