MERRY CHRISTMAS

A Merry Christmas to all Zoomers and readers of our blog.
Don't forget to put out the mince pie and sherry for father Chtistmas otherwise he'll not leave you any presents.
Beware of an over indulgence of turkey and plun duff and to stand up to attention for the National Anthem and please try to stay awake for the Queen's speech,
Lang May your lumm reack. may you have plenty of bourbles jingle in your pouch.
Happy New Year,

Gallery Oldham - Glass through the Ages 15.12.05

The day started off as a little cold and windy but dry and the group was a little smaller than usual.

We started in the gallery containing two large stained glass windows. The first one described to us by Ann our audio presenter. This window was originally in the Chapel of Rest at the original Oldham Infirmary. This is a beautiful window about 7ft tall and 4ft wide.

The other window, very much the same size, had come from a very wealthy mill merchant's manor house. The figure in this lovely window represented "Peace" and was surrounded by pictures of philosophers. Beneath the main figure there were pictures of a cog wheel, steam engine regulater and various other items representing the industrial revolution.

On the wall at the end of the gallery, there were etched windows from Chadderton Swimming Baths and also from Public Houses.

We all then tropped downstairs to the education suite and were treated to mince pies - as many as you could eat - cups of tea and coffee and then settled down to handling various glass bottles.

I particularly remember the soda water bottles with the glass stoppers in the top. As a lad, I collected these bottles in the Lancashire County Cricket Ground and returned them to the glass bottle manufacturers in bif wicker baskets. I have to confess to break8ng one or two necks of these bottles to get to the glass allies as they were prized by young lads. Of course, I ended up with a clip atound the ear.

There were fluted bottles, used by herbalists to indicate poison contents and there was even a flat curved baby's feeding bottle with a glass stopper.

Local glass manufacturers made bottles with their names embossed on them. Some bottles had a n indentation on two sides to enable you to hold them. There were tiny bottles which held sewing machine oil and an original coca cola bottle.

A most enjoyable visit.

Happy Christmas and New Year to all.

Joint posting from Ken and Elaine.

Memory

I started to type this short piece! I looked up to look at the screen(that
shows what a lousy typist i am) and the screen was blank( a little like me)Now the reason for this piece is that some of were saying how easerly we forget simple things on a Monday! like for me my right hand goal post(I) Cheers for now D.B P.s It seems! as it has been pointed out to me! that I must (remember) not to twell to long on the keys! or might it be that I might be said to be stuttering!! D.B.

Manchester Museum/Reptiles and more 25th November

Unfortunately Linda, my volunteer driver was not available on the morning of the visit, so I took my courage in both hands and caught the bus. It was a nice dry day and with the help of students, I found my way to the main hall. Mary greeted me when she saw me approach and took me to the other members of the group. There were about 23 or so altogether, a very enthusiastic group all raring to go.

The curator startled everybody by coming in with a python in both hands, I reckon about four foot. He made a beeline for me and said " here hold on to that". The body was quite warm and the markings on the were beautiful. The spine of the python was quite pronounced which was surprising. He was fed only once a month because it takes three weeks for this reptile to digest his food.

The next exhibit was a toad which had been donated to the museum. It was found in a container and was thought to have originated in India.
It was dark and about the size of my palm. It felt very cold and appeared to have a sticky surface. It's feet were gentle when it was placed on my hand and very still.

Another reptile was a chameleon, bigger than the toad. It was brightly coloured, green and turquoise and the keeper told us that if it became angry with us it would become orange. The eyes were quite bulbous, so I am told, and each moved independently swivelling in all directions. The feet were strong and gripped firmly.

The tree frog adopted me and decided to have a stroll up my sleeve. It was quite small and made a strange calling noise which could have been a quiet type of chuckle. The colour was described as good camouflage.
The next reptile was a snub tailed gecko. This creature was able to fool an attacking snake when being attacked by shedding it's tail. The rear of it was very similar to the head and a short sighted snake, if there is such a thing, would be deprived of its dinner.

The next group of creatures to appear were all mounted. We started with the fox, which is beautiful. It was the size of a small sheep dog, pointed face and of course the renowned bushy tail. A great shame to think of it being hunted.

The next was a mink. A wonderfully jet black silky coat. Much smaller than the fox and again a shame to think of it being hunted for fur coats.
The next was an otter, this animal having suffered greatly at the hands of the mink, almost to extinction. Fortunately they are now coming back into the wild as a result of conservation and the mink numbers are decreasing. The otter was about four foot head to tail, with powerful short legs. The otter's coat is short and very smooth, tailored to be water repellent. It's head appeared to be small but overall a powerful looking animal.

The baby penguin was next and we were told that they mated for life.
Posted by Ken Leckie.

Were you there take 2

A group from the Monday zoomers had lunch together at a nearby weatherspoons! which John(chowo) guided us on the right path, by taking our drinks orders!! Then next came the complecations of ordering our meals(that was almost chaos), then some wanted bread pudding! Plus coffee this john(c) and dave(tiger)saw to for the group. Just to say in closing! it was great to see John Rs grand daughter Julie with us. (lets hope we did not let ourselves down)

A Big search engine

www.big.com

It's a search engine with a very clear layout, and is alot easier to use with a screen reader ( eg Jaws ) than Google. It's provided by the people who run the snap and looksmart search engines. However, it may not be as good a search engine as google.

were you there

At the carol s on Thursday evening! It was a lovely night at the cathedral for Henshaws carols by candlelight, one had two choirs and the well known Henshaws hotspots who inject an enthusiasm into the proceedings. How about going next year (all being well!) Bye Don p.s( now to publish!!)

Reading posts in Zoomers

If you're reading a post in zoomers, you may get tired of having to pan horizontally using a mouse or trackball. Here are a couple of alternatives.

First resize the width of the Internet Explorer window so that it's about a third of the width of the screen. Its easier to do this if you temporarily reduce the magnification. Then the width of the post should fit within the screen, and you can scroll vertically using the mouse scroll wheel ( or trackball equivalent ). Note that you can adjust the rate of scrolling on the Wheel tab on the Mouse Properties dialog ( which you get by double clicking on Mouse in the Control Panel ).

This paragraph shows what it looks like if the width of the post is restricted to one quarter of the screen width. With your magnification set to 4, the width should just fill the width of the screen. Is this more readable?

The second way is to use the panning and moving provided by your screen magnifier. You'll be using the arrow keys and the home key, and its easier to use the numerical key pad for these with num lock off. Start holding down the ALT key ( or for magicians, the MAGIC key ). To pan to the right press RIGHT ARROW - pressing it again increases the rate of panning, and to slow down press LEFT ARROW. When you get to the end of the line, and preferably before you hit the edge of the window, press the HOME key. This moves you to the left edge of the window, after which you'll continue panning to the right, and you can read the next line. After about four lines you'll reach the bottom of the window. Let go of the ALT or MAGIC key, and using the mouse scroll wheel, scroll down about four lines, and start panning again.

Finally for those using Zoomtext, the DocReader feature should be useful, but it doesn't seem to work very well on web pages - I'll try and find out more about this.