Tag archives for themself - Page 7
Forgotten War – Fighting Japan in the Far East WW2
Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of Victory over Japan (VJ) Day. On 15th August 1945 the Japanese Emperor Hirohito formally surrendered unconditionally. My maternal grandfather and his brother both served in the Far East. I only met my Great Uncle once when he came back from Australia for a visit when I was about 7. My Grandfather died when I was almost nine, but he spoke to me a few times about what he did in the war. Their stories are all but forgotten. Private David Coats, 2 Argylls Private David Coats, 2nd Bn Argylls I have a picture of my Great Uncle in uniform, I'm not sure where or exactly when it was taken but my suspicion is that it is a post-war photo (he's wearing a 2 year good conduct stripe). The details have been forgotten. On the back…
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Doctor Who Trailer – Sept 19th!
Watch the Doctor Who trailer for the new series starting on 10 Sept 2015. This Doctor Who trailer is the first teaser for the new series. Awesome stuff, lots of interesting things in there, including a Dalek, Missy, zombies coming out of the ground and loads of other stuff. Roll on September! I cannot wait for this to start on 19th September. The only thing that could make this better would be the news that there is a crossover with the Sherlock team. Peter Capaldi and Benedict Cumberbatch written by Stephen Moffat would be awesome cubed! Related articles BBC teases new 'Sherlock' image, but all fans can see is hair A New Image Of The Next "Sherlock" Episode Has Been Released And It Looks Very Victorian Direct from The Beeb Throwback Photo from SHERLOCK Christmas Special The 'Doctor Who' and…
B203 Exam tomorrow
The exam for B203 is tomorrow afternoon, I can't honestly say that I've done enough prep for it but all I need is a pass. I've already done enough to secure a 2:1 for my degree and this is the last of the mandatory modules I need to do. It's also the least favourite of the modules I've done. Tomorrow night it will be done, barring the need for a resit if I fail the exam. Instead of blogging I've been cramming theory on Operations Management, Information Management, Accounting & Finance, Marketing and HR Management into my head. I've also been putting my notes into a personal wiki that you can find at if you too are one of the people studying B203 with the open university. Let me know if you find it useful. Next up will be T317…
Could You Write Five Million Words?
Five million words. That's about a hundred NaNoWriMo winners worth of words. More than most authors will publish in a lifetime. Yet it's not far off what you need to write to become a good writer. Ten Thousand Hours There's a theory, most famously expounded by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, that you need to spend about ten thousand hours practicing a skill before you get to the world class level. He cites The Beatles and Bill Gates amongst others as examples of this. There's more to success than just putting in the hours, but it certainly counts for a big chunk of it. So what counts as practice as a writer? You'd think this was obvious, writing stuff, and maybe a bit of reading. However I'd disagree with that, or rather modify it a bit. What I think makes you increase…
Twenty Years on the Internet
(Photo credit: Wikipedia) It's so long ago that I've forgotten the exact date, but I first used the internet in February 1995 when I was working as a local system administrator for the UK Energy Efficiency Office. I had a second-hand 386 laptop with a 9,600 baud modem in it and I mainly got usenet through a now long defunct CompuServe account (with the snappy and memorable as my email address). My primary use of the internet was for work, I was finding out about Novell NetWare admin and Groupwise as the mail client + server software. However there were no official internet accounts, and no way of getting sign off for one. That said, everything was done in-house, with the odd specialist contractor to add expertise. So I just got on with using one of the free CDs that…