Alan's Blog

Keeping the bad news quiet

We are to be charged £10 to visit the Old Greenwich Royal Observatory with effect from March, whereas entry has been free in the past. This doesn't seem to have been announced properly anywhere and local blogger Greenwich Gazette only only found out by accident.

Another local blogger, The Greenwich Phantom, has picked up on the story and asks if this is the thin end of the wedge and if admission charges are to be introduced for national collections in general. While I can see some logic in these straitened times for introducing admission fees I do think that they way they have been brought in by stealth on this occasion has been handled particularly badly.

That volcano again ...

Maybe not the best joke, but I liked it:

Message from Europe to Iceland: "We said send us CASH, not ASH!"

Poor timing

I bet the politicians are annoyed. We had the country's first-ever televised debate last night between the leaders of the three main parties. However, the news on TV and in the papers is dominated this morning by the plume of volcanic ash from Iceland that is drifting across Europe, causing the cancellation of virtually all plane flights in the UK, and widespread disruption across Europe.

The way it was

A BR video from 1963 showing how they coped with the snow:

Happy New Year!

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2010!

Cutty Sark and Google AdSense update

A few more months on, and I'm still getting some nice little earnings from my Greenwich Guide site, where I'm using Google AdSense. With the exception of one month only, visitors have clicked on enough ads there to generate sufficient revenue (US$100) for Google to pay me regularly each month. In fact, the next month earned a little more than usual, so the shortfall that one month was more than made up for, and I average over $100 a month for the full period.

In May the Cutty Sark was badly damaged by fire. Since my site appears high up in Google searches for the ship, on 21 May I received over 10,000 hits on the site, when the normal average is around 500 hits. The site traffic went back to roughly normal again after a few days, but the larger number of visitors meant more clicks than usual, so I gained to some small degree from the tragedy. In case you are wondering I've already donated the extra to the Cutty Sark fire appeal.

London Power Cuts

Yesterday evening, at about 6.20pm, much of London was plunged into chaos by power cuts. We had a little taster of the problems experienced a couple of weeks ago by people in eastern America and Canada. The blackout only lasted about fifteen minutes in my case, and power was restored within half an hour to all areas.

It came during the evening rush, and hundreds of thousands were trapped on trains, 250,000 underground. Some passengers spent more than an hour stuck on their trains. Although power was restored to the tube system within 30 minutes, it was not possible to switch the electricity back on because people were still in the tunnels after being evacuated from their stalled trains.

It is too early to say what went wrong, but it appears that transformers failed at three south London substations. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has called the blackout 'a disgrace' and has called for a public enquiry.