Tracing the family back…
I’ve mentioned previously that my wife and I have both started investigating our genealogy with the help of online resources, in fact it’s turned into a competition to see how far we can trace back. My wife insists she’s winning as she can currently trace her great grand parents back to late Victorian times, however I keep telling her she’s fighting a losing battle; I can trace my family back to the Chin Dynasty who ruled from 265-289A.D… nuff said!
   Unlike the England football team, tracing your ancestry can be quite interesting and fun. In fact the earliest census in 1841 has recently been released. Instead of coughing up nearly £70 for an annual subscription, I subscribed for a free trial on www.ancestry.co.uk which appeared to be the most popular genealogy website and I searched and searched - and found nothing! I even searched for my Gran who died in the 1980s, but couldn’t find her; I’m sure she existed! We found one possible match for the wife’s ancestors, but decided to

 cancel the trial before they took any of my money as we found the website not very helpful at all.
   I’m getting the feeling that it’s going to be a lot of paper shuffling and trips to The National Archives in Kew (HERE) rather than using these websites - always assuming we can dedicate the time…

Can the Internet fill up?
Recently a DaC driver asked me if the Internet can get full up? I must admit I can understand why they asked the question, but the simple answer is no, the Internet will never fill up as it has no end; it’s a never-ending network of connected PCs and servers.  However censorship, freedom of speech and abuse of position are the real threats to the Internet.  Too many countries attempt to censor their people’s Internet access - countries such as China, Singapore and the Middle East. Also massive companies such as Microsoft and Google can easily adapt information to suit  their own needs.

Taxi websites
I’ve now been writing for Call Sign for nine years and in the very early days most of my articles introduced new UK taxi websites as they hit the web, in fact, to my knowledge, my web site www.taxicab.co.uk was the very first UK taxicab website, although it now just points to my vintage photo and calendar website.
   Recently I’ve been searching the web, checking-out UK taxi sites and I saw an advert on a cab for http://www.taxi-mart.co.uk, so thought I’d visit their site. Taxi-mart.co.uk obviously intends to be number one for black cabs and taxi sales as they appear to be dedicating a lot of revenue to advertising what is a good website.
   They have all the normal sections you’d expect to see in a taxi website and more, including Taxi Sales, a Forum and loads of Taxi Resources. Definitely worth a visit.

Until next time, be lucky…
Vince Chin