Patrick Taylor

This is my personal website with entries going back to July 2005; an outlet for thoughts and opinions on various topics, and information about me and people I know (not much, but some). Feel free to contribute where comments are welcome. My other websites are listed bottom right, and occasionally I build for other people:

Patrick Taylor Web Design

A one-man web design and development consultancy working from North West England (UK). Hand-crafted custom web solutions for individuals, small businesses, and other bodies creating an elegant, effective, and standards-compliant presence on the World Wide Web with a service characterised by attention to detail and affordability.

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Calamitous Policies:
The North South Divide

A reader's comment (not me) on a recent Guardian article after "predictions by leaders of three of England's biggest cities of social unrest and the break-up of civil society amid new evidence that government policies are widening rather than narrowing the economic divide between north and south."

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The best way to update (upgrade) WordPress

Ten easy steps…

Having run WordPress since 2005 without any problem I've found that this is the best way to update to the latest version: a manual update over which you have full control compared to the auto update function within WordPress. It assumes you have an FTP client program with which you can access your web space (I use CuteFTP). Proceed as follows:

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Sad Sinkings: Hood and Bismarck 1941, Tirpitz 1944

Reading 'Target Tirpitz' by Patrick Bishop (2012).

There's something stark about the sea battles of World War II, especially those fought in the cold waters of the North Atlantic and further north off Norway where it's even colder. Sinkings are always poignant; when they are deliberate and lives are lost they are horrific, regardless of the whys and wherefors. Some seem to capture people's imagination more than others: the sinkings of Hood and Bismarck in May 1941.

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People
  • Portrait of Germaine Brooks Article about Germaine and Basil Brooks
  • Article about W.T.Taylor & Co. Ltd Picture of Brigitte d'Aramon
  • Butch Ingham The Mona Flinta
  • Clive Leyland Françoise Taylor
Snippets
Quote
  • ... the diggers were drinking their gold away. Intoxicated miners with pockets bulging with gold dust lurched from bar to bar, festooning girls with jewellery and lighting their pipes with £5 notes...
    australian gold rush »
  • ... shrapnel hitting craft so we jumped for it at 0800hrs. Cairns hit in leg. Woods hit in eye. Got on to coast road where things were unpleasant owing to mortars and shells flying around...
    kenneth taylor war diary »
  • ... no other design of camera has achieved such a classic look with its exquisitely composed straights and curves and the elegant counterbalance of dark textured surfaces with bright shining edges...
    design classics »
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