Well done Scotland!

Scotland 2 v 0 Macedonia

This keeps Scotland's World Cup 2010 hopes alive.

Good to watch, second half especially.

The Netherlands next week lads!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

This could be the last time

I am reviewing my online presence as I am now running three web sites. www.duncanwil.co.uk, my original web site; www.excelmaster.co.uk is NEW and I am putting a lot of effort into it; www.oxbow.org.uk is being allowed to die as it was a commercial venture that didn't work I'm afraid.

I also manage two blogs: this one and Duncan's Diacritical Discussion, my business blog.

I have been checking the world's response to this blog and it is woeful: I am gathering readership figures now but no one is linking to it and there are only two followers. If the readership is as low as I fear it might be, this blog will cease to be by the end of this month if not sooner!

In spite of that I do enjoy putting the blog together and will probably continue to do that privately if this one has to go.

My business blog will probably stay as I want to use a blog with excelmaster.co.uk. Alternatively, the business blog will go and a new one, based on Microsoft Excel, will replace it.

DW

BBC Proms: whatever happened laddie?

Last Friday night I thought I'd take a break from my usual habits and listen to the Proms on Radio 3. I tuned in, all excited like, only to find a talking programme in progress that went on ... and on ... and on ... I went back to my old habits.

Last night I tried again. There was chatting going on  but only for a few minutes. Then I settled down to listen to the Proms proper. Not my kind of music at all. Can't even remember what it was. I then went to YouTube and found Allegri's Miserere mei, Deus as I told you earlier.

Third time lucky? I went back and tuned in during some piano concerto. Not that good but tolerable. That finished and then what started after that I cannot begin to describe. It was one of those tunes that someone wrote while they were defiling a sheep or something. The kind of music that no one understands but thinks they are the only one who doesn't so they listen politely and talk loudly and effusively about it over the Champers.

In all honesty, I could have played that "tune" and I can play no notes of merit. I wondered how on earth the composer wrote such a thing down.

DW

Guestbook Gone

I installed a guestbook on my site a while ago and whilst it's not something I do seriously or ever really open, I left it there. Today, for some reason, I was driven to take a look at it and found that it had grown to almost 1Gigabyte in size.

So I downloaded it, opened it and found a third of a million messages in there. Every 3, 4 or 5 minutes it received a message for months. So, some clever dick found the guestbook and did whatever he (baseball cap wearer, ponytail sporting and spotty young man no doubt) wanted, over 300,000 times.

Well, it's gone now and won't be back.

The same happened when I started a Discussion Board on another site. It looked good and worked really well until the porno and spamming people persistently got into it.

I knew in the case of the discussion board that security was likely to be an issue but I decided to see if I could control it all with a weekly tweak or something. I couldn't. That's a shame too as I wanted to build up that site with people who wanted to engage with my and the team I as working with.

Fortunately I have lost nothing particularly tangible from my experiences and if ever I do want a serious guestbook and so on, I'll buy a secure service.

Bleeders!

DW

Stunning Ceramics

About 20 years ago I started to buy some limited edition plates from the Matfen Hall pottery in Northumberland: images of inspiration, Neus Design. I took a drive there one day only to find it was closed ... I couldn't go back and now there is a hotel there!

I have tried for years to track down any more of these plates or even anyone else with them. The plates were always limited to a run of 5,000 pieces and the lowest number I got was almost 600. So there are many of us about.

I followed a new lead this morning and have found someone else, in fact two other people, with these plates. However, I like the plates and really would like more of them. They are not massively expensive and from what I have found they have not held their value.

Here are the plates I own: if anyone knows anything, please let me know via a comment here or via my email address duncan_at_duncanwil_dot_co_dot_uk. The background to the plates is my dining table!!

DW

Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei Deus

Years ago I went to a performance of Rachmaninov's Vespers at King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It was utterly divine in every sense. I bought the CD too but really one needs speakers of the size and quality of the Chapel to appreciate the music.

I went to Salisbury Cathedral one Sunday afternoon about three years ago and entered to the kind of music that we think is reserved only for heaven. I went back a couple of weeks later but they were singing something different and it wasn't as good for me I'm afraid.

Well, yesterday I listened to Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei Deus on the radio and although I had heard it before, I have never shared my experience of it before. I am currently listening to a version of this work recorded at King's College Chapel and while the quality of the recording is not too good, it still transcends the ordinary. I love choral music anyway, as just a few people know; and this is among my favourites.

You can listen online to the version I am currently listening to here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZL3POaATn8&NR=1

There is another version that I have just listened to, too, that sounds better but is shorter. This version has the score to read along to: if you're lucky enough to be able to sing along too then that's excellent for you! Here is that version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4xmB1QWYk

Someone wrote a note that this is not music to listen if you're sad. I can see why they say that but I'm not sure I agree!

DW

The Navigation Sowerby Bridge

What have the following got in common?

• two Milky Way bars
• a Curly Wurly
• a Fudge bar
• a Sherbet Fountain
• a Swiffels Matlow Drumstick
• a Flumps
• The Navigation Pub in Sowerby Bridge

Give in?

The link is the Sweetie Pub Quiz they hold on Sunday evenings. Nominally starts at 9 pm and it's a shout out loud quiz where the first person to shout out the right answer to a question earns the right to dip into a bag and pull out one of the above sweets.

The list above is my personal haul from last night's quiz: I got the answers to the first two questions right and thought, better not answer too many more!!! Over the quiz I got seven questions right myself. The fundamental rule is no shouting out until a question has been asked in full. In that case the young girl with the sweetie bag gets to dip into it rather than anyone else. Well, I did that: what position did Pope John Paul II play in his football team in his younger days? I bellowed out far too early but got the answer right ... what position did he play, then?

There's also a separate play your cards right game and since no one won it last night, next week's cash prize will be £260. Buy a sheet of raffle tickets for £1 and that gives you five chances to get into the Play your Cards Right game. Gail from our team got the right to have a go but she drew a pair very quickly so we were disappointed! Shame!

I don't drink alcohol these days but the beer and cider and so on seemed to go down well so there you are.

When we arrived at the pub I asked Nev, brother in law, to buy me a strong lemonade. It was a joke and he understood but for some reason it absolutely threw the girl behind the bar and I ended up with a tiny bottle of bitter lemon!! We didn't make that mistake again!

A good night out with nine of us and a full pub: celebrating another brother in law's birthday: happy birthday Danny Butt.

DW