TheTrainLine.com is a website that allows UK rail passengers to buy their tickets online. It has just introduced booking fees, meaning that a ticket booked with TheTrainLine now costs more than buying the same ticket at the station. Fortunately, there are alternatives.
The slippery slope to booking fees started some years ago, when TheTrainLine introduced a [...]
Royal Mail have a page on their website where it is possible to find out the last Christmas posting dates for international destinations.
But what do Royal Mail recommend if, after choosing your destination, the deadline for that country has already passed? Under the heading What to do next it suggests: “Try a different service or [...]
Occasionally, I’ll see something in an article on the BBC News website that seems wrong, so I drop them a note via their contact form to point it out. They are actually quite good at correcting factual errors, although they seem not to write back to thank the the people who pointed them out. The [...]
I’ve decided not to post an April Fool on my website this year. That’s not because of a lack of imagination (well, OK, it’s partly that too) but rather that I realised the internet covers all of the different timezones, so it would always be the wrong day for the joke somewhere in the world.
I [...]
Recently, I read about two newly-launched web-based services that help to match people up with others for their mutual benefit. One, studentswaps.com, was for students going away to university to live in the home of another family in a swap system, with the aim of saving money on accommodation costs. The other, localmothers.co.uk, was [...]
I’ve noticed that a lot of visitors are reaching my site by searching for information on UK postcodes. So I might as well say something about them, and link to some sites I find useful.
The system of postcodes in the UK is (almost?) unique as a postcode pinpoints a small number of addresses – usually [...]
We often hear about the “Great Firewall of China”, the filter put in place by Chinese censors to prevent access to material that is disapproved of by the Chinese government. For example, there is no access to BBC News. However, for those in the West, it’s usually only possible to read media reports, or hear [...]
I came across a site, Learn History, which offers revision materials for GCSE History exams. As part of its “Crime, punishment and protest” section, it has a gallery showing aerial photos of prisons in England and Wales.
This is the photo which they claim is of Leicester prison:
As anyone from Leicester will realise, the photo in [...]
Ever since Google extended their Local service to the UK, satellite photo coverage has been, quite literally, rather patchy, with not many areas covered by high resolution images. Recently, however, they have been extending the detailed images, and there has been discussion about whether they are now using aerial photos from aircraft rather than satellite [...]
Recently it occurred to me that when I’m writing my name or introducing myself, I never include a title: I’m simply Jonathan Rawle. The question of titles is particularly significant for me at the moment, as people who know me might understand… Anyway, my preference is not to use a title, and when I’m addressing [...]