Cardiff Castle,
originally uploaded by gtj-45.

Another excellent photograph from flickr – this time it is a stunning photograph of the main keep of Cardiff Castle in Wales.

The site of Cardiff castle dates back to Roman fortifications from around AD 60, but the more recent, and more impressive castle, was built during the time of the Norman / Plantagenet kings of England. This served as a base for the Norman knights to dominate the surrounding lands and enforce the Norman rule over the Welsh.

Sadly, Cardiff castle is not part of the Heritage schemes (National Trust, CADW etc) so, unless you live in Cardiff it costs a bit to get in.

Eilean-Donan1,
originally uploaded by photokarsky.

Very attractive castle in the Scotish highlands – it lies at the point where three Scottish Lochs Meet. It is that much of a well known, loved, castle that it has its own website – http://www.eileandonancastle.com/

Sadly, from a purely historical point of view, this is not a castle that has really seen service (compared to the ones further south for example) and is closer to the stately homes of rich nobles (Castle Drogo for instance)

Still Eilean Donan is a stunning building and very imposing. This photograph (from Flickr) is an excellent example.

Cornish Coast,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

A striking view over the Cornish coast, just south of Newquay.

This photo was taken on a very sunny day in January but doesnt quite catch just how blue the water was.

(This has been posted here to test the flickr integration with the blog)

Stonehenge – Ancient Stones,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Photos taken at Stonehenge showing the ancient stones against a cloudy background.

Although there are lots of debates over when the standing stones were assembled, it is fairly safe to say that this happened at some point during a 1000 (or so) year period centred on about 3000 BC.

Despite current beliefs (based mainly on Victorian mistakes) it is more likely that Stonehenge was used for mid-winter rituals than mid-summer ones.

This is probably the end post (following on from the ones I did earlier this week) on the paypal saga. I have tried repeatedly (short of phoning them) to get a straight answer to the problem. I have also tried firefox on other people’s PCs and it has the same issues.

It strikes me as if this is something firefox have no intention of resolving – to the extent that they think it is the customer’s fault.

The customer service we have allowed ourselves to suffer over the internet is nothing short of shockingly bad.

Paypal – shame on you. If this was an open market then I can promise I would never, ever use your services again.

Total sympathy for the PayPal saga. PayPal is impenetrable enough at the best of times. I can’t say I ever worked out how to use it in the first place.

The style of customer service does make a mockery of the new god of customer service, but is so typical of the way that customers’ requirements of a service are the last thing that most companies seem to concern themselves with.

Have you ever sat down and said:

“Well, I would find my bank/energy provider/ISP/phone company” (fill in your own product provider) ” much better if it made me spend hours on the phone at my own expense listening to tinny recorded music and hearing how important my call is to them.  I am also p*d off that they pay attention to my letters and emails and provide answers that relate to the matters I raise. If only they would repeatedly send me standard letters that bear no relation to my concerns. And I would rather be addressed by someone with only a passing familiarity with my language, if at all possible” 

It’s good that they are responding to this barrage of consumer demand by providing the exact services we are all begging for.

When does a robbery become a heist? BBC news today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4749980.stm) refers to “Two more arrests after £50m heist.”

It used to appear that “heists” were only robberiesthat took part in movies, but this odd word is obviously spilling out into news reports. Is there a bottom level value after which an ordinary theft becomes a heist? One hundred pounds stolen clearly does not constitute a heist.  A million?  Pretty likely to be a heist. What about 5,000? 10,000? Can one person pull off a heist, or does it have to involve an illicitly-skilled Ocean’s Eleven-style team?

Maybe there is a special police unit that classifies crimes into robberies or heists.

Well the saga (first outlined on this blog a few days ago) seems to be continuing. I still cant log into paypal using Firefox and I am still sending complaints to paypal. At least now they are responding :-).

The first reply was on 21 Feb (only FOUR days after my complaint) and was from a help desk person who shall remain anonymous (I dont fault her for her answers so I dont see why she should get the blame for Paypal). The response was as follows: Continue reading →

Alfred the Great? or not Great?

Given that I get most of my limited  history knowledge from the television or the Internet, I have no idea what the answer to this is.

Simon Schama’s TV History seemed to regard Alfred (better called by the more typographically attractive AElfred combination) as definitely great. The first King of England (minus the bits the Danes had) crowned in London.

However, most other TV history programmes suggest that Alfred was not Great at all. Just a Wessex king who managed to give away half of England.

Does anyone know what else Alfred is supposed to have done (except prove himself inferior to Mr Kipling?)  Did he start the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle being written?

I will investigate and try to get some answers. If I succeed I will post an article on the Saxons part of  our British history site http://www.etrusia.co.uk

The paranoia about bird flu was bound to lead to bird killing. Bird flu appears to be spreading fast and the responses of national authoritties are to kill birds in their thousands.

The BBC reports Indian officals involved in mass bird exterminations (half a million) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4728952.stm German soldiers have been sent in to a German region affected by bird flu. (What are soldiers supposed to do against a virus?)

Nobody forced us to keep millions of chickens, largely in horrific battery conditions in Western Europe. We are hopelessly prodigal with chicken life and expect to buy chickens and eggs for almost nothing.

When a consequence of this food policy bits us in the butt, what is the usual response? Kill them off. The desire to kill domesticated chickens is doubtful enough but the fact that wild birds have also been found with the virus suggests that killing wild birds is probably next.

The possibility of massive damage to the ecosystem from this sort of action would probably only concern us when there are too few birds left to prevent mass extinctions. This is really too horrible to contemplate.

As history is such an important subject I have broadened the categories here to include it. We already have a few posts that fit the description and over time I will go back and ammend them to reflect the new situation.

Channel 4 showed a programme about the Celts. This was good beacuse it is always good to see tv programmes about interesting historical topics. There were some fascinating sites and objects.

However, it was also bad – or at least irritating – because any tv history seems compelled

• To sensationalise. (Any body must be the result of human sacrifice.)
• To gasp in awe at everything no matter how banal. (Gasp! Giggle! They had toilets in the monastery!)
• To assume that everything in the ancient world was ritual and religion. (Knocking the top of an amphora is assumed to be a sacrifice not just opening a bottle, when the celts did it.)
• To have to show reconstructions whether they are relevant or accurate or not.
• To contradict themselves throughout. (Don’t get me started on this)
• To have a presenter you want to strangle. (You really don’t want to get me started on this.)

Following on from http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/18/paypal-and-firefox/ – I sent a helpdesk request to paypal a good few hours before that blog entry and, at the time of writing, still havent had any reply from paypal. This is a shame as I was hoping to be able to put their side of the argument in, but never mind.In a nutshell, I have been trying to log on to Paypal pretty much every few hours since Friday (yesterday) and, as I use FireFox as the browser of choice, each time I have been presented with a major problem. It seems that they have some sort of “browser sniffer” and it is getting the wrong idea about Fire Fox (or at least my version of it). Continue reading →

Just realised today that for some reason PayPal wont let FireFox connect to it! 🙁

I have sent a complaint to the Help Desk so will write more when I get a reply.

In anticipation of the Celts programme on Channel 4 tonight, you may want to check out some of the updated sites on Etrusia. The Normans Site has undergone a bit of an overhaul and there is quite a bit of new content there now. You can see more at http://normans.etrusia.co.uk/. On a similar vein, the Celtic Website is always worth checking out – look for the articles link to see what has been added recently.

If you are looking for all manner of “history” related articles then check out the Etrusia Articles archive at http://www.etrusia.co.uk/articles.php.