Tony Storey RIP

No, you wont know him, but he was instrumental in introduucing me to computers, almost 20 years ago. I can't even remember why, now, but he & his wife used to lend my son an Amstrad computer over the weekend - one of those early machines with a green & black display, that you booted from a floppy disk. After the kids had gone to bed, I used to word-process my handouts on it & play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (text-only version, of course).

Tony was always around. He was involved with the village school, the doctor's surgery, the parish council, the village magazine, Neighbourhood Watch... Sometimes unkindly mocked by the local children, he was truly larger than life.

We were all shocked to learn from the village magazine that Tony had passed away suddenly last month, at the age of 64. We'd been away on holiday & missed the news, so I don't know what was said in the local paper by way of tributes. But I found this self-portrait on Amazon, where he'd written a review.

In my own words
I am 57 years old and live in Healing, a village of some 2,200 population, about 3 miles from Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire, UK. I am Chairman of the Parish Council and Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator (are there Neighbourhood Watches in the US?).My religion is Soto Zen Buddhism, with a generous measure of Taoism and a sprinkling of Pure Land Buddhism.My other main interest is Astronomy, with the emphasis on Astrophysics, Cosmology and SETI. I have been married to Anne for 34 years next month; we have no children but six cats with, at the moment four kittens. I retired from full-time teaching in 1993 but still teach regularly on a supply basis, that is, I go into schools to cover for staff who are ill or on courses. I have chosen a picture of a butterfly because of Chuang Tzu, one of the other great Taoist writers, who dreamed that he was a butterfly. On awakening, he thought, ' Was I Chuang Tzu, dreaming that I was a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu'?

Tony

R.I.P.

There's a lot of it about

Further to my previous post...





Not to mention:






Become a blogger & get free German lessons!

We're all Europeans now!

Here's the message Blogger gave me as I was publishing the last post:



Vielen Dank :-)

Ee bah gum!

It's nice to see from this story that the BBC is taking to heart the campaign launched this summer to preserve the Yorkshire dialect.







Nor can this be dismissed as a mere isolated typo. The same expression is proudly used twice on the section's front page:


(I really think it has to be deliberate, as the writer later refers conventionally to "Its learning facilities", so s/he knows the difference between it/its/it's.)

Bluefluff 2.0

Inspired by Martin Weller's slidecast, I've started a new blog.

It's not really a case of "Bluefluff is dead - long live Bluefluff" because I'll still be blogging here, too. It's just that part of me needed to move on :-)