iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 08/10/2026

I know I've posted this one before, but it's a classic. On 11 July 1912, King George V and Queen Mary pulled up outside Huddersfield Infirmary and he was handed the end of a rope. He gave it a quick tug to unveil a statue of his late father and then drove off 🤴 huddersfield.exposed/s/26516

Statue of King Edward VII outside Huddersfield Infirmary.
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5606661 CC BY-SA 2.0

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 04/10/2026

If it's not MS behind it, has another AI company figured out a method to hijack MS Bing to use it to proxy content requests? Other weird and wonderful search queries run by Bing's bots (rather than a human user) on Huddersfield Exposed today include "Which zoos have pandas?" (in Japanese).

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 04/10/2026

Here's the most recent example from my server logs, requested by IP 40.77.167.25 (verified as a Bing crawler). My Brazilian is a little rusty, but apparently it's a search for: Congratulations! I have a house on Maria Antônia Fragola Camargos street. I am happy and grateful.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 03/10/2026

Hope your Saturday is going better than mine -- I'm currently fending off a prolonged DDoS attack from AI company bots 😕 huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Hudders...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 02/10/2026

18 year old me saw them at Bradford in 1989 when Rob "The Bass Thing" Jones was still in the band. Ned's Atomic Dustbin were awesome and the Sandkings had a strop and left the stage after one song due to the constant booing from literally everyone in the crowd 😁

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Which is a great excuse to dig out this verse by Rex Mason (brother of actor James Mason) who lamented the gradual falling apart of Rebecca, which was rather hastened by children clambering all over her.

ebecca, dear, beside her well
For years in Greenhead Park did dwell.
Admittedly she lost some charm,
At first her nose and then her arm.
But still to youngsters she was dear,
Without her nose, her face, her ear.
Now she's vanished, gone away,
Replaced by fount in Gothic shrine.
Memories alone will stay.
Where have you gone, Rebecca mine?

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Also on the list of "things that didn't get on well with the Huddersfield climate and fell apart" are the famous lion atop Lion Buildings (replaced with a fibreglass copy) and "The Rocky Stream" drinking fountain in Greenhead Park, also known as "Rebecca at Her Well".

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

A few years later, the council splashed out and purchased a fancy second-hand Italian fountain (reportedly over 100 years old) to go in front of the station. Sadly, it didn't get on well with the Huddersfield climate and soon began to crumble and fall apart. It was demolished in August 1976.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Just noticed that Fiennes lost his job not long after he agreed to sell the station buildings. I wonder if he knew his days with British Rail were numbered and was happy to burn a few more bridges by selling off the station cheaply and therefore saving it from possible demolition?

He was dismissed from British Rail in 1967 for publishing the autobiographical book "I Tried to Run a Railway", which was outspoken about the management of British Rail and government policy changes and particularly critical of the frequent management re-organisations that the railways had gone through since nationalisation.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

The building was then leased back to British Rail for 21 years and the council opened a car park in front of the station. The smoke-blackened station was cleaned up in time for the centenary in 1968. I'll let Clifford finish the story in his own words...

The rent received from British Rail for use of the buildings and the income from car parking, together, now more than pay the debt charges incurred by the purchase, so, in effect Huddersfield became the owner of this splendid monument of the great railway age, for nothing, and in the process notched up another 'first' as the only town to own its main railway station.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Although Huddersfield became "The Town that Bought Itself" in 1920 when it purchased the Ramsden Estate, that didn't include around 4 acres of land where the station stood with British Rail owning the freehold. BR regarded the huge façade as unnecessary and wanted to modernise the station entrance.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

We'll soon be coming up 60 years since the local council stepped in and stopped British Rail from taking the wrecking ball to the façade of Huddersfield railway station.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Which looks pretty much unchanged from 1890 for that bit of the track.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

Might be later on in the week, but I'll have a browse through the local rail books that I've got on the shelf. Here's the 1977 OS sheet showing the track layout if that's of interest.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 29/09/2026

I shall now be looking for opportunities to use the phrase "super dodge" in work meetings. Totes legit, obvs.

One local resident has since told the BBC that while most people have now returned home, others are hesitant to do so.

“I haven’t gone home as I want to wait until I know more about what the hell happened, as it feels super dodge to me,” the resident told the BBC, adding that police are advising people not to take any photos and to stay inside their properties.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 27/09/2026

They're a strange lot in Honley. See, for example, this 1850s article about a Honley man who invited the local press to come and watch him connect his wife's breasts to a steam engine. huddersfield.exposed/s/2967

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 22/09/2026

I see @georgeosborne.bsky.social has a 3 acre estate in Bruton, Somerset. Sounds like plenty of spare room for a small datacentre in his own back yard to me. 🏭

OpenAI fluffer George Osborne talking bollocks as usual.

Photograph of George Osborne pretending to be an electricity pylon providing power to a datacentre.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 22/09/2026

The plantation was then owned by Abraham Hodgson (born Jamaica 1765 and son of Isaac Hodgson) but I'm unsure what his family's links to West Yorkshire might have been. They also owned a nearby estate called "Halifax". www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/v...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 22/09/2026

There are also records in the collection from 1820 which reference the Huddersfield Plantation in the St. Mary parish of Jamaica (now known as Haddersfield). This would appear to quash the theory that the place took its name from the 33rd Regiment of Foot troops stationed there from 1822 to 1832.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 22/09/2026

Very sobering to see that an enslaved African was given the slave name of "Huddersfield".

Screenshot of a slave register which includes an enslaved African given the name "Huddersfield". He was enslaved by Wolfert Katz who was a major plantation owner in Berbice, Guyana.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 15/09/2026

To be found in part of the area known as "Salford" on the southern side of the river at Lockwood. Solid is believed to have the same derivation, meaning a place with willow trees (which I think still grow on the river bank?)

1880s OS map showing the area known as Salford on the southern side of the river at Lockwood.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 13/09/2026

Getting over 99% for "Performance" in the Lighthouse test with a WordPress site is tricky but doable. Plus you get a nice little animated firework display if you get the full house of 100% for all tests 😁

One of the WordPress sites that I provide hosting for getting 100% across the board in the Lighthouse test.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 13/09/2026

Even if I say so myself, I'm rather pleased with these PHP Vitals benchmarks for the new @huddersfieldhistory.org.uk website. If you're struggling with a slow WordPress site on a sluggish server, feel free to get in touch -- I've been hosting WP sites of all shapes and sizes continuously since 2005.

PHP Vitals benchmark for the Huddersfield Local History Society's WordPress web site, which is running on a low-cost server at Linode's London data centre.

A benchmark score of 7.653 seconds puts the server in the top 10 (out of 254) of European servers costing under $10USD per month.

The server is at number 58 out of 2,461 servers benchmarked on the site, and outperforms most of the servers that cost 10 times as much per month.

Still a little bit of tweaking to do to get a full house of 100% on the Chrome Lighthouse test though.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 13/09/2026

Wish I'd thought of doing this ages ago, but converting web server request signatures into blocks of colour (i.e. convert to MD5 hex hash and then use the first 30 chars as 5 sets of RGB values) sure makes it much easier to spot repeating patterns (i.e. bots pretending to be human) in the requests.

Screenshot of incoming requests all from the same US ISP (wavebroadband.com). The two colour blocks for each request represent TLS/SSL connection values and the user agent string. The repeating colours for the majority of the requests indicate that they are non-human bot requests being proxied through the various IP addresses.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 12/09/2026

There's also a free talk on Wednesday evening about Joseph Kaye, aka "The Builder of Huddersfield". huddersfieldhistory.org.uk/event/herita...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 12/09/2026

If you're looking for something to do today, Keith Robinson's new @huddersfieldhistory.org.uk book is being launched in Lockwood. Looks like you might need an umbrella if you want to go on the guided walk tho! 🌦️☔🌈 huddersfieldhistory.org.uk/event/herita... huddersfieldhistory.org.uk/product/the-...

Front cover of "The Millworkers of Lockwood: Two Centuries of Struggle"

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 02/09/2026

Also, and I hate to break this news to any local Reform voters and councillors, but the town's university very proudly traces it roots back to a foreign immigrant who arrived by boat and who couldn't speak of word of English. huddersfield.exposed/s/7322 news-archive.hud.ac.uk/news/2016/de...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 02/09/2026

Presumably they also won't be flying the Union Flag on Kirklees buildings either, since at least one of the local Reform councillors believes that King Charles is a traitor.

Vote for useless idiots and you get uselessly idiotic policies.

Local Reform councillor Tracy Clayton (who lied about her employment status during the local elections) chipping in on a X thread asking if King Charles is a traitor or not.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 01/09/2026

Ron continued to the run The Sair until his death in October 2016 aged 79, after which his son Jim took over. They'll be celebrating Ron's life at the pub on 10 October, so why not pop in? 🍻 huddersfieldhub.co.uk/inside-the-1...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 01/09/2026

Just checked in the archives... the pub continued to be called the New Inn until circa 1982 when it was purchased by Ron and Pat Crabtree. They decided to rename it to The Sair. Ron was one of the three brewers at the West Riding Brewery, along with Ken Williamson and David Jessop.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 01/09/2026

...with "Saar" being a reference to where he was from (I think it means "noisy river"?). The next landlord Eli wasn't related to John but chose to inherit the surname/nickname and became Eli of the Saar.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 28/08/2026

Love how the artist has left a big blank space at the top left for someone to deface it with a Johnny Fartpants guff cloud #QUACK 💨

A zombie snooker player concentrates whilst trying to pot a red ball into the car park's hedge

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 18/08/2026

I can't believe you didn't know that books have many spines, as shown here on the UK Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals web site 😜

AI slop showing an unreadable book with too many spines

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 14/08/2026

The part with him as Gollum is the best bit

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 11/08/2026

Trying not to worry that this album is coming up on being 50 years old *shakes fist angrily at time passing*

Listening to "Bed and Breakfast Man" by Madness, which has an excellent bass line. Think I've still got the LP I bought when it was released in 1979.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 10/08/2026

Also an uptick in AI companies using Google Compute Engines to run their bots, which are easy to detect since they'll contain "bc.googleusercontent.com" in the hostname. Apparently basic stuff such as configuring a custom hostname for a server is beyond the techie skills of your average AI developer

At least Google is making a ton of money out of other AI companies using their servers to run data theft stuff.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 10/08/2026

Sadly the drop off in bots didn't last very long. The residential proxy bots are still out there, but there's been a big uptick in AI companies falling back to using data centres to do their data theft activities (mostly Amazon AWS) rather than hiding behind proxies. huddersfield.exposed/s/74398

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 07/08/2026

Sat going nowhere whilst we wait for a TPE employee to invent a new reason for the delay. How about "haunted section of rails awaiting an exorcist"?

Information is unavailable for the delay

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 05/08/2026

Afraid to say that this was the first thing my brain saw!

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 30/07/2026

*taps the other place* Our oven packed in during the first lockdown and I became a convert. We then moved house about 3 years ago and now have a lovely huge fancy oven but it's purely ornamental as we still only use the air fryer.

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 28/07/2026

Apparently opened in the 1960s, around the same time as trendy cafes like D'Agostino's "Sidewalk", which had a large Americana mural by local artist Philip Castle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_...

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Huddersfield Exposed @huddersfield.exposed · 28/07/2026

I'm not sure how you'd even begin to explain what "Merrie England" was to someone who'd never heard of them before. Imagine a handful of people eating roast beef sandwiches whilst sat underneath a cartwheel festooned with fake candle lightbulbs whilst entirely surrounded by very very VERY dark wood.