I took my camera out yesterday to snap a new pic for the Chamber of Trade site. I’m still getting used to it – it’s a Lumix bridge camera and it’s only the third time it’s been used in earnest (apart from the odd foodie photo for Lindsey’s blog). I thought I’d have a play with the resulting images -  this one is ‘all arty’ as it has been dragged though a couple of filters in Paintshop Pro…

 The second one was taken from The Oak Inn in Oak Street. Different filters, different paint effect.

Yes, I know – I’ll keep trying!

£10,000 has been provided by the Priorities Challenge Fund (Museums Libraries & Archives) to employ a project officer on a five-month contract at the Fakenham Museum of Gas & Local History. Frances Collinson is considering a name change for the musum and is asking for suggestions. Read the story at the EDP’s website.  

Boost for Fakenham gas museum – Norfolk News – EDP24.

What do you reckon to this story in today’s EDP? Marston’s are a large Staffordshire-based brewery and pub company (they have over 1700 pubs across the UK). They own the Wychwood, Jennings, Banks’s, Brakspeare and Ringwood beer brands as well as high-street ‘cooking-lager’ brands  like Carlsberg, Stella Artois, Carling and Fosters.

They’re apparently looking at opening a bar & restaurant in the Clipbush Lane area, close to the proposed Health Centre complex.

Do we need it? Is an edge-of-town site good for our town?

Last night, I got a phonecall from my mate Sean. He’s a bit of a sci-fi film fiend and fancied seeing the latest Iron Man 2 movie. Being brought up on Marvel comics, I liked that idea too, so I walked into town and met him at the Hollywood Cinema at about 8. We bought our tickets and waited outside for a little while for the previous show to finish (it was still quite warm yesterday evening).

When we sat down we had the place to ourselves, so chose our spot at the back in the middle (Oi – no sniggering about back seats in the cinema you lot!) and settled down for the film. We really enjoyed the movie – a good bit of fun and nicely done SFX. Downey gives the part an eccentric edge and doesn’t take things too seriously.

Unfortunately, the screening was very slightly spoiled by some ‘scratches’ on the screen. It looked like the whole movie had been dragged across the ground, with intermittent diagonal white lines appearing whenever the picture was dark. However, on our way out, the guy on the desk came over to apologise for that (they’d spotted it too, obviously) and offered us free tickets for another film.

That’s the way to do it!  Two pretty impressed customers who’ll definitely be back soon – thanks, Hollywood Cinemas. I’m definitely glad I bought that Gold Card.

BBC News – Google admits wi-fi data collection blunder.

The Google Street View cars have been snooping into open WiFi connections as they drove round taking photos. Google said during a review that it found it had “been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks”.

What I think they mean is that after a German Data Protection Agency requested a data audit and found them out, they decided to come clean, but to say they didn’t mean to do it.

As if.

The bluebells in Foxley Wood today.

Do any of my older readers see a similarity between erstwhile climate change secretary and Labour MP Ed Milliband and the late comedian Bernie Winters?

Here’s a 1960′s snap of Ed and his brother Mike, who were a comedy double act at the time. That’s an uncanny parallel with Bernie, whose brother David Milliband makes up a comedy double act which will soon be running in the Labour leadership battle.

In my previous post I mentioned a new project I’ve been working on. It’s now ready to inflict on release to the general public. NorthNorfolk.net is a website where you can publish free press releases and events listings for Norfolk businesses and community projects.

Involved in Norfolk community projects? If you have a school play, village meeting, charity fundraiser, free music gig – in fact anything non-profitmaking that you’re organizing, you can get free publicity.

Do you run a company or business in Norfolk? Create and publish a press release completely free. It’s free advertising and raises your profile to a local audience. There’s help on the website to get you started and it’s an easy process. Profit-making events listings are accepted too – beer festivals, music venues, sports events, business seminars and the like. 

Are you a journalist, media professional or blogger? A simple and free signup process will enable you to get new PR and events listings sent direct to your inbox. Keep in touch with relevant local news stories you may not have noticed before without lifting a finger! All listings will be published on Facebook and Twitter too – so you may prefer to keep informed via one of those methods.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Having seen businesses and organizations struggle to get their Norfolk news out to the public for years, I thought I’d do something about it by creating a ‘one-stop shop’. I’d welcome any feedback you have too. Fill yer boots!

Fakenham’s a small town. You’d think it would be easy to let everybody know when you had some news to tell. Unfortunately, I haven’t found that to be true over the years. We all seem to be involved with friends and colleagues in small groups and news doesn’t always escape into the outside world efficiently.

Newspapers like The EDP, Fakenham Times and The Fakenham Sun play their part. In fact they do a really great job in keeping us all informed. Trouble is, they can only ever print a limited snapshot of what’s going on at any one time and they don’t all pick up on the same information.  Also, there are lots of different people you need to contact when you have something happening and need to tell the world - and if your news is business related you may not be able to reach your target audience easily.

When Kick Start Fakenham held its first tentative meeting over a year ago, I mentioned the fact that there was no central point of information distribution. No single place you could go to make sure that your news reached the right people. At the time, it looked like Kick Start might provide that central point, but their website is still to be published and if the truth’s known, they’re probably finding the same old problems themselves when they need to get their info published.

So, I’ve come up with something myself. It will be launching soon

Here’s a photo, taken in my kitchen, of a bottle of juice drink from Aldi….

Notice anything?

The creeping menace of phantom apostrophes. They’re becoming deeper and deeper entrenched into our collective psyche. Soon this ignorant Philistine of a grammatical error will become part of the English language.

You mark my word’s!