INTRODUCTION
A very quick post to link to our upcoming auctions…
THE CATALOGUE COVER
Below is high resolution scan of the cover of our printed catalogue, formatted as a link to the online catalogue:
Auction Stuff
An auction alert
Category: Photography
Auctions Next Week
An introdfuction to next week’s James and Sons’ auctions.
INTRODUCTION
James and Sons’ October auctions will be taking place next week. A combination of factors, including a colleague being signed off sick for three months, left us somewhat behind schedule, but the printed catalogues should be arriving either today or early tomorrow, and the online catalogue is ready for viewing. The rest of this post details what will be going under the hammer on each day.
MONDAY 23 OCTOBER, SHOP
This auction kicks of with 250 lots of military themed postcards, then 150 lots of ephemera and finishes with 100 lots of cigarette/ Trade cards. Here are a few of the lots:
TUESDAY OCTOBER 24 – SHOP
Postal History, Stamps, Coins and Banknotes. This sale starts at lot 601 and ends at lot 1100.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25TH – FAKENHAM RACECOURSE
This auction features lots 1201-1600. These lots include Jewellery, toys, militaria and other objects of interest.
The Aspi.blog 2018 Wall Calendar
Announcing the new calendars.
INTRODUCTION
Producing a photographic wall calendar has become a tradition for this blog, and courtesy of a magnificent offer at Vistaprint (25 calendars plus postage for £129) this year’s are now on order (eta with me October 25th). The rest of this post gives you a preview.
THE CALENDARS
Most of the pictures for this calendar come from my Scottish holiday, so they do no relate to particular months. There are one or two exceptions as you will see.
Trees in Transistion V
The fifth installment in “Trees in Transistion”.
INTRODUCTION
This post will have a longer preamble than is usual for posts in this series because I have not posted much (except a reblog of an excellent post by Anna) in recent days. On Tuesday and today I have been busy at work, while yesterday I was in Norwich running a stall at a conference organised by ASD Helping Hands, titled “Ageing with Autism”. This means that the tree pics you see in this post are a little bit out of date. I hope to have time for some serious posting over the weekend. For the moment, welcome to the fifth installment in my series “Trees in Transistion”.
TREES TO THE FORE
Some Pictures
A largely pictorial account of my day.
INTRODUCTION
I have just finished editing the pictures I took while out and about today. I have a collection of tree pics ready for the next post in my “Trees in Transistion” series, but for the moment it is the other pictures I am sharing. I will put them up in three segments…
NURTURE
These are pictures featuring my aunt’s plants, which I have been watering while she is on holiday. Barring a freak return to summer weather tomorrow I anticipate one more visit on Wednesday being sufficient.
NATIONAL LIBRARIES WEEK
This week is National Libraries Week. I have visited King’s Lynn Library today, will definitely visit Fakenham Library at least once this week after a working day, hope to call in at Norwich Millennium Library when I am in that fine city on Wednesday (an autism event) and on Saturday en route to Musical Keys should find time for a visit to Gaywood Library. Here are some pictures of King’s Lynn Library…
NATURE
We end with some pictures focussing on nature…
Spotlight on Work
Press releases, photographs and auctions.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this little post about my work at James and Sons. There are two main parts to this post – one features an event from the last of the September auctions, while the second deals with the upcoming October auctions.
ON THE POWER OF INTERNET BIDDING
On Thursday I put out a press release with the title “The Power of Internet Bidding”, which focussed on lot 1301 from our previous auction. On Friday someone from Archant (the media company who publish The Eastern Daily Press among others) asked a number of follow-up questions, so I expect a short piece to appear in the EDP before too long. Here is a screenshot of my original press release, along with the image used therein and a link to the document:
THE OCTOBER AUCTIONS
All three Octobe auctions will take place at our shop, 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AF – on the 23rd, 24th and 25th.
SALE 2138
This sale, on Monday October 25th, kicks of with 250 military postcards before moving on to ephemera, cigarette and trade cards and such like. The imaging for this sale is nearly complete.
SALE 2139
This one has very vfew images thus far. This will be the stamps and postal history day.
SALE 2140
The imaging for this sale is reasonably well advanced…
Trees in Transistion IV
The latest addition to my “Trees in Transistion” series.
INTRODUCTION
This is my fourth post in this series. The pictures were taken between Thursday and yesterday.
TREES TO THE FORE
Sunday Sharing Spectular
A mixed bag of a post, featuring autism, politics, mathematics and photography.
INTRODUCTION
As well as the wide variety of ,links that give this post its title it will feature some of my own stuff, notably pictures.
AUTISM
I start with some stuff about Autism, beginning with…
AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM LAINA
Laina, guiding genius of thesilentwaveblog, has set up a new blog specifically for sharing stuff. Her announcement of this is here, while the new blog can be seen here.
STIM THE LINE
I end this little section with what is a new find for me, stimtheline, with a post titled “Autism is Me“.
GENERAL LINKS
The four links in this section are links that form no natural groupings:
- the gentleman has produced an excellent piece about the durability of Roman Concrete.
- From slate.com comes this piece about how to avoid all-male panels (“manels”) – it is long but an excellent read. As the author points out there is no excuse for an all-male panel. I would similarly say that if you are getting together a panel to talk about autism your starting point should be autistic people – and only when you have several lined up should you consider the desirability of including neurotypicals on the panel.
- A petition calling on the Spanish government to allow Catalonia a new, peaceful independence referendum.
- For UK readers only, a petition calling on our government to ban driven grouse shooting.
ROBERT LOVES PI ON FULLERENES
This refers to three related pieces that I have seen on robertlovespi. Fullerenes are spheroid carbon allotropes (also known in some circles as buckyballs – both the formal and informal deisgnation pay tribute to the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller who was particularly known for geodesic domes). The three pieces are:
- The one that first attracted my attention, titled “The Construction of a Zome Model of a 240-Atom Fullerene Molecule, In Seven Pictures“
- Then comes “A 240-Atom Fullerene, and Related Polyhedra“
- Finally, “The C-320 Fullerene Polyhedron“.
A TEASER
This one comes from brilliant, though it has a little addition of my own as well:
This is an easy question, even without the multi-choice options given on the site. If the 51 under the dividing line was replaced by 53 it would become fiendishly difficult – can you work out why?
PHOTOGRAPHS
Trees in Transistion III
More on trees in transistion…
INTRODUCTION
Both my original “Trees in Transistion” and the post I put up yesterday morning, “Trees in Transistion II” have proved popular, and I have some more tree pictures for you today.
THE TREES SPEAK
These pictures were taken yesterday evening, and the light was fading as time passed. I did not use the flash for any of these pictures.
Links, Puzzles, Pictures
Links, puzzles and pictures. Public transport features, as does some general politics, and mathematics. The pictures are of course my own.
INTRODUCTION
I have many links to share with you, and wilkl be setting a puzzle. I will be putting up another of my tree posts immediately after this one, so my pictures feature stuff other than trees.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
This section comes in two parts, starting with…
NEWS FROM MY LONDON TRANSPORT WEBSITE
Just before lunchtime today I received the following email:
Dear Thomas.
I am writing regarding http://www.londontu.be
My name is Andrew and I work for Nicola at Tour London. Nicola is a tour guide in London UK who takes individuals and groups to the most famous landmarks in London, as well as discovering hidden gems along the way! We were wondering if it were possible for us to appear on your “links” page in any way given that we share such a similar topic.
Alternatively would you be interested in content pieces? Nicola has a vast knowledge of London and would love to share it with your audience.
Finally, If not content, do you have any other advertising opportunities?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
Andrew | Marketing Executive
Tour London
Tourlondon.org.uk
Naturally, I was delighted to receive such a communication, and I have since put in some links, done a special post about this site and ‘pressed’ a couple of their pieces. Please visit londontu.be to read about this in more detail, and then explore tourlondon to see what they have to offer.
WE OWN IT – TRANSPORT
The campaign group weownit have created a resource with the catchy title Privatisation Fails. Below is a screenshot of the homepage for this resource:
Of course, I followed up the bus and train links. Here is a paragraph from Privatisation Fails Buses:
Buses
30 years ago, our bus services were deregulated and privatised. This has been a disaster for our buses. Fares went up and routes that weren’t profitable were cut, meaning you now pay more for less. In 2017, the Bus Service Users Bill was passed, which included a clause which bans local councils from creating their own public bus companies.
On this page are the Big Five bus companies that grew out of deregulation and privatisation in the 1980s – together they control 70% of the bus travel industry in the UK. Many of these companies either own, or are owned by, rail companies as well.
Read more about bus services, and how and why we want to bring them into public ownership, here.
Next up comes Privatisation Fails Railways:
Railways
British Rail was broken up and privatised between 1994 and 1997, and since then rail services in the UK have been provided by private companies. There are 16 rail franchises in the UK, where the government gives train companies funding to run services for a certain period.
Many of the companies that run our trains are European state-owned companies who reinvest millions of pounds a year in dividends from their British operations into their own transport systems. As you’ll see, these companies often own franchises within franchises. You might be surprised to learn who owns your morning commute! We’ve also listed three ‘ROSCOs’ or rolling stock companies, who lease trains to rail companies.
Read more about the privatisation of rail and what we can do about it here.
POLITICAL LINKS
Royal Mail workers have voted by a huge margin to take strike action. The official voting figures are:
Turnout 73.7%
Yes 89%
No 11%
This means that 65.593% of all those eligible to vote cast their vote in favour of strike action. I did this calculation myself, entirely in my head, but here for the record is how to get there…
Calling Turnout T and Yes votes Y and Overall Percent Yes as O we have O = TY/100. Putting the known figures into this we have O = (73.7 x 89)/100. To avoid decimals until absolutely necessary we change this to O = (737 x 89)/1000. To calculate 737 x 89 we can reduce to single figure calculations as follows:
737 x 89 = (700 x 89) + (30 x 89) + (7 x 89), and then splitting these up 700 x 89 = (700 x 80) + (700 x 9), 30 x 89 = (30 x 80) + (30 x 9) and 7 x 89 = (7 x 80) + (7 x 9). We now have a series of multiplications which can all be treated as single figure multiplications, with in some cases zeroes to be stuck on the end. Multiplying them out gives us 56,000 + 6,300 + 2,400 + 270 +560 + 63. Adding these together we get 65,593, and dividing by 1,000 requires a decimal point to go between the first and second five, giving us 65.593%. PS It took a lot longer writing this out than performing the calculations in my head!
I have two links for you about this vote:
- Vox Political’s piece “Royal Mail workers have voted to strike by a huge majority”
- www.independent.co.uk whose piece is titled “Royal Mail faces first national strike since it was privatised“.
A SKWAWKBOX QUADRUPLE BILL
The Skwawkbox, one of the best new media sites around, has had several particularly outstanding pieces recently:
- “A Conference For The Many Not The Few” – an account of the Labour Party conference by activist Sarah Henney.
- “The Latest anti-Corbyn Media Trick to Watch Out For” – exposing a dirty trick that MSM are likely to be using in the near future.
- “HUNT’S ‘UBERISATION’ OF NHS IS TORY BLUEPRINT FOR OUR WHOLE SOCIETY” – On the unofficial minister for rhyming slang launching a new NHS app, and his real reasons for launching it.
- “SIGN/SHARE PETITION TO FORCE WEAK MAY TO #SACKBORISJOHNSON” – exactly what the title suggests.
PHOTOS 1 – ANIMALS
From Monday and yesterday:
A TEASER
This puzzle comes courtesy of brilliant:
PHOTOS 2: VIEWS
aspiblog 