Shetland Scenes

Jarl Lynden Nicolson and his squad of 65 Vikings leaving the Market Cross ahead of the civid reception in the Lerwick Town Hall.
Story on the jarl and his involvement in the festival here: shet.news/v4bu8

Ugh, "run VT" even...

I found myself in a fair few BBC control rooms over the years, and it was always "roll VT"!

Picture of a box of 3.5" floppy disks with the wording 3.5" Microdisks

A 5.25" 3M branded floppy disk with "diskette" written on it.

Exactly that, the 5.25" was a diskette, the 3.5" was a micro diskette. They were just floppy disks, but on boxes and in print they used diskette, so I would assume AI is going to incorrectly assert that narrative. My source is that (sadly) this is my 40th year in IT!

WHEN GUIZER jarl Sidney Nicolson and his squad step out into the snowy scene this morning (Friday), there will be no doubt they are leading the Scalloway Fire Festival.

Full story here: shet.news/0iujl

Deep tyre tracks in a snow covered landscape, winter sun shining.

Westing, Unst

Had a gust of 71.6 mph here. Where are the wind warnings for Shetland then?!

To its credit FPTP gives you stability, it has that going for it, but favours a two party state. As you say, it needs modernising so that there can be challengers, voting for the best person to represent a locality has long stopped being relevant, people (mostly) vote for parties.

Same discussions had in the UK, not surprisingly the incumbent party never seems to keen on changing the FPTP system. It worked well for a few hundred years but I don't think it can, or should survive a world with "social" media.

Would be helpful if the "free" internet on the boat was better than the current dial up speed experience. Like most things with the lifeline service, dated and oversubscribed.

Northern lights green and red glows in the sky of a landscape.

The Mirrie Dancers are out tonight in Unst.

Seascape, blue shows through a cloudy sky with sun backlighting the clouds to the left.

Not Shetland but Orkney, from Scapa Pier looking towards Hoy and Lyness, once the home of the Royal Navy Admiralty fleet.

Council slushed £750k of government climate funding into general coffers Money from government nature and coastal adaption funds has been spent on council “vehicles, ICT [and] maintenance”, officials confirmed.

While other Scottish councils spent their share of nature/coastal adaptation funds on... nature/the coast, Shetland slushed the money into its general coffers for stuff like IT and vehicle maintenance.

"Completely unacceptable" said
@scotwildlife.bsky.social's @ruchirlives.bsky.social.

BBC Radio 4 - Mark Steel's in Town, Series 14, 5. Lerwick (Shetland part 1) Mark discovers how life in Lerwick is shaped by sea, storms and Shetland spirit.

Oh yes, Mark Steel's in toon da night - be sure to tune in and hear what he makes of the good folk of Lerwick!
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Aye, and Hop-tu-naa, which my friend from the Isle of Man calls it.

Hallowe'en skekling in Shetland and other guising traditions | Shetland.org Blogger Catherine Munro gets ready for Halloween by learning more about an old Shetland tradition, and making a skekler hat.

American (presumably US) you say? Not really. www.shetland.org/blog/hallowe...

Shaetlan receives full recognition as a language SHAETLAN has finally been recognised as a language in its own right. The recognition comes after the local language was given its own ISO code by SIL Global,...

Shaetlan has finally been recognised as a language in its own right.
The recognition comes after the local language was given its own ISO code by SIL Global, the organisation that handles the international Ethnologue database has been tasked with the handling of international language ISO codes.

Your site is down, ironically!

Shetland has exactly the same amount of annual daylight hours as say Arne in Dorset, so we are not losing more in actual terms.

As did Bill Connor, author of the Cassandra column in the Daily Mirror, after resuming writing after WW2.

A view over grassy cliffs and coastline in Shetland with a large industrial building near the sea. Text overlay reads: "Shetland spaceport under fire from local community".

🔴 NEW: Disgruntled islanders have criticised Scotland’s first spaceport in the far north of Shetland for a “culture of secrecy and bad stewardship”, according to a new report.

Our latest: theferret.scot/shetl...

‘Every community in Shetland should be able to do what we have done’ A visit to North Yell gives an insight into the transformational power of owning a small wind farm

It's Tuesday lunchtime in Cullivoe and the local hall slowly fills with elderly couples, parents with young children, men in work gear and the odd visitor to the community.
#Powershift
@scottishbeacon.bsky.social @bellacaledonia.bsky.social
shet.news/8yudn

Summer is not quite over yet:

A beautiful day-flying hummingbird hawk-moth in a Shetland garden earlier this week.

Perfect sales pitch as an example of the need for more autonomy.

It's been a scorcher, even my car's A/C tried to turn on one day.

A blue water bay can be seen in the distance, framed by a hillside to the left, and green peatlands under an almost cloudless sky.

Baltasound, Unst from the top of Valla Field. If you ignore the 30+ mph wind, it's a great day.

Certainly the US has provided insight on how a written constitution with apparent checks and balances can be worthless in the wrong hands. I lean more to the Irish way of having a more ceremonial elected head of state as a preference.

Whilst I do see your point, part of me thinks that someone who doesn't want the job but was born into the role, is trained their entire life for it, might be a better choice than Dave the Estate Agent, who became an MP because they're a terrible narcissist, and fancies themselves as head of state.

Juliet Mills is not dead, and they've been married since 1980, if he was in it for the money he's certainly playing the long game eh?

Shetland has its ferry service woes on occasions but the Calmac ferry at Wemys Bay is chaos, no traffic management, no signs, no staff.