Posts
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Moving Day, 2018
Roadside Burials of Suicide Victims
Until the passing of the Suicide Act 1961, Suicide was still a criminal offence in England and until 1882 suicides had to be buried on unconsecrated ground. In the seventeenth and eighteen century, those declared to have commited felo de se (the archaic term for suicide) were given a shameful burial, usually under cover of darkness with a stake driven through the body, and forfeited their estate to The Crown. This map shows the locations of documented cases as and when found Why were suicides...
Jacob Sallis of Littleport, Felo de Se, 1806
Until the passing of the Suicide Act 1961, Suicide was still a criminal offence in England and until 1882 suicides had to be buried on unconsecrated ground. In the seventeenth and eighteen century, those declared to have commited felo de se (the archaic term for suicide) were given a shameful burial, usually under cover of darkness with a stake driven through the body, and forfeited their estate to The Crown. In 1806, the Oxford Journal reported the burial of Jacob Sallis of Littleport in an...
The Littleport Murder – Sarah Potts, 1863
From Cambridge Independent Press, Saturday 23 March 1863
Pavement Slab of the Year, 1964
Spotted in Ely
Dartmoor 365, R16, Stumpy Oak and Hawson Cross
I lived next to this tree and cross for 18 months between 2009 - 2010. We named a band after it
End of Folk Week
Destroyed Earthworks
Trying to identify the location of this mid-Victorian photograph, inscribed on the reverse: "A very old amateur plate taken before old Latham destroyed ancient earthworks. A valuable picture found by chance amongst some old plates"
Demolition of the University Arms Hotel, Cambridge
Jack T Chick – The Last Call, 1963
I always love finding copies of Chick Tracts lying around, those brilliantly deranged small American evangelical comics full of Hellfire for Sinners, Jews and especially Catholics. If they weren't so ABSOLUTELY NUTS they could possibly be offensive, but as it is, they are just so crackers as to be works of unintentional comedy. I was lucky enough on Saturday to find a 1963 first edition copy of The Last Call for £1, a much larger than usual 64 pages of sinners (especially Catholics) being...
Homer Simpson, Hunstanton
Sidmouth Toll Gate, 1820
Doug Lazy at Cinderlla Rockerfella’s Cambridge
Doug Lazy with Razette from Raze at Cinderella Rockerfells, Cambridge Sunday 13th August 1989
Church House Inn, Holne
6 Frieston Road, Boston
Home of my Grandmother Peggy Pengelly until 2007
St Ives Milestone
The Look Around You Works of Shakespeare
A handy quick reference to the complete works of Shakespeare The Noble Naysayer Rupert II The Whore and the Harriman The Weary Wives of Warwick O'Reilly The House At Bunplehurst Rupert III Cocnumis & Grognumis T'was a Merry Morn in Malta Tit For Tat Ian I Ian II Ian III Part I Ian III Part II Ian III Part III Razzmatazz Bessie's Revenge Rupert IV David's Diary Knock Knock Catherine & Casanova Rupert V Harlem Blues
Simple MySQL Command line DB dump for cron
If it doesn't already exists, create the file .my.cnf in your home directory. Add the following to it, replacing db_username and db_password with the database username and password. make sure the file permissions are set to 600 (chmod 600 .my.cnf) so it is readable by you alone. [mysqldump] user=db_username password=db_password The following command will dump the database db_name to the db_backups directory with the filename yyyymmdd.sql where yyyy is the current year, mm is the current montyh...
Advice to a New Club Promoter
There is only one golden rule: The ONLY thing that gets people into events is other people. If you already have people coming, other people will come. As far as nightclub events go, this is the ONLY rule that matters. I promise you. Other rules: As a promoter, your job is to convince people that other people are already coming. That's the only thing that matters. See the golden rule. If you try to convince people of the merit of the event, you are wasting your time. See the golden rule. People...
Dartmoor 365, J16, Kitty Jay’s Grave
The grave of poor Kitty Jay
Welney / Upwell Boundary Stone
Sexist Album Covers of the Past #1
Dick Schory's Percussion and Brass Ensemble - Stereo Action Goes Broadway (UK RCA, 1970)
Face from a Littleport Pub, Early 1800s
Whilst doing a bit of local history research today, I came across this newspaper clipping from the Ely Standard, dated 13th April 1972, and describing a mysterious face and message painted on the wall of the Black Bull pub in Littleport and which had come to light during demolition. The news story goes on to describe how a local collector had salvaged the face and had temporarily added it to his collection of Bygones. The inscription beneath the face reads "No Trust To Day Pay The Fiddler and...
A New Yeares Guift for Shrews c.1620
Who marieth a Wife uppon a Moneday, If she will not be good uppon a Tewesday, Lett him go to the wood uppon a Wensday, And cutt him a cudgel uppon the Thursday, And pay her soundly uppon a Fryday, And she mend not ye Divil take her a Saterday, Then may he eate his meate in peace on the Sonday Published c.1620, Edward Lee
Location of Gnucash Invoice Template on Ubuntu
This is one of those things that drives me mad, that I can never find in the documentation. I'm currently running Gnucash 2.4.11 on Mint 14 (based on Ubuntu) and sometimes need to edit the invoice template. I can never find where the damn thing is. Currently, it's here (along with other templates): /usr/share/gnucash/guile-modules/gnucash/report/invoice.scm
Chicago Rock Cafe Cats
All this digging out old stuff from my past as a Chicago Rock Cafe DJ in the 90s reminds me that they used to have this thing called "Chicago Cats" or something. Basically, the bar staff would work out a dance routine to something awful, like "Greased Lightning" and at some pre-appointed time, probably midnight, the DJ would put on the record and the "Cats" (ie barstaff) would stop serving drinks, get on the bar and perform their dance routine. It was, without doubt, the most excruciating...
The Thinking DJ
In 1996, all the Chicago Rock Cafe DJs got together and had a big meeting (unpaid). They put on their very best thinking caps and entered the Chicago Rock Cafe 'Think Tank', chaired by the self appointed 'Head DJ', where they voiced their very best ideas. Luckily someone was on hand to minute the meeting and distribute to all the Absentees (i.e. me). This is the cream of the UKs DJ talent, thinking their very best ideas. Be awe inspired.
Important Note for DJs
How to Create An Atmosphere as a DJ
This diagram came from the handout provided by Luminar Leisure during one of their monthly "Patronise a DJ" meetings (which, I hasten to add, I never attended, despite constant 'last' warnings). So in 1997, nearly ten years after turning professional, I was bemused to receive a memo containing the following diagram, presumably telling me what I had been getting wrong over all these years. Idiots.
Me vs The Rank Organisation
It's 1992, I'm the DJ at Cambridge's first Student night, the club's busiest night by far, my contract has just been extended and I've been given a payrise. Enter the New Manager, who's first action was to sack the existing DJs so he could put his mates in. As I'd been there nearly 5 years, had a baby son and felt a bit hard done by, I didn't want to take this lying down. So whilst clearing out the garage today, I found this heart warming series of letters. [gallery...
Frank Kidson – Old English Dances
I recently digitised my personal copy of Frank Kidson's limited and very scarse "Old English Dances" (also called "Old English Country Dances"), published in a run of 80 copies, 1890, and offer it up freely for the benefit of the traditional music community. Please feel free to share, but please keep the original copyright details intact and do not republish on the web. This is a large file, around 55MB in size. You may download directly here (Right click, Save as.)
Genuine 1st Pressing Banksy Paris Hilton CD For Sale Sold
I'm offering my genuine, verifiable 1st Pressing Banksy Paris Hilton CD for sale. Thank you for all your enquiries. This has now been sold The Story Everyone knows the story: In September 2006, Banksy went into various HMV stores around the UK and replaced upto 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD "Paris" with his own doctored versions including a redesigned sleeve and a CD-R with a handwritten title containing a mix by DJ Dangermouse. You can read the BBC news story published at the time...
Wedding Photos
In April 2011 I got married to Claire, and our awesome photos were taken by John Miles, since relocated to New Zealand. John did an amazing job at a reasonable price, so I was a bit pissed off when I found out our photos were being used by "Diverse Image Photography" within their portfolio, claiming that they themselves had taken our wedding photos - see screenshot.. I contacted John Murray and asked him to remove my wedding images from his webpage, which he agreed to do. John may well be a...
Enabling mod_rewrite on Apache
This is one of those things I often forget to do when setting up Wordpress on a new server, which means pretty permalinks don't work: If you have a problem with permalinks not working on Wordpress, it may be because Apache does not have mod_rewrite enabled. An easy way to check is to make a simple php script, saved in the root directory of your webserver as info.php (or whatever takes your fancy): <?php phpinfo(); ?> This will give you an output of all the various modules and settings...
Restart Apache Webserver
To Restart Apache on Ubuntu or Mint (and possibly more): $ sudo service apache2 restart
Sir Roger de Coverley from A Christmas Carol (1951)
Elizabeth Woodcock Memorial
On 2nd February 1799, Elizabeth Woodcock was riding home to Histon from Cambridge market when in a raging blizzard (and apparently a little worse for drink) she came off her horse and was soon buried alive under the heavy snow. Trapped for eight days, she was finally rescued when a passer by saw her handkerchief raised as a flag through the snow. News of her miraculous survival spread around the country, and as well as ballads, engravings and accounts of her story being published, a monument...
Jack The Horse Courser
X:1 T:Jack The Horse Courser C:Trad. S:folktunefinder.com & Bernard Wrigley M:4/4 L:1 K:G G2 g2 d2 cB | cBAG F2 ED | GDGB AFED | GDGB AFED | G2 g2 d2 cB | cBAG F2 ED | c2 B A B2 AG | D2 F2 G4:| d2 g2 f2 ed | e2 fd c2 BA | dAdf e^cBA | dAdf e^cBA | d2 g2 f2 ed | e2 fd c2 BA | c2 BA B2 AG | D2 F2 G4:|
Gee Ho Dobbin
X: 273 T:Gee Ho Dobbin. JaW.272 M:6/8 Q:60 S:James Winder Ms, Lancashire, 1835-41 S:Bernard Wrigley R:Jig O:England A:Wyresdale,Lancashire H:1/8 K:D "Key Sig G in MS" A|FED AGF|BAG A2A|dcd Bcd|edc d2:| |:A|def Bcd|cBA B3 |d3 ABA|AGF GEF| G3 F2 A|AGF G2B|B2 G F3|A3 GFE|Ddc d2:|]
“My Alma Martyr (sic)” by Philip Mayne
No hallowed halls, no leafy ways No cloistered strolls no verdant fields Just concrete paths and freezing rain With a long walk there, then back again And, late each day, I’d get the cane From teachers freshly back from slaying The men who’d just laid down their guns And sour old hags who’d lost their sons No valid teaching was the rule Instead to keep us well subdued A sacred doctrine merged with sums Enforced our righteous servitude No witty, bright and in touch tutors Who’d bit off more...
Get the last rows updated in a database
When debugging applications, it can be useful to see what's going on in the database without referring to the code. In MySQL, you can use the information_schema database to get this information. here's what I do: Select table_name, table_rows, update_time from tables where table_schema = "[database_name]" order by update_time desc
Burwell Ness Tool Gate
Spliting strings with awk / nawk
I mainly use nawk to extract elements from a string where I know the position (eg to get just the filenames when running a grep and I'm just too lazy to remember the correct grep syntax). so, to extract field number x from strings in where the field separator (FS) is y: $ nawk '{ FS="y"; print $x }'
Checking for a valid domainname
Very quick function to test a domain name is valid: function validDomain($domain) { // Test domain is actually valid if (preg_match('/^[a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?(.([a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?)+)*$/i', $domain)) { return TRUE; } return FALSE; } The key here is the regular expression (delimited by the forward slashes at each end): /^[a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?(.([a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?)+)*$/ This basically translates as...
Dartmoor 365, Q15, Holne
Explorer – 05/08
Explorer – 10/06
CEN – 10/10/06
The Wale Monument
Explorer – 06/04
Explorer – 03/04
