Video talks by Hans Rosling are well worth watching including on TED, Vimeo and YouTube. He lays out statistics on population growth and child mortality.

Recent Government report looking at An open national address gazetteer. This report is quite detailed. It covers situation at moment and how might move forward. It highlights limits of use of postcodes as already openly released in CodePoint and suggests to wider use of either Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and/or a fuller set of open addresses. I myself am keen organisations move away from reducing addresses to just what is required by the Royal Mail to deliver the post; as the use of Postcodes and ‘Post town’, that are setup to reflect routing and delivering of mail, over actual localities (villages, towns, hamlets or suburbs) together with counties, has distorted much understanding of place.

Instead, now see the collection at the National Library of Scotland: https://maps.nls.uk/os/

I often have odd musings that are worth blogging about but find limited time to blog. So here is just mish mash of pointers. Baby Lead Weaning (BLW) has worked really well over more traditional spoon feeding of purees for us with our son. It was difficult at the start when you wanted to take a short cut with a spoon rather than give him time to explore and learn developing his own autonomy.

You can look up addresses in Scotland in the One Scotland Gazetteer. It is good they provide a search facility where one can look up the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) for a premise, as well as check where located. I could not find some flats at first if don’t match the way record held. The search is not as good as could be as does not seem to search all fields in the record, and the result does not display all the fields I assume recorded from BS7666 spec, I am particularly interest in the locality, as opposed to just the town.

I obtained some information on Council Garages using under Freedom Of Information (FOI) request. I had asked for some info in a normal postal letter to the person at Edinburgh Council who deals with garages but with no response as expected, I asked for more under FOI. Those live near these garages and are interested in renting one might find this snapshot list of vacant ones useful. Although it is already out of date, as our old garage became vacant on 1 July 2011.

Update July 2011; GeoPlace is now up and running . GeoPlace™ – a government initiative for national addressing New agreement set to create a single address database LGA media release – 3 December 2010 FAQ (pdf) GeoPlace™ Q&As [lga.gov.uk] New national ‘address book’ to be free to emergency services [communities.gov.uk] The Register UK.gov: One address-location database to rule them all Mighty GeoPlace to emblobbenate private & public data Although this move does not free up the data, it removes some obstacles on

I give big thanks to NHS staff & also the ambulance service staff who help me and my family recently. Especially the ambulance crew who first arrived Barbara & Stuart. They were great. We are all doing very well now after they help get us back on track.

Full places names can be useful to give location of a place such Newcastle under Lyme. I checked with Staffordshire County Council and spoke to Gary who confirmed that marriage certificates and then subsequently details on birth certificates would give full place name to distinguish from other Newcastles. The same is true with Schwaig b.Nürnberg (which expands to Schwaig bei Nürnberg which translates as Schwaig near Nuremberg or Schwaig at Nuremberg) but the registrar in Edinburgh said they would only allow abbreviation to just Schwaig.

I have been clearing out much of what I have accumulated. I chucked out some old cassette tapes today, and will prob get rid of most latter. But those with printed inlays and label that were bought already are there for anyone who wants them. I would only play them in car and already have enough for that, and tend just like listening to more Radio 1 and recently more classical music the in car.