iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Good ol' Abney level :-) Vital for accurate horizon elevation measurements!

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

We children of the 70s who watched the kids uk tv drama The Changes viewed them with horror.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Yup - alarm fatigue is a recognised psychological effect that reduces people's likelihood to react appropriately. Stupid.

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Reposted by Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net)

Tim Daw @timdaw.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

With @weborguk.bsky.social help in digitising I have produced a reappraisal of Hawley's excavations from a century ago, many details and insights have been forgotten - www.sarsen.org/2026/08/hawl...

sarsen.org

Hawley's Excavations Reappraised

With the centenary of the end of Hawley's Excavations at Stonehenge next month, I thought it worthwhile to reappraise all his excavation rep...

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

In light of the spate of thefts, is it time for museums to remove high value objects from public display into more secure storage and instead put replicas on show? The majority of visitors wouldn't notice, I expect.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

It's worse than that (eg Grok can't do maths consistently) - this is not intelligence, it's predictive text.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

And that, in a nutshell, is why no LLM can be trusted to provide any kind of reliable answer and absolutely everything needs to be cross-checked by a competent human. Which kind of makes LLMs entirely useless.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Silbury Hill is the obvious one for me. And the recent interventions at WKLB.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

“Why did you fabricate your responses?”

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Have you specifically asked it why it's fabricated these responses?

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The Avenue crosses the A303 before you reach KBR, so you could mention that. It's roughly... oh, you know where :-)

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

One of my favourites - especially since the Brig already had a moustache so they had to shave it off and give him an eyepatch to make the evil version :-)

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Grinsell's Legendary History and Folklore of Stonehenge was published in Folklore, Vol. 87, No. 1 (1976), pp. 5-20, and Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation was published in Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38 - if that helps at all.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Ah, but Stonehenge catches more than just the primary solstice axis.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Show me the data! Grid refs for the pits at least, I can do the horizon and obliquity calls myself. Grr. And what’s this agricalendar nonsense?

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Although I do think the AS was probably very early to SH (perhaps the founding stone), I think it's the neo society of the Scotland + Orkney + Hebrides region that decided to move one of "their" stones south to the spot where SH now stands.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I don't think the second half of this idea works. The earliest phase of SH is 3000 BCE, which is about 3,200 years after Doggerland suffered from the effects of the Storegga Slide. I can't see meso hunter-gatherers moving 6 tonnes across a salt marsh, no matter how motivated they were. /2

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

BBC News this morning around 7.15, @remyveness.bsky.social talking about his team's research suggesting the Altar Stone could have been glacially moved to Doggerland but not as far as Stonehenge - humans doing the rest as sea levels rose. But that inundation was in the mesolithic, not neolithic. /1

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I get what they're doing, but unless we want to suggest that meso hunter gatherers moved the AS from Doggerland pre-inundation ~7K BP then I think all this paper does is rule out glacial transport of it. Far more likely, to my mind, that the AS was moved directly on land to SH by humans c. 5K BP.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Just a couple of weeks until Ep 1 of Julian Richards' new 11 part documentary "Stonehenge - Access All Areas" drops on his YouTube channel on May 3rd. Like, subscribe and share! www.youtube.com/@julianricha...

youtube.com

Archaemedia

Welcome to the official YouTube channel of Dr Julian Richards, Archaeologist and Broadcaster.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

56 was slumped at about 77deg to the vertical so def not original position. Its stone hole in the chalk was sufficiently well preserved to show where it had been (inc stakeholes at front to stop toe jamming into chalk when 1st erected) so I have confidence it’s within an inch or two of orig. pos.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

How can I convince you he got it correct? Have you read his report?

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

His excavation report is excellent and shows the fantastic attention to detail. 56 is def. in the right place and correct orientation.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

For the record: although up to two dozen have been reinforced with concrete footings, and several have been straightened or re-erected, the work was done very accurately. Estimated max error is less than 6" in the worst case, and better than 2" in most instances.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

ie this plot (or similar), but with grid refs so I can georef it into QGIS

Diagram of the Warren Fields pit alignment

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Archaeology folks, I'm looking for a georeferenced plot (geophys or otherwise) of the pit alignment at Warren Field, Aberdeenshire and am drawing a blank. "A Tale of the Unknown Unknowns" (Murray et al 2009, ISBN 978-1-84217-347-3) has a layout plan, but no coordinates so I can't GIS it. Anyone?

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

No one ever talks about the Station Stones. There’s no clear dating and they make most sense as Phase 1 features (or possibly Phase 0).

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Phooey :-( giving a talk to a local Astrosoc about the astronomy of Stonehenge tomorrow night so can't tune in.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

I don’t believe we’ve ever interacted before so I’m puzzled by your reaction, but clearly you don’t want to engage in a discussion so I’m happy to respect your wishes. All the best, S.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

You’re very aggressive. I’m sorry if my question has annoyed you as that wasn’t my intention. I’d still be interested in your view on the type of system that can’t be built using OSS principles.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

I’m just asking for you to provide an example.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

So what is the cloud based thing Govts need then?

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

What are these types of cloud-based platforms that Govts depend on that OSS can't fulfil? I spot a market gap...

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

That green bar of light in the southern sky only lasted a short while, but it was spectacular. Back garden near Stonehenge, UK. Canon 1100D 10s @ 800 ISO 28mm f4.5

Bright green curtain of aurora extending through Taurus down towards Jupiter and Gemini, from South Wiltshire UK, Jan 19 2026

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

@amandachadburn.bsky.social - these are the postholes I mentioned (holes 1 to 4 in Plate 3 of MEC's monograph) just outside of the causeway entrance but effectively under the henge bank, so probably early features. The E-W sightline has been (hurriedly, by me) marked with dashes. See you soon!

A cropped closeup of Plate 3 showing the four postholes just outside the causeway entrance, extracted from Maud Cunnington's Woodhenge monograph.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Indeed! It only lasted a short while because people started to come specially on that day of the week. Ropes went up in 78 as you said.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

The thing is in the early days of EH the staff used to bugger off home if there were few visitors and the weather was iffy so it's possible people wandered in for free from time to time. And don't forget there used to be "no ropes days" for a while, with access into the circle (Tuesdays, I think).

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

A child came up to me when I worked at SH (2010-2016), told me she'd counted the stones in the circle, that there ought to be 30 if they were all still there, and that was the # of days in the month. She continued that 12x30=360 and there were 5 big doorways making 365. I didn't get her name.

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Definitely already done, and Tim wasn't even the first to suggest it (though his was the first in recent years to think about how to work the circle into a year count). Problem with all these ideas is that if you're going to count stones, you really ought to count all of them :-)

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Simon (@weborguk@vivaldi.net) @weborguk.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Sooo… when does Grok get given a GPP?

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