729.me.uk

About this site

Thank you for visiting this web address. There are two active sets of pages here. They are the story of my efforts at woodturning and, from September 2006, details of our attempts at a so called self-build narrowboat which is named On Schedule ! Please feel free to check out these pages at your leisure.

About me

Without giving away too many secrets, I can tell you that I'm male and retired in October 2009. In fact this change to the page's text is being written on the day after I packed up work! However, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of undertaking further paid work in the future. I live in the Home Counties and am married and have a daughter who lives locally.

My main interest as I grew up was railways, although I never wanted to be an engine driver, and I spent all but a few months of my pre-retirement working life in jobs associated with railways. In recent years a bit of canal related work also featured.

I still retain a passing interest in railways and Amateur Radio. Canal trips and Model and Model Railways are current main interests as is the inevitable use of the computer. Family tree exploration halted a few years ago as I waited for the 1911 census to become available. Alas, I haven't found the time to check that out since it became available.

Like many people, my internet activity started with a dial-up connection. Initially content with using the service for mail and a bit of web browsing, I foolishly enquired one day whether any one wanted to develop a website for our local Raynet Amateur Radio group. When nobody offered, I bought a book and built the site myself. The maintenance of that site now rests with someone else.

I then, equally foolishly, volunteered to build a site for the church where my wife is a member of the congregation. Not content with that, I went on to develop a site for a few other organisations. In 2004 I developed an interest in woodturning and built the current site. The site's pages were further enhanced when we decided to buy and fit out our own narrowboat and the woodturning took a back seat. More recently and with the woodturning still on the back burner, I've rekindled an interest in model railways, some 35 years after I last had anything to do with them.

All my web sites have been written without artificial aids (i.e. they are written in naked HTML). There's no flash gizzmos and just a sprinkling of Javascript. Any images are kept small to aid faster loading of pages.

The woodturning site was developed to offer support to fellow newcomers to the hobby - so that they know that they aren't the only ones experiencing problems - and to allow friends and family to see what I've been making as my skills develop. It also gives me something to do at times when it would be anti-social to be making a lot of noise which might disturb the neighbours.

The On Schedule ! pages are again being put together for a number of reasons. Family far and wide and other interested people can see developments as we progressed with our attempt to fit out our own narrowboat. Similarly, people who are about to or have embarked upon a similar venture might find some of the information useful. We extended the content to cover details of the trips that we've since undertaken on the boat.

The domain was created when I decided to change to broadband and cease my dial-up account. I had to arrange web hosting for my websites and the cost of a distinct domain is less than 50p per month.

You can mail me at r a y @ 7 2 9 . m e . u k if you wish - sorry, I've removed the direct link to stop spam.