DaveS

I didn't know, until I read this 'thread', that Neil had been banned. Its is not for me to question the reasoning behind the 'banning', or make judgement as to whether the decision to do so, was completely justified. However, it is with regret that Neil has gone from the forum, as although I never had the pleasure of meeting him (albeit my son did), I formed the opinion that he was a very sociable guy. Neil was up-front and honest with his opinion, and would call 'a spade, a spade', coming from a generation (as I do too) when common sense prevailed, and Political Correctness hadn't been invented. Running a forum of my own, I do know that Political Correctness dictates what can and can't be be allowed to be 'posted', and its not always a easy job to decide if, what can be a very fine line would be crossed or not. For this reason, the discussion of certain subjects cannot be permitted on a well run 'board'. I'm sure that the admin of this forum, did not take this decision lightly, and would have considered all the options. Its not an easy job!!! All that said, you will be missed by many Neil. Good luck wherever life takes you, and hope meet you on the water some day. Dave

Unfortunately, its all part of the much bigger overall picture I think that ever inceasing Tolls, Marina Charges, and Fuel costs, with sadly push many boaters to their finacial limit, forcing them to give up boating. Its a lose-lose situation for all concerned. The boater being priced out of the enjoyment of boat ownership, and the BA and Marina owners losing income. Dave

Back in December 2010, I posted a picture that I took, of the Horseheda Nebula in the constellation of Orion (see thread 'Black Beauty'). I was asked to post some more of my astro images, but I completely forgot, and never got around to it. Sorry. As a follow up, here's a recent one taken of the Horsehead Nebula, but with a much wider Field of View, and encompassing the Flame Nebula (left side of picture). This time in full colour. The picture was taken with a cooled (-20deg) mono CCD camera, with each channel (Red, Green & Blue) being taken though separate filters, and then combined in software to produce a full colour RGB image. Exposure time, about 90 minutes in each channel. Dave

Don't know, but it was serious enough for a Paramedic to attend Dave

Good luck with the new venture Richard, and I'm sure that we will will visit whenever we are likely to pass. Dave

I bow to your superior knowledge on that one then Donny, so I rest my case. There is no such thing a truly local team, professional or otherwise. When England, Scotland, or Wales play, then I assume the rules are that you must be native to play in the team. So in a sense, they become truly local teams, do they not? However, I'm sure that amateur teams play for the love of football, and not money, so this is genuine sport. As a non follower of the game, what I find contradicts the whole philosophy of professional football being a sport, is that those teams at the 'top of the pile', are generally the ones with the most money, because they can afford to buy, and pay, the best players. Entertainment yes, a multimilion pound business yes, but a sport in the true sense of the word??. Anyway, my young grandson enjoys it, as he has an Ipswich Season ticket, and goes to most of their away games as well. Plus the fact, after beating West Ham 5-1 last week, they went on to beat Coventry this week apparently. Dave

There is every chance we will be Neil The boat should be lifted back into the water sometime during the second half of March. Dave

Just imagine if all that money was put into Cancer research, supporting our ailing health service, or supporting young families who have lost their dad in the current, or future military conflicts, to name but a few worthy causes. I'm happy to accept that I might be in a minority here, but in terms of obscene wages and transfer fees, I put professional fooballers in the same league as the Fat Cat Bankers. As I said, I am not a fan of professional football, have no allegiance to any team, and as such take a pragmatic view of the "sport", based on what I see and read in the media, and to be honest it leaves me somewhat disillusioned. But then, like most all of the people on this forum, I had to work for my living to earn a reasonable wage, which I did for 45 years before retiring. Anyway, we are going 'off track' here, and I think it best if we all agree to disagree, and put the subject to bed. Dave

But of course Beccles is in Suffolk, so he would have been Suffolk boy playing for Norfolk. As I said before, how much of any professional teams content is local, not a lot. So, when football supporters get fanatical about supporting their "local" professional team, it's just the name and the football ground that's local. Most of the players being imports. As for the money that floats around the game, have you seen Abramovich's boat Village and school football teams, now that's a different story all together. BTW, although I have lived in Suffolk for the past 26 years, I am a North London boy, born and bred, so I have no particular allegiance to Suffolk, or it's football team, but it is a very nice county in which to live Dave

Good to hear, but if he is any good, he'll likely be sold on for some ridiculously high transfer fee. As I understand it, although it's was seconhand information, that Ipswich had a very talented young local lad, who came throught their Academy, to play in the team. Connor Wickham I believe his name was. He was apparently very good, and as a result, this local talent was sold to another club for profit, far away from his Ipswich home. As I said, it's business, not a sport, and it's all about money. Dave

Just how many Norwich/Norfolk players do Norwich actually have in their team?, and the same goes for Ipswich Support your local team , about the only thing that's local is the Football Ground Then again, most every professional football club, have more foreigners than local talent, that's if they have any locals at all. A sport, nah, more like a business with the richest clubs having the best, and most expensive players. The players are only in it for the money, and what money!!!. They have no loyalty to any particular club, and are quite happy to be transferred to another club, who were the oppostion the season before. But only of course if the money is right. Wanna watch real football that's played for the love of the game, then go and watch you local amateur team, or inter-school match. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm not really a fan of professional football. Mind you, my grandson, who is a staunch Ipswich fan, took great delight in telling me that Norwich lost to Sunderland at the weekend, while Ipswich beat West Ham 5 - 1 Dave

I've not stayed there Lori, but I have visited (as a customer), and have to say that I was not impressed. Certainly not on my 'I will visit again list' Dave

On Saturday, as we came out of the Beccles stretch of the Waveney, where the river meets Oulton Dyke, an otter surfaced about 50yds away from us. It then dived, and came back up again a few minutes later. Dave

Cats also seem to have another unwelcome habit The wander up to you, stick their tail vertically in the air, thus exposing their 'third eye', and then proceed to wipe it across your leg Dave

I thought Hire Craft were not fitted with navigation lights, and as such aren't allowed to travel after dusk? Dave

It is clear that the guy was a hero, sacrificing his own life to save that of others. Yet another example of the commitment and bravery displayed by members of our armed forces. May he rest in peace, and those around them help his family through this very difficult time. Dave

Yes it does Horning Ferry Marina and the WRC are part of the same company/group, and there is a reciprocal agreement between the two marinas, whereby berth holders at the WRC can use the facilities at Horning Ferry, and visa-versa, on a short term stopover basis. That is of course assuming that there are spare berths available at the time. With Ferry Marina, it would be best to avoid weekends, as this the main change-over period for the hire fleet. I phoned Ferry today, and booked a couple of berths for Wednesday and Thursday night. You'll find the staff there are every bit as friendly and helpful as those at the WRC Dave

He's already on the river Jim, and I'll be joining him tomorrow. We stayed a couple of night at Ferry Marina last year, and I guess we'll be looking to do the same this week. Very handy having the two marinas as part of the same company. Dave

I guess that means that they won't now be plundering the Navigation Fund, with our money in it, to 'prop up their overheads' And of course, 'pigs might fly' Dave

Its good to see the river being used to carry the sort of load that would have otherwise seen the roads clogged up with even more HGVs. Maybe this will mean that hirers, and probably some less well informed private boaters, will have learn and abide by the "rules of the road", if they are to stay out of trouble Dave

To be honest, since installing Tapatalk, at the request of a couple of members, it has been little used, and I have to consider that it wasn't worth the bother. Our biggest problem is the number of attempted 'spam' registrations that we get. Around 10 per day on average. Activation is not automatic, and my co-forum owner/admin and I, vet every registration. If we know them, then fine. If not, we first run them through the 'Stop Forum Spam' site which shows the majority of them to be from 'spammers'. Where the 'spam check' doesn't show them listed, we send them a standard e-mail, asking them to tell us something about the interest in the subject of the forum. If they are genuine, then we get a sensible answer, but if there is no response or the answer is unconvincing, they get deleted along with those identified as 'spam'. As a small forum, currently <300 members, this is manageable, but is still a laborious task. If we get close to our storage limit, say a couple of years 'down the road', then we'll decide whether to rent more space on the server, or maybe delete old 'threads', say > three of four years old. Personally, I don't think very many, if any, people go searching back through 'threads' of that age. We also have an 'inactive account rule'. That is that any account where the member has not logged in for a period exceeding six consecutive months, the account is considered as no longer required, and gets deleted. That is deleted not 'banned', leaving the option for the person to re-register at any time, should they want. Our membership number refelects actual active members. On one particular forum that I know, they show both total and active member numbers. Having some 15,000 members registered, with only 3,000 active, means that they are storing some 12,000 'dead accounts' on the database. Again, this means more work in going through the 'membership list' and checking the dates of 'last activity', and with ours being a small forum, its manageable and keeps the database from becoming unnecessarily large. Dave

I didn't doubt that Jonzo, and my explanation of the upgrade process was for Neil's benefit, as he asked how it was done. My forum is small compared to this one, as it caters for a specialised subject, and in the two years that its been running, we have used used less than half of the 10Gb of space that we rent on the server. I built a duplicate version of the 'board 'on the server, albeit with just a handful of our registered users on it, which I use to test upgrades and mods, before applying them to the main 'board'. A 'better safe than sorry approach' I don't have an IT background, having been a Consultant EMC engineer, and with many years in Radio Frequency Engineering. So I had to learn about HTML, FTP and Servers etc from scratch, when I got involved in setting up and running a forum 'board' a couple of years ago. I also managed to build my own website, and not from 'style sheets' either. The 'plus side' is that it helps to keep my 69 year old brain active. Dave

The only mods I have are the "who was here" mod, and the 'Tapatalk' access mod. The 'style' is Pro-Dark, which I have edited to suit my needs. This is the second time I have upgraded the software (V3.0.7 to V3.0.8, and now V3.0.8 to V3.0.9), and both times I used the Automatic Update package, which is the recommended method. Basically, download the update package from the phpBB website. Unpack the Zipped file, then upload just the 'install' folder to the 'home directory' on the server. Open the Browser, and point it to the 'install' folder (e.g. http://www.myforum.com/install) The upgrade process will then run automatically. Once it has 'checked' the files to be updated, then download these to your PC. Run whatever FTP software you are using, and upload these files to the 'home directory' on the server, and allow them to overwrite the existing files. Finally, delete/remove the install folder, as the forum will not run until this has been removed. That's it, job done As far as I can ascertain, V3.0.9 corrects a few 'bugs', albeit whatever they were, they weren't causing me any problems. The main reason for updating, is that the phpBB 'team' only support the current version of the software. Dave

FYI, I have just upgraded my phpBB based forum software, from V3.0.8 to the current version V3.0.9, using the automatic upgrade process, and it all went through without any problems. Dave

A job Goodness me no, I retired from that 'lark' nine years ago Dave