Presumably for the benefit of motorists who do not understand what double yellow lines mean or that you must not park within 10m (32 feet) of a road junction. How did they get a driving licence?
Himself
Personal outsider web sites
In her defense of unpolished personal websites Ana Rodrigues opined:
all I want for my personal website is to give back to the web. I want anyone, regardless of skill level, to inspect elements, understand the structure, and learn from readable code.
Splendid. Let’s take a look:
Hmmm!
We should not forget that browsers will happily render a text file (someText.txt) and combined with a simple drag and drop access point like Transmit‘s Docksend it should be easy to be on the web. This was how things worked in the days of yore. Your account with an ISP came with some ‘web space’. The ISP account would put an icon on your desktop onto which you dragged your files and they automagically appeared on the web.
The punk rock scene in the UK of the late 1970s was a move against the self-indulgent, bloated excesses of established musicians and the music industry. Of course it did not last and the status quo was soon reestablished but there was a re-setting of attitudes. Perhaps one day the web will experience something similar and people will reclaim it as their own.
Passing clouds
video test:
Video Player
00:00
00:00
A view of Ludgate Hill
A game of TimeGuesser turned up a picture of crowds gathering, at the end of the First World War in 1918, at Ludgate Circus looking up Ludgate Hill towards St.Pauls Cathedral caused me to wonder what had changed since then.
The street view today shows much has changed – click image to embiggen.
The spire of St. Martin’s church is recognisable; and just above the chap’s hat on the far left it looks like the top of one of the fancy finials that still adorn the building on the left.
The railway bridge was never much admired:
Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct— that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber. – Walter Thornbury, ‘Ludgate Hill’, in Old and New London: Volume 1(London, 1878), British History Online [accessed 9 March 2025].
and it was removed in 1990 with the arrival of the City Thameslink rail service (the canopy protruding on the right) which passes under the road.
But perhaps the single greatest change since then… nobody is wearing a hat.
EMI Videogram Catalogue – Autumn 1979
In response to the growing use of home video recorders in the late 1970s EMI produced a catalogue of a dozen films available for purchase. The choice was limited but included some British ‘classics’. Although most would have been shown on television it was a novelty to own a film to watch whenever you felt the need.
The operation was managed by Cliff Michelmore after his career as a television presenter. Although the reply envelope was addressed to him he probably did not pack all the videograms himself; indeed the newsletter tells us he had up to twenty men and women trying to sell these newfangled things. The films would cost around £200 today. The first blank 180 minute tape I purchased cost the best part of £20. The EMI ones would have been just over £15 (including VAT) – around £70 today. Within a few years you could pick up a pack of three tapes at the supermarket for £5.
Mr. Michelmore assures us that the catalogue will become a collectors’ item. Perhaps he could foresee that the project was doomed. By the end of 1979 the company had merged to become Thorn EMI who published subsequent catalogues but by the mid 1980s the operation was sold to the fraudster Alan Bond by which time the videograms were simply known as videos.
The catalogue and associated bumf can be viewed in the gallery.
DNS longevity
The problem I encountered setting up a gallery subdomain was due to the DNS thingy pointing to an old SmugMug account. According to 1 Password that account was set up in 2011. I guess I used it with a gallery subdomain which was probably deleted about ten tears ago and yet the DNS record hung around awaiting for a new gallery to connect with.
cheque checks
A piece by Greg Morris the other day and now an article from The i Paper talking about checks:
What is going on? That obnoxious American fellow said he was making English the official language so we might be able to persuade them to start using the correct spelling – he seems like a reasonable chap.
RIP WWW (an ongoing series)
Although lacking links Heather Burns‘ enthusiasm for Station Eleven piqued my interest enough to search it out. The Wikipedia page for the TV series provides a link to the “Official Website” which reads
https://www.hbomax.com/station-eleven
alas clicking this link bounced me to
https://www.hbomax.com/geo-availability
Why are you telling me this? Was I interested in HBO Max? Did I ask when it would be available in my region? Could you just tell me about Station Eleven?
Station Eleven is available to buy in my region from Apple TV or Amazon.
I suppose the HBO message was more informative than the usual blanket:
