Cornish Mining Heritage

Cornish Mining Heritage, a set on Flickr. Click any image to enlarge

A quick dash to Cornwall for the extended weekend found us enjoying a glorious walk along the cliff-tops and valleys in the Botallack area of Penwith. One of the centres of the now defunct Cornish tin mining industry the walk is dotted with shafts, chimneys, count houses and engine rooms at every turn. Indeed there are so many, in various states of repair, the area has been designated a World Heritage Site.
The "Danger of Death" warning should not be taken lightly. To this day, not all the tunnels and shafts have been mapped. It is not unknown for a thinly covered shaft to suddenly "re-appear" with drops of many hundred feet in places.
http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/

Robots. Are they getting cleverer?

 If you comment on this blog, and in numerous other places on the web, you are asked to "prove you are not a robot" by typing into a box the letters that you can read on the screen. These are, as I'm sure you've all seen, written usually in a squiggly type pattern, or in varying sizes and/or fonts although lately I have also seen things like sums and photos of house numbers. The logic of course is that us humans can identify these not so easy to read characters, whereas a computer/robot/spambot won't be able to. Only a month or so ago I remarked how easy they were to read, never having got one wrong. Now, in the last couple of weeks I have had to re-try incorrect entries more often than I have got them right, one actually taking five attempts.  So, are these little "tests" being made harder because robots are getting cleverer, is my eyesight getting worse or, and more likely, does my monitor screen need a damn good clean?