Recently in Trivia Category

Apparently, May 1st is RSS Awareness Day! It has it's own site at RSSday.org.

The Metheringham Area News site has its own RSS feed.

Hatches and Dispatches

All these people were either born or died on Christmas Day - name them:

1. Scientist, born Xmas Day 1642 in Grantham. He “discovered” gravity when an apple fell on his head. Sir Isaac Newton
2. This US comedian/actor died in 1946. Starred in “My Little Chickadee “with Mae West. WC Fields
3. Born 1899, this laconic US actor had many hit films but never actually said the line - “Play it again Sam”. Humphrey Bogart
4. Brit comedian / DJ, born in Liverpool, 1944. Introduced us to Brother Lee Love and Hot Gossip. Kenny Everett
5 Born 1949, this US Actress is best known for her role as the troubled teenager in the Brian de Palma movie of Stephen King’s Carrie. Cissie Spacek
6. “Sweet dreams are made of this” will lead you to this female Aberdonian singer, born in 1954. Annie Lennox
7. This Irish musician was born in 1957. Duetted with Kirsty MacColl in “Fairytale of New York”. Shane McGowen
8. In 1997 this iconic comedian, famous for his walking stick, bowler hat and moustache, finally left us. Charlie Chaplin
9. One of the original Rat Pack alongside Frank Sinatra. This crooner starred in several films with the comedian Jerry Lewis. Also checked out in 1997. Dean Martin
10. Danish supermodel born in 1968. INXS frontman Michael Hutchence famously ditched her for Paula Yates. Helena Christensen
11. No Angel and White Flag were two hits for this English female singer born in 1971.Dido or Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong
12. The Godfather of Soul departed this earth last Xmas, 2006. James Brown

How many did you get right?

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the addition of a world map and some visitor details to the sidebar at the right of this post - scroll down a bit if you can't see it. This is a small experiment to see where our visitors to our news site are located. The traffic map shows the last 100 visitors and where they're located in the world. The list underneath shows details of the last 10 visitors, which websites they're arriving from and what they're clicking when they leave your site.

The functionality is supplied by Feedjit. A daft name but it works.

Traffic England.

This little gem from the Highways Agency will help you plan your road travel within England. It provides live traffic information updated in real time. Details of delays, incidents & roadworks are all displayed on a zoomable map.

Link added to the Metheringham Area Transport page.

In a rural community like ours, not only is the weather a favourite topic of conversation but it is a vital component in the farming industry. Since this site launched, there has always been a link to a forecast from the nearest weather station (Waddington).

For many years the data has been supplied by the Weather Underground. This is a US based service that allows a small summary plugin to be used on websites. Clicking through the plugin takes you to a busy page with much more detailed weather data.

The UK's own Met Office also produce excellent UK based forecasts. Their layout is much cleaner and, in our opinion, simpler to understand. The weather link in the sidebar has been updated to the Met Office forecast for Lincoln (Waddington). The latest weather in our area is also available on this page.

For those that demand the extra level of detail, The Weather Underground's plugin will remain on the site for the moment in the useful links section.

Its just been pointed out that the comments on the News pages are not working. It must have been like this since the upgrade at the start of last month.

The errant script has been re-installed and the comments checked to ensure they are now working.

Thanks to Philip for pointing it out.

Wikipedia is the free online encyclopdia that anyone can edit. Here are some local entries:

Metheringham

Dunston Pillar

Blankney

Scopwick

JG Magee

Martin

Nocton

The first challenge is to find any others.
The second challege is to expand the existing entries by adding your contribution. It's not as difficult as you might think.