In my eternal quest to explore my family history I have recently been focusing my efforts towards researching my own surname ‘Saunders’.

The thing about genealogy is that is soooo addictive and also a task which is never ending, every generation you go back you instantly double the number of lines to follow (2, 4, 8, 16…), this is before you start going back down the tree finding distant cousins! To try and avoid my research taking over my life I have, for now, put the blinkers on to all but the Saunders family - basically following my paternal line.

Putting this surname limit on has actually helped me get further back than I ever imagined, thus far getting back 7 generations back to 1754. I am now keen to try and find other Saunders’ who may share the same ancestors as me. So far all my Saunders ancestors are from the county of Sussex and this is them:

James Saunders (Me!) ->
Philip George Saunders (My Dad!) ->
Frederick William Saunders (Burgess Hill, 1914) ->
George Charles Saunders (Clayton, 1879) ->
William Saunders (Albourne, 1846) ->
John Saunders (Cowfold, 1809) ->
Charles Saunders (Hurstpierpoint, 1783) ->
John Saunders (Twineham, 1754)

I have not yet come across a hint of any massive family fortune due to me - I think many of my older ancestors were part of the poor class, mostly working as labourers on the Sussex farms or as fishermen, but I am still proud of them as an important part of the country keeping the nation fed.

I now want to see if I can make any links with the wider Saunders family across the world. Rather than searching through dusty, illegible and incomplete old documents I am turning to the tools of a 21st Century genealogist… DNA testing with FTDNA and Social Networking on Facebook.

During the last year I have been rather lax writing in, this, my blog. I could make up some elaborate excuse why I have been blog vacant but to be totally honest it is just because my interests were else where… wait, hold on don’t switch off yet! I just want to apologise to my ‘loyal readers’ for deserting them and cutting short their supply of random Jimbo thoughts, rants and revelations. Thinking about it, I actually miss lovingly composing blog entries letting them out into the wild of the wibbly-net and then seeing the responses come back in the comments.

Of late I have been warming to my trusty blog again, and reading other people’s blogs too. I hope to get back into the swing of things again and start churning out some thought provoking posts again. However, as I say above, if I have not lost your loyalty already, I would love to read your feedback and thoughts on any future or previous posts.

Once again, please forgive me!

“You can’t undo anything you’ve already done, but you can face up to it. You can tell the truth. You can seek forgiveness. And then let God do the rest.” –Author Unknown

Over the past 8 months I have really been getting into researching my genealogy. I have, for some time, been interested in my family roots, however recently I have made it my mission to convert all the family photos, documents and certificates into digital PDF format so they can be kept, copied and printed easily for future generations. In doing this I also hope it will prevent the valuable history only being handed down one family line and other decendants missing out - even if the original paper copies go one way, at least digital copies can be duplicated as many times as needed.

I have been struggling getting past a brick wall tracing my 'Saunders' paternal line after the paper trail went cold after just 4 generations. Being my own surname I am keen to try and get further back with this surname so I have turned to the genealogical research method of the 21st century - looking into my DNA.

No longer do you have to look in dusty old books or have to decipher unintelligible writing on old documents I have got my Genes tested with Family Tree DNA, based in the USA they host the largest database of Y-Chromosome DNA results categorised by surname, these surnames are then grouped into Projects which you can join and compare others DNA results with similar surnames.

If you are a Saunders, Sanders, Saunderson or Sander I would encourage you to join the Saunders DNA project, the more who join the greater the chances of finding matches.

"I've been single-stranded too long! Lonely ATGCATG would like to pair up with congenial TACGTAC" --DNA Joke

As you may have guessed I like reading phenomenon’s, here are a couple more I picked up...

The first is a 'Nonsense Passage' which my mum gave me, it is used to test weaknesses in reading possibly as an indication to dyslexia. Apparently it highlights an over-reliance on rote word learning, and a lack of understanding of the regularities of the writing system... whatever that means? Still thought it was interesting:

One day a mib fell into the feg. So gruny was he that he cried, "Ober, give me a throld!" He climbed out, shook the water off and ran back to his dom. She said, "Oh stid," and gave him a reb lim drack.

The second is really more of a tongue twister, I have yet to say the following whole sentence correctly at a reasonable speed:

One smart fellow, he felt smart.
Two smart fellows, they felt smart.
Three smart fellows, they all felt smart

The poor fellow just ends up smelling bad every time!

"If you are dyslexic, your eyes work fine, your brain works fine, but there is a little short circuit in the wire that goes between the eye and the brain. Reading is not a fluid process." --Bruce Jenner

This June, me and a bunch of my Virgin Media colleagues will be swapping our keyboards and desks for the great outdoors. We ‘think’ we are fit and therefore have decided to take the challenge to climb 3 of the UK’s tallest mountains, Ben Nevis (1,344m), Scafell Pike (978m) and Snowdon (1,085m). Oh yeah, and we thought we would try and scale these 3 mountains in just 24 hours too!

We are not just doing this to prove to ourselves that we are on top of form, nor just to bag three more trig points, but the primary reason we are doing this is to raise money for charity. Last year the team raised £2375.46 for Great Ormond Street Hospital and Motor Neurone Disease. This year we are combining our efforts with 35 other competing teams to focus all our fundraising efforts for a charity called the Foyer Federation, an organisation which helps homeless young people regain their full potential so they can begin to build a life for themselves. More information about the charity and the event can be found here.

Please sponsor us by visiting our Just Giving Sponsorship Site. Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor us. If you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no extra cost to you.

Please dig deep - we are climbing 3 mountains in 24 hours after all!

“The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.” –Sir Richard Branson

Today is World Autism Awareness Day, a day which aims to challenge us to “think differently about autism”. This remindes me about a blog entry I wanted to write about something that opened my eyes recently after reading a magazine article and watching a collection of online video blogs made by an autistic lady.

I have worked in the past with Autistic Children in a previous job I had as a carer in 2005. In this job I learnt a great deal about the different ways in which we can communicate with Autistic children using picture and coloured cards. I have also seen first hand the frustration that can be experienced by both carer and autistic child when they are unable to communicate because they are almost talking a different ‘language’.

The magazine article in Wired Magazine (March 2008 Issue) posed a couple of thought provoking questions about how autism should not be considered a disease, how we should not have the rite to try and ‘fix’ autism and whether autism should be accepted as another part of ‘the variety of life’. Why should we put down a person for failing to speak our language or conform to our ‘normal’ ways while we fail to try and learn the “native language” of an autistic person?

The article goes on to discuss the problems with traditional intelligence tests written in ‘our language’. In the past many Autistic people were considered to have low I.Q. because they could not understand what was being asked of them. It has recently been realised that quite a number of autistic people have small areas of increased ability (mathematics, memory, problem solving) but these have been undetected due to shortfalls in the methods we use to measure intelligence. We would not consider a blind person as unintelligent just because they are unable to respond to a set of written questions, yet we label autistics as lacking brainpower because they can not express what they know, or in a way we can understand.

Following reading the article I then went on to watch a couple of YouTube videos created by an Autistic lady called Amanda Baggs (aka ’silentmiaow’) showing how she communicates with the world. The first of the videos called ‘In My Language’ started off with a woman rocking back and forth, flapping her hands and chanting an spooky hum, going on to stroke and rub her face on various objects. The video then cuts to a translation describing what is going on inside Amanda’s head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. The second video, ‘Disability Characteristics and Political Correctness’, is a commentary by Amanda describing her past as a child, tortured because she was different and her upset of people now walking on egg-shells around her. What is amazing is how Amanda creates these videos, she does not talk but instead uses a computer synthesized voice, splicing together lots of small video clips. From first impressions you would never have guessed that this lady was capable of creating and publishing such content.

Watching these two videos and reading this article certainly changed the way in which I now look at autism and I really hope that you will also watch these videos and that they too will challenge you to “think differently about autism”.

“If Amanda Baggs had walked into my clinic five years ago, I would have said she had significant cognitive impairment. And I would have been wrong.” –Thomas Zeffiro, Neuroscientist

Today is a momentous occasion because it is the 5^th year this blog has been running on my JLSNet Website! Over these past 5 years the blog has evolved from being a simple log of my university project to what it is today, a collection of random geeky projects, special events and other assorted ponderings.

Just for fun I am going to start a little quiz to try and encourage people to read back through my blog. There are 5 questions (one for each year of this blogs life), the first person to post all the correct answers, along with supporting URL links, in the comments below will win a special prize!

1) What is the closing quote at the bottom of my very first blog entry?
2) What was I doing to avoid studying for my Theoretical Computer Science B Exam?
3) What are my feelings towards travelling on the London Underground Trains?
4) On what date did Claire post her first entry to this blog?
5) How many people voted “YES” for Craig to have his Dreadlocks cut off?

Tip: Use the Search Box and Archive Navigation Menu.

The blog has had its up’s and down’s with varied spurts of lots of entries followed by dry seasons of silence. Of late I have neglected the blog a little, it has been pushed aside in favour of one of my more recent hobbies which is researching my family history and finding out about my ancestors (aka Genealogy). However, I have realised that this blog, in a way, may become my legacy for future descendants of mine who want to know about me and what I have done… Huuurm scary, what does my blog say about me?!

“Pleas’d look forward, pleas’d to look behind, and count each birthday with a grateful mind.” –Alexander Pope

For some time I have spoken about my ‘Man’ List. I want to make it clear that this list is in no way a list of men I fancy but rather a list of males I would consider Real Men! I have tried on many occasion to try and categorise, describe and quantify what qualities are needed to make it onto the ‘Man List’ but I really have not managed to pin it down yet.

The men on this list are not necessarily strong, young or the obvious Hollywood good looking heroes. Over the years many men have moved on and off the list, a number I have simply forgotten and, until now, I have never actually put these names down in writing. So, in order to keep log for all time, without further ado here are my ‘Men’ (in no particular order):

• Frank Butcher (From East Enders)
• Winston Churchill (England’s Prime Minister!)
• Harold Bishop (From Neighbours)
• Trevor McDonald (ITV Newsreader)
• Barry White (The Love Walrus)
• Brian Blessed (Boisterous British Actor)

I am sure there are others but these are all that I can think of for now. I suppose they are all men who you could say have contributed towards the demarcation of men from women, they all possess an eminence which would stand up quite well to miscreants down a dark alleyway and are the sort of guys who I would happily go down the pub with and have a motivating bloke conversation with over a pint of foamy beer.

Feel free to suggest other ‘men’ for the list, although I do not have a hard and fast set of rules as to who makes it, the decision is purely based on my innate man judgement which can make a decision in seconds.

“I’ll tell you what, pal, you talk to me like that again and you’re gonna get a dry slap.” –Frank Butcher (Mike Reid)

I’m sorry it has been a while since a last wrote in my blog, it isn’t that I have been on strike along with the american show writers, who have protesting for more pay, it is simply because I have been rather busy over the last couple of months. I am now relaxing in a Youth Hostel in Wales in the middle of a weekend lads hike around the Brecon Beacons with Craig. Yesterday we went on a 10 mile hike around a horse-shoe shaped ridge and up and down three mountains, Fan-y-Bîg (719m), Cribyn (795m), and Pen-y-Fan (886m), none of which had a trigpoint!

A couple of weeks later… It had been a while since I have set my feet upon a decent size mountain but I need to get back into the game as I am going to once again be doing the 3 Peaks Chanllenge this summer with work. The lack of any recent mountain action really did make itself apparent on the trip as I huffed and puffed up the last mountain. The weather started off really nice and sunny but as the clouds closed in and the wind picked up at the top it started to feel uncomfortable due to low visibility. I must admit for a brief moment I was not enjoying myself up there, but as soon as we were down it all felt good again and I really enjoyed it, and we even got a Trig Points towards the end.

Due to a low yield of Trigs the previous day Craig and I pinpointed a couple of them on the map and drove to the base of some smaller hills, still of reasonable height to warrant a bit of physical excertion. All muddy and proud of our acchievements we drove back home.

“He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below; He saw everything as far as you can see; And they say that he got crazy” –John Denver

I found another reading phenomenon which I found interesting… English spelling is particularly complex, especially considering that there are many ways to spell the same sound:

“My knew spelling checker does knot all ways no sum of the write words two use. It tolled me awl of these words were spelled write. Ewe sea, eye halve a knew spelling checker own my pea sea. It was maid to make my miss steaks plane four me two sea. Did ewe find the blew sentences hard two read? Eye did to. They did knot make good since!”

Therefore computer spell-checkers shouldn’t always be trusted, as domonstrated by the passage above.

“You learn how to pass your driving test - THEN you learn to become a driver, it is the same with teaching.” –Lisa’s computer monitor

As the darkness once again nibbles at each end of our days and I reluctantly leave the house, scrape the frost of the car and drive to work, slowly crawling my way out of Portsmouth I often look at my opposites crawling their way into Portsmouth on the other side of the road. On a few occasions I notice other drivers yawning and without fail within seconds I too will yawn. Why!?

Who knows, after I see the person on the other side yawn, and then I yawn myself, maybe I then trigger someone else back on the other side of the road to yawn triggering the person behind me to yawn, causing a yawning epidemic to ripple virally up and down the road.

This got me thinking of a little blog experiment. What I want to know is has all this talk of yawning caused you to yawn also? I certainly am (which may also have something to do with the face that it is Friday afternoon and the Virgin Media office heating seems to be on live volcano setting).

You are thinking about yawning, yawn, yawn, yawning, yawn!

So answers in the comments below - has this blog comment caused you to yawn? If it did, was there anyone around you who saw you yawn and yawned also? Why do we yawn when we see other people yawning? Could I write the word ‘yawn’ in this blog post any more times?!

“Encouragement is the Oxygen of the spirit” –Dr. Steven C. Riser (via Dad)

We have finally got internet at home again! Claire and I have now moved to our lovely new and bigger flat, but I have had to wait a whole 1.5 weeks to get my broadband transferred to our new address - it has been painful and I will not deny at times I was pining!

This morning a lovely Virgin Media engineer arrived early, tools in hand, and in a flash, had the cable up the side of the flat, through the wall, and into the back of my TV set top box and cable modem. Without delay I excitedly rigged up my wireless router and instantly clicked over to Facebook. Ahhh, it is almost as good a feeling as when you get to have a long awaited wee after travelling on a long distance journey with a full bladder.

Now I can access the internet at blinding 20Mbps speeds again I feel the need utilize it by posting a weighty blog entry, but I don’t really know what to blog about, so I will just pose a question…

What is your favorite joke?
Keep them clean - any dirty ones WILL be deleted! The best one wins a prize!

“A man went to play golf for the day. He took his golf clubs and two pairs of trousers. What were the extra pair of trousers for? In case he got a hole-in-one!” –Jim’s Favorite joke of the day

Another observation I have made recently, is that when ever two females meet, they always greet each other in conversation based around the same basic formula:

Girl 1: “That’s a nice [X] { where did you get that from? | I think I saw one of those in [Y] }.”
Girl 2: “Thank you! I got it from [Y], it was reduced down to [Z]% off in the sale.”

Where:

• X = An item of clothing, bag, jewelery or hair accessory.
• Y = Shop, Newlook, Next Topshop etc.
• Z = Percentage reduction (note never actually revealing price).

It does not matter what age the girls are, or in fact what they are really wearing, this type of chatter will occur, without fail, within the first 5 minutes of then meeting. The question is, do women then actually remember where the article was brought from and then go to the shops to buy one?

The weekend before last Claire and I went to a wedding, and of course this kind on female greeting ritual was in full force with lots of women with new dresses and handbags. It is not that I am complaining, I daren’t, in fact it is better than us blokes who probably just grunt at each other. I guess this girl conversation is kind of like another form of British weather conversation?

“Ma il mio mistero e chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun sapr�! No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dir� quando la luce splender�!” –Luciano Pavarotti, Nessun Dorma

I have made my first couple of Flash applications using Flex 2! It was suprisingly easy to create the applications after downloading the Flex 2 Development Kit and following this simple tutorial I created two little applications which connect to my MySQL database backend.

This first Flash application connects with this blogs WordPress database and returns back the blog comments records:

This second Flash application presents a user comments form and then saves the comments to the database (under this blog entry ID):

Please feel free to leave a comment using the Flash application above.

Flex 2 is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs) it allows you to write Flash applications quickly with XML (in a similar way to how you would use HTML). Flash has grown up! no longer is Flash just something to create anoying epileptic fit inducing images and anoying cartoons, Flash can now be used to create rich applications which can interact with web databases and be garenteed to work exactly same on all platforms with the Flash plugin installed.

“Impetuous boy! Oh well, who wants to live forever? DIVE!!” –Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed), Flash Gordon

I have recently got a new mobile phone (yes another one!), a Samsung i600 free from Orange. It is a very nice phone with all the bells and whistles.

The phone got delivered to me at work last Thursday, and I quickly removed it from its box like an excited boy unwrapping his new Christmas toy. Like most gadgets, PDA’s, phones, cameras etc. the screen had a protective film. This time I peeled the film off straight away, usually I leave it for a day or two until it gets all curly at the edges and it is hard to read the screen.

I don’t know what it is about that screen film but it appears that most people leave it on for a little while, some people even leave it on for ages which starts to drive me mad as it is begs to be pealed off.

Still on a sticky subject, I used to always leave the prices on my CD’s and DVD’s, I don’t really know why, I guess I thought they may be worth more one day with the prices on, or I feared the nasty sticky gooo which is left after taking the price sticker off. One thing I did learn was not to use nail varnish remover to try and take off the sticky residue - it melts the case! This is something I found out on a PlayStation game I brought for Simon’s birthday a couple of years ago.

How long do you leave your film on? Do you leave the prices on your CD’s?

“Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.” –Groucho Marx

We are getting ready to fly back to Gatwick from Inverness. We have had a nice time in Scotland visiting my brother and it was a great pleasure meeting his girlfriend’s family, who were an extremely friendly bunch.

Despite forecasts the weather has been good allowing us to go to Loch Ness which is not far outside Inverness, the highlight being a real sighting of Nessie of which I have posted a photograph on my Facebook profile.

We also visited a castle (Claire likes castles), went shopping (Claire likes Accessorize) and went to a kilt makers where I managed to get a small sample of tartan fabric, the pattern of which would have been worn by my ‘Crichton’ ancestors, for my family history records.

I would not have been able to travel back to the south of the UK without bagging at least a couple of trig points up in Scotland. Yesterday Claire and I went on a ramble in search of three trigs, the first Dun Garbh we had to abandon mission due to the terrain being a little too steep for a ‘country stroll’. The second trig at Clune Wood was very easy, and admittedly bagged beside the road, however I think we redeemed this lazy claim after bagging Creag A Chlachain, although not a very high trig it was one huge endurance test climbing through thick heather and battling with swarms of flies buzzing round our heads, I am not kidding when I say at times our vision was impaired by these little flying beasts.

As lovely as it is and as sad we are to leave, I do not think we will be moving up to Scotland, it would be a bit of a commute to work!

“By the beard of Zeus” –Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Claire and I have flown up to Inverness, Scotland to visit my brother, David, and his girlfriend Ruth. We have all been at home in Eastbourne visiting our parents and flown up this afternoon to the picturesque highlands. So far it has been a really nice week spending time with our folks and relaxing in the long awaited sunshine!

Claire got VERY excited getting on the plane, bouncing about, I was concerned that someone had slipped her some kind of weird buzzin’ drugs. I am looking forward to the rest of the week mucking about with me little bro, going to see Nessie, eating Haggis and no doubt bagging a few trig points on top of the mountains. The view from Davids flat of the surrounding landscape is quite stunning and I am quite impressed with his little male-style pad.

“I’m just not the best at making decisions… Or am I?” –Father Dougal McGuire, Father Ted

A friend, Craig Hicks, is to get married to Sarah Wallace sometime later in the year. Craig has had his hair in dreads for a number of years now. Should he cut the dreadlocks off for the wedding?

I have put together a little poll to collect the public vote and comments to help Craig decide whether to give the dreads the chop. Please click here to cast your votes.

Craig has gained the nickname “Sideshow Bob”, and has spent many an evening cultivating and refining his 52 individual dreadlocks. Sarah has gone from originally hating the dreads to becoming quite fond of them and also enjoys twiddling with them.

“Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together - black, white, Chinese, everyone - that’s all.” –Bob Marley

Below is a matrix of 120 ‘ViralTags’, this is part of an experiment, started by Founders Cafe, to distribute links around blogs in order to achieve higher Google and Technorati rankings. In brief, it works by blog owners copy and pasting (infecting) their own blog with the ‘ViralTags’ matrix thus passing on a collection of links. Please do give this a go…

======== Copy and Paste this line and Below ========

Instructions:

1. Copy and paste this blog entry including the matrix of ‘ViralTags’ below and these instructions (courtesy of Founders Cafe).
2. Substitute the Host Tag and one of the ‘ViralTags’ in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.
3. When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their ‘ViralTags’, practice good courtesy by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your ‘Viral Tags’ below.
4. Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: JLS Cisco Networking

One Million Shirts | Tech at Hand | Rich Minx | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Web 2.0 Tutorials | Technology Music Life | infokarir jobs | Manila Mom | Link Love | ViralTags | Web Design Blog | Daily Life Technology | ViralTags | Steve’s Tech Blog | Agloco Internet Marketing | Daily Bulls Investing | Tech Gadgets Stocks | ViralTags | Computer Seventy-Five | Learn about e-Learning | Tech Hack Ramblings | Jack Book | Screen Writer Guy | Overseas Filipino Worker | ViralTags | Really Smart Guy | ViralTags | Day Mind Xpression | ViralTags | Make Money Blogging | ViralTags | Pie Hole | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Tech Startups Web2.0 | | ViralTags | ViralTags | Mrs. Sparrow | Hot Buzz | ViralTags | Really Funny Jokes | Best of Blogs | ViralTags | ViralTags | Domain Development Blogs | Sundhed og Helbred | ViralTags | Business Blog Web | Anitokid Chronikos | Klapkids Chronikos | ViralTags | Everything iPod | Jason’s Random Thoughts | Fun Web Development | ViralTags | ViralTags | Yung Silent Whisper | Greg Stratz | horeki | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Wealth Blog | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Bloggointestinale | Telemaco | Tobsy | Wolly’s Weblog | iMod | Lord Zarcon | ViralTags | Catepol | Samuele Silva | bayle | Alex2000 | ilMatte81.eu | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Photoshop Tutorials | ViralTags | ViralTags | Sha Money Maker dot com | Sam Ideas | Sid05 weblog | BMW Community | Adsense | Diary of a Smart Woman | Mybloggo.org | Karlana’s Blog - My Life | Sarah Pauline Cada | laketrees | Make Money Online | Pinoy Blog Machine | Prudence & Madness | Daily tech notes | Working at Home Mom | Derrich.com | Blogging News & Reviews | Stackians.Com | Affordable Graphic Design | Wireless LAN Security | Running MINI Wales | Mario’s Weblog | Weight Loss | Mrs. Sparrow | esofthub’s web finds | The Broken Bow | Make Money Online | JLS Cisco Networking | The Junkie’s Wife | Startup Entrepreneur Money | Earn Money Online |

Rules:

• No Porn Sites
• Only 1 link per person (i.e. Do not hog the ViralTags!)
• Please do not tamper with other peoples URL’s

Important:

Once I get a ping back from you, I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as ‘Host Tag’ here, replacing one of the ‘ViralTags’ from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

======== Copy and Paste this line and Above ========

“I’m a raver, man - I’m a cheesy quaver…I buzz off anything and any one.” –Tracey, Big Brother UK 2007

I have added a couple of new pages to the JLSNet main site.

The first page being a fault finding guide to help troubleshoot ADSL connections, the second page is again a fault finding guide to help troubleshoot ISDN connections, both are aimed at users of Cisco routers.

Both these guides have been written to help users logically perform a series of simple tests to diagnose various steps in the connection stage, including Layer 1 physical checks, Layer 2 data link debgug checks, Layer 3 network address checks.

“There are holes in the sky. Where the rain gets in. But they’re ever so small. That’s why the rain is thin.” –Spike Milligan

I am really looking forward to going on a little Holiday with Claire, Alli, Lisa, Katrina, Ben, Julie and Sam. We are leaving tomorrow morning to go to all stay in a little cottage in Port Scatho, Cornwall for a week. I am so excited I have written a little song:

We’re all going on a Cornwall holiday,
no more DSL links for a week near Looe,
fun and laughter on a Cornwall holiday,
lots of pasties for me and you,
for a week near Looe.

We’re going where the sauna glows brightly,
We’re going where the pool is blue,
We’ve seen it on the t’internet,
now lets see if it’s tru-ooo-oo-e.

JCALKBJS are havin a Cornwall holiday,
Doing things they always wanted to,
So we’re going on a Cornwall holiday,
Nice tea with creams will do,
For me and you.

Just pray the car gets fixed, it is currently in the garage getting the power steering fixed and we need it to drive there!

“The true Cornish way to eat a pasty is to hold it in the hand, and begin to bite it from the opposite end to the initial, so that should any of it be uneaten it may be consumed later by its rightful owner.” –Cornish Recipes Ancient and Modern 23rd edition with supplement by the Cornwall Federation of Women’s Institutes

Just for a bit of fun… using Google (other search engines are available) search for your name, followed by ‘likes to’ surrounding both by double quotes. For example “James likes to”, write down the first 10 search results. This is what mine came back with:

1. James likes to think of himself as a really splendid engine.
2. James likes to write about a child’s interaction with nature and animals.
3. James likes to travel.
4. James likes to watch fat porn.
5. James likes to bike, hike, and bird watch.
6. James likes to relax by swimming, walking the coastal footpath with Jane.
7. James likes to bring his own style of depression and gloom to Saturday mornings.
8. James likes to call his favorite Bible.
9. James likes to pass.
10. James likes to say, it’s about “impacting minds and hearts”.

Some are very funny especially about me being a really splended engine, although I must point out that I really do not like to watch fat porn!

Go on, give it a go, I would love to hear your results in my comments…

“This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green; Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes” –The enkindled spring by D H Lawrence