THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE ANCIENT

A sort of bitty day when I never really got my teeth into any one things, rather I dipped into a lot and got a bit done here and there. The good news comes twice, I found that I'd kept the miniDv tapes of the cine films I'd digitised and thus don't need to copy them again other than put to digital once more. Thus when I selected another batch of films today to copy rather than do the same again in a short time span I an increasing my pile of cine reels which can be deposited for long term safe keeping although I hope some get a film show outing or two rather than slumber in the dark. When I copied the first two reels today the lamp went on the projector, amazingly I'd put the two spares in the drawer marked 'bulbs', well there has to be a first time for everything but when I changed it there was still no light. I remembered my pal John Bishop said that the prongs on the lamp can get coated, I guess the electricity oxidises the metal, so cleaned then off with the edge of my scissors and hey presto I was back in action. Really nice watching some of the original cine again mostly after many years storage.

I've copied HEC Peircey 1973 Poland and the Terry Barker 1962 and 1958 German trams and trolleybuses, it's the trolleys which make this one so desirable. I've packed that up for the evening. I've done research on accessible outings for the Polio Fellowship next year and also for St Oswalds 750th celebrations, I'm trying to draw out theme for the flower festival. I've also been putting together material for a Bus Spot Ultra on Brighton. There is an abundance of material so I need to be very selective, the old archive section while nowadays least popular takes the longest to prepare. Very few people view the older material on Youtube but there are many gems there. I load our archives now to our shop as raw material for research or with a licence for commercial use. It is still surprising that people are downloading digital films thinking they are DVDs, the price alone would give the game away as well as the category and media descriptions. It is also surprising that anyone uses Amazon to purchase when they charge postage and it is free in UK in our shop.

I've spoken to my friend Martin this afternoon and we are progressing the Asia trip in March, I'm looking at a few tweaks to add a 'rail' element to the travel hopefully in North Borneo. I will research that this evening. I'm looking at truck filming tomorrow morning if it isn't too dark, nowhere far away though. The next bus DVDs will possibly cover Wrexham and Chester, nice handy places for a winter excursion. Here are some shots from Stoke last week.