Eclectica

Quiz

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:18 PDT

What is shown below?

Company of Fellmongers

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:07:45 PDT

Brass plates outside a solicitors office in the small market town of Richmond, Yorkshire.

BitTorrent's new sync tool calls home

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:56:06 PDT

BitTorrent [the company] has recently released an interesting new sync tool [link]. It is a peer to peer tool that allows users to sync files over multiple machines over the internet. This seemed a very interesting development until somebody found something interesting. Dear Bittorrent, After digging around in some wireshark logs of my btsync setup I found that btsync calls home to a server

NSA guide to searching the web

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:46:17 PDT

The US National Security Agency has just put its 643 page guide to searching the web in the public domain. It can be downloaded as a PDF. Link

UN investigator says Syrian rebels used Sarin gas

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:30:36 PDT

In an interview with Swiss-Italian TV on Sunday, Ms Del Ponte, who serves on the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said: "Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals. "According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible

Alternatives to Google's services

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:18:23 PDT

The Guardian has a handy list of alternatives to Google's services. Click here. I already use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. It is a very acceptable alternative to Google. I did not know about Nokia's maps but they seem to be as good, if not better, than Google Maps. The Guardian mentions Tumblr as an alternative to Blogger. I have started using both Wordpress and Tumblr after it became

Jack Irish now on film

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:08:17 PDT

If you are a fan of Peter Temple's Jack Irish books you will want to know that the first two books [Black Tide and Bad Debts] have been filmed and are available on DVD from Amazon. Guy Pearce [Lieutenant Exley in LA Confidential] plays Jack. They are very good. There are plans to film the other two books [White Dog and Dead Point] and Temple is said to be working on a fifth JI book.

Google Alerts has stopped working

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:30:36 PDT

The very useful Google Alerts has stopped working [yet again]. Is this another service Google is killing so that it can get its snout further into the trough?

The CIA's criminal stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:30:36 PDT

"In its zeal to identify bin Laden or his family, the CIA used a sham hepatitis B vaccination project to collect DNA in the neighbourhood where he was hiding. The effort apparently failed, but the violation of trust threatens to set back global public health efforts by decades. The deadly consequences have already begun. Villagers along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border chased off legitimate

Syrian Sarin gas attack - an Israeli false flag operation?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:30:36 PDT

See which of the following you believe. 1. The Syrian Government has used Sarin gas even though they know that this is exactly what their enemies want them to do to provide a pretext for military intervention. 2. No gas has been used. It is disinformation by parties unknown intended to provide a pretext for military intervention. 3. Gas has been used as part of an Israeli false flags

Liberals kill Snoopers Charter.

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:07:07 PDT

The so called Snoopers Charter was an attempt by the UK police and secret police to set up a system spy on everything that we do online. Kudos to Clegg and the Liberals for killing the proposal [Link]. I thought they had forgotten why some of us vote for them. Maybe they are getting back their identity. The scheme was supposed to make us safer but was wildly disproportionate to any risk we

Interesting Links

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:02:07 PDT

A link to my bookmarks is now at the top of each page [next to Home]

Another sign Blogger is marked for closure

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:38:28 PDT

" Blogger no longer offers any direct support — just a forum where users can commiserate and try to answer each other's questions. No support email gets any response, and repeated posts on the forum don't either. Many other reports can be found in the forums concerning people who can't get any help from Support." Link

Which are the really dangerous drugs?

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:21:28 PDT

The Science and Technology Committee of the UK Parliament commissioned an assessment of legal and illegal stimulants using scientific evidence to determine which are the most harmful. In addition, they took evidence from expert witnesses. This was all done as part of a study of the use of scientific evidence in the UK government’s decision making. The Committee have published their findings.

Old map covers

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 06:03:45 PDT

All drawn by Ellis Martin for OS maps published in the 1920s. Click on the map tag for more examples. 'The 1920s and 30s saw the rise of the British tourist industry when, for the first time, ordinary working-class people had enough weekend leisure time to leave their smoky factory towns for a couple of days, and take to the country with its fresh, invigorating air. It was the beginning of the

Old map covers

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 06:04:44 PDT

All drawn by Ellis Martin, with the exception of the Liverpool map [Arthur Palmer] and the Peak District map [J C T Willis]. All drawn for maps published in the 1920s, with the exception of the Peak District map which was printed in 1936. Click on the map tag for more examples.

How Israel fuelled a civil war

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 09:34:08 PDT

In the early 19602 a group of British mercenaries went out to the Yemen to fight in a civil war between Royalists and Republicans. The mercenaries were mainly former SAS. Their story is told in Hart-Davis, D., 2012. The War That Never Was, Arrow. They fought on the side of the Royalists. They were a very unsavoury bunch who were supported by the equally unsavoury Jordan and Saudi

Volvelles, Wheel Charts and Slide Charts

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 04:35:58 PDT

Some more wheel charts [aka volvelles]. Click on the volvelle tag on right for more posts about volvelles. From the Cold War period?

An alternative to Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 06:18:36 PDT

Google Reader is closing on the 1st July. I suggest Newsblur as your new feed reader. I have been using it for a while and would recommend it. Its mobile reader is not as good but in other respects it is superior. For example, it has filters so you can manage your information load by filtering out anything that does not interest you. It is slow at the moment because there is a big rush of

New Zealand's Great Rides

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 09:34:59 PDT

New Zealand's Great Walks are the countries premier trails. They are very popular with overseas visitors and some have booking systems. I have walked part of the Abel Tasman coastal path and would like to walk the famous Tongariro Crossing. Now the New Zealanders are creating a series of Great Rides. These are long distance bike rides. The Great Rides site is here. At the moment there

Volvelles, Wheel Charts and Slide Charts

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 06:27:46 PDT

Some more wheel charts [aka volvelles]. Click on the volvelle tag on right for more posts about volvelles.

iPad versus the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 07:11:59 PST

This is a comparison of the iPad and the new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. I am going to compare the tablets, their operating systems and the apps available to run on them. I have owned an iPad 2 for almost two years and use it a lot. I owned a Google Nexus 7 tablet for a few months. I didn't use it much and have sold it. Recently I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. My iPad isn't the

Forgotten history - Scotland's Slate Islands

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:11:29 PST

The photo below shows Easdale Island. It lies off the west coast of Scotland, a few miles south of Oban. It is one of Scotland's slate islands. The ponds which dot the island are actually flooded slate quarries. Some of them are over 80 metres deep. Tens of millions of roofing slates were quarried from these pits and shipped around the world. There are Easdale slates in Australia and New

Slate Wreck

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 07:12:53 PST

I was reading this article in Wikipedia about the Welsh slate industry and came upon the following line. Slate has been mined in north Wales for several centuries — this was recently confirmed by the discovery of the wreck of a wooden ship carrying finished slates in the Menai Strait which dates from the 16th century. It reminded me of the time I dived a slate wreck in the Sound of Mull, off

Bring back the Lynx

noreply@blogger.com (-) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:06:23 PST

Britain has too many deer [about 1.5 million] according to this BBC report. 'There are now more deer in the UK than at any time since the last Ice Age.' They destroy woodland and prevent its regeneration. Anybody who goes around the British countryside can see for themselves how much damage is being done. It has been suggested that a cull of 50% [750,000 deer] per year is needed to control