Stuart Butterworth v4.0

Blog

  • New Years Resolutions 2024

    As is traditional for this time of year (give or take a week that I’ve used trying out other blogging platforms, but completely failing to find anything that fits my style as well as WP!), I’ve decided to make some changes in my life to mark the more or less arbitrary end/start of our annual jaunt around our nearest stellar neighbour – most of these have to do with various projects I have on the go, but there are a couple of other things.

    Firstly – seriously, Stuart, get away from the cess pit that is your current work environment- you are massively overworked, and just as massively underpaid, and you deserve so much better!

    Second – read more!
    I’ve lost the habit of reading over the last few years, and really need to get back into the swing of it, if only to get rid of the backlog of books my wife keeps buying me for birthdays and Christmas

    Third – on to the computer/Web stuff.
    Get the madCam site back up again.
    This time, try it as a purely standalone thing, with connectivity built in, rather than using a separate Masto account.
    This time, try it as a purely standalone thing, with connectivity built in, rather than using a separate Masto account.
    Figure out – quickly – the best way to do galleries, so I can backport this to MancAvGeek, which is getting unwieldly without access to galleries.
    I’ve gained the habit of writing daily blurbs for MancAvGeek, so writing daily blurbs shouldn’t be too much of a hardship, especially if I alternate them.
    Add the new features/sections to MancAvGeek l keep threatening to do – galleries (see above), daily , proper blogs, maps and guides, etc.

    As an aside, do more planespotting and photography, especially as 2 new daily /sections that have recently been introduced have severely limited material.
    As well as EGCC and EGCB, try and get to EGLL, EGPP, and EGBB.

    Write more for everything, generally, but especially for StuartB – daily (at least) Masto posts, and twice a week for the site.
    And keep it up!
    I’m writing this on the bus to work, no reason I can’t do it for more things!
    Get back to writing fiction – I have so many notes for Rob Knash stuff, it’s unreal, actually DO it!

    Try and do something with the Bassixx and/or Mr303 musical projects that have been languishing for years – it’s been almost 25 years since the Tribute and Lost Tapes albums were recorded, it’s about time something was done with them, even if just launching them into the wild as CC. And as for the long awaited followups…

    Yeah, that’s all I can think of, for now.

    All…

    As if that’s not enough.

    StuartB

  • Kevin Walter Edwards – 30 November 1942 – 20 November 2021

    2 years ago, we lost my Father-in-law, and on the anniversary of his leaving, I thought I should repost the words I posted on a previous version of my site.

    2 men sitting down, the one on the left with short, floppy brown hair and wearing a white checked shirt, the one on the right with dark hair swept back in a quiff and a pair of glasses, and wearing a black shirt. Bothe men are looking at the camera and smiling, in front of a pair of curtains with checks in yellow, green, orange, and red.
    Me and Kevin in a restaurant several years ago.

    Although fairly short of stature, Kevin Edwards was an absolute giant of a man, with a heart as big as his voice, and a personality to go with it.

    Loving father of 6, doting grand-father of 21, and proud great-grand-father of 11 (at the time of writing – this is only going to go up dramatically!), as well as plenty of nephews and nieces, he was a man to whom family was everything.

    A man who effortlessly charmed everyone who met him, he had a string of women willing to throw themselves at his feet, but only ever had eyes for Pam, his wife of 58 years, with whom he was completely besotted.

    Sepia-toned image of a young, newly-married couple on their wedding day. On the left is a man with dark hair in a quiff, and wearing a dak suit with a white shirt and black tie.On the right is a slightly shorter woman, with light hair covered in a thrown-back veil, and wearing a white, heavily embroidered wedding dress, holding a posey of flowers at waist level. Both are looking at the camera and smiling.
    kevin and Pam on their wedding day.

    Posessed of a fine (if largely untrained) tenor voice, he was equally at home leading the hymns at his church, or belting out the songs of his heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis, his song often the first indication that he was nearby, usually entering a room long before the rest of him.

    His sense of humour was legendary, an eclectic mix of dad-jokes and almost-but-not-quite ribald comments, many of which drew an exasperated “Kevin!” from his beloved Pam, usually followed by a giggle from her as he shot her a glance that could only be described as “naughty schoolboy grin”.

    A man being silly, with with yellow and black round sweets inside his glasses, covering his eyes, and a large black sweet dangling from his mouth, while grinning. He is wearing a shirt with green, black, red, and yellow horizontal bands, in front of some fancy curtains.
    A typical photo of kevin.

    In his younger days, he was a fine Rock-And-Roll dancer, with his preferred partner being his wife – in later life, he found himself confined to just watching, but actively encouraged his Grand-daughter, Melissa, to pursue her love of dance, and loved watching her perform.

    When I married his eldest daughter, Louise, he was suffering all manner of health problems, and found walking to be difficult, usually accompanied by a lot of excruciating pain – but he wanted to show how much he respected me, by walking Louise down the aisle, without his cane. By the end, the pain was evident in his face, but so was the love and joy at knowing his daughter had found someone worthy of her and her children.

    Kevin was one of two men I was proud to call Dad, and if I grow up to be half the man he was, I will be doing well.

    StuartB

  • Some Boring Site Update Stuff.

    So, amongst family stuff and some work on another project, today has been spent trying out some themes and plugins for here, as well as getting used to the Guttenburg way of doing things with WP – which, I have to say, is a bit of a major step backwards, as far as I can tell.

    But, I digress.
    One of the things I’ve always hated about WP is the way that themes pretty much never work the way you want them to, straight out of the box.
    And worse, it sometimes seems as if each theme does things entirely it’s own way, meaning that learning the ins and outs of one theme is almost entirely worthless when it comes to another.
    You are left with a pretty bland looking page until you find that one setting that suddenly turns everything in to something stunning.
    If the actual content on the page is a load of rubbish, hey, at least the site looks good, amiright?

    So yeah, the theme in place at the moment is entirely temporary, until I find something I can live with.

    As for apps – well, one of my other (possibly my main) projects involves a lot of photos, for which I’ve never really found a decent way of integrating into galleries and albums, at least without spending an inordinate amount of money.
    So, I’ve been working on trying to find something that would work, without much success so far.

    And then, there is the actual, you know, writing side of things, the single reason for the existence of this site and it’s domain.
    And that… isn’t going so well.
    I have stuff I want to write about, but diving headlong into some weighty subjhects just seems wrong, but I don’t particularly want to start with something light, either, so trying to pin something down isn’t as easy as I would have hoped.
    I have something fairly weighty planned for a week on Monday (Note to self – schedule that one!), and I have plans for a music video anti-advent calendar for December, but apart from that, nothing has been finalised.
    There is one piece I’ve written fairly recently that I am actually almost happy with, and a couple of other bits I could live with if I could just give them a bit of a polish.

    So, yeah, expect some proper stuff from me in the not too distant future, just don’t expect too much of the content, or frequency!
    Mind you, half of the challange of writing is getting in the habit of doing it (again!), and since I’ve been spending a lot of time writing recently, even if it is just blurbs for photos of [Redacted for being too geeky], so hopefully that will stand me in good stead for the future.

    Okay, I have to go and do some more family stuff, so I’ll leave it there.

    StuartB

  • Hello World!

    Well, hello there…

    So, this is my post, trying to find a new way to do Social Media.

    I’m StuartB, British, father of 3, grand-father of one, husband of one.
    Thinker. Purveyor of sweets, snacks, and treats for my grand-daughter. Writer. Snorer. Progressive. Occasional talker of sense. Socialist. Non-practicing intellectual.

    I’m trying to consolidate my posts and everyday, longform posts (which, sadly, have been far too thin on the ground over the last couple of years, hence rebooting the whole site!) in one place, allowing both conventional comments and Social Media responses in one place, and hoping that this will work out better than having my site and my socials seperated.

    The plan is to have 1 (or more) long-form posts a week, daily (or better) short-form posts, and replies through out the day.

    Not sure how well this will work out, but let’s give it a try.

    StuartB


  • Whats the phrase?
    Oh, yeah…
    Ahhh, De Haviland…

  • This is also a test.

  • Hello There…

    So, restarting the whole website from scratch (again!) – I wonder how long I can keep this up this time around…

    The current plan is to post some long-form pieces at least once a week, possibly twice, possibly more often,, with shorter-form posts pretty much daily (again, possibly more!) but who knows, it all depends on what I want to say and how much time I get.

    What kind of content can you expect to find here?
    Well, there could well be all manner of political stuff, as well as some geek-culture commentary, music, and possibly some other things – it’s my little space, I’ll do what I feel like at the time.

    So, onwards and upwards…

    Stuart

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