Timbo

Excellent work Paul! I have to say I have a similar situation in people prodding me to make things to sell. The father in law is of the opinion I should look at everything in terms of mass production! When folks come and ask me to make things I'm in the bad habit of not charging enough. I've never been a tradesman. Can't get the hang of sucking my teeth! Etsy is the place to visit to get the hang of pricing, or I should say what you can get away with on your pricing. I learned the hard way when I made some long grain mahogany walnut and maple cutting boards. I was told by one customer to put my price up after they had seen chopping boards just like mine on Etsy. Long story short someone was buying them from me at £35 and selling them on Etsy from £70 to £100. Looking Etsy right now there are two clocks similar to yours one is priced at £85 and the other at £135. The seller priced at £85 has made five sales the £135 seller has made none. But some of the er...'tat'? being sold and amazingly bought on Etsy makes my mind boggle! Check this out for enterprise! Worth fifty quid?

New laws governing online activity are currently being implemented in the UK. The new legislation to be enacted is intended to protect children and vulnerable adults and make the internet safer for all to use. What Is The Online Harms Bill? The Online Harms Bill will encompass new online safety laws to help keep people safe when accessing the internet. This will mean: All organizations and companies must take action to tackle illegal activity that threatens the safety of children and vulnerable adults, in addition to preventing children from accessing material that is inappropriate and putting strong protections in place against cyberbullying. It should be much less likely that adults encounter illegal material online. If they do, it should be easy to report this to the organization or company in question, who will have to act quickly to take it down. The new legislation will make companies and organizations accountable for protecting children and other vulnerable users on their platforms. They will be expected to adapt and enforce their terms and conditions, making it easier for users to report harmful content and get it taken down immediately. Companies who fail to comply with these new regulations will face fines up to 10% of turnover or £18 million whichever is greater. Who Is Affected By The New Laws & Who Enforces Them? The laws will apply to companies and organizations that host user-generated content. Content will include images, videos and comments, or be a site that allows UK users to chat to other people online through messaging, comments and forums. This means that popular social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as little sites like the NBN will all be included under the new laws. Ofcom will be appointed as the online harms regulator. Ofcom will be responsible for helping companies to comply with the new laws by publishing codes of practice and through fines levied. What Counts As Harmful Content? Organizations and companies will have a responsibility to prevent anything illegal from being shared on their platforms such as hate speech or child exploitation. Organizations and companies will have a responsibility to protect children and vulnerable adults from harmful content. Ofcom will decide on a case by case, complaint by complaint, basis what it deems harmful. The laws will also require companies and organizations to address harms around disinformation, misinformation and mistruths. What About Freedom Of Speech? As a subject of the United Kingdom you have the privilege of Freedom Of Expression, you do not have a right to Freedom Of Speech. There is a difference. Under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, “everyone has the right to freedom of expression” in the UK. But the law states that this freedom “may be subject to formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society”. Those restrictions may be “in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”. The bill intends to safeguard freedom of expression by ensuring that the laws are risk-based. What Are We Doing To Implement The Bill? It has been my job to monitor the progress of the bill from the green paper stage and make contributions to the discussion where possible. I have followed the progress of the bill in detail from 2017 when this was the Internet Safety Strategy, through April 2019 when the Online Harms white paper was published to 2021 with Online Harms Bill to be enacted. I specifically designed the moderation system to accommodate the Online Harms Bill and its legal requirements. It has always been mine and Ian's strategy to get ahead of legislation so that we already comply when it becomes law. Therefore we have already had the procedures for reporting, recording and auditing in place for over a year now. In the past it has been forum policy that all members are adults and over 18 years of age to participate. We cannot guarantee that everyone reading the forum is over the age of eighteen and not a vulnerable adult. We do not want to implement ID verification for a family orientated site about the Norfolk Broads. Therefore we will have to work from the standpoint that minors and vulnerable adults will have access to content on the site and our content must reflect this. Who Is Liable? This one is easy, Ian and myself are liable. Ian as the owner of the site and myself as the Chairman. The buck stops with us. It's our heads and our wallets and therefore our decisions. What Can We Do To Help? This one is also quite easy. and just comes down to common sense. Remember we are a family orientated organization and have a quick think before you post and ask 'is this post suitable?' before submitting your post. Give the moderators the opportunity to do a difficult and time consuming job and get used to the new laws and procedures as quickly as they can. Be patient while we find solutions to problems not of our making under penalties where what is deemed 'harmful' is not rigidly defined but 'risk based'. Realize that we have to limit access to portions of the site, the jokes page is an example, as we are now directly responsible for preventing access to children and vulnerable adults to certain content. In Conclusion Frustrating isn't it? You should see it from this side of the monitor! Detailed records to be kept of all reported posts, audits to be done of decisions and actions taken, those decisions made on each and every post against someone else's, as yet, undefined sliding scale of what they consider 'harmful', different for each organization, at the whim of the regulator against a background of sanctions and steep fines. Whilst the legislation is intended to reign in the larger online platforms, Ian and I are well aware that the big fish can take care of themselves and it is the smaller fish that will be picked off as an example. It does not make for an easy night's sleep! We are aware that the NBN is a community, and a community of family and friends from all walks of life with our love of the Norfolk Broads our mutual bond. We would like to keep it that way. We have done our best to get out in front of this legislation and we will abide by the law and the guidance from Ofcom and Oliver Dowden the Culture Minister. Dowden said yesterday that social media organizations that fail to protect children and vulnerable adults from online harms will be shut down. Dowden goes on to clarify that social media will have "no excuses" and "must face the consequences if they fail to remove illegal or harmful content". Ian and I will take him at his word. At the end of the day, we are a family orientated organization about boating on the Norfolk Broads and there should be no content posted to our site that could be judged to be inappropriate for children or an online harm. It's that simple.

As with much of the site I'm looking at G, although I made the find in context with early medieval pottery shards I also picked up Roman and Medieval CBMs but also the neck from a stoneware ginger beer bottle...a early good old R Whites...in close proximity. So for dating by context it could be anything from 2nd Century to 16th Century excluding the ginger beer drinking time traveller. There are similar pattern metal spindle whorls in the V&A collections but as I'm slowly cleaning the find, wooden toothpick stage at the moment, the more I clean the more I'm leaning away from the finds officer's identification. I think its a loom weight myself. That's what I thought it was when I first saw it. The central hole is elongated as though it has been hung vertically. Judging from the weight of the thing it must have a lead or lead alloy core. One cheeky Herbert told me on Friday, 'amateurs like you have to realize that there's more to archaeology than they see on Time Team. It takes several years to get a degree in archaeology you know!'. If they hadn't have told me, I would never have known! My next line of inquiry will be to weigh the thing using good old 'lbs' as the scale. Although the cheeky Herbert did inform me that 'we use the metric system these days'. Fun fact for the metricated (and cheeky Herbert), the reason that the abbreviation for weight in 'pounds' is 'lbs' is that the 'pound' is a Roman measure of weight and 'lbs' is an abbreviation of 'libra' the Roman pound. 'All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?'.

I have an identification for the metal disc. It's a spindle whorl!

Rain...perfect chance to consolidate the finds and start the mapwork and find plotting in earnest. A visit to the bomb crater with tape measure and survey equipment reveals that it is indeed a bomb crater. A big bomb crater! A perusal of the handy wartime government handbook 'Bomb Reconnaissance and Protection Against Unexploded Bombs (1942)' gives a handy reference between crater size and depth and the size of bomb. 50 KG8-12 ft (2.4 - 3.6m)2-5 ft (0.6 - 1.5m) 100 KG20-30 ft (6-9.1m)7-10 ft (2.1-3m) 250 KG24-36 ft (7.3-11m)10-12 ft (3-3.7m) 500 KG30-40 ft (9.1-12.2m)10-16ft (3-4.9m) The crater is 38 ft in diameter and approximately 14 feet deep (deeper if you allow for modern deposits in the bottom). The crater itself is indeed round, but there appears to have been a slot cut into the crater from the adjacent field where I picking up Roman archaeology. I took some photographs from the lip of the crater but the perspective is not brilliant and doesn't highlight the depth of the blast hole. I've finally managed to get the missing LIDAR data for the area and composited the images. Quite a few anomalies for me to stick my nose into when the weather stops leaking. Before the heavens opened this morning I did find something 'odd' in the western half of the field. A circular object about the size of a Burton's Wagon Wheel (before they made the things smaller). Found in situ alongside two pieces of medieval pottery, it has a hole through the centre and is made of ferrous metal. Quite heavy for its size. Any ideas what it could be?

I'm wondering if members can offer up some help in identifying and hypothesizing on bomb craters? I know some of you are young enough to have skipped around the devastation of bombing raids and some of you have served in the RAF and may give me better information than I can glean from countless scientific papers that I'm currently trying to wade my way through? Due to lockdown and a change in dog walking route I've shifted my attention temporarily away from the Broads to poking my nose into local Lincolnshire history. The site I'm looking at was previously a medieval moated manor. The estate was acquired by Sir Edmund Anderson (1530-1605) in 1599 with a new brick house built by his son in the early 17th century. That house was demolished in 1972 with the site passed to the parish council who now operate it as a public park. Lea Park has many walks and opens up onto miles of public footpaths. The terrain ranges from open fields, plantations, fen, marsh and is bounded by the River Trent on one side, the Lincoln railway on the other and is bisected by the Roman road Tillbridge Lane that runs from the Trent to Scampton. Although there is more than enough archaeology in the park to poke around, my attention has been captured by one particular field outside of the park boundary in which from my first walk I started picking up pieces of pottery ranging from Roman Grey Ware to Roman Samien, Medieval Glazed Wares, Roman and Medieval CBM (Ceramic Building Materials, so roof tiles and floor tiles) along with pieces of air dried clay (complete with finger impressions), debris from Roman kilns and the best find...a toe from a Roman statue! The finds range from neolithic flint dumps and scatter to 18th and 19th century field drains with sizeable quantities of Roman and Saxon finds for good measure. As I start to assess the wider landscape I've run across some modern archaeology in the form of a bomb crater, or what the locals profess to be a bomb crater, which is causing me a problem. It's rectilinear (a rectangle in normal speak) Is this normal? Comparing LIDAR information with maps from the 1850's to the 1950's I cannot locate the crater. Marshalls of Gainsborough were producing turrets for bombers, the X-Craft Midget Subs were built here as well as various pumps etc for military use. Despite its importance in engineering, there was little bombing of the town. Taken from Wikipedia... "Gainsborough suffered its only large-scale air raid of the war on the night of 10 May 1941. High-explosive bombs and incendiaries were dropped, but many fell harmlessly on the surrounding countryside. There was only minor damage in the town and no casualties. On the night of 28–29 April 1942 a single Dornier 217 dropped a stick of bombs on the town centre, causing extensive damage and the loss of seven lives. On 31 December 1942, a RCAF Bristol Beaufighter aircraft on a training exercise crashed on Noel Street, killing both airmen and a three-year-old girl. On 22 May 1944 a RAF Spitfire fighter, in a training exercise, collided with a Wellington bomber and crashed into a Sheffield-bound goods train as it was passing over the railway bridge on Lea Road. The pilot was the only casualty. In the early hours of 5 March 1945 a single Junkers 88 fighter/bomber made a low-level attack over the town, dropping anti-personnel bombs on Church Street and the surrounding residential area. Three people lost their lives and 50 houses were damaged." A little more research and I did discover that Lea Marshes to the north east of the site had an application to the Ministry of Ag & Fish to 'extend a bombing range' dated 1947-50. However, circular depressions visible on the LIDAR which at first I thought could be bomb craters are noted on maps from the 1850s and are I think could be ponds and in one instance a round barrow. I'll try and snag some images of the crater on this evenings dog walk. I will try and plot a possible route of the aircraft from the alignment of the crater. Any help much appreciated!

I did ask Aunty Pat what she calls Uncle Mike. "All depends on what he has or hasn't done!" was the reply.

Thoroughly enjoying every bit of tech on my new fully tech'd out MG HS, especially the brown trouser inducing red Super Sport button. Finally I'm enjoying driving again, something I haven't done since forced to say goodbye to my Scimitar thirty years ago!

I remember the last time we visited with both beagles that dogs were made more than welcome as long as they were on a lead and owners cleaned up after them. There were even water bowls placed at intervals. I scraped my knees and cricked my neck getting down to them so I assumed they were intended for the dogs!

Bypass might be open Q, but every road joining it this morning was choked with road works, temporary traffic lights, temporary speed restrictions and random groups of men looking into holes.

Looking good. Just one thing...have you done a Gibbs from NCIS? How you going to get it out of the conservatory?

The river upon which the myth is based, the archaeology and the region is, of course, classified as a 'core' of one of the twenty seven National Parks of Greece. Under the legislation creating the Greek National Parks the area surrounding the core of a National Park should be equal or greater in area than the core. Thus Hades would indeed be a National Park.

It's twenty grains or one scruple of silver...around one sixth of a drachma...placed under the tongue. Failure to pay the Ferryman will see your soul wandering around the riverbank for eternity.

He more than 'did his bit'! Rest in peace, Sir.

I turn my telly on periodically but I reckon it's broken. All I can get on it is thirty year old sit coms, a load of people that can't dance, can't skate, can't bake, trapped in a jungle and the feed from some copper's dash cam.

Members are advised and reminded to follow HM Government guidance with regard to Coronavirus status and the ongoing changes to that status which is available to read and digest here. In addition, specific guidance with regard to boating on the Broads has been published by the Broads Authority in consultation with Defra, other government bodies and other inland waterway authorities and is available to read and digest here. Members are reminded that the easing of lockdown is fluid and subject to conditions and criteria being met nationally. Despite the rumblings of armchair politicians and lawyers or the pronouncements of digital demagogues there is no definite set timetable for the easing of lockdown. Guidance from HM Government and it's agencies, such as Defra and the Broad's Authority is written to reflect this. Until such time as each of the phases of the lifting of lockdown is initiated or if the guidance is unclear, the default guidance during the pandemic is to stay at home unless your life is threatened.

After weighing all of the information available to me, from official and unofficial government sources, checking with all local authorities and landowners as well as members of the NBN Ents team members there will be no official NBN Meet this year. There are far too many 'ifs', 'possibly's', 'might's', 'should's' and 'could's' and 'thou shalt not's' to make a meet viable for the remainder of this year. Instead we will take the time to make sure that all permissions, precautions and conditions are in place and plan for a spectacular meet next year that will be open to all members.

The best, the very best cricket coverage is of course on Facebook...provided you have the same large number of cricket mad friends on the Indian sub-continent as I have! The passion, knowledge of the sport, the excitement, laughs and banter, no matter who is playing, puts all other coverage to shame. As with most sport I listen to coverage on the radio, but when its cricket...I keep one eye on what my friends are talking about in India and Bangladesh.

'Scrawns on a ashtray' was my delicacy of choice...available from a number of stalls Donny Fish Market. An hour before closing on Saturday was best as you would get an extra portion, anything left come closing was bagged and put on ice to sell round the pubs Saturday night. Sunday morning I would always check the fridge in case Uncle Albert had been chatting up the 'fishwife' in the pub the previous night. A fridge full of prawns meant a 'black pepper and vinegar breakfast' for me. The addition of 'finny haddock' to the fridge meant Uncle Albert had been sober enough to feel guilty come closing and stony silence between Mum and Uncle Albert all day with Mum giving me frequent lessons throughout of the derivation of the terms 'fishmonger' and 'fishwife'.

It's getting to the end of an anxious few months. Two weeks before Christmas our grandson Arlo had to attend hospital to get a lump on his jawline checked out. After a trip to casualty and then a full ten hours of testing the following day he was referred to oncology at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. A PET scan on Christmas Eve then a visit to the specialist the first week of January and he was scheduled for surgery last Thursday. Prior to his surgery, Arlo had to go into quarantine for a week and he has also had to quarantine for a week after for Covid related reasons. Consequently, we have had to do the same to be on the safe side. The good news is that the little lads surgery went without a hitch and he was back at home by the evening. For his second week of quarantine, Arlo has been at home with his Mummy while his sister Gracie has been staying with us. We still have the anxious wait to find out exactly what had caused Arlo's lump. To complicate matters further, Grandma has developed shingles and I've never had chickenpox. Fortunately our living arrangements mean that I can isolate from Grandma and we can all stay in our little bubbles. Having your other half live next door can be a wonderous thing. There's no celebrity baking, dancing and singing on ice in the jungle dressed as a sausage on TV in my house! Advances in technology, in other words Ellie discovered WhatsApp in the first lockdown, mean that I now get instructions in text instead of shouted over the fence. The walkie-talkies the neighbours bought us are now redundant at home and are down on the boat. Other than the means by which my instructions arrive, not much has changed really. The day is based around Gracie logging on to do her school work and driving to deliver the essentials to keep our bubbles operating. My meals are still dependent upon climate. No matter what the meal is, even salad, if its raining by the time I've brought it back to my house...its soup! All of this has meant that firkling opportunities have been virtually nil. Virtually nil. 'Virtually', that's the important bit. I have made some small but important progress in the realms of computing. To aid Gracie in her schoolwork, I needed to clean my workstation PC and get the printer working. Now that I have access to the printer, 3Ds Max, Maya and my early iteration of SketchUp adapted with all the bells and whistles before the architects took it over and ruined it, I've been doing a spot of digital firkling, designing new projects and printing out the plans and patterns! But, right at the moment its snowing! Great big flakes to add to the couple of inches we've had over night! I see snow men in my future!

The long grain would suggest teak to me, going by the hefty lumps that Griff dropped off for me. Give it the sniff test, a slight whiff of leather and its teak Alternatively sand it back and do a water drop test. Mahogany absorbs water quicker than real teak.

Like Griff, my way points have changed over time. As a kid in the very early 1970s, it was Donny Railway Station that was the gateway to The Broads. A couple of years later and sitting in a traffic jam with the 'improvements' to the A17 and A47 became the way point. As an adult it was the sight of Lincoln Cathedral sitting on the cliff that marked the beginning. Later, as the trips became more frequent, the marker would fluctuate between stepping out of my front door to pulling up at the boat yard. At one point it was the moment I rolled into the campsite at Hickling, pitched the tent and popped the top on the first beer. As the roads continue to be 'improved' with the associated chaotic roadworks and my in-laws move to southern Lincolnshire the way points have moved again. Before this last lock down, I had the strange experience of driving along the mental and geographical boundary between 'I'm going to visit the in-laws' and 'I'm so close to The Broads it would be quicker to visit the boat than to drive home at this point'. All it would have taken was one more set of road works with a detour and I would have been off racing to the boat. But, when all is said and done, there is one particular moment when I know I've arrived. It's in the early hours of the morning,false dawn. The wind is in the reed beds and the 'Boys' (or boy now) will be nosing along the bank. I will take a deep breath of air tinged with the green of reeds, the brown of water with just a multicoloured hint of diesel and I will accept that at last I am on The Broads.

You mean...I can stop cleaning up in readiness for Scarlet Johannsen nipping round to congratulate me on my knighthood?

My apps fall into three categories. Archaeology, filmmaking and woodwork. Archaeology My bestest app is a map app connected to the small finds registers nationwide. It can pull up details of archaeological finds along with the map reference of each find. Invaluable when I'm out in the field and need to check a find against the existing register or look at find distribution. Joint second bestest apps are the LIDAR apps. One allows me access to my own more detailed LIDAR renders and the second is Bevel which allows me to scan an object in 3D. Third bestest app is the OS Maps app, which does exactly what is says on the tin but also allows me to take accurate measurements and plot them. Woodwork Measure is an app I also use in archaeology settings but is dab handy in the shed too. The Woodshop Widget has handy conversion calculators as well as board length and wood species data bases. Filmmaking I have a whole raft of YouTube apps to keep track of the various channels that I operate. From metrics on channel performance to advertising and monetization packages. Filmora Go and Adobe Premiere Rush are essential tools. There is, not so much an app as a 'function', I find invaluable. The OFF button located on the side of my phone!

Here we go again! An early night was needed as both Ellie and I were shattered. I read the forum while I made myself a drink. No sooner had I pressed 'submit' on a post on 'weirs' than my phone rang. It was Ellie and the store had been broken into for the second time in less than 24 hours. It was 10:20 pm. I scraped the ice off the car and put on my coat, Ellie joined me in the car and once again we set off to pick up Jodie. This time things were a bit different. The criminals had been caught in the act by the police. Two guys had been spotted by the CCTV operator who rang the cops. This time they kicked in the very expensive plate glass door. One of them had sliced himself in the process. Police picked them up as they tried to make their escape. A win for the boys in blue and the quick thinking CCTV operator. Video footage, a nice footprint in the plate glass, blood at the scene, on their clothes and on the stolen goods in their possession.