I am in the process of clearing up the piles of papers in my study and came across an old article (2009) about Cinerama, a forerunner of today’s IMAX. Cinerama was a great idea at the time that sadly did not catch on, but not before it brought a travelling Cinema (in a tent – like a Circus) to the UK and a number of other Europeancountries.
Making a new search on the web this week led me to find a few new links about Cinerama, including one about a young (at the time) Junior Projectionist who worked at the UK travelling Cinerama during the mid 1960’s in the UK.
I had not heard of this organisation before seeing this year’s BAFTA’s awards. Good to see how Cinema can be used as part of recovery during a stay in Hospital.
Not getting much coverage in the main stream media!!!
Watch this. And never let anyone who helped Boris Johnson become PM near power again. Don’t read the papers who helped him either. Brexit. Covid. Corruption. N Ireland. Debasing of standards. Promotion of non talent. So much damage. But he didn’t do it alone. https://t.co/TwGSZPXjvj
WordPress.com UI Changes – It appears that there have been some changes to the way that the WordPress editor displays and edits it’s posts this last week. Maybe that explains my problems in last post!
I wondered why they have changed it without a general information broadcast which might have saved me having to look up across various sites including WordPress support to discover the changes.
Having worked in software most of my life, I simply don’t understand how companies get away with changes to software without telling the user base that changes are on the way- and when. Looking at the number of posts in the various WordPress forums, I seem not to be the only one who is annoyed.
I don’t mind software updates ‘on-the-fly’ – I’m a big user of Adobe products and they seem able to ‘broadcast’ info about upcoming changes much better – as it means that ‘you’ are always using the latest version, but how about a heads-up first.
COVID-19; the Saga Concludes? – It looks like we are coming to the end of Covid restrictions and the easing of Lockdown – I have my second jab (Pfizer) next week so all should be set for a great big Shindig – or perhaps not. With Covid cases increasing on mainland Europe, based on previous government efforts to keep the virus at bay, I will not be surprised to find us back under some sort of restrictions by the summer!
One area of the Covid reported figures that seems strange to me is the levelling out of the news cases, which seem to be hanging around the daily 6k to 6.5k mark. According to the latest UK Gov. figures 38,937 news cases were found in the last 7 days, up 4% from the previous 7 days.
Does this mean that 38,937 people don’t know how to social distance? On the other hand there seems to be increasing evidence of increased cases amongst children, as this article in the New Scientist seem to indicate.
Beached Whale – With the stricken Ever Given Container ship grabbing a lot of the headlines this week, I saw an interesting article about how in the 1960’s the USA was going to help Israel build an alternative canal as a rival to the Suez original. How? By using some 520 Nuclear Bombs to make the trench all the way from the Aqaba to the Mediterranean Sea. Had it gone ahead, it would have brought a whole new meaning to ‘glowing in the dark’, methinks.
On a more serious note, the incident does show how many economies are now so dependant on deliveries of intricate components for their ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing processes via the global supply chain, that incidents like this one can cause serious issues to all sorts of manufactures.
The Allotments – With a new growing season upon us, time to get going on the plots despite the strange spring weather here in the UK – what’s new! My original plot is all tidied up and showing signs of growth on the stuff I planted in the Autumn and ready for early Potatoes, probably next week.
On the other plot, had a good week sorting out and planting some 250 Onion sets! Yes; we like Onions! In fact, we have just finished off the last few from last year, though I did share quite a few around family and neighbours, hence we need more Onions!!! Still have over 120 Reds to plant!!
My new shed is slowing taking shape, there has been a shortage of Cladding, but have now sourced a load and will be doing that over the next few weeks, then the roof and finally I can start to fill the IBC’s.
p.s. Clearly the formatting issues experience with the last post seem to have been cleared up, the update I suppose!
Back in 2006 a friend and I started a small website and blog about the changes the NHS was going through at that time. Such as Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges.
It’s amazing after all the years in which we have had five different Prime Ministers and four different governments and massive amounts of money having been spent on the NHS; the very same problems of staff shortages, bed shortages and car parking charges continue to weigh down the NHS.
One of the reasons we started the website was that there did not appear at the time one central source where one could look at to get a snapshot of the then ‘current’ situation.
It took a bit of collating, but it was surprising how much information could be gathered over the Internet at the time. However, there were a lot of phone calls made and surprisingly we did gather a lot of data by simply ringing the hospitals directly and asking; and simply being given the info we asked for! I am sure today; there’d be lots of Freedom of Information (FOI) forms to fill out and lots of refusals given back to us.
We also set up a contact page on the website and received quite a bit of information that way, slowly building up the data across the three main areas of Job Losses, Bed Losses and Car Parking Charges (changes)
Sadly over time and due to both our jobs – we were independent IT consultants (not in the NHS) – suddenly getting very busy with new contracts (not with the NHS) so the website and the Blog started to fall by the side. We did look at raising money via donations, but sadly that did not happen. Not really focused enough due to our jobs I suppose. Today, ‘Crowdfunding’ might be the answer!!
However; I have kept the Domain name which I may revive (when I have time) at some stage when we see the current governments’ direction. I do still publish a daily (Mon-Fri) newsletter of NHS related stuff that grabs my eye at https://www.scoop.it/topic/nhswatch.
It is sad to see the struggles the NHS has gone through over the years; yes it has improved in many areas as I can confirm when I have needed to use it on two occasions. However; it seems of late, that no one person really has an single answer to the staffing and bed problems that have continued over the 14 years that I have been looking at it.
As a guide to any links you might see associated with this post. I ‘ported’ over all the past Blog entries from the ‘NHS Watch’ original Blog platform quite a while ago. Needless to say any related comments you see will be very old and of course very out of date.
I’ve always enjoyed cycling and will try to improve my performance for 2020. Didn’t do too bad last year with quite a few Km’s in France, but thought I should have cracked the 8,000 Km total, but sadly feel a bit short.
However, there is always this year. Also rejoined my local Cycle club and accepted a few Strava and other online challenges. Out today for the first real ride of the year with a pleasant ride up to Benson and a nice coffee stop.
Beasley's Place 