End of the affair

Last year i began Project Debloggification to replace my blogs with my own website. This has been successfully carried out but there was one blog left: this one! This blog will today also come to an end, however it will be replaced by... another blog!

Why is this then? The only content i have not transferred (or am in the process of) to the web site are my book reviews, i think these will be better served in the blog format. I thought it might be better to create a new blog without all of the legacy posts on other topics getting in the way. So, Knell Lane has ended and Morton Bagot has been born!

This blog will no longer be updated but will remain open to view. Instead, new posts will appear on the new blog. The new blog has book reviews (fiction and non-fiction) as well as trip reports and the odd historical post. Thank you for visiting this blog and i hope you will join me on the new one!

Last cut

Another of my blogs has now reached the end of it's life (though will remain viewable in it's afterlife of course). This is the big one, my canal blog which has been going for over sixteen years! The blog was updated daily (week days that is) with a photo from my journeys around the canal network. However, i now have a British waterways website so its time to retire the old blog.

Project Deblogification continues, just one blog remains to end... this one. However, there is a new blog which will replace it. More details soon.

Last screening

Way back in 2017 i began a movie review blog. It was restricted to reviews of films from the 20th century because reasons, and has stuck to that mostly (there have been a couple of reviews of films from the late 1890s!) Now, after eight years and 1,999 reviews i have finally decided to call it a day. Why 1,999? Well the blog is for films between 1900 and 1999 so i thought it was an amusing number to end on...

The blog has tended to review more obscure and lesser known films, especially B-movies from the 1930s to 1950s, rather than famous blockbusters though i did end on Star Wars, my favourite film of all. It will be strange to no longer be seeking out films and reviewing them but it is quite a drain on my time and i think it is better to end now than to struggle on and fizzle out after review 2,217 or something.

The blog is not going anywhere, the reviews will all be available to view for ever more (or until Google kill my Blogger account).

Deblogification one year on

A year ago (or a year and four days ago to be exact) my then-new website replaced my railway stations blog. Since then five other sections of my web site have replaced or supplemented my other blogs. Phase 2 of Project Deblogification will see the ending of new posts on three other blogs (including this one). This will take place over the next few months.

However, there is a new blog in development which will be book review and history based. This will replace Knell Lane (this blog), this will happen sometime in the Autumn.

Happy first birthday to my website

Last year i began a project to replace some (if not all) of my blogs with a dedicated website. The website went live this time last year and has continued to grow. Several blogs have been replaced by it and maybe others will too. Well we'll see!

The website can be seen here. I wonder what the website's second year will bring.

Waterways reaches 3000

My waterways photo blog is my oldest blog, the first posts being way back in 2009! Today we reached a milestone with the 3000th blog post! Actually earlier in the year i was thinking of ending the blog on post 3000 but later i changed my mind, it is going to continue. We begin the road to 4000 tomorrow...

Project Deblogification complete

The Around the Shires blog, which looks at British towns and villages, has now become the latest blog to reach the end of updates and has been replaced by a section on my website. This now completes Project Deblogification, but wait... didn't i say earlier that there were two blogs left to be replaced?

Indeed, i did plan to replace my Waterways blog last of all but having given it some thought i have decided to keep that blog going. There will be a section on my website coming soon dedicated to canals and other inland waterways, however i think this section complements rather than replaces the blog.

Another one bites the dust

Project Deblogification continues, this time the diesel and electric rolling stock blog (originally called TOPS Tastic) which has now been replaced by a new section on my website, which you can see using the link. Not all of the content has been transferred across by any means but more and more will make the switch and be updated as it is so over the following months.

That just leaves two blogs left to replace and that will be done by October. This blog, Knell Lane, isn't going anywhere though! I need this blog to tie everything together.

Two down, three to go

Project deblogification continues, the Typewriters blog has now had it's last update. Instead, fans of retro office technology such as typewriters, calculators and dialphones can get their fix at my dedicated website. I have three more blogs to retire and transfer to the website though there will probably be a bit of a gap before the next retirement.

Deblogification begins

After a number of years of heavy duty blogging on a number of blogs, including this one of course, i have decided to cut back my blogging activity dramatically. Indeed, i plan to only keep updating this one in the long-term. I am going to replace the other blogs with sections of my new web site, starting with the Calling At stations blog which had it's last update this week. Going forward, new stations and updates will only appear on my Railway stations website.

There are a number of reasons for this process of deblogification (is that a word?) Blogger only really changes for the worst, making things harder or more tedious to do. I also do not have as much control over the blog, even with a lot of CSS customisation, as i do over my own website. Plus, i want to try and keep my web design skills relevant and fresh as i do not do this much at work anymore.

So, by about the end of next year the deblogification process should be completed. Until then updates will continue on the blogs though the website is where the real action is.

Return of the homepage

For years (many in fact - i did my first one in early 1995) i had a homepage, always hand crafted in HTML. Then i got into blogging in the late 2000s and early 2010s and i began to use my blogs such as this one as my homepage instead. 

However, i am unsure if Blogspot has a future. Google do not seem to care any more about the platform and they have a tendency of deleting things when they bore of them! Therefore, I have decided to create a new homepage which includes content from my two railway blogs, this blog and the Shires blog, and my typewriter blog. Hopefully these blogs will not die (at least before i do) but if they do... well there will be a place for my content to continue, and here it is.

Around the shires

For a number of years i have operated a blog called Midlands Photos which is a photo blog of places (one different city, town or village as the week's theme) in the Midlands of England (the number of counties gradually increasing over time). 

However, i have decided to open this out to the entire country, instead of changing the existing blog i have replaced it with a new one called Around the shires which has been running in parallel for a few months and is now ready to take over. This is a similar site though will include non-Midlands counties and also outside of England too. It also will have a little more textual content than just photos chiefly a profile of the week's theme on the first day, it will also have more videos. The old blog will continue to exist though will probably not be updated after next week.

Hitting those keys with a new blog

My latest blog has now gone fully live. It is dedicated to typewriters, which as you know i have become obsessed with over the last couple of years. The typewriter collection is currently at fourteen with three pending so there should be lots to talk about. You can find the Typewriter Museum here.

Around the shires

Today we make live our latest blog, Around the shires. This has features on the towns and villages of England and Wales (i would include the other two nations though have not yet been to them!) The blog will try and avoid covering larger settlements, especially cities, and concentrate on villages and market towns.

Happy 500th (station)

My railway station blog Calling At... has reached a notable milestone. London Liverpool Street is the 500th station to be covered on the blog. It will take some time to reach 1000 at the current rate as currently new stations are added weekly. Maybe in just over nine and a half years time!

The Midlands Photos Blog

We have a new blog to join the family. The Midlands Photo Blog is similar to our Waterways blog and the now defunct Railway Photo Blog in having a new photo published every week day. The Midlands Photo Blog will be concentrating Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, the West Midlands, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Leicestershire (including Rutland). One town or village will be the theme every week with photos of interesting buildings, other built environment and nature. You can see the blog here.

Love the 1970s blog

Time to introduce my latest blog. I've wanted a blog based on the 1970s for some time, and have had a couple of failed attempts to get one off the ground. Love the 1970s is the latest attempt and seems to have taken flight, as it were, so i feel confident to announce it! It is a nostalgic blog which harks back to the pop culture and some major events of fifty years before. Therefore currently the blog is looking at 1970, next year will be 1971! The blog contains music videos, album and movie reviews and photos from the 1970s. I'm not sure what will happen if the blog is still around in 2030, maybe it will just change it's name to Love the 1980s!

One hundred movie reviews up

At the start of the year I launched three new blogs. Two of them (on waterway and computer history) I expected would work out really well. The third, a blog of movie reviews, was more speculative and I honestly didn't know how if it was a good idea and how long it would survive. As it happens the two history blogs didn't work out and have been archived. The movie blog on the other hand is going from strength to strength and passed the hundred review milestone last week.

The movie blog has evolved very quickly. It started out just featuring reviews of films I had seen in the past, so a lot of 1980s and 1990s stuff (the blog is restricted to twentieth century movies). Then I discovered the wealth of older movies available on the likes of Amazon Prime and Youtube. Most reviews nowadays seem to be of 1930s crime dramas - which I am now most certainly a fan of. The blog continues and it will be interesting to see if it evolves again.

Public domain image of "The Air Mail" lobby card

Calling At...

Introducing my latest blog Calling At! I've got two railway blogs already but here is a third, why? Well the other blogs concentrate mostly on rolling stock (locomotives, multiple units et cetera) but this new blog looks at the actual stations much of that rolling stock serves. National Rail and preserved stations are covered, basically stations that i visit in my travels.

I'm trying to make the posts as geographically spread as possible so we've already visited London, Liverpool, the Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire and Wales - though the majority of posts will be in the Midlands as that is where i go the most!

Monks Risborough

Liverpool James Street