Dec 2007
Royal Family, German? You think?
06/12/07 15:33 Filed in: Personal
This post is prompted by a couple of things.
A couple of weeks ago ITV presented a little piece about QE2 and he husband Price (Don't let him speak) Philip. At some point during the promo Giles Brandrift said "And there was no doubting he had German blood and this didn't go down well in Britain. The Queen, marrying a person of German decent so close after the war.".
Oh... HE'S German is he. Like the entire royal family isn't?!
Surely everybody knows that they are the German family of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha dynasty. King George V in changed their name to Windsor in 1917 because of bad PR as a result of World War One.
What's more, and I don't want to stretch this. The famous Louis Mountbatten, born in Windsor, is also from German stock. His parents were Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. You'll realise at this point that Mountbatten is the anglicised version of Battenberg; both meaning the Mountain of Batten. The name change... oh, did I mention it was in 1917?
My second prompt is that Channel 4 is going to air "Hitler's favourite Royal" about Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Grandson to Queen Victoria and nephew to King Edward VIII. That would be the the King Edward who abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson and with whom he went to Germany with in 1937 to shake the glad hand of Adolf Hitler. Not to mention the full Nazi salutes.
Considered Nazi sympathiser they spent the rest of their lives under the watchful gaze of British intelligence long after the war was over.
A couple of weeks ago ITV presented a little piece about QE2 and he husband Price (Don't let him speak) Philip. At some point during the promo Giles Brandrift said "And there was no doubting he had German blood and this didn't go down well in Britain. The Queen, marrying a person of German decent so close after the war.".
Oh... HE'S German is he. Like the entire royal family isn't?!
What's more, and I don't want to stretch this. The famous Louis Mountbatten, born in Windsor, is also from German stock. His parents were Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. You'll realise at this point that Mountbatten is the anglicised version of Battenberg; both meaning the Mountain of Batten. The name change... oh, did I mention it was in 1917?
My second prompt is that Channel 4 is going to air "Hitler's favourite Royal" about Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Grandson to Queen Victoria and nephew to King Edward VIII. That would be the the King Edward who abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson and with whom he went to Germany with in 1937 to shake the glad hand of Adolf Hitler. Not to mention the full Nazi salutes.
Considered Nazi sympathiser they spent the rest of their lives under the watchful gaze of British intelligence long after the war was over.
One you may have missed. Google maps for ALL mobiles
01/12/07 11:23 Filed in: Technology
Nokia's N95 and the iPhone have been around for quite some time now, and both contain Google Maps to allow you navigate around. The N95 contains a build in GPS receiver (it's quality gets mixed reviews) while the iPhone doesn't.
On the iPhone you tell it where you are and where you'd like to go or what you're looking for or any of the standard Google Maps function. After all, this is the full blown version of Google Maps.
But "here's the thing" (as Kevin Rose would say), did you know you could get Google maps for just about ANY mobile phone.
If you navigate here you'll be given a nice splash screen detailing which systems Google Maps for Mobile can run on.
The list is;
Windows Mobile
Palm OS, or
Blackberry Enterprise
But if this doesn't sound like your phone you can always open your mobiles web browser to www.google.com/gmm and give it a go. I'm running it on a Nokia N93, which sadly (and for reasons I can't explain) run Nokia's version of the same. But I can run Google's Symbian application.
If you're Nokia phone does run the Nokia version then I suggest you run it, because it allows you to download the maps in advance and use those on the go. Which, unless you have a significant data plan on your mobile phone contract, would be the better way to go. Especially if you're in the middle of nowhere! The most likely place to get totally lost.
One last thing before I go.... did I mention it works with any Bluetooth GPS receiver you happen to link to your phone? Well, I'm using a fairly recent Sirf III job and even in the house it's working pretty spectacularly. Not that I needed to know where in the world I was, I know where I live. But it serves as a decent test.
Best of all, you can even map out routes (before driving, obviously) and presumably you can track your progress with live GPS feed.
One thing it can't do, sadly, is re-route on the fly. Which is a bit of a shame, but what do you expect from a complete and totally free service!
Just for fun, you can even have the satellite image. I'm in, it appears.
On the iPhone you tell it where you are and where you'd like to go or what you're looking for or any of the standard Google Maps function. After all, this is the full blown version of Google Maps.
But "here's the thing" (as Kevin Rose would say), did you know you could get Google maps for just about ANY mobile phone.
If you navigate here you'll be given a nice splash screen detailing which systems Google Maps for Mobile can run on.
The list is;
Windows Mobile
Palm OS, or
Blackberry Enterprise
But if this doesn't sound like your phone you can always open your mobiles web browser to www.google.com/gmm and give it a go. I'm running it on a Nokia N93, which sadly (and for reasons I can't explain) run Nokia's version of the same. But I can run Google's Symbian application.
If you're Nokia phone does run the Nokia version then I suggest you run it, because it allows you to download the maps in advance and use those on the go. Which, unless you have a significant data plan on your mobile phone contract, would be the better way to go. Especially if you're in the middle of nowhere! The most likely place to get totally lost.
One last thing before I go.... did I mention it works with any Bluetooth GPS receiver you happen to link to your phone? Well, I'm using a fairly recent Sirf III job and even in the house it's working pretty spectacularly. Not that I needed to know where in the world I was, I know where I live. But it serves as a decent test.
Best of all, you can even map out routes (before driving, obviously) and presumably you can track your progress with live GPS feed.
One thing it can't do, sadly, is re-route on the fly. Which is a bit of a shame, but what do you expect from a complete and totally free service!
Just for fun, you can even have the satellite image. I'm in, it appears.