Tag archives for themself - Page 8
New Books of 2015 pt.1
In keeping with my resolution to read more paper books (and the self-imposed target of at least twenty or five more than I've acquired) I thought I would record the new books I've acquired this year. I intend to read all of these during 2015. The first batch are technically 2014 acquisitions, mostly Christmas presents, but I'm counting them in my 2015 total. Here they are: That makes seven books so far, and you should expect to read reviews of them all on the blog later in the year. Given my post last year about how readers choose books I thought I would also record why I chose each of these books. Working up from the bottom here are the reasons I wanted each of these books. The fantastically funny Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett. This was on my wish list…
Top Ten Posts of 2014
I've been looking through the stats, and ignoring the home page, and the separate parts of a linked series of posts, these are the top ten posts of 2014 (not all of which are from 2014). I've also adjusted the order to allow for when in the year the post was published, but these are all originally in the top 12 posts). Some stats During 2014 I have written 112 posts. 241 posts (out of the 334 posts plus four pages available) have received at least one hit over the course of the year. The top ten (list below) account for over half of all traffic across the blog. There's a small gap in the stats too, I got hacked in late November and lost a couple of days worth of stats, I rolled back to a previous version and…
Remembrance Challenge
We took our cubs to the local war memorial in the Church near the Scout Hall as part of our own remembrance challenge. Before we went the cubs each made a wreath of poppies and wrote a message on it. Each boy did his own personal wreath. We then walked to the Church where we spoke about why we remember, and how different things were in 1914. South Merstham wasn't as big then as it is now, the new houses were mostly built in the 1950s. In the 1911 census there were around 600 men in the locality. About 150 of whom signed up in August 1914. (I'm guessing some would be unfit, others in jobs that couldn't just go off to war and some others not that keen). @N04/15767315095/ Remembrance Challenge The remembrance challenge was to find out as much as…
Safestyle Scamming
This afternoon, while I was making lunch for Lucy, the phone rang. Now we only have a phone because you need a BT line to get broadband, so the handset is pretty cheap and we tend not to give the number out. Only three people ever phone me on the phone, apart from the telephone scammers. I answered the phone but didn't immediately speak. A male native english speaker asked to speak to Mr or Mrs Kemp. I asked him who was calling. "Mr Kemp, I'm just calling from the local office of Safestyle to follow up a request for a quote." he claimed. I hadn't said who I was, my policy is to neither confirm nor deny anything to people on the phone until I've worked out who they are. "Oh, really?" I commented. "Mrs Kemp requested a quote…
Scottish Independence – It’s Very Close Indeed
I've updated the graphs with the latest polls and re-drawn them, I've also ignored the polls from before March 2014, so this is just the last six months of polling (about 50 separate polls). My original data source is ,_2014 The graph clearly shows that as the poll gets closer more people are making their minds up, and that the gap between the views is narrowing. Yesterday saw a major effort by the No campaign to influence the Don't Knows which won't yet have made its way into the opinion data as the latest one was only published yesterday. If you haven't made up your mind yet then you might be the person that decides the outcome. Here are some useful links that might be of assistance in gathering the facts (NB apply buckets of salt to anything said by politicians,…