Many of our locations for the remainder of this year stretch us out around the country few as far though as this week where we shall hopefully cover Truro, Penzance, Exeter, Plymouth, Poole, Bournemouth and Salisbury. Also in the coming weeks I hope to cove Kent, Essex and East Anglia plus the North East and Scotland before autumn sets in. So plenty there to go at. I have made the decision for the final piece of our editing IT software to go with AVC rather than Topaz. Everything is ready to start working with, just need some time to do it. I really need to give our Youtube channel a boost and the first edits will be partly aimed at that but also doing a lot with archives we already have to play with. I'm pondering a Liverpool on Film a bit like the London ones already released. There will almost certainly be Down Your Way's on Hampshire and Sussex.

So tomorrow we will be up at 4.30am and straight to Truro then finishing the day at  Penzance driving back to start the next day at Plymouth and on to Exeter, the weather looks to be very hot and sunny. Back home Wednesday night as we have our Polio Fellowship meeting on Thursday. Meantime we can look back at yet more photos from our trips to the South West

NEAT is probably a new name to you but it offers some useful tools when treating old film and this can mean eradication the particles which can show up when Standard 8 is enlarged to such huge sizes as HD. I've still to make my mind up with AVS vs Topaz, both have elements of usefulness. I;ll be starting to treat the TTC commission film from their early which they kindly lent me back in the day. It did feature on an early PMP release but this time upscaled and colourised it will initiate new audiences into what can and cannot be achieved with Artificial Intelligence assisted editing.

I've got a lot more of the Phil Tatt cine recopied, post apocalypse of the computer style, shame I'm having to handle it once again but in future it will by accessible like the rest of my collection within the OTA from several storage media and locations and will be able to be seen worldwide and licence for commercial use. We also managed a sit out in the sun, it was damp first thing like everyday in Cheshire but warmed up later in the afternoon. I managed to get the back hedge cut.

This week we'll take advantage of the fine weather to get some bus filming done down south! Meanwhile with Bournemouth on our minds a look back and lets hope that Go Ahead can get a reasonable service up and running to plug gaps and not then set upon by monopolies and mergers hatchet men.

I have nearly half a million photos on my archive discs and of these 271,000 are on the PMP Smugmug shop where you can order prints, posted in UK and or down files.

This catch up has been quite a marathon and I finished quite early today and then had another epic getting this years releases on our Ebay shop, which I completed before lunch time.

I've managed to get a lot of the scanned cine films on to file and scanned several more from scratch which were those lost in the great data crash which came with the new computer and I lost three extension drives. Another mini crash took out the video files for York and Harrowgate as well as the MTT open day.

So it is a game of win a few and lose a lot. I'm intending popping along to the local steam show at Astley Park tomorrow. The weather here has started wet every day this year and stayed windy. The lawn has nice stripes and I doubt if we will ever need a hosepipe ban. We got a new water meter fitted  lunch time by United Utilities, the old one was life expired. I gave all the lawns a mow.

Here are some shots from the Commonwealth Games bus services earlier this week. The three DVDs are on the shop and digital downloads should be on later today. All these are on the Smugmug shop link on PMP landing page.

The week of the big catch up, I've already loaded around 20,000 photo from this years events and going into 2021 there are more which I never had time to upload in the Pandemic. Remember our Smugmug/Flckr site now prints and posts in the UK. Here are the latest films of the Commonweath Games Bus Services

When I have all the photos uploaded tomorrw I'll make a start getting our Ebay shop up to date a bit, but please always use the PMP shop on this site in preference!

The new computer has turned out to be one of my biggest mistakes ever but I had hope it would open up new avenues in AI etc but so far it has taken me backwards and the hope of ever catching up seems remoter each week plus it cannot undo the damage through lost drives and material. Now the files for York, Harrogate and Burscough have gone, all in one folder which has vanished. I think an auto update download from Edius Grass Valley editing software  caused it but where to look, it is nothing simple and may be down to compartments with the extension drive.

Here are some more shots from Birmingham yesterday

Signage and instructions on routes and travel let down the side and I guess all the helpers are volunteers as they were mostly chatting and fiddling with phones when guidance would be hand. West Midland were giving out inaccurate info and none at all to some degree, sour grapes I suppose as Stagecoach got the contract.. A couple of negative anecdotes going the rounds on the police but I found them to be the best informed, kindest and helpful people at the games and that says a lot coming from me! One young police lady gave me a bottle of water at their support facility. No hassle at all at the stadium after getting back on track after National Express 'help'. Had some nice fresh juices from local shops near the stadium. Certainly much more friendly than Glasgow and easily on par with Olympics and Manchester.

As the main athletics start tomorrow in Birmingham I'll be heading down to the Midlands tomorrow and hope to get good coverage of the shuttles which start somewhere  called James Watt Way, I'm sure I'll unearth it but it looks a bit wide and I'm dreading an expanse of roped off semi motorway. They will mostly go to the main stadium which will hopefully produce some more interesting buses. As well at the Stagecoach fleet of over 600 there are coaches from all directions. I've covered Manchester, London and Glasgow. Manchester and London were really helpful and friendly, Glasgow was just full of hating anyone English mostly the police and Buchannon St bus station staff.

Getting any gen of where will be best spots for photography this time round seems to have been limited to the odd shot on Facebook perhaps by tomorrow night I can offer a fuller story. Fingers crossed for a friendly West Midlands welcome.

A super day at the MTT at Burscough their annual open day with frequent bus links providing lots of interest and a splendid line up of visiting buses. Great to see so many familiar faces and make new friends. The day flew by so quickly and before you knew it we were home watching the girls do their bit at Wembley, as a non sport fan it was still splendid to see us win something for a change and get one over on Germany. I was making the final touches to our Birmingham olympic bus trip tomorrow when I discovered that the main athletics aty the dog track don't start until Tueday which great as the weather had gained on the earlier forecasts and looks like being just light cloud and I can catch up with editing. Something to note was that just like the Ribble running day at Morecambe there were no programmes on sale although I believe they existed, great learning for us at the NWVRT who were well represented  at today's MTT event. Here are some shots and coming tomorrow lorries for a change!

Although I've had a good old fashioned cold it has been so long that I suppose its hit harder. Many did two tests and nothing positive. So the car is packed and ready for our stand tomorrow at the mTT Burscough premises annual open day. With my first 100% improved trial with AI I'm looking forwards to introducing more of the down your way series with really old section upgraded to HD ( Youtube and Download) remember good old DVD cannot take HD. It takes a little more time construction each DVD programme but it does mean that everything is always multi back up and nothing builds up awaiting processing although still photos are several months adrift, they are now printed and posted within the UK. Here are some York bus shots

As well as filming in York and Harrogate I've got my first trial A! enhanced film done from old 1940s bw film, colourised, enhanced frame rate and size to HD, film steadied and all 'noise' removed. It takes 4 or 5 processes but the results are astounding and I hope to have something I can put on Youtube soon. Here are some Harrogate pictures. Don't forget we'll be at Burscough Sunday. I will be filming the Commonwealth games buses next week.