The house from the garden

A view from the South

The garden in April

The apple blossom is in full swing. I will have to tackle the nettles soon.

 Above is the "breeze-way|" to the fields behind.

 Still the remains of daffs and now bluebells in the old bed

The orchard wall and the horse chestnuts, which I will have to tidy.

Ford

Looking a lot cleaner than usual!

Getting to Central London by LT

It seems the best way is to drive to the foot of the M11 and then take the North Circular westbound to the first roundabout. Then go north before turning hard right (south) into South Woodford.

There are 93 parking spaces at the station, it should be okay on a Saturday.

Attribution of images

What I have tended to do in the past when I have used images from a private source was to add an attribution indicating the source of the image. This was even done for images that were not specifically copyrighted to an owner. The attribution was made as a courtesy to the owner and may have included the web address of the owner.

What I have decided to do now is to only use images that I have taken on this blog.

The value of Personal Data

There was an interesting programme on BBC World Service last night. The discussion was around that of how much data is collected in the "digital age". How this data is used and who collects is and for what reason.

Of course, there was the "big bad business" or corporate giant argument that it was all about needing the information so that they can make money out of users. There was also the concept that this data was something that could be used to determine the way that we all think, our view on politics and social responsibility. That the data could be used to determine the way that we vote and how we voted. The notion that the use of this data was the reason for the Brexit and Trump votes. It being used to create "fake news" and influence the "popularist" movement.

Push-back by those wanting to protect their personal information and keep their privacy. Awareness being far greater post the Snowden revelations. A large disconnect seemed to exist in that those responsible for legislation not really understanding what the realities are. I posted about this before with Amber Rudd and her "All the Necessary Hashtags".

There also seemed to be a "given" that everyone uses Social Media and this is the primary means by which all this data is collected and used.

Wanting to find out more about this I searched for "What is my personal data worth". Apparently this data is only worth 50p per person. I think that mine is worth far more! This seemed to be determined o the price that marketers would pay for the information on my activities. The FT also published a questionnaire where you could determine what your data is worth. I completed this and I found that my data was worth 63p. It was easy to see what the "movers" were in this determination as I admitted that I was a millionaire but I didn't admit to having any intention to make any large purchases. It was easy to see that this was just a marketing exercise - it was the other uses of this data that really concerned me.

In these days of Cyber Fraud I value my data far more than 63p.

All the churches in Suffolk

Wayne McAlpine fails to understand the position of the churches in England. He seems to think that any of them would be interested in someone who lived in Canada for 35 years and allegedly had "disturbing" images on a computer hard drive.

If contacted I am pretty sure that many would not even know what a hard drive is and many of the church-goers don't even use email.

The other irony is that not only is Wayne McAlpine's accusation about me completely false he doesn't even realise that I am an Atheist, i.e. I don't believe in God. The Churches of England would not even care about this and would be more than grateful that I would have an interest in their old buildings. This in contrast to Canada and the US where the attendance of church is by the faithful and in most cases to buildings of no architectural or historical significance. This was another reason that we left Toronto and returned to the UK. In addition to the distinct lack of culture we were unimpressed by the fact that we were living in a "Christian" country. We don't have a religion and are happy to live in a country where this is the norm.

About those "Dangerous" Auto Parts

It seems that this is a topic of interest. To claim that a product that is as important as a component that is used in a motor vehicle as being "Dangerous" is a serious matter.

As Wayne McAlpine seems to want to make out, the sale of such parts is a threat to public safety and should be taken seriously. If a complaint is made it should be investigated.  Similarly, if a claim is made and it proves to be untrue, then the person making that claim should be severely reprimanded.

Apart from the waste of time that those who are administering such things, claims such as these are irresponsible and should be stopped. A person who makes such claims is also likely to do so about other things that he/she does not agree with. This extends to making false claims.

I repeat, it is Wayne McAlpine that is making those claims under the guise of TheRamMan.com (not TheRamManINC.com)

Any Reference to Pirate Jack

Morris Brown said:

any reference to pirate jack is detrimental to all. these are good people, mcalpine IS NOT ASOCIATED WITH THEM.

Well this at well be true, it is Wayne McAlpine who is claiming that he is the agent of PirateJack.

As far as "Good People", I have no idea and I don't care.

It appears that this is all part of the deception that McAlpine tries to perpetuate.

Pizzagate

A visit from Eugene, Oregon.

Pizzagate is a term used to describe an ongoing worldwide investigation into the elite and their child sex trafficking ring run thru the Clinton foundation.

Perhaps Wayne McAlpine will have an idea about child sex trafficking?????

Ford recalls 52,000 F-250 pick-up trucks over park fault

Of course this was a UK story

Although I own and drive a Ford, I would not consider anything that is remotely North American in nature. I find myself saying "why?" when I see a Jeep (very popular here in the UK) or a Mustang on the streets of rural Suffolk.

This post has nothing to do with my current dispute with Wayne McAlpine and his assertion that there are retailers in North America that are selling "suspect" auto parts that may have an impact on vehicle safety. I do admit that I posted it to possibly get some interest from him.

I have no idea what locking hubs are really used for. I do know what 4WD is and how this could be relevant, but it does not apply to me.

Websites built using Wordpress

As I was saying on my website, I am not a fan of Wordpress.

I downloaded Wordpress on my Canadian hosting service to test out what I could do with it. It didn't take long before I abandoned it due to the amount of blogspam that the comment and contact features were attracting. I could have turned the commenting function off, as many do, but this then only gave me the same functionality as what I was doing manually creating HTML pages. I was hoping that Wordpress would offer a solution to handling the "Social" aspect of my website.

The use of templates of the design of others also influenced my decision as the time used to customise the look and feel was similar to designing from scratch.

The hacking of Wordpress is well documented and is a prime target for SQL Injection attacks, the Wordpress engine runs on a MySQL database after all. I have also experimented with these databases, as I have such technologies in my past career, I also gave this up as I found that I didn't have a use for it. Similar to many of the technologies that I have featured on my websites my pursuit was of an academic nature. The MySQL experiments involved the installation of phpMyAdmin. This brings me to another decision that the use of PHP was also something that I was not interested in continuing with.