July 2007 Archives

I note that, according to the BBC.

The British Army's emergency operation in Northern Ireland comes to an end at midnight on Tuesday [tonight] after 38 years.

Operation Banner, as it was called, was the longest in the Army's history.

No doubt, there will be much rejoicing in many quarters and the end of the need for military support for what were called the troubles.

That reminds me, I went to Beijing in 1994 and our Chinese guide would use the phrase "and something happened" when talking (on not talking) about protests and deaths that occurred in Tiananmen Square.

At the time I found the use of the expression "and something happened" somewhat obtuse. But, in hindsight, the 'sensibility' of saying "and something happened" is no more strange than calling what went on in Northern Ireland "the troubles".

I have some fun working out my genealogy. So far, I'm back to about 1812. But after that date it gets a little tricky.

The problem is that census data pre-1841 isn't very helpful (genealogically speaking), and prior to 1937 the birth, marriages, deaths indexes weren't centralised.

So, if I'm to go any further back, I'll need to get creative.

I've spent a happy few hours this weekend putting together a website for Team Cru Vin Dogs. It's been a nice distraction from writing (my PhD thesis).

The design work was done by Grant Hunter at Hunter Creative, and I assembled the plumbing using:

• Drupal as the CMS
• A2 as the hosting company
• Network Solutions for the domain name

It will be interesting to see how much financial support for Mobility Dogs will be generated; after all that is the main purpose of the Team Cru Vin Dogs site.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support of Cru Vin Dogs who are funding the racing team.