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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…

These look like old coins but they are actually well disguised cigarette cards based on those coins.

Next up came some left over coin and stamp lots…

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Then there were a few small flags…

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

Lot 751, first of the records in this sale
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Although I restricted myself to showing 10 of the 28 records this one had to be included.
Lot 778, the last of the records.

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

The Stereograph
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When viewed through the stereograph you get a single picture in 3D

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…

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Lot 653
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Lot 653 – picture only

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Lot 654
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Lot 654 picture only

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

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

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The last of the commemorative coins.

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A large collection of themed stamp books.

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

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Old maps…

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… 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!

The basic set up
An arrangement of lines which prevents any of the balls (released from the nozzle you can see top centre) from escaping. I do not know what kind of sound this generates, as at no time while the sound was on did I have this many lines in place.

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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An Eulerian Birthday

A distinctive (I hope) way to mark the occasion of my 41st birthday.

INTRODUCTION

Today is my birthday, which is the last part of the title explained, so where does the word “Eulerian” come in?

THE MOST PROLIFIC OF ALL MATHEMATICIANS

For all his immense output Leonhard Euler (pronouned “Oiler”, not “Ewe-ler”) is best known to the world at large for his solution to the “Bridges of Konigsberg” conundrum. Citizens of this then German town (it is now Kaliningrad, Russia) used to amuse themselves by trying to walk around the town crossing each of its seven bridges once and once only in the course of their peregrinations. Nobody ever managed it, and Euler (pioneering the science of topology, a minor offshoot of which is the “Beck Map”, versions of which are now used worldwide as an easy way to display urban public transport routes, in the process) proved that there was no way to do this. This is because each the four landmasses involved contained an odd number of bridgeheads – had specifically two (and it could have been any two), or all four of these landmasses contained even numbers of bridgeheads it would have been possible to devise a walking route using each bridge precisely once.

Much less well known than the above, Euler also noticed that if you feed values into the equation Y = X2 + X + 41 every value of X from 0 through to 39 produces a prime number for Y, and even after the inevitable break to the sequence where X = 40 produces Y = 1681 = 41 * 41, and X = 41 produces Y = 1763 = 41 * 43, the formula continues to produce a very large number of prime numbers – far more than any other formula of similar type. This then is why I described this an Eulerian birthday – it is my 41st. A clue to bear in mind for next year’s birthday is that the person who will play the role in my blog post on that day that Euler has played today was proud of the fact that he was born in Cambridge in 1953 and had initials DNA. More details, including a full listing of the primes produced before X = 40, can be found in Keith Devlin’s “Mathematics: A New Golden Age”.

PICTURES

I have some pictures, mainly from today at work. These are presented as a ’tiled mosaic’ – click an individual image to view at full size.

From here to the Watt medallion are tokens that I scanned at high resolution and worked on to produce the clearest possible images.
These last few pics are not work pics – they are the best images I have managed to get of the James Watt medallion I bought recently.

AFTERWORD

Many people on both facebook and twitter have wished my a happy birthday and I thank all of you for so doing – the main celebration, a Sunday lunch at the Crown in East Rudham two days before the actual day was superb.

 

 

Trials and Tribulations

An account of recent events at James and Sons.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday was James and Sons’ May auction, at Fakenham Racecourse, and today we had a badge sale at our shop in Fakenham.

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WEDNESDAY

Our main auction was blighted by problems with the internet connection at the venue. Eventually we relocated the auction itself to Cool Roxy, the owners and trainers bar, while leaving the stock in the Prince of Wales Suite. This left us way behind schedule. Nevertheless, the sale was very successful, with five pieces of postcard artwork accompanied by sample postcards by a man called Twelvetrees selling phenomenally well, some old vinyl records selling well (a Black Sabbath recording went for £340), and many other items faring well. Among the lesser lights a book of photographs from King’s Lynn’s past went for just £4 (it goes well with my substantial digital archive of pictures from King’s Lynn’s present thank you), while a Cornwall Polytechnic Society medallion featuring a bust of James Watt (he after whom the unit of power is named, and who along with his distant predecessor Heron of Alexandria, his closer predecessor Thomas Newcomen and his near contemporary Richard Trevithick played a key role in the development of the steam engine, the first power source for locomotives) went for £11. In amongst all this I had to get images of the reverse sides of the some of the badges being sold today to resolve queries.

Overall, the early problems not withstanding it was a successful day, and here are some photos…

These helmet plates all did well
The model aerolplane was another success
The model soldiers (of which we had vast numbers in various lots) also went down well.
These mounted soldiers were one lot
The Twelvetrees artwork and sample postcards referred to in the text.
This map piqued my interest but was beyond my means.
This barometer has seen almost as many auctions as I have, but this time it found a buyer.
Had this been being sold individually instead of as part of a much larger lot I would have been interested.
A plastic case full of fishing flies, of which this is just a sample, sold.
The medallion referred to in the text.

TODAY

Today’s sale proceeded smoothly. Although no huge prices were recorded a number of items did better than expected. Overall therefore I think we can say it was a successful week, although very draining (especially yesterday).

Press Releases

Details of four significant press releases that I have put out recently.

INTRODUCTION

This post covers one particular qaspect of my work at James and Sons. Everything yousee has gone out between Thursday of last week and this morning.

PRESS RELEASES

I am sharing four of these with you:

MILITARY BADGE AUCTION ALERT

This one is about our upcoming auctions on Wednesday and Thursday, the first of which contains a few military badges, including both of those used in the image, and the second of which, taking place at our own premises, is a pure badge auction. I will provide the images, a jpg of the full document and a link to the original word document:

102103MILITARY BADGE AUCTION ALERTAAPR

THE GREAT CENTENARY CHARITY AUCTION

For various reasons instead of a dedicated auction devoted entirely to fund-raising we are incorporating the Great Centenary Charity Auction within our own programme, with lots in June and November being sold for fund-raising purposes. I have put out two press releases thus far about this:

WHERE MILITARIA AND SCOUTING COMBINE

The first press release focuses on a collection of medals and paperwork relating to Jack Cornwell, who at the battle of Jutland became the youngest person ever to win the VC. He was also a boy scout, giving an extra connection. I have a jpg of the press release, the press release itself and all the images I took of the various items:

Cornwell PRIJCKings Medal ReverseKings MedalMedals - FrontMedals Photo - reverseMedals PhotoMedals reverseMemorialNewspaper cuttingVC Paperwork 1VC Paperwork Hi-resGCCAPRGREAT CENTENARY CHARITY AUCTION

POPPIES AT THE TOWER

The second Great Centenary Charity Auction press release is about an oil painting of the Poppies at the Tower by one of the two artists who created the real thing…

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COIN AUCTION ALERT

This was chronologically the first of the press releases to go out, focussing on this Wednesday’s auction:

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COIN AUCTION ALERTPRICoin Auction PR