Bristol

  • UWE supplies refurbished PCs for internet cafés in Togo

    Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

    UWE's surplus office furniture and PCs off to Togo
    The container being loaded for shipping to Togo
    Bristol’s University of the West of England (UWE) has announced that a shipment of refurbished computers and office furniture has just arrived in Togo after an eight week voyage. The recycled equipment was refurbished by UWE student volunteers.

    The equipment is now being installed in 2 internet cafés in Lomé, the Togolese capital. Both internet cafés will be open to the public, although some time will be set aside each week for special user groups, such as orphanage children, who will receive computer training, and micro-finance clients. In addition, The cafés will provide a learning and employment opportunity for local people and aim to be profitable in about a year, earning income from providing internet access, printing and copying services.

    Jo Earl, from UWE Volunteering, co-ordinated students from UWE’s Department of Computer Science & Creative Technologies to make the computers ready for use.

    “Four volunteers worked as a team to assess the donated equipment, install operating systems and additional software. In total 84 PCs were shipped and the students worked really hard on a complex and time-consuming task,” said Jo.

    “After refurbishing the computers, our next big task was shipping the PCs from Frenchay campus,” continued Jo, who worked with UWE facilities manager Richard Bird on packing and loading the computers, printers, desks and chairs into a shipping container.

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • Bristol Post Balls – the ghost train

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities

    Yesterday’s Bristol Post featured a report on convicted murderer Paul Flint, who has absconded from Ford Open Prison in Sussex.

    Flint is believed to be in the Bristol area, the evidence for which is included in the following sentence:

    The latest reported sighting of Flint was on a train at Bristol Parkway station, heading towards Westbury-on-Trym, shortly after 6.20pm on Tuesday.

    There’s one major problem with that statement: no railway line runs between Bristol Parkway and Westbury-on-Trym. The closest any line runs to Westbury-on-Trym is the Henbury Loop line (posts passim), which has been closed to passenger traffic since 1964.

    Is there a chance that reporter Daniel Evans was confusing Westbury-on-Trym with Westbury in Wiltshire, which does have a functioning railway station – or does he live in a Bristol in a parallel universe where public transport provision is excellent? 😉

  • Bristol Post Balls – let it rain

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Certain parts of the country suffered from very heavy rain earlier this week. Where I was camping in the Black Mountains for the past week, we had some 3 inches of rain over the weekend.

    image of a row of umbrellas
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    The Bristol area was also affected by the torrential downpour. Sit back and marvel at the mathematical genius of an anonymous Bristol Post reporter in this report posted in the online version on Sunday and bearing the headline “Met Office issues severe weather warning as Bristol poised for 12 hours of heavy rain“.

    The forecast is for heavy rain from 10pm tonight, stretching through until 10pm on Monday, before heavy rain showers persist until 7pm.

    Excluding the heavy showers, I make that at least 24 hours. How about you? 🙂

  • Sea greens

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    Yesterday I left the confines of Bristol and travelled down to the Bristol Channel coast.

    While there I was there I made time to visit an area of salt marsh to forage for marsh samphire (also known as glasswort), which is currently in the midst of its short season, which consists of the months of July and August only.

    image of marsh samphire
    Marsh samphire (Salicornia europaea)

    Samphire can be eaten raw or cooked. In the latter instance, no salt needs to be added to the cooking water as the plant has an inherent high salt content. It has a fresh, salty taste, crisp texture and makes a great accompaniment to fish and shellfish dishes, eggs or such specialities as salt marsh lamb. As samphire gets older and larger, the core of the plant becomes more stringy and the succulent flesh has to be stripped off the stringy core.

    Until the start of the 19th century, marsh samphire also had industrial uses: before the introduction of the LeBlanc process for the industrial production of soda ash, marsh samphire ashes were long used as a source of soda ash (mainly sodium carbonate) for making glass and soap.

    As regards the origin of the noun samphire, it is believed to be a corruption of the French name herbe de Saint-Pierre, i.e. “St Peter’s herb”.

  • North Somerset libraries to offer free wifi

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    glassy wifi symbolNorth Somerset Council – Bristol’s immediate neighbour to the south – has announced that free wi-fi will be available in almost every library across North Somerset from 1st August.

    This will allow library users (not ‘customers’, as stated in your press release, North Somerset! Ed.) to bring their own laptops and other devices into their local library to use the internet.

    Wi-fi will be available to everyone by simply visiting any library during opening hours. There will be no need to book and visitors will not need to be a library member to set up an account, although first time users will need to approach a member of the library staff to set up an account.

    However, there’s library where this facility won’t be available – the mobile library.

    Potential users can find out more details of the scheme and opening times at http://www.n-somerset.gov.uk/mylocallibrary.

    First posted on Bristol Wireless.

  • Bristol Post Balls 4 – a classic homophone

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Today’s cock-up by the Bristol Post, from a story entitled ‘Man on lilo rescued after drifting out to sea off Weston-super-Mare’, has gained Bristol’s newspaper of record a seat in homophone corner.

    For the benefit of passing Post journalists a homophone is “a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of “rise”), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too.”

    Now let’s see (or sea. Ed.) what landed the Post this particular accolade.

    screenshot of homophone from Bristol Post
    What did he drift out to see, Bristol Post?

  • Boycott bingo

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    The second Ashes Test match is currently underway at Lord’s in London between England and Australia.

    Over the years I’ve become a fan of the live coverage provided by the Test Match Special team on Radio 4 LW; local Bristol community station BCfm interferes with the signal on Radio 4’s FM signal where I live.

    portrait of Geoff Boycott
    Geoff Boycott
    As a consequence, I’ve got to know and appreciate the consummate broadcasting skills of Aggers, Blowers and company, including Geoff Boycott, regarded by some as the ‘greatest living Yorkshireman’.

    One of the joys of listening to the coverage is the banter between the team, especially the ribbing of Boycott and the interplay between him and Aggers in particular.

    Now Geoffrey is not known for keeping his counsel to himself, being a man of strong opinions. Like all of us, he’s got little foibles in his speech and recurring phrases, affectionately known as ‘Boycottisms‘. These Boycottisms have been used to produce ‘Boycott bingo’ cards like the example below.

    image of a Boycott bingo card

    You can get your own Boycott bingo card at http://boycott.gdb.me/.

    Play along and enjoy the game!

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