Brian’s Blog – Mostly Harmless…

It was nice to get a Fathers’ Day card from Matt:

As this doesn’t apply to me, he must have sent it to the wrong Dad

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Filed under: Family, Funny, Isle of Wight, Seasonal

Well I think I gave Twitter a good try, about three months or so, but it’s time to say goodbye to it.

Today I deleted my account having still not discovered what all the fuss is about. Yes it’s clever, and yes it keeps you up to date with loads of people’s lives BUT I find Snarfer and RSS feeds do it far better for the kind of things that interest me. Twitter’ll probably turn into the killer app that we’ve all been searching for but, for now at least, I still can’t see the real point of it.

Sorry to anyone following me; I didn’t announce my departure on Twitter before leaving and I guess that may look a bit rude, but the thought of being cajolled into staying was more than I could bear

Toodle-oo Twitter….

Update: And as if to reinforce my decision: “Jogger Hits Tree While Tweeting, Hurtles Toward Global Infamy”.

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Filed under: Isle of Wight, Software, Techie

About a year or so ago and all in the interests of genealogy, I had a Y-DNA (follows the male line) test done. At the time there were only a couple of matches to mine and they were already known to me through more conventional records.

After a few months, as more people had tests done, the number of links grew a bit; again most of them were from people I knew and  shared the same or very similar surname (CURD, CURDS, CURDE etc) however, there were a couple (and now even more) who had other surnames! Perhaps even more surprisingly these were very close DNA matches differing in only 1 or 2 markers which makes it almost certain we share common ancestors. The fact that all these connected persons live in the USA made the match even more interesting. The surname with the most and best matches is ROSE which is obviously not one derived from CURD or one which could be easily mistaken for it.

I had previously contacted one or two of the ROSE relatives, but none could shed light on a possible connection – I assumed one of my ancestors must have “strayed” and, as there are many CURDs in the USA, I assumed the straying took place over there and left it at that; interesting diversion but one that seemed almost impossible to fully explain.

Today, I received an email from a W. ROSE in the USA:

Brian,  I understand that you are working on the Curd family
genealogy so you are probably aware of the fact that DNA of
a group of descendants of Robert ROSE & Dorothy match with
your Curd family descendants.  This Robert came to New England
in the 1630s and probably came from England, possibly Kent.
I’m forwarding the attached Article of the early Long Island, NY
settlers as Robert was the ROSE who was one of the first nine
settlers of Easthampton on Long Island in the 1640s having come
down from Lynn, MA.  This article states that six of the nine early
settlers came from Kent but we’re NOT certain at this time which
of these six are known to be from Kent.  It is possible that one is
our Robert ROSE whose wife was named Dorothy.
Based on there being Curd descendants who match our ROSEs,
there seems to be a connection between the two families and it
possibly began in the Kent area of England prior to the 1630 time
period.  We know that there were ROSEs living in that area so it
is possible that is where Robert came from and where the two
families connected. 
Thanks for your attention to this article and the possible connection
with our ROSE group.

Assuming this info is correct, it means that the “straying” appears to have taken place back here in Kent before 1630 and that my Hertfordshire CURD branch must be connected with KENT branch and also that the common CURD ancestor and therefore MY family were not from Hertfordshire after all!
Having been stuck in 1750 with one John CURD in Hertfordshire, this has rekindled my interest in the family’s history although finding records dating back so far won’t be easy!

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Filed under: DNA, Genealogy, Hobbies, Techie

Had a great long weekend out at Brighstone at the IOW Star Party. Loads of good friends, brilliantly (?) dark skies and wonderful viewing – I even won a prize in the raffle – now it’s time to sleep!
Got to bed at about 2am Fri, 4am Saturday and 3am this morning (still on GMT) I’m knackered but still buzzing.
I hope to add a few pictures of events and some of the images captured over the 4 days but that’ll have to wait for a while – stay tuned…. ZZZZzzzzzz…

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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Isle of Wight, Photography

Over on the right of my homepage you can hopefully see the output from a streaming webcam.

For now, I am experimenting with it connected to a telescope to get in close to a bird feeder in the garden. Eventually I hope to use the thing for astronomy but before making any permanent mods to the camera I thought I’d lash something up with “gaffer” tape.

Please bear with me if the camera goes off line, the tape has probably broken! – one day it’ll have its own page I think.

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Filed under: Astronomy, Hardware, Hobbies, Home, Isle of Wight, Photography, Techie