The universe really does have a sense of humour

/

Amazon gave me a refund for something I hadn’t sent back. This offended my honesty. Plus I was worried about them catching up with me. So I got in touch. Talked to an AI assistant that was useless. Then got put onto a supervisor which might have been a slightly more expensive AI model. But were very helpful nonetheless. They/it told me to take the win and smile. So I did. Then something that costs almost exactly the same as the refund broke and I had to buy a new one. From Amazon. Life eh?

Friday Widescreen

/

Friday finds us at a presentation at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. It was all about widescreen movies. Back in the days when movies were things you went to, not things you made, a plucky band of souls formed the Amateur Widescreen Association. Impressed by the widescreen movies of the day they tried to create the same experience using films and equipment available for home use. At the time cameras and projectors were entirely mechanical, so the task was to use different lenses, film gate shapes and film sizes make the biggest and most impressive wide screen effect. Every year they held an event where they all gathered to show off their latest creations. They built some amazing hardware, including one presentation that used 3 synchronised projectors. Each year they had a competition to pick the best films, and we got to see a bunch of test films, along with some of the winners. It was great fun.

Of course, nowadays widescreen is an option you click on your phone camera and image quality is just something you take for granted. But the presentation showed that with determination and ingenuity you can make tiny negatives really sing on the big screen. Some of the movies were projected as film, in one case it was the original celluloid that went to Afghanistan, was exposed and mixed there in camera and then brought back for development. Lots of material ends up as being of historical interest, as we saw scenes of places that no longer exist. Thanks to Guy Edmonds and the rest of the team for doing such a great job of bringing the past back to life.

The presentation was part of a larger Widescreen Weekend in Bradford which runs once a year. There are lots of movies on show. Maybe next year I’ll sign up and spend an entire weekend eating popcorn…

A Fine Time at the Maritime Museum

/

So much for cute polar bears

We had a fine time at Hull Maritime Museum yesterday. We booked tickets (you can do this on line and it costs nothing) and were there bright and early when it opened. There’s a lot of stuff here,

The history of Hull and the sea is well told, with thought provoking presentations about the life of a trawlerman (tough and dangerous) and the efforts it took to make fishing safer. For me the best bit was seeing what they had done with the rooms. The plasterwork and decoration was amazing.

The view from the museum is pretty good too, as is the café. If you live in Hull you should go. If you don’t live in Hull, come to Hull and then go.

Toll Memories

/

The Control Centre back in the day

One of my (few) claims to fame is that I wrote some of the software that used to manage toll collection on the Humber Bridge. Ian wrote the control room software, Siemens programmed the toll booths and I wrote the management interface.

This is my bit

It was great fun. It ran for quite a few years and only failed once, when someone testing the uninterruptable power supply sent a DC spike to all the devices and blew up the power supplies for the network routers. I had to go in and move some wires around to get it going again.

The rest of the time it just worked, registering tolls, indicating when the number of axles detected on a vehicle didn’t match the class the booth operator had entered and producing summary data. We closed it down a few years ago.

I was reminded of this when I paid for some crossings today. I had to download and use an app, of course. You can pay for you crossings in advance, which is nice, but you don’t know whether the crossings you paid for have registered properly until two days after the crossing, which is one day after the deadline for paying for the crossing. Which seems a bit odd to me. I’ll just have to hope that the people who built the new system are as good at their jobs as Ian and I were all those years ago.

Perfect Father's Day

/

I’m planning on getting all three

Had a really good day today. The weather was just the right temperature for a barbeque. I got a book I’ve been after for ages. I got to do some Lego, got a super-interesting book about the 6502 microprocessor (among other things). I also got to play with a camera, go for a walk and run a film off and then come home and develop it. Good times.