time for some retro 35mm slides to digital

As well as the digitisation of a stack of old home movie VHS cassettes, I'm working through some packets of slide films. They were in a box in the garage although the projector has already departed creating a dilemma about what to do with them?

I remembered I've a transparency and negative scanner (in yet another small crate) and fired it up to convert at least some of the transparencies into digital. The scanner in question is an inexpensive one, and I suspect it works as a sort of glorified camera in order to make the digital images. Whilst not as fancy as a super high resolution scanner, this little Veho Smartfix seems to do the trick.

A regular 35mm scanner might make a couple of passes and could take a minute or two per slide. This only takes a few seconds to do three slides, and the image size it produces is 2544x1696 pixels. That is perfectly respectable for most of my uses of these old pictures. It seems to have some basic inbuilt exposure sensing too and although it came with a DVD of software, I'm happy using it straight from the packet, where it will scan direct to an SD card in the back of the unit. My only change was to put in a faster and higher capacity card.

I'm also reminded of some of the old analogue film challenges as I process these slides. Dust on the original transparencies. Marks on the equipment used by the original processor. Curious colour shifts on some batches of film. Curvature on the transparency affecting sharpness. Moisture trapped between the glass on the slides in fancy holders.

I've decided to blast through the slides without anything more than quick fixes. Rotation, quick colour shift fixes and the like. It seems to be working well enough and is fast enough to already have a decent stack of processed slides.

If any are that worthy, they could be reprocessed on another occasion. The initial objective is to get them catalogued into Lightroom. So far it's 633 slides captured. That's about 17 films. I've already found one packet containing snaps around the path up from the Eigernordwand, near Kleine Scheidegg and another pack of the martian invasion as a new motorway arrived in town.

Current configuration may vary from that shown in picture

Martian 'Arrival' on London outskirts, years ahead of the movie

way back in the 1990s - VHS to mp4

Way back in the 1990s. We made our own amusement then.

A slight rework of the old Incredible String Band song, which was set even further back.

Today I find myself wiring up a 1997 Sony SLV-E920 video recorder. Back in the day they cost around £500, or about £860 in today's money. Suitably rare, they pop up on eBay for about £60, although I found this one in the garage.

The purpose? To recode a few of the equally garage-based lost treasure VHS cassettes into digital. And how things move along.

Old VHS tapes can only be recoded at playback speed. Nowadays a DVD can run at 180 frames per second for conversion to mp4 or similar. So I still need to be selective about what gets converted. In the days they were created, the tapes would also be packed with multiple items, so there's a certain amount of fast forwarding required to figure out the content.

The line resolution of old domestic VHS is also quite low. 240 lines of interlaced signal. In modern terminology I suppose it would be 480i. Somewhat less than the typical 1080p of a modern set-up. I might whack the completed digital output through Handbrake later to squish them down a bit further in terms of file size.

As for the analogue to digital converter. I've been using the elgato video capture connector. It handles all the analog to digital conversion inside a little white 'blob' in line with the USB connection cable. I can remember using fancy PC cards to unreliably achieve similar goals in the past. Remember Windows driver conflicts?

Years ago, I used various Matrox RT systems, including RT2500 and RT100x. They were designed in the time of transition from analogue to digital video and cost more than the video recorders. Ironically, in those days when disk storage was still limited, one of the ways to output a storable image was to send it back to tape in DV format.

Now, for these conversions, I'm going straight from the tape to 'iTunes playable' format, so intermediate 'high quality' formats are really not needed. As home movies, the aim is for the 'Ahhh' factor rather than someone to examine the technical quality.

Sports Day, anyone?

terms and conditions

Like many, I've probably only skim read the T&Cs for iTunes.

Its around 26,000 words now, fully a novella in length.

Robert Sikoryak has made it easy for us, by turning the whole thing into a graphic novel featuring various unauthorised appearances by superheroes.

Now some areas are melt in your mouth simple to understand, whilst others might require a few stones to be overturned.


Even in the example above, it's clearly related to United States Law and would be different for International territories such as the United Kingdom.

Snoopy or Supergirl might need Dennis, Gnasher, Biffo the Bear or even Lord Snooty to clarify.

Inevitably, various forms of Steve Jobs appear, covering all manner of topics.

Of course, the idea will probably spread to further genre.

I see that the big league Trump collection is also on its way.

talking with the taxman about the art of redirection

The budget has come and gone, with Mr Hammond somewhat stymied by his predecessor's mess and the upcoming turmoil of Brexit.

The risk profile of self-employed is higher than of those in employer based work, yet Hammond is to reduce the offsets available, with the National Insurance realignment. Unless you are a backbencher ex-Chancellor now working for BlackRock, of course.

I've been playing with the entirely synthetic national household income as a way to get a sense of outgoings. We all get one of those customised HMRC profiles which shows personal contribution to the various direct taxation categories. I decided to reprofile it for the 'all UK household' case, driven from the Office of National Statistics figures.

In practice the ONS produce a quintile (fifths) breakout of UK incomes and although the middle quintile shows an income of £33,758, I decided that the 'All Households' blend, which includes the lowest and highest in the right proportions, would give a more useful figure.

On that basis I can also see that the 'all households' lifetime tax bill has risen between 1995-96 to 2015-16 from £447k to £826k. In 2000 it was £583k. I guess that is worth a separate plot at some point.

But my original objective was to get a sense of the 'All households' contribution into various tax categories, including the EU.

An interesting read. Welfare, Health, State Pensions, Education and National Debt interest make up 75% of the tax bill. And the EU contribution? Smaller than overseas aid(1.2%), at 1.1%.

Let's convert that into the 'All households' direct tax contribution. Of the £9,514 direct tax, around £105 goes to the EU. Welfare, Health, State Pensions, Education and National Debt contribution is £7,145.

So perhaps Mr Hammond was right to leave Brexit out of his budget speech, although the 19% reduction in US dollar foreign exchange rate still takes some explaining.

my garage tidying gauge is still at the dark star dense setting

I'm still in the tidying marathon, although today I decided to take a pause.

I've almost got the original three sides of the garage that were filled with clutter down to one (short) side. The 'to be skipped' pile is getting larger again ready to be pushed through the garage doors when I'm good and ready.

To be honest, the hastily snapped interim picture doesn't really do justice to the full scale of the situation. It was taken just before I demolished that desk unit and filled the space with more crates.

Indoors, the attic is clear although I have remembered that there is a whole stash of further stuff under one of the beds. Cupboards and wardrobes are still full and the music room has an entire department of various electronica, lighting and video equipment.

I decided to invent a guide to show my progress with tidying over the next few weeks.

The purple arrow is 'now' and the dotted one is where I started.

When we sold the central London place a couple of years ago, it was a much simpler process. Before that sale I actually drove to an IKEA and bought a few extra items. New table and chairs for the balcony looking over to Battersea Park. A couple of interesting IKEA tall light fittings so that the full range of switches was in use. Around £100 of IKEA soft furnishings. Okay, I did also replace the oven and dishwasher with state of the art slide and hide Neff and Miele ones.

Finally, the offer (after sale) to include all the furnishings for a very modest additional sum. It saved the entire packing and storage process and, really, we didn't need any of what was there and I didn't want to store it back here.

The buyers leapt at the chance to take everything so they now had a turnkey pied-a-terre in central London. Unlike the house-flipping politicians, and off-shore tax haven-ed fat cats, we duly paid the regulation amount of capital gains tax. I guess we are not as smart as some of the new world leaders who can dodge tax bullets.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to look at ads for short-term rentals in case we have to wait for our next place to be built.

spidery laws and de-duplication

I'm still going through the archaeology expedition in the garage.

I've adopted an approach which has since been copied by the American government. I call it 2 into 1. It is an intermediate stage of rationalisation, which should really be using the full Marie Kondo Spark Joy method, but I need to make enough space for that to be viable.

Hence take two of something with similar characteristics and reduce it by half. The Americans are supposed to be doing it with their legislation. I completely get what has happened and how everything has increased, much like the way that EU legislation has blossomed.

It is a lot easier to get busy around a new thing than to worry about all the repercussions in already existing things. That's how new laws get made but ancient ones don't get repealed. Actually even some fairly modern ones are a bit weird...The Salmon Act of 1986 made ‘illegal to handle salmon under suspicious circumstances’ and there's still that 'don't shake a mat towards the street' after 8am law in London.

Of course they are the more well-known examples; when all the Brexit stuff has to be adapted I suspect there could be a n awful lot more overlapping legislation. Perhaps some of the legal eagles will see this as a new business opportunity in the future. Rule reduction. Law lessening. Act adjusting. It'll probably be called something more complex like non-destructive reductive de-obfuscation. NDRDO. There could be a whole department.

And why the picture of the railway? It's at the back of the garage, although my iPhone pictures show that the spiders have been having fun around it.

why is the box set finale in multiple parts?

The box-set series finale of America is taking much longer to play out than I'd expected.

It's like the script writers had a whole bunch of extra plot twists left over and wanted to use them all. We get Russia, possibly duplicitous appointees, allegations of phone tapping of candidates, offshore hacking of political parties, reverse hacking of diplomatically linked allies. The list goes on.

And then we are told that many stories are fake news. That we should believe the tone burst 140 character outputs from the Trumpster.

He seems to have had a makeover recently, with better tailored suits in a darker shade, new ties and even a slight adjustment of his hairstyle.

Maybe one of his advisors is giving him instruction on decorum?

moonlight and an integrity, accuracy and confidentiality slippage in la-la land

Has anyone else noticed Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz with those black briefcases containing the Oscar results? Especially that Brian, for some reason, appears to have two cases? A case of double entry (boom-tish accountancy joke).

Come to think of it, that PWC slogan about '..accuracy..' might also have taken bit of a boom-tish.

Last year Kate Blanchett appeared to be trying to help Brian out, attempting to remove one of his PWC monogrammed cases. She may have got a best actress award that year, but Brian didn't get her hint about keeping things simple.

Oh well. It looks as if Ryan Gosling still had a good time, even if the actual award was snatched away.

coffee break

A guilty pleasure watching this tv advert.

OK, I'll admit it, I have even rewound it and played it again.

Assembling before a business meeting in London, it'll often be in a random coffee house close to the venue where, no doubt, some of the situations described are playing out.

spicy acolyte gaggle reduction denials

At that aircraft hanger rally MrT talked about the fake media that was out to get him.

Then a couple of days later his spicy acolyte decided to run a press gaggle without certain of the media in attendance.

The ones missing happened to coincide with the ones that MrT had earlier identified as fakes.

But that's not what Breitbart News reported; they were able to say that the whole 'ban' on some reporters was, itself, fake news.

MrT has now said he won't appear at the upcoming correspondents’ dinner, which is scheduled for 29 April. That's the one where the incumbent U.S. President has the Michael extracted by a bunch of comedians and other press folk.

Many have seen that one a few years ago where Obama was the President but Seth Myers managed to get a few barbs into Donald, although Donald remained rather static and looked as if he'd remember the speaker for a very long time.

I suppose we will have to make do with that ongoing Saturday Night Live series now that the White House microphones could remain blanked out for some of the coverage? Perhaps they will also re-run the old Comedy Central Roast of Trump? That's another one where Trump doesn't look best pleased for most of it.

virtual reality and stranger things

Having recently turbo-cycled through the Stranger Things series on Netflix, it has been fun to spot the numerous references to other movies and genres during its episodes. A sci-fi show set in the 1980s, so before the prevalence of mobile phones and other gadgets.

Right from the Star Wars like montage of the promotional poster, it is clear to see that this series has many sci-fi and horror influences. A primary styling influence is E.T. with wider Spielberg hat-tips such as the 'drop of blood' Jaws component.

There's oodles of other references, from Alien face huggers, Firestarter psychic powers and nosebleeds, pre-cog tank floatation from Minority Report, Altered State morphing, Under the Skin's black event horizon (yep that is Scarlett Johansson below), clicking pre-striking Predator sounds, boy buddies like in Super 8. Then there's a short sequence which plays the melody line from Twin Peaks (I had to rewind to check I'd heard it) and the titles for the whole show come straight from the cover of any Stephen King novel.


The list goes on and we even get posters from other movies on various bedroom walls, in one case even declared 'inappropriate' by the Dad character.

In a movie like Under the Skin, the female lead gets a strong character part. In Stranger Things, despite including female lead roles there is also some utilitarian and unsympathetic writing. Without wishing to spoiler it, there's at least one unlamented disappearance.

It all makes the main plot line of the series a bit Scooby-Doo, with various episodic adventures involving scary buildings, bear traps and sundry weaponry. It's like a a few recent series I've watched which seem to break out guns and rifles just a bit too readily. I suppose the succession of episode writers are given a start and end position and x minutes to improvise with their characters and the locations.

There's even a set of those mysterious scientists that work in an anonymous building on the edge of town. And a quasi-governmental Agency able to do just about anything.

The series has clearly been popular and there's a current countdown already running for its sequel. I notice the countdown scrolls like a VR screen. Like any good scary movie, the obvious thing is 'look behind' and find the vintage television running an upside down show, which gives some further clues about Series 2.

old phones for new? hey alexa, what color are your eyes?

As part of the ongoing tidying and clearance operations, I stumbled across this time capsule of old phones. They were tucked away in the back of the garage, in a crate. Ironic that this is the week that the owners of the Nokia brand for one of the phones announce they are to restart Nokia 3110 production.

I never had a 3110, which was the type that had the gimmicky plastic cover swaps. My professional 6110 and subsequent phones all had 10 day plus battery life and held on to calls even on one bar signal strength. They were brilliant for, yes, making phone calls and I had several generations that all fitted the same car kit. I remember buying that Ericsson 'World' at Brussels airport duty free when I was on the way to the USA in the days before everything worked everywhere.

Nokia's approach changed around the time of the 7110 with the Matrix style spring cover hiding the keyboard. Nokia changed the buttons to a roller and it just didn't work as well. But it had that predictive text system which worked okay if you only had a few keys. It still fitted the car kit though. But then we were all given a succession of Blackberries right up to when the iPhone appeared.

My question now is whether there will be a new demand for a simple phone based upon advances in voice recognition? For example, 'Hey Alexa' works okay, but is still somewhat temperamental when it wakes up unexpectedly in the middle of a movie when it thinks it hears its name. Like with the playful deliberate sequence in Mr Robot.

Meanwhile, my experimental holding of shares in Apple continue to go north. They are showing a 51% gain since I bought them last year. As well as the upcoming Chinese and Indian 5SE update, Apple are allegedly expecting an iPhone super cycle in September, when they release something that includes augmented reality and wireless charging. Has anyone else noticed the increase of iBeacons around certain areas (buses and tubes spring to mind)? But whatever they do with the next iPhone I bet it won't fit my current car kit.

Here's one of those Mr Robot scenes from S2E11, redrawn here in cartoon form via DSC. Dominique DiPierro is played by Grace Gummer (that's Meryl Streep's daughter). Alexa is the sightly weird North American Alexa.

As a footnote, this cartoon version doesn't trip Alexa, I think it's because of the rerecorded audio?