The Old Man

So sorry for Joe. Thanks for the update, Randee. If you are in touch, please send him our warmest regards as Gotham says and tell him we're thinking about him and missing him. He promised to take me to a baseball game one day if I ever get across to the US, so he must get better as I'm holding him to it!

Ok, it's all good fun. Smith, such a common name! Here goes... Interesting, I'd always assumed it was something to do with Blacksmiths, which is the medieval term for metal workers. Join me down at the river for a blood letting ceremony and I'll tell you more.... Are we all sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin... I don't know about any blacksmiths or metal workers in the family, but on my father's side of the family and according to word of mouth, apparently a few generations back (great, great, great grandfather or so), a young lad ran away from school in South Africa after being beaten by his teacher for spilling some ink. He stowed away on a sailing ship and when eventually he was discovered out at sea, they took a liking to him and he became the captain's cabin boy. The story goes that he grew up on the ship and became an apprentice ship's carpenter and learnt his trade. Years later, he came to England and met a nurse, got married and stayed here. Somehow the family came to live in Birmingham. My grandad who is 97, moved from Birmingham to North Wales when my dad and his brother were boys. He was a steam train driver, which was apparently a high paid job back then. He just came home from work one night and told his wife and kids they were all moving to North Wales, and he took a demotion to work on the rail tracks, which apparently was unheard of. One son became a joiner (aka carpenter), the other a long distance lorry (truck) driver. Now both have grand-children. No sign of any metal workers though, as far as I know.

Thank you Randee, have been thinking about Joe all day. 🤗

I honestly miss Erin so much. So frustrating we never got to say goodbye to her. Every time I see and read her posts, content, articles on the main site etc it breaks my heart. Hope her family are doing okay. We lost one friend too many. Please, no more.

Absolutely gutted, poor Joe and his family. So caught up in my own problems this year, this really puts things into perspective. Huge hugs Joe, you can do this old friend. Thoughts and prayers for a speedy, strong recovery. X X X

Hi folks, Over the last few months I've been ill since January so when I've been up to it, I've had some time to work on the Millennium Group Home Page and it has been updated with a lot of nifty new bells and whistles. You may have already seen it, as I left it live whilst working on it. I dropped a hint in the Chatbox some time ago that I was working on something cool, well at least I think it is! Here's a video or just head over to check it out and have a play with it! https://millennium-thisiswhoweare.net/homepage.php Firstly, and this was asked for very long ago by the amazing @ethsnafu (who would have to be the most patient guy in the world if he were still waiting for me to learn how to achieve this!), there is a now a faux modernised implementation of the much loved Millennium Group voice recognition log-in. Secondly, you can choose from the various Millennium characters who used the vocal log-in and some extra effects for fans of our Chatbox boom! The default voice is of course Frank Black. I've converted the Javascript framework over from Mootools to jQuery. I've also been having a play around with jQuery to try and learn more about it, and so the Home Page now has some new special effects, especially if you are using Firefox as your browser. For some reasons, there is occasionally some fast scrolling when opening and closing things in Chrome. I've updated the Settings Panel to give you more customisation options. You can now reload/refresh the page using the small button at the top right, to see the special log-in approved message at any time. You can play around with the vocal log-in, by clicking on the waveform. I've updated the Twitter live feed blocks which now auto update, to include news from the BBC, TIWWA and tech news from Ars Technica. Added a background image of the The Suchow (Soochow/Su-chou) Planisphere Added 2 default short cut links to M-TIWWA and the TIWWA forums, you can still add up to 3 more of your own. You can still use the Google Search for web pages and images, and search Wikipedia. When using Google Search, you can also filter/restrict the search results to TIWWA as shown in the video. Brand new pop up Date Picker to make changing your count down date much easier! Option to instantly reset all settings back to default and clear cookies. Hope you enjoy the changes and find useful ways to use the page, even if just for fun!

This Is Who We Are

Wow, @Walkabout you throw amazing par-tays!

Happy Birthday Alex! Have an amazing birthday! Graham

Happy Birthday Joe! Have a brilliant day! From one Old Man to Another!

It's pretty cool and offers a lot for the price. You definitely get more value from it if you have a Amazon Prime. In hindsight, I probably would have got the version with voice control, but when you get used to selecting a few letters in the search box, you find it autocomplete your search words so you don't have to type the whole word or sentence out. I bought one primarily to watch the Grand Tour series but I really like it for the YouTube app on it as I don't have a smart TV. I had an email to advise there's a software update for it which ads new functionally so I should try it out.

I'm halfway through Season 2 binge watch of Fortitude, this series just keeps getting better and more and more creepy! It has a Thing/X-Files feel to it. Season 2 is brilliant so far. Brilliant acting, great writing, stunningly shot, hugely atmospheric, oh and really scary polar bears. What's not to like?! I have to record them all, another one of those addictive shows where one episode a week is torture.

Not seen it yet but noticed it's available on Amazon Prime (I occasionally one of those Firesticks), so I added it to my watch list a few months back.