Thought provoking video created for the AARP U@50 video contest and placed second. Required viewing for anyone who ever started a sentence with “Kids today…”

Sometimes the inane news items are the best:

“Do you agree with me that the British people have a right to know if we have been visited, and if so, when you become prime minister will you seek to lift the veil of secrecy and give the public the truth that they deserve and that has been covered up for all these years?”

Mr Cameron laughed and replied: “I’m convinced we have been visited by alien life forms – and one of them is the trade secretary Peter Mandelson.”

He later apologised to the man for the joke, but offered no apology to Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

Times Online – David Cameron: we will publish secret UFO files

In an addendum to my previous post on researching your family tree, I just thought I’d issue a quick warning so you don’t get ripped off.

If you’re looking to purchase birth, marriage or death certificates via ancestry.co.uk (i.e. them acting as intermediary), they charge £19.99. Don’t do that. Go direct to the General Records Office and it only costs £7 if you know the GRO Index reference or £10 if you don’t – a significant difference.

Researching your family tree is expensive enough without spending double on the certificate copies.

I’ve recently been getting back into researching my Family Tree … well, more my kids’ family tree as I’m using them as the focal point and going back into both Akra’s and my family history.

It’s a project that works well for my temperament – something that’s easy to pick up, get totally absorbed in, then put it down again for months/years until the interest comes back – no backtracking and “catching up” due to the time the project was ignored is required.

There’s something very satisfying about searching records databases to try and find a particularly elusive ancestor and finally being able to prove that you are related. I suppose it’s a natural extension to my Google Fu. It’s also fascinating to uncover family stories that would otherwise have been forgotten and to feel that you have a place in a wider narrative that is still being told.

I’m very lucky that I have an uncle, cousin and mother-in-law who also have an interest in family research, so I’ve been able to cadge a huge amount of data from them with minimal effort. As a result, I’m enjoying focussing on the detail – trying to find photos of old residences, getting certificates together, looking up where people lived on a birds-eye view map – and finding out about the people that don’t overlap with their previous research.

Anyway, I thought I’d post a bit about what tools I’m using – nothing new to experienced geneologists, I’m sure, but might be useful to someone starting out:

• The software I’m using on the computer is Synium’s Mac Family Tree – it’s not the most recommended out there (most seem to rate Reunion for Mac – an all singing/all dancing and highly expensive piece of software) but after downloading the trials for several packages, Mac Family Tree was the one I found most intuitive, working in a very visual way that I found easy to pick up and makes it a pleasure to use.
• I’m registered with Genes Reunited but only so I can connect easily with the data my other family members have already researched. I bit the bullet and paid for Ancestry.co.uk, mainly because I found using their search facilities much easier and more likely to find matches.
• If you’re trying to keep costs down though, I can recommend FreeBMD (a free service to search birth, marriage and death records), FreeCEN (free census records) and FreeREG (free parish records). There are two important things to be aware of these sites: 1) don’t confuse the ancestry.co.uk advert at the top of the site which looks like it’s part of the search – it’ll take you to a registration page for a free trial to a different site which is very confusing; 2) not all the records have been transcribed yet.
• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission site is also very useful if you suspect any of your ancestors died in one of the World Wars – again, a free search.
• Finally, the 1911 census is now available on the official site in association with the National Archives. Am rather annoyed that this hasn’t found its way over to Ancestry.co.uk yet and you have to pay per view any census records. I can only assume that it’ll find its way over there eventually.

RIP Tony Hart. You were a big part of my and many others’ childhoods.

I found this lovely tribute on YouTube which is a lovely collection of clips from his shows:

YouTube won’t let me embed any of the morph clips such as Morph and the Toll Bridge, but you should go and see it anyway as it’s a great blast from the past.

Good Night, Tony Hart. Sleep Tight.

It was very foggy and icy this morning. Lethally so… we virtually ice-skated to school rather than walked.

I’m sure there were lots of accidents out there today and I warned the kids to take it easy and not mess around to avoid slipping over.

Did one of them slip on the ice anyway?

Oh no.

Li’l Bhaji decided to walk straight into a staggered fence instead because he was too busy talking to look where he was going. Sigh. Still, it makes a change for him to have the accident on the way to school, rather than during school – so it’s a progress of sorts.

He’s okay now, but does have a rather lurid blue bump on his forehead as a memento.

Have I mentioned recently that Akra is a star?

I’ve been thinking about getting Fallout 3 for a while – it’s a Bethesda game, and I adored the Elder Scrolls series (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion). In fact, Daggerfall was what got me into RPGs (and later MMORPGs) in the first place.

The problem is, it’s not available for Mac. I don’t have an Xbox 360, and Bethesda have pretty much stated that they aren’t interested in doing a port themselves. I can boot into Windows on this machine (I have Windows XP installed on Boot Camp) but I hate doing it. I’ve pretty much made a policy not to buy any more Windows-based games and spend all my time on Mac OS.

My resolve started slipping though when a friend got it for Christmas and kept telling me how wonderful it was. I finally decided to hell with the policy on Saturday and here’s the bit of the story where I tell you how great my husband is. He not only went straight out to PC World to get it for me on Saturday morning, but then took the kids out in the afternoon so I could play it!

Because, no… it’s not a game you can play in front of young children. This game has earned its 18 certificate. Not just the bleak subject matter – a futuristic post-apocalyptic RPG where you have to fight every inch for your survival – but a lot of graphic violence and colourful language.

It is awesome. I haven’t been this immersed in an RPG for years. In fact, I don’t think I got this excited about Oblivion – previously my favourite single player RPG out there. I didn’t think I would get into Fallout 3 as much, because I prefer my RPGs to be full scale fantasy with dragons, knights, swords and magic. I also hate the first-person shooter genre which I’d imagined this game to borrow many elements from.

But no, I am totally gripped – I’m struggling to avoid the main quest (I’ve been warned to leave this for a long while and do lots of side quests, like the Elder Scrolls series) because I desperately want to find out what happens next. I’ve had two very late nights, got to level 6 and haven’t even scratched the surface of the story. I’m actively counting down to my next play session.

I have a few criticisms so far. The tutorial was very cleverly done, but didn’t really give enough information on how to play. In particular, I ended up getting extra advice from friends on V.A.T.S (the fighting system), lock-picking and computer hacking as it just wasn’t as intuitive as it might have been. Similarly, the manual wasn’t very instructive until you’d already spent a few hours in the game figuring out the concepts.

That said though, it’s a highly addictive totally immersive game with a very compelling storyline. I’d recommend anyone to play it.

Just not in front of the kids!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I’m suffering for the lack of geeky friends nearby: people who “get” what you mean when you slip Twitter, blogging, Jonathan Coulton or Mumsnet into the conversation; people who I have more in common with than just happen to have children of around the same age.

Don’t get me wrong, I have some lovely casual, “say hi and chat inconsequentially” type friendships and even some “occasional meal out and gossip” type friendships but when the chips are down or I need someone who thinks on the same wavelength, then it’s online friends that I turn to.

The problem is, most people don’t view virtual friends as “real” friends (whatever “real” might mean in this context). I disagree. It’s been in my mind today in particular after a petty playground snub which made me feel like a gawky, insecure 12-year-old again.

Then a particularly lovely friend who I speak to frequently on IM gave me a virtual pat on the back and the link to an article by Anna Pickard in the Guardian: Virtual people, real friends which is the most positive look at internet relationships that I’ve ever seen in the mainstream media. It sums up my feelings perfectly.

Call me naive, but far from being the bottomless repository of oddballs and potential serial killers, the internet is full of lively minded, like-minded engaging people – for the first time in history we’re lucky enough to choose friends not by location or luck, but pinpoint perfect friends by rounding up people with amazingly similar interests, matching politics, senses of humour, passionate feelings about the most infinitesimally tiny hobby communities. The friends I have now might be spread wide, geographically, but I’m closer to them than anyone I went to school with, by about a million miles.

Do read the whole article in full, it’s worth it.

It’s certainly made me re-evaluate what makes a friendship “real” and significant to me.

Can you hear it?

You’re not listening hard enough.

Now can you hear it?

That’s silence that is.

No arguing, no bleeping sounds from the kids’ new DSes, no “MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMY”ing, or “I’m bored”s.

The kids are back at school, and while I have really enjoyed this holiday (once the manicness of pre-Christmas was past) it’s bliss to have this space to myself again.

I haven’t done much today, just made the most of the peace and quiet.

I’ve worked through a couple of exercises in a career guidance book, changed the beds, put some washing on and spent some time working on the family tree (have some new software that I’ve been playing with). I even managed to take some photos.

Routine is for tomorrow. Or maybe next week.

Right now, I’m enjoying the silence.

The thing that struck me most about the story of the woman who died when her car became stuck between the barriers on a level crossing is that she would have only had 30-40 seconds from the time the barriers came down to when the train smashed into her.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the safety situation (I have no knowledge of that particular crossing’s operation) or whether she should have immediately have abandoned the vehicle, that really isn’t a very long time to react.

30 seconds to decide on what to do. 30 seconds to unstrap your seatbelt and get out of the car. 30 seconds to make sure any passengers were out safely too. 30 seconds in which to panic and freeze.

If it had been me I’d have had two children to unstrap and get out.

Scary.