DARnet Andy Roberts

Time capsule for Jan 2011 Songwriters Circle

2012-02-01T10:39:13Z

Some illustrations used during the January 2011 Songwriters Circle Challenge. The next Cohort is due to start on Monday February 6th 2012 if you’d like to join usand kick start your songwriting in just 30 days

Haverfolk Newsletter Andy Roberts feature evening

2012-01-27T13:27:46Z

HaverFolk News

26^th January, 2012

Hi all,

Newsletter time once again with a report of last nights’s Andy Roberts feature evening from John the Fox.

Havering report 25 January:

A splendid turnout for our guest artist Andy Roberts (Haverfolk’s Andy not the Liverpool Scene one) meant the number of floor spots was restricted (the guv’nor Simon Oliver led by example and stood down, despite having practised something special for the evening).

Proceedings were opened by our Hillbillies Pep and Terry playing a quick bluegrass piece then leading all-comers in the songs You Ain’t Going Nowhere and Worried Man Blues.

MC for the night Smolovik formally opened proceedings with Down By the Riverside then called on Foxen who performed Freewheeling Days, their tribute to the late Suze Rotollo, Bob Dylan’s girlfriend who is pictured on the front of his Freewheeling album.

Our own Thief of Dadgad, Graham Harrison, marked Burns Night by singing Archie Fisher’s Lindsay.

Concertina and guitar duo Bernie and Maureen Pilgrim gave us Grandfather’s Tune and Uncle Bernard then violin maestro Richie Barratt made a welcome return, accompanying Micky Brown on a song we think was called Can’t Wait Till the Weekend Comes.

Newcomer Di Russell accompanied herself on mandolin for a Mumford and Sons song, Awake My Soul and Ray Spillman, recovering well after his recent stay in hospital sang Norwegian Wood.

Poetess Carol read us a brief ode written during a workshop she went to on hands and Peter Walters sang Gypsy Rover.

Then it was time for the main event. Andy has a growing reputation as a songwriter and treated us to an hour and three-quarters (with a break) of mostly his own compositions. [ full setlist ] Old favourites such as London Bridge (which Haverites insist on calling the Cormorants) and Winter In Andalucia jostled with newer compositions such as Never Was to Be (an online collaboration with lyricist Daryl P Hall) and Clean Living Woman Blues (lyrics by Andy’s partner Linda Hartley).

As it was Burns Night he gave us two of his Scotland-inspired numbers The Last Nail and The Rowan Tree (not to be confused with the Scottish ballad written by Lady Nairne).

We also got a version of his epic, Gernika, inspired by a visit to the Basque city on the anniversary of its bombing by the Luftwaffe.

He finished off with his song Cajun Music Cajun Food and invited Pep on banjo and Richie Barratt and John Foxen on fiddles to join him.

He was called back for a well deserved encore and aptly provided The Last Subway Home, reminding us it was time to take the last train.

A fine end to a fine evening. – John Eason

Local Round-Up:

This Sunday, 29^th January the FaB Club has a “Club in the Pub” session featuring Al Neville & Friends. www.fabclubgrays.com

There is a singaround at Waltham Abbey Folk Club on Monday, 30^th January; all welcome. www.walthamabbeyfolkclub.com

This coming Tuesday, 31^st January sees a guest night at Romford Folk Club with C’est la Vie; the compere & commere are Mick & Nora. www.romfordfolkclub.com

Also on Tuesday, 31^st January the Hoy at Anchor Folk Club has a guest evening featuring Tony McManus. I quote direct from their website: ”Tony McManus is the Jeff Beck of the acoustic guitar”; ”His guitar playing is faultless…atmospheric and evocative…consistently appealing” just two of the many glowing reviews attributed to this guitar virtuoso. In the course of his relatively short career Tony has established a reputation as the best Celtic guitarist in the world…the man whose fellow guitarists would aspire to and are in awe of!” www.ridgeweb.co.uk

On Thursday, 2^nd February, Loughton Folk Club has guest Josienne Clarke; again I quote direct from the website: “Josienne Clarke is now one of the leading lights in the current folk revival movement. Her music is borne from sincere and succinct songwriting, distilled through traditional folk, executed with skill and dexterity. Come and see!” http://www.loughtonfolkclub.btck.co.uk/ also www.josienneclarke.co.uk

Back to Haverfolk:

Our next open session is on Wednesday 1^st February when all are welcome to claim a floor spot. The first 15 to give their names to the night’s MC are guaranteed at least two songs. After that, it depends on how many we have, but we’ll try to fit you in for two if we possibly can.

That’s it for this week – a rather shorter-than-usual newsletter, but not so much happening this time. Make it a date- Wednesday at eight!

Cheers – Peter Walters

HaverFolk, The Function Suite, The White Horse, 118 High Road, Chadwell Heath, Romford, RM6 6NU

www.haveringfolkclub.bravehost.com

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Haverfolk Newsletter Andy Roberts feature evening

Home Email Addresses

2012-01-26T17:24:45Z

Please read, understand and inwardly digest that

aroberts@gmail.com is NOT an email address belonging to Adrienne Roberts.

Get it right!

Brain surgeons, tut. What can you do with them?

On 26 January 2012 16:15, Adrienne Roberts <aroberts@neurosurgery.org> wrote:

Adrienne Roberts

Senior Manager, Legislative Affairs

American Association of Neurological Surgeons/

   Congress of Neurological Surgeons

725 15th Street, NW, Suite 500

Washington, D.C. 20005

ARoberts@neurosurgery.org

Direct Phone: 202-446-2029

Main Phone: 202-628-2072

Fax: 202-628-5264

Cell: 703-254-9424

From: Cynthia Spriggs
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 11:11 AM
To: Adrienne Roberts; Alison Dye; Cathy Hill; Katie O. Orrico; Koryn Rubin; Rachel Groman (groman.rachel@gmail.com)
Subject: Home Email Addresses

Adrienne:            arobertsdc@gmail.com

Alison:                  adye12@hotmail.com

Cathy:             jandchill@aol.com
Cynthia:           cyntmaria@msn.com

Katie:                    kateorrico@aol.com

Koryn:                   Koryn.rubin@gmail.com

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time capsule from December 25 2011 Calabardina

2012-01-02T11:51:04Z

Calabardina

Taken December 25, 2010 at 3:28 pm

Aguilas

Taken December 28, 2010 at 1:21 pm

Calabardina

Taken December 29, 2010 at 4:49 pm

Underwater

Taken December 27, 2010 at 12:40 pm

Underwater

Taken January 2, 2011 at 2:13 pm

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time capsule from December 25 2011 Calabardina

Aguilas and Callabardina Christmas 2010

2011-12-15T12:42:32Z

Time capsule pictures from Calabardina and Aguilas in Murcia, Spain just before Christmas 2010. Sad that we can't be there every year at present. The current weather over there doesn't seem to be quite as idyllic as usual though, bu a few degrees warmer than London and a lot milder than Scotland.

Calabardina

Taken December 21, 2010 at 4:23 pm

Evan Roberts pouring cider

Taken December 20, 2010 at 3:19 pm

Aguilas, Murcia, Spain

Taken December 20, 2010 at 11:23 am

Aguilas, Murcia, Spain

Taken December 20, 2010 at 10:30 am

Aguilas, Murcia, Spain

Taken December 20, 2010 at 11:23 am

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Aguilas and Callabardina Christmas 2010

George Osborne’s full-blown attack on the countryside will delight rentiers

2012-01-12T22:09:40Z

The Conservative Party hate everything about Britain and are busy dismantling it.

Now the coalition government intends to strip away protection from our most treasured places, as the chancellor establishes his Republic of Gideon, finally big landowners have their champion of slash and burn capitalism

This article titled “George Osborne’s full-blown attack on the countryside will delight rentiers” was written by George Monbiot, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 1st December 2011 14.26 UTC

What sort of a world would George Osborne like to live in? I imagine him fantasising about the Republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Unprotected workers, assigned their places in a fixed social system, crawl over toxic waste dumps, while the upper castes, though rendered sterile by unregulated pollution, live without fear of democracy, trade unions or the minimum wage.

The Republic of Gideon began to take shape on Tuesday, when the chancellor launched a full-spectrum assault on both workers and the environment. In his autumn statement, he curtailed public sector pay and, once again, hammered the tax credits and benefits upon which the poorest people depend. At the same time he gave away £250m in yet another bailout for big business: in this case the UK’s most polluting industries. Read Damian Carrington’s withering exposure of this exercise in crony capitalism, and you will rage and gnash your teeth.

He also snuffed out the government’s attempts to limit the amount of transport fuel the UK consumes, announced the construction of new roads, airports and power stations and reneged on the promise the energy secretary made just a month ago, that there would be “absolutely no backsliding” on carbon capture and storage at the UK’s power stations. Now the £1bn set aside for CCS will be given (in the Treasury secretary’s words) to “different sorts of projects”. Another corporate tax break perhaps?

But perhaps the worst of Osborne’s environmentally destructive proposals was his attack on the laws protecting England’s wildlife and places of natural beauty. These were first introduced in 1994 by the previous Conservative government. He claimed that they are “gold-plating” European rules and “placing ridiculous costs on British businesses”.

He is wrong on both counts. The Davidson report in 2006 found that the European rules had not been gold-plated. The laws defending our special areas of conservation and special protection areas impose costs on business only if business wants to trash the few corners of England which have been placed off-limits. That means spots such as Lyme Bay, the New Forest, Epping Forest, the Norfolk Broads and Flamborough Head.

Why should corporations be allowed to do to these treasured places what they can do anywhere else? Osborne might as well complain that the rules forbidding developers to knock down St Paul’s cathedral and build a new bank there place “ridiculous costs on British business”.

His intentions are spelled out in more detail in the Treasury’s national infrastructure plan 2011. To prevent the protection of our natural heritage from imposing “unnecessary costs and delays” on money-making projects, the Treasury will “give industry representation on a group chaired by ministers so it can raise concerns … at the top of government”.

This, remember, is a government umbilically connected to big business, which has so thoroughly infiltrated Westminster and Whitehall that government and corporations are almost indistinguishable. Now the Treasury claims that business needs even more access?

Worse still, bodies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency, which are supposed to defend our treasured wild places, will now “have a remit to promote sustainable development.” This is a complete inversion of their purpose – from restraint to promotion.

The Country Land and Business Association, representing the class of rentier capitalists whom Osborne appears to see as his natural constituency, professes itself “delighted” with these proposals. I bet it is. The big landowners it represents have been pressing for slash and burn capitalism for years, while simultaneously insisting that the taxpayer stocks their wine cellars and cleans out their moats through farm subsidies. Now they have a government which gives them everything they ask for.

These people will never be satisfied. No ancient woodland, no Bronze Age burial mound is safe: unless it is protected by the kind of rules Osborne now wants to dismantle.

As for stimulating the economy, it’s hard to see how the UK can win the race to the bottom to which he appears to have committed us. If this country tries to compete by tearing up the rules protecting workers, the unemployed, the environment and our quality of life, it will be worsted by China and 100 other nations with cheaper labour and laxer regulation than ours.

This seems obvious to everyone except ministers and officials. UK Trade and Investment, the government body which promotes this country to foreign investors, boasts that “compensation costs [ie wages] in the UK are less than most of the western European countries.” It has “one of the lowest main corporate tax rates in the EU, generous tax allowances and … low social welfare contributions.” And “the UK’s labour market is one of the world’s most flexible.” Come to Britain, where you can treat your workers like dirt.

In the wake of this autumn statement, perhaps UK Trade and Investment will now seek to entice investors away from Guangdong with the promise that there are tax breaks for the biggest polluters, no planning laws worth their name, and special access to ministers if you want to trash England’s beauty spots.

Even if foreign investors can be persuaded that the rules are slacker in the Republic of Gideon than in the grimmest export-processing zones of the developing world, what does “winning” look like in these circumstances? A bit like winning a nuclear war? “Yes, our nation has been reduced to a charred desert. But we’ve come out on top*. Rejoice, just rejoice!

“*Customers should be aware that when, in the previous clause, the government states that “we” have come out on top, it is in fact referring to a subset of the population: namely those possessed of sufficient means to have invested in underground bunkers. The government cannot be held liable if the rest of the population experiences alternative results. If you are not fully satisfied with this outcome, please contact your nearest mortuary assistant.”

In reality, the autumn statement, like much else that Osborne has delivered, has little to do with stimulating economic growth. It’s about transferring even greater powers and resources from the rest of us to an economic elite, the kind of people Osborne hangs out with on Nat Rothschild’s yacht. They are the only winners of the Chancellor’s pyrrhic victories.

www.monbiot.com

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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George Osborne’s full-blown attack on the countryside will delight rentiers

time capsule November 24th to December 8th

2011-12-01T12:22:14Z

This time last year, an evening session about music online at the School of Everything and Romford Market with a bit of snow.

November 24^th to December 8^th, 2010

School Of Everything

Taken November 30, 2010 at 6:57 pm

Romford Market

Taken December 1, 2010 at 10:35 am

School Of Everything

Taken November 30, 2010 at 6:36 pm

Romford Market

Taken December 1, 2010 at 10:35 am

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time capsule November 24th to December 8th

Blue House Farm North Fambridge

2011-11-25T09:16:43Z

Blue House Farm Bird Reserve, North Fambridge

Thursday is our new day off, so we took ourselves out of London on the Eastern Railway line towards Southend and then on the little single track branch line from Wickham to North Fambridge¹ .

North Fambridge is a lovely quiet place with big skies, salt marsh estuary, boatyards, a good old pub and loads of wildlife. The flooded fields, dykes and river provide such special habitats for all kinds of birds that the main farm in the area, Blue House Farm, is now managed as an SSSI² nature reserve by the Essex Wildlife Trust.

The large flocks of thousands of geese still haven’t arrived from Siberia and Eastern Europe yet, the weather over there isn’t quite cold enough all along the path but Brent geese were chomping away on the sward and flying alongside the sea wall in several flocks of fifty or more, which is a cheery sight on a mild and bright, relatively wind free morning towards the end of November. Other types of geese included Greylags and Canadas, about 25 Barnacle geese, and a small group of six White Fronted geese.

Will Marsh Harrier take a Wigeon?

Back home at Wanstead Flats we are always pleased to catch a rare glimpse of a pair of Teal on the Alexandra Lake, but from the furthermost hide at Blue House Farm we watched a group of about 150 teal being frightened up into the air by a pair of Marsh Harriers hunting along the reed beds. These colourful small ducks can fly really well, twisting and turning almost like a murmuration of starlings. Then one of the Marsh Harriers started to make a move towards a solitary wigeon we’d been watching sitting on the river. The Marsh Harrier approached like an Osprey towards a fish near the surface, talons outstretched to within a couple of feet above the hapless wigeon, who wasn’t in the least bit bothered by the very real threat of impending carvery, the Harrier hovered for a second, eyeing up the prospect, then seemed to think better of it and withdrew. The wigeon still didn’t move towards cover though, and the Harrier came back for a second approach, but again decided that it dan’t want to attack a whole duck right at the moment and headed off back to the reed beds where it was presumably hunting for small songbirds or mammals.

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Blue House Farm North Fambridge

The Crouch Valley Line
Site of Special Scientific Interest

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP

2011-11-20T13:03:55Z

I’ve just been using ManageWP beta – the web utility for managing multiple WordPress installations – to delete an obsolete plugin from several of my older blogs.

The functionality to delete or deactivate plugins was a much requested feature that was added to the many useful operations that ManageWP can perform for you just a couple of weeks ago, and it really does make this web service indispensable for anybody with more than just a couple of WordPress installations. I was recommending before, but even more so now.

The plugin I wanted to deprecate in my installations was called Viper’s Video QuickTags, very handy in it’s day for embedding youtube videos withing blog posts, but that functionality was added into the core WordPress code several versions ago, which renders the plugin redundant for me.

Plugins and Themes

With ManageWP I could select “plugins and themes” from the sidebar, then chose All Websites, tick plugins, active, and search by keyword: “viper”. That gave me a list of five blogs that still had the old plugin active. I could have deactivated the lot in one fell swoop just like that, but I wanted to make sure all my old posts with videos embedded would still work so, without even leaving the ManageWP dashboard, I went to each affected individual WordPress dashboard in turn, and searched through the posts for the string “[youtube”, that being the way the old plugin recognised source posts needing to have the embed code added. I then removed the shortcodes from each end of the video identifier leaving just the youtube url on one line by itself, which WordPress now interprets as a request to embed video inline. Once the legacy code was removed, I could then deactivate and delete the plugin, leaving me with a nice feeling of having tidied up a longstanding loose end.

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Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP

WordPress London #7

2011-12-21T17:00:54Z

I went to WordPress London meetup number #7 last night, hosted by Headshift at their office near Shad Thames, along the south bank of the Thames, east of Tower Bridge. Nice to have something on the East side for once, although south of the river, I wouldn’t normally mention the general location but for Londoners, having different travel options is essential and I was pleased to be able to exit the Transport For London system at a zone 2 tube station, Bermondsey.

WordPress London is not really a mainly social gathering like some of the bloggers meetups, it’s a business learning event and last night there were three sections, each packed with fast moving presentations full of detail, actionable insights and deeply understood data.

First up, a round up of news from the world of WordPress from Chris Adams of Headshift with a peek at the new drag and drop file upload interface for WordPress 3.3, out very soon. There was also a heads up for the ManageWP service launched this month, a service which I use myself and would also heartily recommend for anybody who maintains more than one self-hosted WordPress installation, in fact it’s brilliant if you have dozens or more.

WordPress London Meetup

Then David Bain delivered a comprehensive briefing about SEO for WordPress, including an outline of a hub and spoke structure for content based on using pages for the main parts of a site, supported by posts All based around keyword targeting, which, while possibly on it’s way to becoming somewhat old-school, is after all what search engine optimisation is all about. One or two plugin tips to be followed up there.

Finally, Keith Devon a WordPress developer explained how and why to use WordPress Custom Post Types. Custom post types are not types of posts at all, but other types of content alongside of posts or pages. The example given was that of a real estate property rental site, for which the element “Property” needed to be a thing of itself, with it’s own display template in the theme, neither a post nor a page but with it’s own “add Property” section within the dashboard. This gave me some great ideas for how I might have designed one or two of my existing sites much better had the concept been around a few years ago. Keith showed us how to implement custom post types by dropping in chunks of code into functions.php “because it’s easier” but discussion from the audience suggests that using specialised plugins for the purpose may be the way to go if you want to be able to keep your site up to date with new software releases.

Time for some brief discussions and an optional visit to a Samuel Smiths pub afterwards, so I walked back along the south bank and over London Bridge back to dry land.

Hashtag: #WPLDN

WordPress London – #7 Links and Slideshare

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WordPress London #7

time capsule November 8th – 20th 2010 Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

2011-11-15T12:21:58Z

Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Taken November 16, 2010 at 11:02 am

Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Taken November 16, 2010 at 11:03 am

Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Taken November 16, 2010 at 11:03 am

Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Taken November 16, 2010 at 11:04 am

Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Taken November 16, 2010 at 11:04 am

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time capsule November 8th – 20th 2010 Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question

2012-01-12T22:08:53Z

With the current phase of capitalist crisis posing extremely stark questions about the fundamental nature of the system, you would think all the mainstream media would be falling over each other to wheel out academics and reformed revolutionaries to explain in simple terms “Why Marx was right after all” or “We’re all dialectical materialists now” but apparently not. Earlier this year, 2011, The Guardian published a series of articles about Karl Marx. This is part 1, on the subject of religion.

This article titled “Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question” was written by Peter Thompson, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 4th April 2011 15.34 UTC

Marx famously said that all criticism begins with the criticism of religion. This is often taken to be the starting point of a position that ends with the slogan that “religion is the opium of the people”. However, as with most thinkers, this reduction to slogans does not do the ideas behind them justice. The critique of religion as a social phenomenon did not connote a dismissal of the issues behind it. Marx precedes the famous line in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right with the contention that religion was the “sigh of the oppressed creature in a hostile world, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions” and that an understanding of religion has to go hand in hand with an understanding of the social conditions that gave rise to it.

The description of religion as the heart of a heartless world thus becomes a critique not of religion per se but of the world as it exists. What this shows is that his consideration of religion, politics, economics and society as a whole was not merely a philosophical exercise, but an active attempt to change the world, to help it find a new heart. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it,” he wrote in his famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach, the phrase carved on his gravestone in Highgate cemetery.

Even though understanding and action were tightly linked in Marx, we can trace his understanding back separately, through two German earlier philosophers, Hegel and Feuerbach.

In Hegel he finds the concept of the idealistic dialectic as a means of understanding historical change but he uses Feuerbach’s materialism as a tool for understanding it correctly. That’s why he called his system dialectical materialism.

Hegel’s dialectic is not at all materialistic. It is based on the existence and importance of ideas, which are conceived of as almost independent of the people who have them. We are merely their puppets. It was essentially an attempt to explain change in history during the period of revolutionary upheaval around the French revolution. Why do revolutions happen, he asks, and what happens to them? Why do things not stay the same and why is some world spirit (Weltgeist) constantly changing its mind about the way it wants the world to be and introducing a new “spirit of the age” (Zeitgeist)? Taking his cue from Kant, adding in some Spinoza and a dash of neo-Platonism, Hegel maintained that change happened in the world because it was immanent in a growing development towards something as yet incomplete but which had at its core the unfolding of the idea of human freedom. History thus became simply a vessel for this unfolding, a totality which was constantly changing and completing itself through a series of constructive negations.

The dialectic is a theory of motion which posits that within every given situation there exists its own negation. The tension and interplay between the situation and its negation, produce constantly new and emergent forms of social existence. Of course there are difficulties in deciding what exactly is the negation of any particular situation. I will deal with those later.

Marx took this Hegelian and idealistic dialectical approach and added in a materialist grounding from Feuerbach who was in many ways a sort of political Ditchkins of his day. For him religion “poisons, nay destroys, the most divine feeling in man, the sense of truth”. His insight was that all forms of religious expression were merely the abstracted vague longings of the human species translated into deities and their hangers-on, or in other words a god delusion.

Marx’s real synthesis of the debate between Hegel and Feuerbach is to agree with both of them but to turn them both upside down (or back on their feet as he would have it) and locate their ideas in concrete historical situations. Hegel’s idealism and Feuerbach’s materialism had one thing in common and that was their abstraction from real concrete conditions. Hegel’s dialectic was indeed a way of understanding change in the world but it failed to recognise that change emanated from prevailing material conditions rather than from the workings of the Weltgeist. On the other hand Feuerbach’s materialism dealt only in abstract form with the way people perceived religion and did not locate the form that abstraction took in the way that people, above all classes, interacted with each other historically.

By 1848 Marx was thus able to open the Communist Manifesto with the contention that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. This, for Marx, was the real motor of history; real struggles between real classes which produced real historical outcomes which in turn went on to become new struggles as the process of the negation of the negation – “the old mole” as Marx called it – carried on burrowing away, all the time throwing up new ways of thinking which themselves went on to negate and change the world.

What I shall do in coming weeks is to look at how all of this actually works, how Marxists took up the baton and what the consequences of it all were. I shall also ask whether Marxism still has any explanatory power today, in a new age of revolutionary upheaval, or whether we have, in Hegel’s and Fukuyama’s terms, reached The End of History.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question

The Bonzo Dog Band on Do Not Adjust Your Set

2011-11-01T14:59:47Z

YouTube allows the rediscovery of highlights from very distant memory, in this case the seminal TV series ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set” featuring the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Here they are performing “Hunting Tigers Out In Indiah”:

“I really did see them in black and white!”

Somebody called ‘Dormouse’ in the alt.fan.bonzo-dog newsgroup put me onto these videos, but with YouTube it takes no time at all to browse around and find more rare gems. The live concert in Belgium, extracts from films, interviews, alternative performances and outakes – they are all there.

Incidentally, alt.fan.bonzo-dog was the first online group I ever founded, in February/March 1998 the the process of which I learned a lot. Here is the original charter:

Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 20:46:11 -0000
Organization: ESBI
Lines: 54
Sender: richard.bryant@ukonline.co.uk
Approved: richard.bryant@ukonline.co.uk
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Host: p81-as2.dubexs.tinet.ie
Summary: Newgroup message
X-Newsreader: Anawave Gravity v2.00
Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:17319

For your newsgroups file:
alt.fan.bonzo-dog The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band: Neil Innes, Viv
Stanshall etc

DISCUSSED IN alt.config:
proposal for alt.fan.bonzo-dog posted by andyrobts@aol.com on
19th March 1998. reply from Sysop 20th Mar. Justification posted,
various contributions demonstrated strong international interest
and traffic in newsgroups. Name finalised without -band.Richard
Bryant suggested posting a Charter, charter posted No further
 objections.

JUSTIFICATION:

A dejanews search on bonzo+dog indicated 2100 matches. There is a
mailing list with 65 subscribers which is intended strictly for low
 volume informative posts. It is envisaged that this would continue
 and the ng will attract wider ranging discussion, probably medium
 volume traffic.

References to the Bonzo's regularly crop up in alt.fan.capt-beefheart,
alt.fan.frank-zappa, alt.comedy.british, alt.fan.monty-python
newsgroups. Also in rec.music.beatles, rec.music.dementia,
rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1960s.

CHARTER:

A forum for fans of the ‘The Bonzo Dog Band’ previously known as

‘The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Topics might include the recorded output of the Bonzo’s, TV shows and
videos and the careers of former band members. No commercial
advertising allowed unless for goods or services related to the
subject of the group. Private individuals may advertise their Website
or business in their signature files . Binary postings are forbidden.
All Binary files should be posted onto the relevant group with a pointer
to them in this group Format: Text files only, HTML , graphics and
sound files should be placed on the Web with a pointer to them in
this group

Moderation:

The newsgroup will not be moderated. We are an anarcho-syndicalist
collective with a rotating chair.

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The Bonzo Dog Band on Do Not Adjust Your Set

Time capsule from October 2010

2011-11-01T09:16:28Z

Kew Gardens October 2010

Kew Gardens October 2010 Red Shoveler from South America

Taken October 25, 2010 at 1:43 pm

Shabby Chic Dresser Portobello Road Market

Taken October 30, 2010 at 11:14 am

St Paul's – Millennium Bridge – Glass

Taken November 1, 2010 at 7:57 pm

Wanstead Park

Taken November 4, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Kew Gardens October 2010

Taken October 25, 2010 at 1:44 pm

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Time capsule from October 2010

London’s Air Ambulance

2011-12-07T14:35:41Z

I saw a car driving up the Romford Road the other day with “Air Ambulance” written on the side.
It didn’t fool me, I know what a helicopter sounds like.

later….

Ok, there is a perfectly good explanation for why the Air Ambulance Service needs to send cars when it’s too dark or difficult for the helicopter to land. That makes sense. But it still doesn’t make sense to label the car as an “Air Ambulance” which is how it appears. They’re going to have to keep explaining that one over and over again to more and more people for as long as the silly branding exercise continues.

The other question that comes to mind is, in what circumstances is it more effective to dispatch the London Air Ambulance replacement car service all the way from Whitechapel rather than a local Ambulance from the neighbourhood hospitals ambulance services?

London’s Air Ambulance PR Manager replies:

London’s Air Ambulance is not just an airlifting service. We carry a highly experienced doctor on board, usually an Anaesthetist or A&E consultant. We also carry a specially trained paramedic. The service is about the expertise of the medical team. They are the only roadside trauma team who look after London and the helicopter is a means of getting them to the patient quicker as London is one of the most congested cities in the world. As well as being too dangerous at night to land, due to objects such as telephone wires, it is also not as busy and our rapid response vehicles can get about London quite quickly. The team generally patrol central London waiting for a call to a serious incident so they are positioned to get to any area of London quickly. They do not always base themselves at Whitechapel. We are different to a normal ambulance service. Our services will be called upon because our team performs procedures on scene that are normally only found in the hospital emergency department. This has included open chest surgery and bringing a patient back to life who would otherwise be clinically dead and this is a procedure only our team are able to do at the roadside.

One of our paramedics is always based in the London Ambulance control room, monitoring the thousands of 999 calls which pass there every day. As our trauma team are indispensible we have to ensure they are dispatched to the right jobs. The types of incidents they attend include serious road traffic collisions, industrial accidents, falls from heights, drownings and penetrative trauma. We have also attended every major incident in London since inception, including the 7th July terrorist bombings.

I understand that having London’s Air Ambulance labelled on the cars might be confusing, however when the service was initially set up we only had a helicopter. The cars were introduced as it was found there was a need for them as more people where dying unnecessarily at night time in London. Last year, with the help of donations from the public and LAS, we were able to go 24 hours. We probably will have to keep explaining this one over and over again but each time we have to; we are educating one more person as to what our operation is about and hopefully to the fact that we are a charity. We provide an imperative service to London and the cars are a very important part of our service.

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London’s Air Ambulance

Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone – V2.0

2011-12-07T14:36:08Z

After I posted my step by step guide to moving a complete WordPress blog installation from one host to another yesterday and tweeted the ManageWP founder Vladimir Prelovac , he sent me an improved, simpler method.

Here is what Vladimir came up with, it should be quicker and slightly more straightforward now, I hope it works!

Select the site and click “Backup Now” option from the popup menu. Create a backup.
Go to “View backups” and click to Download the backup file
Go to the new host and using CPanel (Fantastico) create a new WordPress blog
Go to your domain registrar, and switch the DNS to point to the new hosting. Wait for it to propagate.
Using FTP program or Cpanel file manager upload the backup file to your new site (for example to wp-content/)
Add the new site to ManageWP
Select clone tool and as source type in the URL of the backup file. (for example http://yoursite.com/wp-content/backup_file_name.zip)
Select to overwrite your new site.

That should be all the steps required, with no need for any individual file substitutions any more. I’m going to try it out as soon as I can, please let us know if it works for you

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Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone – V2.0

Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP

2011-12-07T14:36:29Z

From time to time you may wish to move your entire WordPress blog with all its posts, comments, images, themes and widgets over from one web hosting service to another.

In this post I’m going to show you step by step how you can move a live WordPress blog and domain from one webhost to another without needing to delve into the mySQL databases or edit any php files.

This could help you move to a more economical hosting deal, find a faster and more reliable hosting company or help you escape from that nightmarish overselling company with the frontline support ticket service from hell, and there are plenty of those around!

ManageWP.com

As a blogger using WordPress, messing about with web hosting is something I prefer not to have to do, but unfortunately it frequently becomes a necessity. Good web hosting companies come and go, and last year’s bargain can soon become this year’s nightmare as far as technical support and hidden limitations are concerned. Imagine if we could just copy our blogs from one host to another just like switching phone networks or changing insurance companies? That would turn web hosting into a simple commodity which you could chop and change as often as you like, following the best deals or the best service, checking out new ones on a monthly basis to see how well they perform and switching back whenever you felt like it. Well I think we are almost there now, and this is how I did it most recently using a new web service called ManageWP which is presently in beta and promises to continue providing a free account for up to 3 ( or maybe 5) blogs indefinitely.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

How to Move a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog and domain from one web hosting to another using ManageWP

Select the blog you wish to move from within ManageWP, and click the “Backup Now” button (see¹ ).
Go to File Manager or ftp in the old host CPanel and find the backup file just created, in WP-content eg public_html/blogname/wp-content/e51f790672adfc64dd712f17a9ac3/mwp_backups/blogname.com_manual_full_2011-10-17_d12569cceea51195afee02b3db.zip (see² ).
Download that backup file to your computer.
Go to CPanel at the new host and run Fantastico or Scriptaculous to create a new WordPress blog with the same name at the new host, domain top level
In File Manager or ftp, Save a copy of the new wp-config.php file just created under wp-admin.
Now at your domain registration provider, switch over the dns to point to the new hosting and wait for it to propagate
When the new empty blog is showing in the browser and in ManageWP dashboard, remove blog from ManageWP then re-add – (to add the manage-wp-plugin and reset the IP details etc)
In ManageWP, select the new blog then Options then Backup and run a backup
in File Manager, navigate to the newly created backup file and upload the old one to the same folder
Still in File Manager, rename the uploaded backup file to the name of the new backup just created.
in ManageWP, Restore from backup – ( now you get a Database Error because wp-config.php is looking for the old database names) so….
replace wp-config.php with the one saved from (step 5) the newly created WordPress.

That’s it, it worked! You may need to deactivate and reactivate the manageWP plugin to get ManageWP to recognise the newly restored blog again.

To summarise, Backup the blog from the old host, create a new blog on the new host, then switch the dns over. When the new blog is live, re-add it to manage WP and do a backup. Then replace the backup just created with the one from the old blog and restore, but put back the wp-config from the new blog. Deactivate the ManageWP plugin and re-add the moved blog to ManageWP dashboard again.

This has been the first in a series of posts about using ManageWP to help organise and maintain multiple WordPress blog by Andy Roberts at DARnet

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Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP

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Sunrise on Wanstead Flats

2011-10-16T09:34:07Z

I generally wake early and get started online before breakfast but yesterday I decided to try a sunrise walk around the Alexandra Lake at Wanstead Flats. That’s where I often end up taking some exercise later in the day anyway, but the sky was clear and there are supposed to be some interesting migrant birds heading our way at this time of year.

Leaving the house I could feel the air was cold but on approaching the green open space that is the flats I could see layers of mist suspended over the frosted grass. When the sun poked up over the lines of trees it lit up the landscape with golden light.

Wanstead Flats Sunrise October 15th

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Sunrise on Wanstead Flats

Kew Gardens

2011-10-11T14:06:18Z

There are many folly buildings at Kew Gardens and yesterday I learned that the person who instigated them had a swivel chair installed inside the little domed colonade at the top of the hill near the lake next to the Palm House. From that vantage point she could survey the results of the gardeners’ labour. The view would have been much different in those days but I thought I’d make a mock swivel chair video of the view from yesterday at Kew Gardens.

Many more Kew Gardens photos are amongst my photosets on Flickr such as :

Kew Gardens October 2011

Kew Gardens

Collection of Kew Gardens Photosets

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Kew Gardens

Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia

2011-09-28T12:13:46Z

Hello, I’m cooking fresh fish with cider over a trangia camping stove in sunny Galicia, northern Spain.

With videography by Evan Roberts, this youTube is pretty self explanatory.

The actual location is a campsite at Camping Moreiras, O Grove, Pontevedra, Galicia. The fish, a whole monkfish, came from the fish market on the harbour at O Grove itself, as did the vegetables and the cider is an Asturian Sidra Natural obtaine en route from one of many Eroski supermarkets.

Just a bit of fun really, but it captures one of many happy mealtimes from a memorable holiday touring Asturias and Galicia in September 2011. There are loads of photos online at both my collection and Linda’s Flickr photostreams.

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Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia

DARnet Andy Roberts

Time capsule for Jan 2011 Songwriters Circle

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time capsule from December 25 2011 Calabardina

Aguilas and Callabardina Christmas 2010

George Osborne’s full-blown attack on the countryside will delight rentiers

time capsule November 24th to December 8th

Blue House Farm North Fambridge

Blue House Farm Bird Reserve, North Fambridge

Will Marsh Harrier take a Wigeon?

Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP

WordPress London #7

WordPress London – #7 Links and Slideshare

WordPress News

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Custom Post Types

time capsule November 8th – 20th 2010 Alexandra Lake Wanstead Flats

Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question

The Bonzo Dog Band on Do Not Adjust Your Set

Time capsule from October 2010

London’s Air Ambulance

London’s Air Ambulance PR Manager replies:

Migrate a WordPress Blog Using ManageWP Clone – V2.0

Change Your WordPress Hosting Easily Via ManageWP

How to Move a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog and domain from one web hosting to another using ManageWP

Sunrise on Wanstead Flats

Kew Gardens

Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia