A heads up about James and Sons’ April auction – a monster three-day affair.
INTRODUCTION
James and Sons’ April Auction will be spread over three days – the 24th, 25th and 26th. I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week so that we could get the catalogue to the printers and had enough images done to upload it to the-saleroom as well. Then, after some negotiation at the end of Wednesday I also went in yesterday to do another day’s imaging. In the rest of this post I will take you through some of the highlights of this monster sale.
DAY 1: SPORTING MEMORABILIA, EPHEMERA AND BOOKS
Lots 1-250 consists of sporting memorabilia of various types, including speedway, football, tennis and cricket. Here are a few highlights from that section:
Lot 1Lot 208 – the signature on this scorecard is that of Zimbabwean fast bowler Heath StreakLot 92 – Some Tennis stills of recent vintage.Lot 190 (two images). This was the first FA Cup final played at Wembley, just a fe weeks after the stadium was completed, and for the record Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham United to claim the silverware. This item will fetch in the high hundreds or possibly even into four figures.
Most of the books and other ephemera are fairly unremarkable, but here are a couple of highlights from that section:
Lot 332 (three images)
Lot 340
DAY 2: COINS AND MILITARIA
Both these categories are already attracting attention. A few coin highlights:
Lot 511Lot 514Lot 539Lot 540Lot 464A close-up of the big coin – it is not often that one sees a coin with a map on it.
Highlights from the militaria section:
Lot 715 – this Naval Ensign flag is so huge that I had to spread it out on the floor of the shop and stand on a chair to get it all in shot.The print on the edge of the flagLot 761Lot 762Lot 763Lot 764Some interesting plaques.
DAY 3: POSTCARDS AND RAILWAY PHOTOGRAPHS (PART 1 OF THE W A SHARMAN ARCHIVE)
I have imaged all of the postcards, but I am only about one-third of the way through the Railway photographs which will end this auction. Here are some highlights from the postcard section:
Lot 997Lot 1009Lot 1018Lot 1022 (two images)
Lot 1040 – I have already answered one enquiry about this lot.Lot 1047
Lot 1048
Lot 1050 – the last postcard lot.
I have been imaging the railway photographs by using the scanner, at 400dpi. I image the photograph itself, the typed label on the reverse, and combine those to form the master image, and when I have a decent number of such images I watermark them so that unscrupulous operators cannot cheat us by printing out the images on photo quality paper. Here are some of the highlights from the watermarked images:
I finish with a couple of pictures which have extra features of interest:
This one has Bronte connections – not only is this Haworth, where they lived, Branwell Bronte worked on the railways briefly (he was based at nearby Luddenden Foot for the record)Lot 1091 – a photographer’s pick – note the clever use of the arch to frame the approaching train.
Solutions to my .last set of problems and a new set. Also some photographs.
INTRODUCTION
It has been a few days since my last post, and the principal reason for this will made clear in my next post. Meantime I am starting proceedings for today by answering the questions I included in my previous post, and then setting a couple of new ones.
To explain, here is Alex Warneke’s published solution (one of a number, but the one I like best)
Draw a circle around each figure. The circle drawn around each polygon has a larger circumference than the polygon and therefore a larger radius than the circle. If we consider the ratio of circumference of a circle to perimeter of inscribed regular n-gon we see it is bigger for smaller n and smallest for n = 3.
SOLUTION 2: EBBINGHAUS DISILLUSION
This was the problem:
The two blue circles are exactly the same size. Here is an edited version of the above, deliberately clumsy so that my method of editing it can be seen by all:
PROBLEM 1: DECK OF CARDS
The first of two new problems from brilliant that I am sharing in this post:
This is a multi-choice question, the possible answers being:
a) Less than 50%
b) More than 50%
c) Exactly 50%
PROBLEM 2: GROYNE
Again from brilliant:
As the title of this section indicates I have identified a clear-cut mistake in the wording of the question – there may be room for doubt as to whether the indicated structure is a groyne or a jetty, but it is most definitely not a ‘breakwater’ – such would be entirely out at sea, not stretching from the land into the sea.
A petition, a Thunderclap, a message to Aldi, some photographs, and a couple of little snippets.
INTRODUCTION
Although there will be a couple of minor items tacked on that the end, this post is mainly devoted to a thunderclap and a petition, both regarding an area of woodland that adjoins a Nature Reserve and is under threat from plans by supermarket chain Aldi.
SAVE QUESLETT TREES
There are two parts to this, starting with…
A THUNDERCLAP
To participate in the Thunderclapyou need to be on facebook and/or twitter and/or tumblr. Below is a screenshot formatted as a link:
Linked to the Thunderclap is a petition, a screenshot of which appears below, again formatted as a link.
The main business of this post ends with…
A MESSAGE TO ALDI (AND PLANNING AUTHORITIES)
I feel very strongly that Aldi should accept the initial negative decision, especially given how many supermarkets (including two other Aldis) are located close to this area already. I am a fairly regular customer of Aldi stores in my own part of the world, but that may not remain the case if Aldi do not reconsider their stance over this. I conclude with some advice for all involved in this decision to consider, tendered in the form of a picture created by Anna from a comment I posted on her blog:
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are some of my recent photographs, before I finish off with a couple of minor items.
A COUPLE OF NUGGETS
The last few days have seen two numbers come up for me:
300 – the number of successive days on which I have solved at least one of brilliant’s problems – here is one of them for you:
900 – my Lumosity Performance Index has just exceeded this value (after this morning’s workout it now stands at 917. Below, concluding this post is first the breakdown of my LPI, and second a little puzzle for you: Solutions will be in a future post.
An introduction to Autism Acceptance Month/ Autism Appreciation Month and a few photographs.
INTRODUCTION
Officially April is designated Autism Awareness Month. In this post I will give my view as to why this designation should be rejected and what the alternative, as articulated by autistic people should be.
AWARENESS
Firstly the notion of ‘Autism Awareness’ is tainted by the mere fact of who the main organisation pushing it are, who I will not name here. Suffice to say that their many misdeeds include being responsible for the video nasty “I Am Autism”, and that they are associated with the colour blue and with the puzzle piece symbol. I am glad that I am separated from them by the width of an ocean!
Secondly, even if the first point above did not apply, ‘awareness’ is simply not sufficient as a bannerline aim. Awareness does not equate to understanding, and that latter is the barest minimum that is required…
UNDERSTANDING, ACCEPTANCE, APPRECIATION, RESPECT
Understanding of autism is merely a good starting point (and there are ton of places where you can find autistic people writing about autism, some which I shall list later). It needs to lead to acceptance of us for who we are, appreciation of our good points and respect for us as human beings.
PLACES TO LEARN ABOUT AUTISM
This list is not (never in the proverbial million years) exhaustive, but it gives you some good pointers.
#REDINSTEAD, #LIGHTITUPGOLD & THE RAINBOW INFINITY SYMBOL
The organization I refuse to name tells people to #lightitupblue, for which reason that colour is off-limits (except when it appears in photos) to this site at least for the month of April. The first two elements of the title of this section refer to alternatives. This blog is following #RedInstead simply because gold letters don’t really stand out against a white background. The Rainbow Infinity Symbol, a customized version of which heads this blog, while another appears on my personal cards, is an excellent alternative to the discredited puzzle piece for the role of autism symbol. Here courtesy of stimtheline is the Autistic Bill of Rights:
James and Sons had auctions on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I was then back at work yesterday, doing various things. Also, as will be revealed in the course of this post something else came up after Tuesday’s auction.
TUESDAY
Tuesday’s auction was a specialist stamp sale, and what should have been a fairly quiet afternoon actually became the most stressful period of the week.
THE AUCTION
I have already posted a report on both these auctions on the James and Sons website. This auction did not feature any headline making sales, although quite a bit of stuff did sell. I am going to focus on just three lots, starting with…
LOTS 794 AND 795
In the run up to this auction I fielded a query about these lots, providing images to an interested party. It was this very person who subsequently bought both lots. Here are the images I produced.
LOT 966
This lot was one I had an eye on, and it was duly knocked down to me. I have lots of pictures of it, starting with the images I produced for public consumption, continuing with some images from during the auction the feature it and ending with the ones I took of it today.
A six image gallery from work
Displayed at the auction – next to it is lot 959.The full display (most of the big albums were left upstairs)>A close-up shot taken at the same time.Lot 966 displayed on the big screenNote the insert, which tells us what this cover is all about – this is the first of the images I took today.
AFTER THE FIRST AUCTION
Having consumed my sandwiches I sought to update our website and discovered that it had been suspended due to a malware attack. This necessitated getting it professionally cleaned, and also arranging for it to protected in future. An hour and a half of exchanges with technical support staff at sitelock, discussions with my employer about which of various options we would go for, and a considerable amount of stress later the matter was settled, and I was able to head home knowing that the matter was being dealt with. At about 6PM I got an email sent to my personal email address confirming that the clean-up was complete and that they were informing Host Gator, who would reactivate the website.
WEDNESDAY
In view of the information contained in the paragraph above it will be no surprise that I was determined to be at James and Sons early, and I managed to be on the 6:23AM bus, arriving in Fakenham not long after 7. A quick check up confirmed that the website was back up and running. It remained only for me to reset the password (one does not take chances when there has so recently been an issue of that nature) and do some editing. I then had plenty of time to help bring down auction lots for display and get the IT side of the auction up and running.
This sale went well overall (see here for more details). There was however one serious annoyance. There had been a confusion over lots in the range of 165-200 and I had had to remove a lot of images from the-saleroom, and renumber them and upload them again. The screengrab below, taken from the ATG Media toolbox shows conclusively that I had done this, but nevertheless, when we came to those lots on the day the wrong images were in place.
Here some images of the layout of this auction…
POST AUCTION
One I dismantled the IT stuff and replace it all where it belongs, and then consumed my sandwiches, as I was able to get some more work done, editing the website and also updating the company database with details of online bidders.
THURSDSAY
A quiet day, in which I completed the updating of our company database, started imaging for the end of April auctions and took some parcels to the Post Office. I now have the long weekend to recover from these three days, the first two of which were very draining.
A cricketing post, in which I set out my stall for World Autism Awareness Week and then the month of April.
INTRODUCTION
While this post is a cricket post, it is also my first post in World Autism Awareness Week. Thus to set the stage for this week and for the whole of April you will notice a couple of changes:
All of my own text will in #RedInstead
Save in photographs where it is unavoidable the colour blue will not appear in this blog before the start of May
The main theme of this post is what happened in Auckland, but before that…
A QUICK UPDATE ON THE
AUSTRALIAN CHEATING SAGA
For full details please visit my previous post. The official ICC ‘punishments’ – a one-match ban and a meaningless fine for skipper Steve Smith and just the meaningless fine for Bancroft are a complete joke. However, it seems that Cricket Australia will be taking tough action against Smith and vice-captain Warner(this latter has to rank as one of the stupidest appointments in cricket history given his reputation) and less tough action against Bancroft. The latter annoys me on the following counts:
Yes, Bancroft was a junior player acting under the influence of his seniors, but “I was only obeying orders” has certainly been utterly debunked as a defence since at least 1945.
Bancroft is both older and more experienced than was Mohammad Amir at the time of his fall from grace and yet the latter (quite correctly) spent five years banned from the game (the other two offenders in that case, Mohammad Asifand skipper Salman Buttwere both drummed out of the game permanently, again correctly.
Incidentally, the match in which this scandal broke finished yesterday, a day early, as Australia collapsed in their second innings, losing all 10 of their wickets for the addition of 50 runs (57-0 to 107 all out, thereby outdoing England’s collapse of a few days ago).
CRICKETING JUSTICE IN THE END
England made a decent fist of things on the final day in Auckland, taking the match into its final session, but in the end cricketing justice prevailed, with New Zealand winning by an innings and 49 runs. The truth is that this match was a three-cornered affair, with New Zealand coming out just ahead of the weather and England way back in a distant and dismal third.
There were two things that stood out about the England second innings:
Nearly every batsman got going, but none managed to produce a really major innings, Ben Stokes‘ 66 being the top score.
The ends of sessions were calamitous for England, with Root falling just before the close of day 4, Moeen Ali on the stroke of tea on day 5 and Stokes on the stroke of the dinner break on day 5.
New Zealand bowled very well again, although there is no way that Neil Wagner’smedium paced bouncers should have caused the havoc they did. Leg spinner Todd Astlecollected 3-39. Trent Boult was deservedly named Man of the Match for his nine wickets in the course of the game – it was his magnificent bowling on day 1 assisted by English ineptitude that gave New Zealand an ascendancy that only the weather seriously threatened to take away from them.
England need to learn from this – the only publishable word to describe their ‘preparation’ for the test match section of this tour would be”shambolic”, and their batting in the first innings reflected this.
A win in Christchurch would give them a 1-1 draw in the series, though I reckon that another defeat and resultant 0-2 reverse might just administer the kick up the collective backside that they need. Further information about this match and the players involved can be found here.
I end this section by emphasizing once more where the credit belongs: my heartiest congratulations to New Zealand on a splendid performance.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Unless I specifically state otherwise any photos you see in this blog will be mine.
On the first remotely spring-like day of 2018 (it was still not that warm, but there was a curious yellow ball-shaped object visible in the sky) I spotted my first butterfly of 2018.
A few recent finds, an solution, a new problem and some photographs.
INTRODUCTION
I finished my posts about the two major autism events I have recently attended ahead schedule, so I am producing an extra post today. This post will contain some autism related links, a solution to the problem I posed on Saturday, a new problem, and a handful of photographs.
A SOLUTION
On Saturday, in a post titled Setting the Stage for Tomorrow and Monday I set a problem about an email spam filter. I now present the answer, and my favourite of the published solutions, offered by Aaa-Laura Gao Gao.
SOME AUTISM RELATED LINKS
First of all, the last blog-related thing I did yesterday was to create a page containing links to everything that I had posted about the two autism events I recently attended.
Next up come two pieces that tackle the organization known in autistic circles as Autism $peaks or sometimes just A$:
An open letter to A$ co-founder Suzanne Wright from the parent of an autistic child, published on the Autism Womens Networkunder the title “For God’s Sake Stop Speaking“. I quote one paragraph below: Your insistence that your tragic ideas on how autism should be viewed, managed, and treated be forcibly imposed on every country in the world is frightening in its scope and ambition. The very loud horn of the autism apocalypse you keep blowing at the world is sad because there is so very much good you could do. I cannot grasp this hate filled fear mongering in someone who has a neurodivergent grandchild. I would think you would want to use every means at your disposal to insure the world accepts him and supports and accommodations are made for him to actively participate in every community. I can’t help but wonder how he feels about a grandmother who speaks publicly about how difficult his existence is on his mother as you did in your previous unfortunate address to Washington.
We finish with a piece written by an allistic mother of an autistic child, Mind The Hypo’ssplendid piece titled “A Different Perspective” from which I quote a paragraph:
Then she goes on to say “I’m also reaching out to fellow parents in pain to remind them to cast off shame,“. Not only an article but an entire book about the pain and shame of having an autistic child. To me, this is a self-centered, retrograde, outmoded idea. If one truly intends to cast off shame, how about starting by not calling it a tantrum, or not offering an explanation that sounds like “he’s broken” followed with “but it’s not my fault, I’m just a martyr of a mother, please recognize that!”
My final blog post about the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the fifth and final installment in my Autism Events series, concluding my account of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo a week ago yesterday (still to come are some related posts on my London transport themed website and a page on this site bringing everything together).
THREE MORE TALKS
I will handle these talks in exact chronological order, starting with…
THE AUTISTIC DAD
This one was slightly problematic for me, although I welcome another autistic person being given the opportunity to speak. The biggest problem I had lay in his comments about vaccines, which I found particularly hard to stomach given that since he is autistic there is an obvious genetic component to his son’s autism. This talk did not inspire as much as I had hoped, and a week on I do not feel any happier about it.
SPORT FOR CONFIDENCE
This was a wonderful talk by Lyndsey Barrett, a former netball international (she had a very serious illness which nearly killed her, but is now back playing netball to a good level although she has not yet been recalled by England) and founder of the eponymous Sport for Confidence.
Lyndsey Barrett.
AN EXCELLENT FINISH
The final talk was from one of the people from Green Board Games(see my first post about this event for more) and although I was very tired by this stage of the day I thoroughly enjoyed it.
HOMEWARD BOUND
Leaving the event I headed back to Uxbridge station, and got a Metropolitan line train into London, arriving at King’s Cross in good time to catch the 18:44, arriving into King’s Lynn at 20:22. Here are a few pics from the return journey, although the battery in my camera was running on fumes by that stage of the day.
This footbridge is at Hillingdon, one stop out from Uxbridge.The station building at Rayners Lane, which functions as a bridge between the platforms as well is one Charles Holden’smost famous.Chiltern Railways, with which the Metropolitan is closely integrated. Chiltern Railways‘ historical predecessor, the Great Central railway was a creation of Sir Edward Watkin, who also ;played a massive role in the Metropolitan’s history. This train is at Harow-on-the-Hill.A distant view of Wembley Stadium.
Takes my story of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo up to the end of the first of the talks that I attended.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the fourth post in my Autism Events series. This is Part 2 of my coverage of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo which took place at the Eastern Gateway Building, Brunel University. For those joining the series at this point the previous post are:
This post will cover the remainder of the stalls at the event and the first of the talks that I attended.
AROUND THE HALL
This is a story that will be told largely via photographs…
Autistic artwork.
Yes folks – a whole stall devoted to selling fidget/stim toys.
PAUL ISAACS TALK
Paul is autistic himself, and his talk was both informative and inspiring. Notice that as with the Autism Anglia event in Norwich this event gave autistic voices lots of opportunity to be heard. Here are some pictures from this talk.
Because of the shape of the meeting room it was equipped with two big screens, one for each half of it.Paul’s talk on the screen.Paul ready to start his talk, while event organiser Anna Kennedy watches from the corner. She kept all the speakers informed as to how they were doing timewise.Paul Isaacs speaking
Autistic and Aspergian traits.
Close up of the Aspergian traits listAutistic traits close upThe ones in the middleAlthough I choose when using such descriptions to refer to myself as an autistic person, with ‘person’ coming after ‘autistic’ I am with Paul in asserting my personhood.Paul’s considerable output.
Most of this post covers events from a week ago yesterday, but before I get into the main body of it there is on little thing I need to attend to first:
AN AMENDMENT AND AN APOLOGY
For those of you who saw the original version of Autism Events II, you will notice should you revisit it that I have removed many of Amanda Hind’s slides from it. This was at her specific request, on the course of a very friendly twitter exchange. I have never previously been asked to remove photographs of slides from a post, but I fully acknowledge Amanda’s right to make the request, and I acted on it very promptly. This is by way of both explaining why I edited that post after it had been up for a while and apologizing in this blog for publishing more of Amanda’s slides than she was happy to see published.
THE ANNA KENNEDY AUTISM EXPO – GETTING THERE
The event was taking place at Brunel University’s Eastern Gateway building in Uxbridge. This meant getting a train and changing at King’s Cross. The Metropolitan line route from King’s Cross to Uxbridge is more direct than that of the Piccadilly line, and the Metropolitan line platforms take less long to get to from the railway line, so I opted for that route. I also decided that even though it would almost certainly mean not being there for the very start of the event that I would get the 6:54 rather than the 5:54 from King’s Lynn. I will be covering the Metropolitan line element of the journey in detail on my London transportthemed website, but here are some photos from the journey…
On the platofrm – note that mine is the second train due in.The chesham train – doors open.The new stock operating on the Circle, District, Hammersmth & Cty and Metropolitan lines is articulated in the manner of Swedish Tunnelbana stock rather than using old-fashioned bogie couplings.The route map at King’s Cross St PancrasThe Metropolitan line route map on the train.A Jubilee line train (from just before Finchley Road to just after Wembley Park the Jubilee and Metropolitan lines run side by side)Crossing Kilburn High Road.A Piccadilly line train (from Rayners Lane to Uxbridge the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines run in tandem).A roundel at Uxbridge station.The clock at Uxbridge station.Stained glass windows at Uxbridge station.The outside frontage of the station
The full surface building.
The walk from Uxbridge Station to the venue was supposed to take about 25 minutes, but I went the wrong way at first, so it took me a bit longer than that. I arrived at the venue a bit late, but soon got stuck into visiting all the stalls, to see what people were doing and to tell people about myself and NAS West Norfolk. I will now share a few thoughts and photos from a couple of those stalls.
I spoke to two of the people from this company, which creates games aimed specifically at helping SEND children, including autistic children. I got to sample a couple of the games as well – they look very good to me. Please note that the title of this section is formatted as a link to their homepage.
Some of the products.This is a viciously hard game – you have 30 seconds to look at the shape and memorise it and you then have to use the blocks to construct it.This is tough in the early stages, but as more spaces are filled it gets easier to place your pieces.This one can be played in two ways. Either require the players to memorise the shape they will be building or leave it on display. You have to place as many blocks as you can without rotating them, then when no more can be used towards making the shape pick the unused blocks up and roll them like dice to reveal new faces, and so on until you have completed the shape (the completed shape here, using light blue blocks was the work of yours truly.
Joely Colmer is an autistic woman whose website I linked to via the title of ths section. As well as her website she is the author of a book about her experiences, “Aspergerworld: My Fairy Jam Jar”.
SOME PHOTOS FROM THE VENUE
I will end this post with some of the photographs I took of general stuff at the venue:
These last two poctures are of a boat that hangs from the ceiling of that building.It is of the type referred to in rowing circles as a ‘light four’ (there are two types of four person rowing boats, the light as seen here, and the ‘tub four’).
aspiblog 