Allie Nickell

@alliethinks

Likes history, genealogy, art, movies, small furry animals and terrible jokes. Possesses a (mostly) logical mind and a vivid imagination. Born and rared in Belfast, and back there after wandering round Scotland and London.

492 Folgt1.161 Follower2.876 Posts

YouTube Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir alliethinks.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· 17d

That's one upright and a loom weight taken care of.

Photo of a small dog with a really big stick.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· 18d

Face blindness - Came across this pic of identical twins who were mixed up at birth. Took me a while to work out who went with who, because the faces all looked similar but different. I compared individual facial features, and now it's really obvious. Can other people see it instantly?

Screenshot of four photographs of men's faces, with each of them looking directly towards the camera.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· 20d

Ice cool.

Cartoon of Snoopy as Joe Cool, wearing a red sweater and dark glasses, and standing against a white background.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Jun 19

This is my favourite.

Puffin standing on a rock on one leg, presumably scratching, preening or working on an advanced yoga pose.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Jun 12

Treated myself to some fancy yarn, just because. I've never worked from a yarn cake before.

A round 'cake' of yarn viewed from the top, starting with dark plummy red on the outside, and changing through shades of purple, pink and orange as it moves towards the centre. Some of the yarn is a solid colour and other parts have different shades twisted together.

The outside of the yarn cake, labelled 'YarnArt Flowers'

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Jun 3

The farm before and after the railway (Maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) #OnePlaceWednesday

1909 OS map showing the same field as the previous image, but with a railway line running vertically through the centre of it.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· May 3

I'm not used to thinking about counties in some of those areas, so may have mislocated a few towns, but I had a go! A combination of travel for work, academic conferences and visiting uni friends let me see a lot more of England than I would have otherwise.

Map of the UK, colour coded with counties where I have lived, stayed, visited, stopped and passed through.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Apr 27

Came across this photo from the early 1900s of St Mark's, Dundela (the Belfast church often associated with C S Lewis). Using maps, I'm trying to imagine what I would have seen around me if I had been the photographer - it's frustrating not been able to swipe round StreetView-style!

Tinted photograph of a dusty-looking road, with a striped church tower on the right-hand side. The road (the Holywood Road) is lined with low walls, hedges and trees. There is a pavement on the left-hand side, and a very narrow strip of pavement on the right. Two people are walking in the distance.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Apr 18

The generated links to the actual #1926Census records all appear to be broken (for me anyway), but can be fixed by adding %20 to join the two parts. #IrishGenealogy

Examples of broken, auto-generated link and an amended, functioning link.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Apr 18

Playing with links to the #1926Census. The generated links are quite long and messy, so if you want a neat link to an individual's transcription page, the key bit of info that needs to be at the end is: /#a_id=XXXXX (replacing the Xs with the ID number). #IrishGenealogy

Examples of an auto-generated link to a census transcription page, and a modified short link.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Apr 2

I ❤️ doing old newspaper research #GenHour

Image from a scanned newspaper, where the text is unreadable dots and smudges, and the OCR has no chance.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Nov 15

Not the greatest pic of a family of moorhens, but the magnificent feet are on full display! I love the Ulster-Scots name for a moorhen - sheugh duck. #CootsAndMoorhens #BirdOfTheDay

An adult moorhen (facing away) standing next to two black chicks. They are on a smooth tarmac surface, so the large feet are clearly visible.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Nov 14

This is a swan, honest. Taken at Barnes WWT Centre. #swans #BirdOfTheDay

Black swan, sitting curled up on grass, in front of a log and water. Its neck is twisted round, with its beak buried in the feathers on its back.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Nov 13

#DucksOutOfWater 2/2

Rear view of duck standing majestically on a fence, surveying its kingdom / pond.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Nov 13

Have seen a few #DucksOutOfWater photos today, and I'm never one to duck out of a trend. Taken at Barnes WWT Centre in 2007 1/2.

Duck (female tufted duck?) walking across the grass with six very fluffy ducklings following in a line behind.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Nov 6

Have a quokka.

A quokka, with its paws outstretched, is delighted to see you.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 31

Digitisation horror story.

Image of book from Internet Archive, with first page stating 'Uneven Number Pages Within The Book Only'.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 28

When you run out of 'G's.

Newspaper cutting, reading : "Mr Ward concluded his speech by expressin reret" The last two words are written in block capitals, making the missing letters more obvious.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 28

I hadn't realised that the illustrations for 'Ireland's Memorial Records' (the list of Irish war dead from the First World War) were done by stained glass artist Harry Clarke.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 16

Are you *sure* about that?

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 13

(This is an old pic that I happened to have lying around)

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Oct 13

An 18-month old Angela Lansbury endorses Pond's Cold Cream.

Newspaper cutting from The London Daily Chronicle, 5 May 1927 - A consultation with Angela Brigid - When I saw Miss Moyna Macgill, little Angela Brigid Lansbury was in attendance. Miss Macgill is, in private life, the very charming wife of Mr Edgar Lansbury, and Brigid, aged 1 1/2, is their daughter. In reply to my inquiry as to whether she used Pond's for that lovely complexion of hers, little Brigid made sympathetic sounds which her mother interpreted as meaning "not yet, but I jolly well intend to later on." And her mother completely approved of that very sensible decision. "One of the best things that I can hope for her," said Miss Macgill, "is that she should keep a fair and clear complexion, free from all blemishes; and when she begins to grow up she will be taught that Pond's Two Creams are the best means to that end."

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Sep 26

Some weird ghost images in this newspaper scan.

Head and shoulders photograph of a man superimposed over text (from the Irish Times, 1936)

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Sep 23

The other bit of the Secret Service that put it there must be really annoyed...

Headline from The Guardian: Secret Service says it dismantled 'imminent telecommunications threat' near UN general assembly ahead of Trump speech.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Sep 17

I ❤️ the Internet Archive, but I wish uploaders would get the metadata right - been looking for this report for longer than I should have, and it wasn't until I realised there were multiple "First Annual General Reports" that the penny dropped. Usually it's the publication date that's unreliable.

Title page for an "Eighth Annual General Report"

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Sep 6

Use it anyway. There's even a footnote you can borrow.

Footnote reading: 1 This was once revealed to me in a dream.
The footnote is apparently found in Nikolai Berdyaev's book The Divine and the Human.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Sep 4

My day has improved significantly - just received a shiny new library card via the uni's civic borrower scheme (pictured here with my swanky new-ish diary 😊)

Back of an Ulster University library card (obviously not showing any of my personal details) sitting on an aquamarine Moleskine academic diary (this season's limited edition colour, don't you know, and very tasteful).

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Aug 21

1917-style genealogy humour.

Newspaper cutting (Berwick Advertiser, 25 May 1917): "|An individual who called his first daughter Kate, when his wife surprised him with another girl, promptly christened her Duplicate."

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Aug 16

Are there any nice Irish speakers out there who can tell me what this says?

List with the names Tlaith-Bheatha, Adhbhar Neambeo, Ar an gCanail and Miosoruin.

Allie Nickell@alliethinks· Aug 15

Get up to shenanigans with your otter, get your otter confiscated.