May the 4th be with you The 4th day of May is traditionally Star Wars day where all Star Wars fans celebrate this ground breaking series of films. Not George Lucas though — he missed a golden marketing opportunity by missing the 4th of may and releasing the original film on May 25th 1977. It was even mentioned in...

Online testing tool that checks out how your website measures up I have been evangelising web standards for quite a few years now and tools that help you test your work are very appreciated and make the tasks a lot easier. For pure code there is the W3C testing suite that tells you where your code is invalid and...

The best angle to staple paper is 67.5 degrees. This angle keeps pages easy to flip, reduces desk interference, and prevents strain on the paper when reading through a multi-page document. Why Does the Stapling Angle Matter? The angle at which you staple paper affects how pages sit when reading, how much desk space...

Sunday circular walk by the Thames We have been looking forward to getting back into doing Sundays walks after Christmas and today we completed our first one of the year. It was a circular walk starting and ending at the Dog and Badger in the village of Medmenham. As soon as we arrived at the pub and start point we...

New year heralds new design and some long overdue focus back on this website I have now updated simon​cox​.com and have moved the site to EE which I have been using since 2006 for other sites but had kept using the MT content management system for this website. I had been waiting for ExpressionEngine (EE) version 2...

The baseboard structure is now mainly complete I took a few days off to concentrate on moving the White Sands Quay project forward. This is a 4mm scale 9mm gauge railway based in Cornwall and originally from a plan by the late Reinier Hendrickson. I wanted to build a self-contained but light exhibition display for...

I have had one of Nigel Lawton's Bachmann re-motoring kits for a long time now and one of my engines packed up recently so I set about my first bit of modelling for the first time in a few months. Why does everybody say that the winter is the time for lost of modelling? I never have any time! Nigel's instructions...

Loxley Barton Falls will be at Brighton Model World Exhibition this year. I have just had the invite paperwork through as a late invite (something about loosing my details!). I see that there are four other 009 layouts at the show which is not bad going for a general modelling exhibition. Brighton Model World is on...

My pizza layout, Withywindle Mill, has won the competition it was built for - the GDNGRS Pizza layout competition! It was a late decision to have a competition at this years ExpoNG so we kept it to members only. On the day there were five layouts but I know of five others that were underway but not finished in time...

Magazine cover with Withywindle Mill as the main image. Update This is of course a spoof. There were quite a few enquiries about where to get the magazine - so many that I did think about creating it for real!

I was asked last year to exhibit Loxley Barton Falls at the 2007 Norbury & South London Transport Club's exhibition on the 10th and 11th November. I was put in a small alcove next to the gents (quite handy) but this wasn't far off the entrance so nobody missed the layout. I forget how many more families go to...

Amberley was great fun. I shared a table with Robin Winter who was showing Wee Donegal. Behind us was Richard Glover, also from the Greenwich and District Narrow Gauge Society with his new small layout Sand Point and also his own Pizza Starbottom Lane so we had a good laugh as always when members are exhibiting...