I have spent some time over the past week working on a new layout for my blog.
Some of the changes include:
The header image has been replaced with a wider image.
The RSS button has been increased in size and an email subcription added.
The add comments page has been modified to also include the entry on the page.
It works fine in Firefox and Opera, and after a bit of hassle, also in Internet Explorer.
If you have any comments please let me know through the comments.
We went to the Dunstable Music Centre end of term concert yesterday morning. It was due to start at 10:00 and with this term’s excellent organisation it actually did. The changes between groups performing were very slick and quick, something that has been missing in previous concerts. Due to this, the interval was actually a good length, rather than the usual rush from your seats to get a drink in the 10 minute break of previous concerts. Dunstable Music Centre is part of Bedfordshire Music, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this academic year. The centre caters for all students from 7 upwards and there are quite a few parents and other adult students giving a broad range of abilities.
The level of performance was really good, with, in my opinion, 2 outstanding groups. The Jazz Orchestra and the Concert Band really stood out for their exceptional performances. You could tell that everyone, children and adults were really enjoying themselves.
This term’s running order was
Senior Orchestra – Scarborough Fair – lead by Janice Saxton
Junior Strings – Alouette – lead by Janice Saxton
Senior Strings – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – lead by Janice Saxton
Junior Orchestra – “The Junior Orchestra” – lead by Lynette Driver
Beginner Recorders – Swing Boats & 1,2,3,4 – lead by Jo Howard
Junior Recorders – Moon River – lead by Lynette Driver
Junior Woodwind – James Bond Theme – lead by Mark Holt
Junior Band – Can Can – lead by Mark Holt
Senior Saxophones – Puttin’ on the Ritz – lead by Kate Worms
Tuned Percussion – Water come a me eye – lead by Simon Wicker
Electric Guitar – Crazy little thing called love & Brown Sugar – lead by Pete Smith
Interval
Jazz Orchestra – Cute, Travellin’ Light & Autumn Leaves – lead by Graham Cook
Jazz Combo – Mud Pie
Junior Dance – Jungle Rhythm – choreographed by Sarah Meers
Song – Seasons of Love
Senior Dance – All that Jazz
Guitars – March & The Ox and the Ass – lead by John Stevens
Ukuleles – Baby Face & Rock around the clock – lead by Pete Smith
Concert Band – The Simpsons & Super Invincible Mighty Dynamic medley – lead by John Ravenor
It all finished slightly ahead of time at 12:20.
Due to other musical commitments, Esther Hackett, who was head of Dunstable Music Centre, has stepped down. She has made a big difference in the time she has been there. She plays and teaches violin and is currently my son’s violin teacher.
I have just realised that after over 18 months, I have never explained why my blog is called ‘Failure is the key to success’.
One of the sayings of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the Japanese martial art of Aikido, is ‘Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.‘
When I was looking for a name, this seemed very appropriate. Everyone has failures in our lives and only by learning from them do we improve ourselves and succeed in our goals.
My connection with aikido goes back to the 1988. Several of my friends had joined a local martial arts club and talked me into coming along. Now, I had never seen myself as the next Bruce Lee or anything like that, but thought I would go along for a few weeks to keep them company. One of my friends, Dave Long, was a 1st Kyu (brown belt) in Shotokan Karate, so I figured that if he thought it was worth going to, it was probably worth looking into. I turned up the first night not even knowing the name of the martial art that they were doing.
What I found was a martial art that didn’t rely on strength or flexibility (although the latter comes with time). It uses a combination of wrist locks, pins and throws to deal with your opponent. You take your opponent’s balance and use their strength and momentum against themselves. I never saw myself as a slugger in a fight situation and the almost analytical approach to how the techniques work appealed to my logical mind. So much so that I outlasted all of those who talked me into going.
When training, you take it in turns to be uke, the receiver of the technique, and tori, the person applying the technique. The relationship between tori and uke has been similar in all clubs and courses where I trained; uke provides a honest spirited attack and then, if necessary, helps tori to understand where the technique is failing to have them falling to their knees in pain. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that, the wrist locks, twists, pressure on nerves can all be quite painful. You have to be mad; you pay for the privilege of having someone else inflict pain on you.
Anyway, after I had been training for about 3 years, when I was a 3rd Kyu (green belt), I was asked if I would be a reserve uke for Joanne, one of the club’s lady 2nd Kyu (blue belt) who was taking her 1st Kyu (brown belt) grading. I was second reserve, so there was little chance of being needed. That was until, in the same week, the first uke twisted his knee on a building site and the first reserve had a hospital appointment for an operation on a longstanding shoulder injury. Suddenly it was real and I was going to be thrown around in a grading. After getting some extra training in, we discovered that my breakfalls weren’t quite correct and it was a small miracle that I hadn’t broken anything yet. So in the months before the grading, not only were Joanne’s techniques polished, but my breakfalls were completely taken apart and relearned. This took me from turning up once a week and enjoying myself, to seriously getting involved and travelling around the country to courses.
So, that’s how I met my wife Joanne; she spend several months throwing me around a mat before her grading to get her brown belt. We eventually ended up running the local club for a few years and learnt from and trained under many instructors from the UK and abroad. During my time training I received technique many hundreds of times. However when being thrown, I can count on one hand the number of times when I was thrown without being aware of it. What I mean by this is the attack gets so redirected that you feel no force when you are thrown, one minute you are attacking (grab, strike etc) and the next you are flying through the air thinking ‘what happened?’ This has happened once with Jo and twice with Sensei Tony Sargeant the head of Takemusu Iwama Aikido Europe, another time was from Sensei Mike Smith who was the head of our association the Kai Shin Kai.
Aikido is not a quick martial art to learn. It is only at dan grade (black belt) that you really start to understand how to use it effectively. I am sure there are some people that would disagree with this, but this is my personal opinion. I stopped training about 10 years ago due to other commitments. I renewed my membership annually for another 3 years, before I accepted that I had stopped training for the moment.
Anyway, as you can see, aikido has had quite an effect on my life and so it seemed natural to look to the sayings of Morihei Ueshiba, known as O-Sensei, for a suitable name.
Back in June last year, I changed over to using Voice over Internet Protocol phone (VoIP) for all of my calls. This has worked really well and has allowed several free international calls. This was due to the way that the VoIPCheap account works. When you add credit to your account, it allows 300 minutes of free calls a week to certain countries for the next 120 days after the credit is added. Calls to UK landlines used to be free also, but soon became 1p per minute. After the 120 ‘Freedays’ are over there is a minimal charge per minute.
Anyway, I was checking my account balance yesterday and realised that I was nearly out, so I added more credit. I should have checked their tarrifs first as most of the rates have gone up. For example a UK landline call is now 1.5p per minute; this is however cheaper than my land line provider, VirginMedia, who charge 3p per minute plus a 6p connection charge. I checked the tarrifs for the other VoIP accounts that I have, VoipTalk and SipGate and found that for UK calls, Sipgate works out best for me. I have added credit to this account and changed the dial plan on my Linksys SPA-3000 adapter to use Sipgate for all UK calls and VoipCheap for all international calls.
A couple of weeks ago, I had an unexpected premium rate call on my land line bill. As I use Sipura 3000 System Tray Monitor to monitor the phone adapter, I was able to confirm that we had not made the call and get a refund.
After 9 months of using VoIP for all my calls from home I am very pleased with the results. I also get the benefit, when I add credit, of the free international calls. If you are reading Lyall, I’ll try to call you next weekend.
I received an email this afternoon from the Government responding to the e-petition to reduce the classified period for census data from 100 years to 70 years. I posted about this back in January (Census E-Petition) when it was at 1,500 signatures and again when it was at 13,000 signatures (Census E-Petition update). The deadline for signatures was 8th March, by which time there were 23,600 signatures.
As expected the response was that there would be no change.
“The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to “reduce the classified period for census data from 100 years to 70 years” has now closed. This is an email response from HM Government.
Thank you for signing the e-petition calling for the closure period on census data to be reduced from its present 100 years to 70 years for the 1911, 1921 and 1931 censuses.
The Government understands the frustrations this delay can cause, particularly to people who are researching their family history. But these frustrations have to be balanced against the assurances given to people at the time about confidentiality. This also has implications today, for public confidence in the privacy of information which people provide in future censuses.
Clearly, the importance of the personal information provided in the census is that it enables a detailed and accurate picture to be built up of our society. This is of great assistance to Government and to the community as a whole in helping shape policies and set priorities for the future. But unless people believe that the personal data they provide – which includes details of their occupation and who is living with them – will remain confidential and secure as they have been promised, the danger is that they might feel reluctant to give sensitive information.
It is for this reason that there is a policy of a 100-year delay before releasing the personal data in the census. The purpose is to minimise the risk of embarrassment both to those living and to their immediate descendants. The Government does not believe this policy should be altered or the explicit assurances given to people at the time broken.
You might like to know, however, that the 1911 census was not taken under this Act. The census returns are held by the National Archives, not the Office for National Statistics. Plans are underway to set up an on-line search service of the 1911 census by 2009, although again personally sensitive material will not be released until 2011. The National Archives will also respond to certain requests for information on the 1911 census under the Freedom of Information Act.
On a sadder note, the 1931 census records were destroyed by fire during the Second World War.
We know this reply will disappoint many people, but hope you will understand that in the long-term, the reasons given are in the best interests of preserving the census for future generations.”
It talks of setting up online access to the 1911 census by 2009, but that personally sensitive material will not be released until 2011. I expect this means that ages will be excluded from the information made available, which will greatly reduce the value of this for identifying members of the family. Still at least there will only be a couple of years after that to wait for the full data.
I was hopeful that the petition would succeed and that the additional census years would help me to break down my family tree ‘brick wall‘ . My paternal grandfather is proving very difficult to track back due to the lack of information I have about him. It would have been nice to find him in the later censuses and maybe find some other relations.
I will have to check the ancestorsonboard.com website for his voyages to Africa during the 1930’s in the same way I used it for the Voyage to New Zealand 100 years ago post a couple of weeks ago. I’ll have to wait a while though as they are only up to 1909 at the moment.
I had an eye test a couple of weeks ago and needed new glasses as a result. Jo had an eye test today and her changed prescription means she needs new glasses with varifocal lenses. Also her lenses need to be ultra thin to keep the weight down, each lens costs more than my glasses. Ouch!
While we were out this afternoon, I dropped the films that I took of last weekend’s lunar eclipse in for processing. I have got a few reasonable shots of the eclipse and once I have scanned the negatives, I will post them.
This evening while the kids were watching the television, the screen flashed and the tv turned itself off. I turned it back on and all seemed well. That was until about 10 minutes ago when it crackled, flashed and turned itself off again. It only crackles when I try to turn it on, so it looks like we will be looking for a new tv tomorrow.
I can still hope that I might win the lottery tonight.
Posts 
