June Catalogue Ready

An annoucnement that the catalogue for our June 29th auction is now ready for viewing. Please share widely.

INTRODUCTION

The catalogue for James and Sons’ auction on June 29th is now ready – it is back from the printers, and today was devoted to plugging the last gaps image-wise in the online version, which can be viewed by clicking here.

FILLING THE GAPS

Most of the gaps were due to images not being uploaded, but once these had been attended to, some items remained to be imaged, the bulk of them coins. Here to clear the decks are the non-coin items that I had to image today…

The coins that needed doing were a run of 19 lots, all bar one of which could be scanned (396-414 incl), and one extra lot (416)…

396
Each of these coin lots has three images minimum (a composite and two individuals)

396-a396-b397397-a397-b398398-a398-b399399-a399-b400400-a400-b401401-a401-b402402-a402-b

403
This one has an extra image – a close up of the date.

403-a403-b403-d404404-a404-b405405-a405-b406406-a406-b407407-a407-b408408-a408-b409409-a409-b410410-a410-b411411-a411-b412412-a412-b413413-a413-b414414-a414-b416416-a416-b

The Inaugural Autism Awareness Cup

An introduction to the Autism Awareness Cup, a couple of important links (please follow up on both), and a classic infographic with a link to the original post in which I found it.

INTRODUCTION

This post is about an event that has been organised by a young man named Grant Cotton as a fund-raising autism awareness event. I have also included one of the finest autism related infographics I have yet come across.

A SIX A SIDE FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT IN KING’S LYNN

The tournament will take place on July 10th, using the artificial pitch at Lynnsport, 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometres) from the centre of King’s Lynn, and each team will have the name of a country (England, Holland and the Republic of Ireland have all been bagged already). Reproduced below is Grant Cotton’s poster for the event, which can be seen in its original setting by clicking here:

Poster

A COUPLE OF IMPORTANT LINKS

My first link, courtesy of my friends at DPAC, is to details of a court case which will impact on the enforcement of the law regarding wheelchair bays on buses (this law is not open to misinterpretation – it states clearly that if a wheelchair bay is not in use the driver has discretion to allow a non-wheelchair user to use it, but the needs of wheelchair users come first – a non-wheelchair user in a wheelchair bay is legally obliged to move for a wheelchair user). I urge anyone who lives in London or who can travel there on Wednesday to be at the court to make our presence felt. I have already shared this story on facebook and twitter and pressed a link on my London transport themed website www.londontu.be.

My other link comes courtesy of NAS, and concerns a new Too Much Information film which will be showing at various shopping centres over the next few months. Of reasonably local interest are the showings that will be happening at Chapelfield, Norwich on August 27 and 28.

A GREAT INFOGRAPHIC

I spotted this on blondemomsense this morning and had to include it. The original blog post from which I extracted it can be viewed here:

Infographic

Two Small Auctions and Imaging for one Big Auction

An account of Wednesday and yesterday – with plenty of pictures. Also a link to a splendi piece on WEIT.

INTRODUCTION

Most of this post deals with events of Wednesday and yesterday.

WEDNESDAY – NORWICH

We had a small stamp sale at the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich, which necessitated a seriously early start. I was at the bus station at 6:00 as intended (the bus I was going to catch is scheduled to leave at 6:10, and I always like to be there early), but the bus was very late. I considered briefly catching the alternative X1, but was not willing to pay twice as much money for the quicker journey (£11 for the X1, run by First, £5.50 for a day-rider plus on the X8/ X29 Stagecoach route). Finally, over 20 minutes after it was due to leave the bus arrived to pick up passengers. It made good time once it was under way, apart from the inevitable crawl past Hellesdon Hospital, and I was at the venue by 8:15. There were no computer issues, and the sale ran very smoothly. Those items that sold went for good money, and overall the sale was as good as we could have expected.

THURSDAY – FAKENHAM

Thursday featured an early start, but not so much as the previous day, since we were holding a postal history sale at our own premises in Fakenham. This sale was more of a success than the one the day before – due to the presence of internet bidders, and a number of items made good money. Once it had finished I had time to do some imaging for the big auction on June 29th, at which some lots will be sold to raise money for the Royal British Legion’s Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College, London, and for which the catalogue is currently at the printers. There were some very large flags, one of them so huge that the only way I could image it was in the open air with two of my colleagues holding it up, one at each end. Here are the images…

342
One of the two images I took of the hypergiant flag
343
This was one of two giant flags
344
This was an ordinary size flag
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The other giant flag
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A supergiant flag – by spreading it out on the shop floor and standing a chair I was able to obtain an image of each hal;f of the flag and use my editing skills to bolt the two images together.
346-a
One half of the supergiant flag
346-b
The other half of the supergiant flag
655
Lot 655 – a piece with local historical significance – and a gallery of seven images

655-a655-b655-c655-d655-e655-f

675
This table needed careful handling and crafty psoitioning to get a usable image.

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To end this section, a challenge to my readers: from where did I get the descriptors (giant, supergiant and hypergiant) that I used for the outsize flags?

A LINK AND THE CURRENT TEST MATCH

Having already shared Richard Murphy’s piece on licences for company directors, when I then came across a gem of a piece on WEIT I felt that I could not justify a second such post within such a short space of time. Here therefore is a link to a piece about the Freedom for Religion Foundation going after NASA for giving a grant to a theological study.

England have recovered somewhat from a very poor start. Just before the close of day 1 of this third test against Sri Lanka Jonathan Bairstow reached his century, becoming only the second England wicketkeeper after Matt Prior to reach three test centuries in a calendar year and also only the second after Les Ames to reach two in the same test series.

I finish this piece with a few more photographs:

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Various model aeroplanes are currentrly on display at locations around King’s Lynn, and this picture and the next feature two of them

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A bird enjoying the metal artwork that adorns the market square in Fakenham
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The image of the hypergiant flag that I decided not to use as the official one.

Imaging

A brief and mainly, indeed almost entirely, pictorial account of my day at work.

INTRODCUTION

Today we were getting the catalogue for the auction on June 29th ready to go to the printers, which meant a lot of imaging for me.

A WIDE RANGE OF IMAGES

My days imaging started with some cigarette/ trade card lots…

Next up came some left over coin and stamp lots…

Then there were a few small flags…

Then came 28 vinyl records, some of which are likely to fetch serious money…

Once the records were done, there was a stereograph and some accompanying slides, which occupied 20 odd lots between them…

The stereograph was followed by a handful of toys…

The last items of the day were two highly decorated, framed title pages of atlases, for which I provide complete image galleries, all as individual images…

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE
Lot 653
Exif_JPEG_PICTURE
Lot 653 – picture only

Exif_JPEG_PICTUREExif_JPEG_PICTUREExif_JPEG_PICTUREExif_JPEG_PICTURE

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE
Lot 654
Exif_JPEG_PICTURE
Lot 654 picture only

Exif_JPEG_PICTUREExif_JPEG_PICTURE

Nick Cohen on Hitchens’s “conversion”

Please read this great piece in full, taking note of the wonderful cartoon at the end of it!

whyevolutionistrue's avatarWhy Evolution Is True

Poor Larry Alex Taunton has been beaten to death for his dumb book on Christopher Hitchens’s supposed late-life interest in becoming a Christian; and I won’t belabor the man after this post. But several readers called my attention to a new drubbing of Taunton by Nick Cohen in the Guardian: “Deathbed conversion? Never. Christopher Hitchens was defiant to the last.” (Taunton, of course, is a Christian, trying to claim an atheist for his own.) It’s worth reading Cohen because, well, it’s always worth reading Cohen, and, as usual, his piece is unusually perceptive. Plus he wrote to Hitchens’s son for comment.

First, Cohen recounts some of the slurs the tawdry Taunton levels against Hitchens and his friends:

The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist is the work of a true fanatic, who has never learned when to seize a golden opportunity to hold his…

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Musical Keys and Imaging

An account of today at work and yesterday at Musical keys.

INTRODUCTION

This post has two very disparate strands – yesterday’s Musical Keys event for Autistic People and tody at work.

IMAGING

While I have imaged a wide variety of stuff today at work I am going to concentrate on some commemorative coin lots that were of particular quality…

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353
I did not have time to provide close-ups of all these coins…
353-a
…so I selected the one featuring a picture of Nelson (we are in Norfolk after all) for the treatmnent.

353-b353-c

354
This lot featured an extra requirement.
354-a
Namely providing a shot focussing on the coin and info sheet into which it is set.

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357
The last of the commemorative coins.

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510
A large collection of themed stamp books.

510-a510-b

511
Inidvidual mounted stamps
511-a
A close up of a single set
511-b
an even close up of two individual stamps.

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667
Old maps…

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689
… and an even older map to finish

MUSICAL KEYS

The 12 years and older session of the Musical Keys workshop run as an NAS West Norfolk activity started at 4:45PM yesterday and ran until 6:15PM. I was there both as participant and as one 0f the two designated committee members to be present at the event (the other was group leader Karan whose younger son was participating). As usual with Musical Keys the main piece of equipment we were using was a miniature computer:

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For the first part of the session we were playing computer drums:

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After a mid-session break during which a birthday cake which Karan had very kindly made (gluten-free as her son has an adverse reaction to gluten) and which was absolutely delicious, we moved on to the second part of the session, which featured a system whereby lines had to be drawn across the screen so that balls would bounce of them to create sounds. For those of my generation it looks a bit like a very early BBC Micro game!

As anyone who knows what the weather was like in King’s Lynn yesterday early evening will be aware it was not suitable for photography on the way to the Scout Hut, where as so often with NAS West Norfolk events this took place, but I did get this picture on the way home…

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Angel Falls

A reblog of a fantastic post from WEIT featuring two videos of the world’s tallest waterfall.

Two great videos featuring the world’s tallest waterfall (all 979 metres of it)…

whyevolutionistrue's avatarWhy Evolution Is True

I doubt that I’ll ever make it to Venzuela to see Angel Falls, the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world—3212 feet, or 979 meters: 6 times the height of the Washington Monument. But this video, from the BBC’s Planet Earth, is a decent substitute:

And here’s a longer video, well worth watching. It also shows the plane from which Jimmie Angel first saw the spectacle in 1933. Trying to land on the plateau in 1937, he crashed the plane, but it was recovered by helicopter in 1970 and now sits by the airport in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.

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