Bill's Beard

William and Isabella (nee McKinlay) Hunter lived for many years in the coal mining community of Lochgelly where they died in 1925. They had successive homes in Grainger Street, Chapel Street and Plantation Street. I would guess this photo of my great grandparents dates from around 1920. Whilst looking for information about the family I stumbled across online software which can be used to animate old photographs. The video clip below was created using the above image. If you sign up for a free trial on the MyHeritage website it's possible to animate a limited number of portraits. I suppose that in the future image manipulation of this kind will be widely used for those creating and presenting a family history. I'm undecided if I like it or if it contributes much of value. Moving on... below is an extract from the  Hunter Family Tree . Note that at present (April, 2021) I'm sti

In 1985 I made a number of trips to the General Register Office (image below) in Princes Street, Edinburgh to research my ancestry. That was before digitisation so it was necessary to physically search the civil registers of births, marriages and deaths. I also spent hours looking through Old Parish Registers and census records. It was a laborious process, but after a couple of weeks enough information was gathered to construct a basic family tree.

On another blog page I described how in 1985 I made several trips to the General Register Office in Princes Street, Edinburgh to  research my ancestry. This is a  link to my Hunter Family Tree  as far as it goes at present. It is an ongoing project. The photographs posted below are members of the Hunter clan. Each has a reference number to help find that person's entry on the family tree. Further photos will be added as I search them out.

In March 2021  Rangers Football Club  became Scottish Premiership Champions. Scotland's greatest football club have now won a record-breaking 55 league titles. In fact, since their formation in 1872, Glasgow Rangers have accumulated more domestic trophies than any other football club in the world. It has been a difficult decade for Rangers fans, but we are back in our rightful position as the dominant force in Scottish football.

I decided to replace the spark plugs on my Suzuki Jimny. This blog page includes images and comments on fitting new plugs. I've owned my Jimny for about 7 years and never replaced the spark plugs. Whether they'd ever been renewed since the car's manufacture in April 2007 I don't know, but with a current mileage of just under 63K I came to the conclusion that it was probably about time.

I've previously written about my 2007 Suzuki Jimny and explained why I think it's such a great little vehicle. In this post I give an account of how the starter battery was rejuvenated by a 'smart' charger and take a look at the brands and specifications of battery which can be fitted to this model of car.

This blog is hosted by Google. In the past I've considered the pros and cons of using Google's Blogger and why I chose Blogger for this blog. This article looks at how snippets of code can be neatly displayed within posts using a few lines of CSS. I opted for the  Contempo Aqua  theme for this blog, but regardless of the theme you decide to install it's probable that you'll want to customise its appearance to some degree. I decided to keep things simple and not to edit the HTML content of the theme's template. The few changes I've made have been achieved by the addition of  CSS . To add CSS, starting from the Blogger dashboard, follow these steps... Click Theme . Under 'My theme' click Customise . From the resulting menu choose Advanced . Use the down arrow then click Add CSS . Insert and then  Save  your CSS code. From time to time I'll provide explanations of modifications that have been made to my blog through the ad

Elsewhere in my blog I've posted an article about a book I had published in 1996. It was reviewed by the Sunday Times and described as a trainspotter's paradise . The subject matter was football results forecasting and betting. Football Fortunes is more than a little dated, but even so I spent a couple days scanning its pages to compile a PDF file which can be viewed online. Improbable perhaps, but someone, somewhere may still find something of interest. I hope so!