Month: Sep 2005

More Disk Space

We’d managed to fill up the 120Gb disk in my Shuttle XPC with photos, videos and music so I ordered and new 200Gb Seagate Barracuda SATA drive from ebuyer for about £60.

It turned up yesterday, and after a brief hiatus whilst I worked out how to get in to the Shuttle case – had to remove the front cover and dvd drive to drop the new disk into the space for normally used for a floppy and then reassemble – its now installed and running like a charm. Gentoo spotted the new drive and loaded the appropriate kernel modules automatically (after I’d enabled the SATA controller in the BIOS) – Linux treats SATA drives as SCSI so the drive appeared as /dev/sda1.

A quick fdisk to create two partitions and we now have a 150Gb partition for the photos, videos and music and 50Gb to backup important stuff from the root disk. I’m using the quick and powerful rdiff-backup for the backups – it backs up changes to a 10Gb home area in under a minute.

Losing the root disk shouldn’t be as much of a disaster now, just have to hope we don’t lose them both at the same time – maybe one day i’ll buy a pair of 400Gb disks and just mirror them…

Liverpool 0 – 0 Chelski

The Reds had the better of a tight game at Anfield, but had to settle for a point in the first Champions League group encounter with Chelsea.

A couple of penalty claims might have gone their way on another night, but it wasn’t to be. They made the Premiership Champions look pretty ordinary though, and should have no worries about the repeat performance on Sunday.

Looks like there’s no Hockey match this weekend, so I’ll have to make do with the half hour we managed in the pool at the Hyrdo today to keep me fit. Megan ‘swam’ on her own, without having to hang on to mum or dad anyway, for the first time in a while – just need to keep going regularly to get her confidence up. 🙂

Isles of Glencoe

We spent the weekend at the Isles of Glencoe Hotel at Ballachulish.

We’d been there before, but whilst the food was excellent and we made good use of the pool the room was a bit disappointing. It was very small for a family room, with just a cramped shower and no bath, but on top of that it was grubby and in desparate need of a lick of paint.

On Saturday we went to the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary near Oban to see the seals getting fed, and then to the Oban Ceramics in Oban itself where Megan got to decorate her own bit of pottery – we’re still waiting for it to arrive in the post!

We had a good time in spite of the weather and the accomodation – not sure we’ll be returning to the Isle of Glencoe in the near future though…

Eliza Crawford

We’ve discovered that George Sherratt (my maternal grandmother’s father) was born in Perrey Street, Runcon in 1873 – his parents being William Sherratt and Eliza Sherratt nee Crawford. My mum’s middle name was Crawford and the story was that there was some link to the Crawford family of biscuit fame (see Custard Creams and Bourbons) but it was never clear to anyone quite what the link was.

Eliza is the first Crawford to turn up in the family tree investigation, so has obviously become the center of attention. I’ve now sent for William and Eliza’s marriage certificate so we can continue back up the tree, unfortunately their ages both put their date of birth around 1837 – the start of civil registration – so there’s a chance we’ll have to resort to parish records for birth certificates.

A trawl through the 1871 census has thrown up the Sherratt family living at No. 16 Perrey Street – George obviously wasn’t around at this point but he doesn’t seem to be short of elder siblings. The cenus shows Louisa (10), James (8), Thomas (5), William (3) and Emma (6 months – strangely listed as a son!) all living with them along with a boarder going by the name James Crawford. We don’t know too much about James as yet, other than he’s aged 63 and a widower – there must be a fair chance it’s Eliza’s father, but until we get the wedding certificate we won’t know for sure.

The search for the biscuit millions looks like it my prove fruitless however, as his occupation is simply given as labourer – not wealthy biscuit baron… 😀

A Car Sold and a House For Sale

We’ve sold the Rover 75 to a very nice retired gentleman from Livingston who was highly delighted with his purhase, I’m sure my dad would have approved!

The house is on the market now too – Edwards Grounds have it on their website already, lets hope they can sell it for us.

On the genealogy front we’ve made a bit of progress tracking down the Crawford link. We’ve received George Sherratt’s (my maternal grandmother’s father!) birth certificate which show’s his mother’s maiden name to be Crawford – we’d always assumed it had come down a different branch. Time to do a bit more digging to establish whether we’re entitled to that lifetime supply of biscuits…

Liverpool 0 – 0 Man Utd

Another goalless draw, but a good performance from the Reds nonetheless and an improvement on the same fixture last season. It’s Birmingham City next week and we’ll be looking for a few goals and three points to consolidate a steady start to the season.

A slightly less impressive performance on the Hockey front saw Clydesdale IV go down 5 – 1 against Western at Auchenhowie – there’s no game next week, so we’ve got a fortnight’s wait before we can try and make amends…

Make Believe

I’ve been listening to Make Believe the new album from Weezer, and I think its probably they best thing they’ve done since the debut album in ’94.

They’ve always written good pop songs, but this album is just more accessible than the previous stuff – the production is better, as are the vocals but in spite of that they don’t seem to have lost any of their edge.

Beverly Hills and This is Such a Pity are classic Weezer, and the atypical Freak Me Out probably will – I don’t think there’s a bad song on here, definitely a four and half stars… 😀

Real Betis 1 – 2 Liverpool

Two great goals early on from Florent Sinama-Pongolle and Luis Garcia saw Liverpool take three points from their first game in the group stages of the Champions League. Real Betis came back strongly in the second half but some good defending and few good saves from Pepe Reina saw them home. It’s Man Utd at Anfield on Sunday, and we’ll have the extra day to recover from the weeks exertions – should be another good un.

A new stick and a swim

The first match of the season on Saturday highlighted the need for a new hockey stick, the old one’s not broken yet but it’s definitely on its last legs! I’ve ordered a new Grays GX4000 Turbo (apparently it does around thirty to the gallon) from Barrington Sports and a new pair of astro trainers, so we’ll see if they’ll do the trick next weekend.

We all took advantage of the pool at the Hydro today – Megan had a good splash round with her armbands on and I managed a few lengths, just need to make it a regular thing now…