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Geolocating old photos
- 52 Ancestors 2026, week 35: A spot on the map
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I recently shared some seaside snaps from my great uncle's photo collection.
I often look at photos and wonder exactly where they were taken, except I don't have the skills of GeoWizard when it comes to geolocating a photo. Instead, I have to live with just using photos from the same batch for context, the few captions that were added to photos, and a little bit of reverse image searching. Or just cheat and use my knowledge, especially when they're photos from my home area.
A bittersweet week
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This has been a bittersweet week. On Thursday I won a directorate award for turning complex data into an impactful narrative about our operations, and yesterday marked 15 years since I started my Cancer Research UK journey.
Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!
- 52 Ancestors 2026, week 28: Leisure time
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After my great uncle Jack died in 2021, a whole stash of photographs, negatives and slides were found in various places around his house - even suitcases stashed full of them under a bed.
As the "family archivist", as my dad called me, I was tasked with scanning them all. It was a task that took a couple of months but, 3,200 files, 8.5GB, later, we were able to save and share them with the family.
"What's that got to do with the seaside?!" I hear you ask. Well, going through them revealed an abundance of seaside snaps.
The Birth and Baptism Book-keeping Blunder
- 52 Ancestors 2026, week 9: Conflicting clues
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During my most recent rekindling of interest in my family history, I noticed that I didn't have an exact date of birth for my 2x great-grandfather, William Hearn, just a quarter date from the birth indexes of Q1 1840.
I like to get as much detail as possible about my direct ancestors, including copies of BMD certificates where possible, so I immediately thought this was unusual.
I then spotted I'd previously written in the notes:
Prev birth date noted as 3 March 1842. Birth index overrides that - unless there was another William?!
Bringing my great uncle's photos to the Fediverse
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After my great uncle Jack died a few years ago I was given the task of scanning the thousands of photos he and his wife Mary had in their collection.
Read more: Bringing my great uncle's photos to the Fediverse
Winding down on Facebook
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When I heard the other day that Nick Clegg had stepped down as Meta's President of Global Affairs, the news that followed about Meta were making changes to their content moderation policies wasn't surprising. Nick Clegg was responsible for setting up the platform's Oversight Board which, in turn, was the ultimate body responsible for content moderation decisions.
Since then, more details about these changes have been published which has led me to start winding down my use of Facebook and other Meta products.
x Mile Cross
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After a friend and I were talking recently, we commented on how kinda unusual it was that he was originally from Mile Cross in Norwich, and I was from Three Mile Cross, near Reading.
"What happened to Two Mile Cross?" we wondered. It's in Aberdeen, apparently.
Which got us thinking: how many other "Mile Cross"es are there out there?
Hi, I'm Chris. I run the online shop for one of the UK's largest charities.
