Archive - Story

As you can tell there haven't been many new items on this site for a while. This is an update:

The site has been updated to the latest Drupal 6 code but unfortunately the project module hasn't been updated yet. This means the issues database for reporting bugs and enhancment requests will be offline for the immediate future. Until it is fixed please post any such items in the forum.

Ladder hosting - there are now over 1000 ladders being hosted and over 9000 players. Hosting continues to be free at squash-ladder.net and the games-ladder.net, tennis-ladder.net and sports-ladder.net domains are also available.

Ladder development - this is on hold for the forseable future. Programming takes up spare time that I unfortunately don't have at the moment :o(

Downloads - are now through the project page at Sourceforge.

Chicken house - there has been some recent interest and some new ideas from other poultry automation fans so the project pages may get an update.

After such a hot July, August felt a bit disappointing being rather chilly and windy. At least there was plenty of rain to revive the plants. The wildlife sightings seemed to tail off too but maybe because we were outside less. The flycatchers were busy but no more nests. There have been plenty of tits, sparrows, chiff chaffs and finches. The second clutch of swallows fizzled out. The parents seemed to visit the nest only intermittently. One egg was pushed out and smashed on the floor below and a couple of weeks later a dead chick was on the floor beneath the nest. There have been no visits since then but the nest in the chuch porch is still going strong with chirping chicks almost ready to fly. Other bird sightings were a kingfisher and the green woodpecker especially when it picked a fight with one of the chickens!.

There have been plenty of newts, dragonflies and damselflies. The number of butterfly sightings was slightly disappointing overall but there were regular visits from a red admiral, peacocks, whites and blues. I discovered an area of woodland nearby with literally hundreds of woodland butterflies along the bramble covered edge. It is a long while since I saw butterflies in those numbers. We also paid a visit to a new community woodland called Weavely Furze (SP464182). It has recently been restored and looks promising, I was interested in the small hazel coppice which is in its first year. Whilst there we saw a hare. The only other sightings that come to mind are several muntjac deer and last night a hedgehog on the lawn but it managed to run away before I returned with my camera.

Whilst watering the plants by the back step I was surprised to see the soil in the pot starting to move. This was followed by a bubbling noise and all of a sudden a face appeared! It seems like a strange place to make a home buried inside a flowerpot but the toad seemed happy enough...

For the last month or so the site has been under constant bot attack. It seems to have been identified that the site was permitting posting without logging in and so every three minutes an automated post was being made containing one or more links to various poker or gambling websites. I have therefore had to disable anonymous posting on the site. I was hoping the attack would stop after a while but this has not happened. Please therefore register/login to post messages or comments on this site and the forums. I hope to change the system back to allow anonymous posting if/when these bot attacks end.

We came back today from a weekend away to find an egg in the nest box. I'd spotted Millie sitting in the box for a while before we left but wasn't expecting anything for several weeks as it's early for the local Barbu d'Uccles to lay, especially with all this cold weather. It's incredible she should instinctively know where to lay her very first egg!

I popped in to the Reading & District Bantam show this weekend which was held in the Northcroft Leisure Centre in Newbury. This was my first chicken show and I wasn't sure what to expect. The birds were in what I presume is normally the badminton / indoor football hall. On opening the door in to the hall I was met with an overwhelming and deafening array of chicken noises. There were so many different shapes and sizes of bantam it was hard to believe. I only had my phone on me so snapped some slightly blurred images on it.

This is quite an impressive video clip as well as an opportunity to embed a google video.
Read more about Parkour on wikipedia.

Version 0.8.1 of squash ladder PHP has been released. The changes include:

* Major code overhaul to comply with e_notice errors
* Automatically writes .htaccess file (requires Apache mod_rewrite module)
* Several 'behind scene' changes to make hosted ladders easier to manage
* Centralised image management (no need for subdirectories)
* Improved content management system
* Better support for different sports/gaming types
* Fixed bug where deleted players displayed as resting
* Fixed the incorrect 'From:' email header
* Added customisable text for non logged in user
* Fixed duplicate results recorded when page refreshed/reloaded
* Added automatic MySQL backup feature
* Admins can backup database to Excel
* Various bug fixes
* Supports recording of set results

Every Christmas for the past 15 years or more my family has engaged in the seasonal sport of satsuma bowls. This is a keenly fought contest, loosely based on lawn bowls, the rules of which have been progressively developed and fine tuned. I have to confess to making the assumption the same would be happening up and down the land each winter when satsumas and clemantines become available in the shops. Google says not - apparently a satsuma bowl is an Japanese decorative antique!

There was a clear need to have satsuma bowls recognised as an official sport. To achieve this I have set out the rules of the sport as well as a bit of background information such as how to choose the ideal satsuma bowl, jack selection and scoring systems.

One thing I have noticed since moving out of London is how little the weather previously affected us in the inner city. November seems early to have such a harsh frost and the ground has been frozen for the best part of a week. I haven't really seen a frost like this for many years. I went out early one morning to take photos of all the ice cystals covering the plants. The chickens weren't as taken by the beauty of everything - one foot on the frozen ground and they hopped up on my back for warmth. The other thing you really notice is the stars. In London a clear night meant you could see the stars. Out in the country a clear night means you see thousands of stars of different size, colour and intensity and some of them really do twinkle!