Granny Buttons

Rollyo - a new idea in search

Rollyo is a new idea in web search.  And I think it's pretty neat.  You create a list of up to 25 of your favourite web sites, and it indexes them.  Then, whenever you want to run a search, but only on your favourite collection of sites and none others, you search your 'searchroll' on Rollyo. 

For example, I've created a selection of some of my favourite sites into a searchroll called (inevitably) 'Granny Buttons'.  Go to http://www.rollyo.com/, and in the keyword box type in 'canals'.  You'll find my searchroll (it's the only one or canals at the moment, but there'll be another along in a minute.  Type anything you like into that - it'll then use Yahoo to search only those website I've listed.

IWA regional AGM at Lichfield

This weekend is another example to attend - and report from - a waterways gathering.  It's the Inland Waterways Association (IWA) AGM, at Lichfield.  Granny Buttons is now at Whittington, so there's no excuse for me this weekend to avoid reporting it.

Here's a PDF of the events of the weekend.  Apparently there's a boat gathering at Bridge 80, Whittington, from Friday onwards.  Well, Granny's there already, and will be right in the middle of it. 

That'll be a first (me arriving early to a boat gathering, I mean).  L&H stalwart Eric Wood says there'll be a garden barbecue, and has invited me.  Granny's there, but actually I'm not.  I'm in Norfolk.  Don't know how early I can get away from work, but I'll try. 

The IWA AGM is the quintessential opportunity for me to blog the events of the whole weekend.  I daresay I'll find a reason (I mean, an excuse) not to do it.

Wolseley Bridge to Fradley

Wolseley Bridge to Fradley top lock.  3.30pm - 7.30pm, mooring at the long stretch above the top of the Fradley locks. 

Every section of English canal that I think is dull, turns out to be more interesting that I thought it was.  Perhaps that's because I start too late, and am always in a hurry. 

Today, I spent a long time looking for a place in Rugeley for a wi-fi connection, so that I could update Granny Buttons.   And ended up at Cannock McDonald's over lunch while I adumbrated the details of my post about Bell Bridge Barn (for sale). 

News links

BW nominated for Computing Awards 'Project of the Year' - Computing magazine
[For the introduction of a] new IT infrastructure to allow a map-driven system where users could click on a map and access all the relevant information associated with property or assets at that location ... [is this the one that Richard Fairhurst midwived?]

Canal network gets £3 million boost - The Scotsman
Major funding has been announced to help improve Scotland's canals network ... Projects include improvements to locks on the Caledonian canal, major renovation of a swing bridge on the Crinan canal and an outdoors activity centre on the Union canal at Falkirk.  Also Glasgow Herald.

Angler catches biggest-ever UK match weight in Oxford Canal reservoir - Coventry Evening Telegraph
British Waterways' Boddington Reservoir ... has produced a jawdropping match catch. Fishing in a six-hour club event, Dave Parvin weighed in an incredible 539lb of carp ... the biggest match weight ever officially record in the UK.

BW and English nature extend canalside nature reserve - North Wales Daily Post
A 24-acre British Waterways plot, next to Llangollen canal, is being added to Fenn's, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses national nature reserve, near Wrexham.  [There's a beautiful downloadable A3-sized PDF of the area here, but I don't know which are the relevant 24 acres.  Perhaps a BW person could enlighten us? Have they given it away to English Nature?]

Canal revamp project 'may be scuppered by threat to salary' - Yorkshire Post
Multi-million-pound plans to fully restore the Chesterfield Canal could be scuppered after it was revealed Rotherham Council chiefs were planning to pull out of a funding deal. [i.e. paying part of Geraint Coles' salary]

Coroner urges safety work after double canal tragedy - Liverpool Daily Post
Verdicts of death by mis-adventure were recorded at an inquest at Warrington yesterday on Gemma Biggin, 17, and Stephen Abbott, 17, who died in Stockton Lane, Grappenhall, Warrington, on November 28 last year ...  At the blind, left-hand bend in Stockton Lane, Stephen appeared to "over-steer" to the left and then try to correct himself.

How to name your boat

Here's a clever way of naming your boat - in both Semaphore and Morse!

England also expects you to put the name on your boat in a way British Waterways can read, and this boat's owner has done that as well.  But he's gone one better, and signwritten it in a way Lord Nelson could have read it too.

News links

Closure of A49 causes uproar - Northwich Chronicle
Business owners in Little Leigh are up in arms after council bosses announced the five-week closure of the A49.  Roadworks to reconstruct part of the A49 Warrington Road at Acton Bridge start on October 10. The stretch of road is home to three pubs, The Horns, The Hollybush and the Leigh Arms, all of which will be severely affected by the closure... Cheshire County Council says during the closure British Waterways will also be undertaking an assessment of the swing bridge and carrying out essential mechanical and electrical work.

Letter re Tollesbury Barge, Millwall Dock - icTheWharf.co.uk
"I cannot help but feel that BW has little interest in preserving what is left of the maritime history of the West India docks. In the past five years it has proposed closing the Masthouse Terrace Pier and drawn up plans to infill half of Grade I-listed Blackwall Basin for a luxury office development." - Richard Gosling.

[Tollesbury Barge] bar still sunk - icWharf.co.uk
British Waterways has appointed the Port of London Authority's marine salvage unit to retrieve the 105-year-old floating bar, but there is no indication of when this will start.

The Foxton Locks game.

All right, I admit it.  I find the Foxton Locks game compulsive. 

In fact, I play a lot of the WOW games too.  There, I've said it.

I think Katie will enjoy these games.  In fact, if she can beat my high score of 787 937 (!) for this game, based on Foxton Locks, she'll be a dynamite boater.

A blogging offer you can't refuse

If you want to start a blog and you are connected with a voluntary waterways organisation, I've got a special offer for you, so read on. 

The ancient joke is that if you get an infinite number of monkeys to type at random, you'll soon come up with Shakespeare.  And if you pay peanuts, you'll get Hamlet in a trice.  With the blogosphere expanding so fast, we'll soon know if that's true.

Canaltime boats

There's a Canaltime boat for sale, advertised second hand (3rd hand?) on Apollo Duck.  The vendors describe it enthusiastically as a "45' beautiful narrowboat ... built as time share for USA & South African holidaymakers in UK to very highest standards."   Maybe, but the £60,000 asking price seems to me extremely optimistic, unless they've done a lot of customising.  I'd expect a 45-footer of that quality and age to sell around the £mid-30s.

Eight years ago Canaltime came quickly from nowhere to dominate the timeshare canal boat business.  Soon after I bought Granny Buttons in 1999 I noticed how each boat was numbered and frequently had a strange or preposterous name, so I invented the hobby of Canaltimespotting, on 12th August 2000, as I wrote in uk.rec.waterways: 

On that weekend, between Armitage and Hopwas, I spotted:  6/Water Baby, 46/Angel's  Payment, 51/Marjorie Nott, 58/Hero Wilkie, 59/Erin Mary, 60/Barrovian Passion and 61/Kaybees (not necessarily in that order). 

I lost interest when others picked up the hobby.  It didn't feel special any more.  A bit like the boaters who give up the canals when other people discover the charm and the secret's out. 

The total number of Canaltime boats in operation seems to have stabilised at around 160, but they seem to be replaced after three years, and there's a regular trade in used ones. 

I meet conflicting opinions on their build quality from boatyard people who've worked on them, but I've also spoken to a few owners of second-hand versions, and they all seemed very happy with them.   Once the boat's telltale maroon-&-eggshell-blue colour scheme is overpainted, it's a nice, stylish, individual and homely floating cottage.  It's worth factoring the cost of a good, full repaint (perhaps £4,000) into the offer price if you want to be proud of your personal new (i.e 2nd hand) Canaltime boat.  If the boat on Apollo Duck is to be worth its £60k, it had better come with an undercoat of silver plating and a topcoat of 14-carat gold leaf!

I met an ex-Canaltime called Whisper at Fradley last Sunday morning (pictured).  It has been stylishly customised with a couple of good roof containers by the new owners and looks superb.  I'll never get used to its lack of a foredeck, cratch or forward exit, but I'm told they were built that way to avoid novice boaters flooding them with gate paddles.  The big compensating bonus, of course, is the full-width double bed at the front.

News links

Floating Away -  50connect.co.uk
Bob Barton takes it easy on a trip afloat on the Monmouth and Brecon canal in Mid Wales.

Google AdWords

You'll have noticed (and even clicked on, occasionally, I hope) the Google adverts on the left of this page.  Here's an interesting article from American technology columnist Robert Cringely on how Google decides which ads to serve up. 

Which particular advertising appears is based on what text appears on the screen - what I write about, in other words.   Or what you (dear reader) write about, if you leave a comment on my posts (if I may drop a big hint).  If you are advertising your business via these ads, Cringely's post is particularly interesting reading.

(via Scobleizer)

WWW revisited.

I've substantially rewritten last night's Waterscape and Waterways World post.

Woman jumps into canal, not many dead.

If  you thought my mocking little italics about the Brighouse story yesterday were unwarranted, here's more italics to sober you me up:  Woman jumps into canal.

Mohali: A 35-year-old mother of two daughters allegedly jumped to death in Bhakra canal in Daumajra village near here on Saturday night. The woman [Mandip Kaur] was told to be disturbed as her husband with meagre means had to raise two daughters and his three sisters ... Mandip's father said apart from poverty his daughter also felt bad about having two daughters.

I've never seen a story on the English canals as sad as that. 

Waterscape and Waterways World

I'll never make as a blogger.  Not as a true-blue, 100% kosher wide-awake radar-alert sort of blogger.   Nearly three months ago, in early July, Waterscape relaunched, and I still haven't written anything about it.  Not even though editor Richard Fairhurst primed me in advance until I choked with facts about the new, improved Waterscape:

• New maps.
• Better search.
• Boaters' Guides.
• You can now view the site by town or by region, as well as by waterway.
• Eye-catching 'splash page' replaces the rather cluttered old homepage.
• Underneath the hood, the big difference is that it's all been done in-house.

Well, I had other things to do than write about it. My kettle needed filling, I needed to iron my shirt, that sort of thing. And now Richard himself has become the new editor of Waterways World and it's taken me over a week to report it, and I've missed my chance to be a real 24-carrot 'News Bunny'.