this site in 2012-07

We've established that Guess Who 26? is not Lester Piggot, French and an ex-sportsman, and it may be in a large town near Chelmsford but what a job op for a young snapper.

Alexa.com is telling us our pages are loading a bit faster since our server change/upgrade and publishing is certainly a lot faster, so worth all the pain ... maybe.

Guess Who 25? is Ethel (wasn't Just William's sister called Ethel?) Jane Cain the first voice of TIM the speaking clock, next Guess Who? in a month or so.

Because of the server change towards the end of last month we had to knit two sets of statistics together to find out last month you visited a record 94,579 pages, thank you.

We could be a bit wobbly at some point in the future as our host migrates us on to a shiny new operating system.

We're nearly 1,500 leicas on our Facebook page.

Expect us to be chattier on Twitter now that our tweets starting @yourname are filtered out from that feed on the left.

As you can see we've added buttons at the top there so you can tell your friends and followers about the nearthecoast page.

Those roof bars are still FOR SALE and now thought to be a universal fitting.

54 years ago today Mike Hawthorn became the first British Formula One world champion.

Our Twitter feed on the left there is back which is nice and a pig stolen in Dunwich ... not as funny as it sounds.

ASTONISHER (quite) No.27:  We weren't that surprised and definitely not astonished that Captain W E Johns the creator of Biggles wasn't a real captain but we were a little taken aback to discover that early in his career he was a sanitary inspector in Swaffham Norfolk.

Hopefully you've noticed we look slightly different?  Not only that but the 400+ pages of nearthecoast.com should be looking more consistent but in true Suffolk style there are still bloody minded outposts of this website fiercely resisting change.

Nineteen new leicas on our Facebook page, feeling popular.

Yes we're five years old today thank you very much for asking.

We've only just noticed that Eric Sykes died Wednesday.  We always liked the considered Tati like way he moved and adored his tv series with Derek Guyler as the policeman Helmet off Corky, Helmet on Constable Turnbull and the surreal running joke that Eric and the divine Hattie Jaques were twins:)

ASTONISHER No.25:  James Robertson Justice the bearded Sir Lancelot Spratt of The Doctor films tended goal for professional ice hockey team the London Lions ... we know but when you look at his build it's probably true.

We're very pleased to welcome back advertiser Warne's taxi service and we were told Boulevard Blond is no more but Mrs Warne and most of the BB lineup are putting together a Motown influenced band.

Roof bars for a Peugeot 307 estate FOR SALE on the board.

We went away for about 45 minutes around midday, a Denial Of Service attack on the host apparently.

♫ ASTONISHER No.23:  Johnny Johnson's big afro was in fact a wig ... you're going to have to trust us on this one.

That's taken forever importing on this day in but it's here now, look up your birthday and see what happened on that day in history.

We've been running a bit slow recently but a server re-boot's had the same effect as three Red Bulls and not that you're interested but even when we were running slow Google says we were still faster than 80% of the sites on the web.

ASTONISHER No.22:  Canadian Jay Silverheels who played Tonto was in the 1930s a lacrosse professional with the Rochester Iroquois and Clayton Moore The Lone Ranger wore that worryingly lavender suit to personal appearances into his 80s despite the copyright owner briefly getting a court order to stop him in 1974.

Stackton Tressel now has it's own page, as does Little Mutterings.

363 years ago today Oliver Cromwell declared England a commonwealth.

ASTONISHER No.21:  When Abdulfattah Jandali managed a restaurant in Silicon Valley he was flattered to have Steve Jobs of Apple as a patron and on several occasions shook hands with him ... neither were aware they were father and son ... you'd think the genes would recognise each other wouldn't you?

12,634 of you visited last month and looked at a record 82,987 pages, thank you.

<blush>  Our pic of Truly Thumptious and son has been nominated by US website Derby Life for Most Derby photo 2011.

That's nice, we've already gone over 11,000 visitors for the sixth month in a row ... might, just might, go over 12,000 again.

Have a good one ... see you on the other side ...

ASTONISHER No.19:  When Fred Astaire (b1899 in Omaha Nebraska!) made his first film with Ginger Rogers he'd already made one film ... she'd made twenty and OMG weren't they beautiful, watch Ginger's left arm, we think it's gently doing some sending up.

Fifth month in a row we've had 11,000+ visitors, ♥♥♥ you all.

Yes, it's Roy Plomley who in the 1940s devised and then presented Desert Island Discs for some 43 years, and it's still going on Radio 4 ... Radio 4? ... it's a radio station?  Just up from Radio 2 past Radio 3?  Radio 3?  Tell you what, let's forget it.

Guess Who 17?  Who's the bald bloke on the right?

October was the fourth month in a row we had over 11,000 visitors and we had almost 13,000 in August, thanks a lot you lovely ntcers.

  You lovely ntcers visited a record 80,541 pages last month.

ASTONISHER No.17:  Broadcast only in the Midlands area in 1977 news reader Angela Legs Rippon was the first presenter of Top Gear not Jezza and chums ... although it does feel like they've been doing it for ever ... we know but it's true.

Guess Who 15?  Haven't had one these for a bit, the girly in the middle?

We've gone over 12,000 visitors this month  , thank you every one of you.

Because of hyperactive spambots we are reluctantly blocking new registrations by hotmail and gmail email addresses on the bulletin board.

After just a handful of days Truly Thumptious and son has become our most viewed pic on Flickr.

A record 11,000+ visitors to this web site last month, perhaps it was our coverage of the Dunwich Dynamo?

07:03pm  What's that Skip?  You don't know what oxymoron means?  Don't worry Skip, it's a self contradictory figure of speech ... like ethical banking, sports personality or technology centre.

Just slightly fewer visitors last month than the record 10,777 in April but a record 8.25Gigabytes of downloads.

ASTONISHER No.14:  Lord Lucan's great-great-great-grandfather was the officer who told the Light Brigade to charge the wrong Russians ... we know but it's true.

The truly green alternative to the iPod; no batteries, no USB, no mains adaptor, just wind it up and off it goes and on ebaY starting at just one penny!

Apologies if we seemed to have blitzed you with old(ish) sports cars, it's a prob on the server which we've fixed by giving it a wipe with a dirty J-cloth ... hopefully it'll hold.  (thanks Gosia)

8pm:  Probs with bulletin board fixed with a rusty Brillo pad.  (thanks SBB)

Thankfully the Gentleman Plumber has finally put Guess Who 12? out of its agony, it's famous wart wearer and pretend bass guitarist Lemmy aged 3½ ... this is probably a bad idea but who are these two?

ASTONISHER No.12:  Israel qualified for the 1958 world cup without playing a game as the Arab countries in their group refused to meet them.  FIFA then ruled that to qualify Israel should play Wales (Belgium having declined) and consequently Welsh national manager (and assistant Man U manager) Jimmy Murphy was in Cardiff not Munich.  Scotland's first national (but still only part time) manager Matt Busby was in Munich and near death so the Scottish FA solved the problem by not sending a manager ... we know but it's true.

You'll be pleased to hear we aren't doing a Christmas special this year so no special guests like Arthur Mullard, lookalikes Deadwood and the person who actually owned Doophus.

ASTONISHER No.9:  At the 1898 FA Cup Final the teams were photographed with the cup before the match and at the photographer's suggestion eventual winners Nottingham Forest borrowed Derby County's lighter coloured jerseys ... we know but it's true.

The up coming Charlie Haylock cd Confessions of an Hysterical Historian (with our cover photo) is imminent.

ASTONISHER No.1:  Country singer and songwriter Kris Kristofferson has a boxing blue from Oxford ... we know but it's true.

Kid's bike on the board SOLD.

Kid's bike FOR SALE on the board.

Thanks Jamie, Anne and Cameron for the Facepack ½ century!

We don't have even a 100 followers on Twitter, and some of those we do have are distinctly dodgy, but WeFollow reckons we're the fifth most influential tweeter in Suffolk ... mind you we've got a ways to go to catch up with Food Safari; and thank you everybody for a record 9,134 visitors in this month so far.

If we get few extra new visitors over the next couple of days we should go over 9,000 visitors in a month for the first time.  So tell all your friends about us ... or if you're a property developer tell that bloke at the district council you take out for a drink.

Advice on how to use this web site to promote your safer neighbourhood or roller derby team, quantitive easing initiative or monthly witch ducking.

Talk to us nicely about advertising and we might give you a BOGOF.

We love NearTheCoast, thanks for latest update, Rachel, Diss

My first car is still running and lots of sporting automotive stuff on drastic plastic.

  Are you brave enough to tell us about your first car?

We can now tweet from our mobile phone ... if we could find it that is.

We've put our web statistics online, over 6,600 visitors last month.

Sorry!  For some reason we still don't understand our email list software decided to send out the January? des' dinners to everyone this morning.  We've made it sit on the naughty step and think about what its done.

We take your point which is what is the point but we're on Twitter.

We'd rather feared that the builders had gone off on another job before finishing the makeover on our print gallery but eventually they turned up to finish the job and we rather like the slide show.

Tomorrow's weather is cancelled.

The clocks went back last night and don't rely on our new clock up on the right there, it runs off your computer's clock so if the pc hasn't adjusted itself ...

You may think we're geeks but just imagine what the uber geeks at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) must be like.  W3C specify standards and if your web site

complies with the standards it makes the world a better place. We spent a very long day yesterday replacing embeds with objects, includes with nested templates, nowraps with nowrap="nowrap"s and eventually we ended up with a wobbly looking home page but it did W3C validate ... just made a small change and it doesn't validate anymore, well see for yourself ... then we fixed it.

Thanks to Karl Semple's conversion script the bulletin board is more or less back.  (PC Jeff Burt's wedding pics have gone missing but we can soon upload them again.)  God bless you Karl Semple.  May all your children be pension fund managers.

11:00am  We seem to be sorted but have to wait for name server changes to spread to your service provider.

01:30pm  Ah well, mother said there would be days like this.  The database software on the new host is a newer version than the old host and attempts to post on the board get an error message.  Working on it ... they're probably thinking about a siesta in Salobreña right now (it's 2:30 there) ... we would say "Apologies for any inconvenience" but we're not Icelandic and we don't have your money ...

The bulletin board admins are putting up a team for Man in the Hat's Screen and Music quiz next Thursday at the Framlingham White Horse.

We've now got a YouTube playlist.

We've been so busy with techie stuff that we forgot to tell you it was our first birthday the Sunday before last.  Though working on a Sunday we had a Bakewell Tart to celebrate but the tart didn't last long enough to get a snap:)

When watching our vids on YouTube don't forget to click watch in high quality.

We had over 7,000 visitors last month ... which was nice.

Board mod Amanda Frost is on Weakest Link Monday night and yes, it was recorded weeks, if not months, ago.

Last month on average someone visited this site every 2 minutes 37 seconds, which was nice.

It's gone 1pm and we've sent out the first Near The Coast monthly digest.  If you don't want it just reply STOP and we will.

Amongst other things Reporters Without Borders maintains an annual worldwide press freedom index.  The UK comes in 24th behind Iceland and Norway equal first but ahead of USA (Land of the Free) in 48th position.

We had 5,521 visitors last month, that's 35% more than in October.