Day 512 – Rotterdam to Amsterdam

Not me, of course. I’m not allowed in other countries and this is very much in other countries.

No, this is a timelapse shot in 2013, but which (mysteriously) “couldn’t be published right away due to restrictions”. There’s no indication as to what those restrictions are or were, but at the end of last year they were either lifted or ignored and now we have a 10 minute trip through the flat lands of Holland The Netherlands (happy now, TA?).

In 2013 a special transport over water left from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. A timelapse camera was installed at 30 mtrs high. The resulting film gives a unique and stunning view of the old Dutch waterways, in 4K. And, you will pass a few dozen different bridges that all open before your eyes. Images were shot with a Canon 550d at an interval of 3 seconds, totalling around 30.000 pictures taken.

A couple of notes here: the camera appears to be attached to some sort of kite or balloon. And if the camera wasn’t attached to the boat in question, it would be able to get through a lot of those bridges a whole lot more quickly.
BUT SEE UPDATE BELOW

There are a lot of places along this route that, should you find yourself on the wrong side of the canal, you’re staying that side for a while. I was quite surprised about that in a country as small as Holl… The Netherlands.
Anyway, this video has made me want to go and do a European canal trip again:

But that would also mean traveling to another country, and as I mentioned above…

UPDATE: Thanks, Dave.

It’s a piece of equipment for (Royal Dutch) Shell, apparently.
That’s my balloon theory blown up out of the water then. (see what I did there?)

Day 163 – A Youtube ad that I actually enjoyed

I was served this advert this morning ahead of a video I was going to watch.

I automatically skip all the Youtube ads as soon as I am able to, but this one caught my attention, I watched it all the way through and I actually quite enjoyed it.

I mean, yes, it clearly starts in San Francisco and then races to Pretoria, but other than that mild inconsistency, very amusing. (To be honest, I’m also rather irritated that the thumbnail gives the plot away a bit, but these are mild concerns.)

Sadly, in looking it up to share here, I typed the name of the company into the Youtube search bar, and so you can guess what has been on the front end of every subsequent video I have opened since then.

So tomorrow, look out for a new post on here:

Day 164 – A Youtube ad that I am thoroughly sick of.

Sanitise [psst]

Day 137, part 2 – Youtube plugin test

I’ve been having a few problems with embedding Youtube videos on the blog.

They appear just fine, but when you go back, some weird additional coding has been added to each embed code, and the video no longer shows.

Just a big gap. Embarrassing.

So I’m trying out a plugin to assist me with this problem. Let’s see if it works.

If there is no Hans Zimmer/Alan Walker crossover video above, it hasn’t.
However… well, I guess you can work out the alternative.

That said, this problem never seems to manifest itself immediately. So let me revisit this in a few days time and see what’s going on.

Thanks for reading this far.

Day 46 – Concerts and production

Given that there’s no sport and no socialising at the moment, I have found myself trawling the internet for stuff to watch.
They are generally quick trawls. You don’t have to look very far.

One of the things I have been enjoying is some of the concerts that have been made available for our lockdown entertainment. And one of the things that amuses me about them is just how polished a “proper” concert video is when compared to what’s being offered at the moment.

NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING, you understand…

I’m very grateful to have these things to watch.

Here’s an example: my man-of-the-moment Baxter Dury playing an intimate gig in a French penthouse, BTV:

versus this from his bedroom for the Royal Albert Hall Home a couple of weeks ago:

Don’t be fooled by the impressive title page. Click through and it’s wonderfully laid-back, fun, sweary and deliciously informal and almost amateurish: backed by his son on guitar when the recorded backing track didn’t work and with a half dead fern in the background.

Love it!

One more example, and this one is somewhere in the middle. It’s an OMD gig and yes, the footage was also recorded BTV – last year, in fact – but never readied for performance. So you occasionally get hands in front of the camera, it gets bumped by energetic concert-goers and there are sometimes chunks missing between the songs. Who cares? It still looked and sounded great on the big 4K TV in the corner of my living room.

We watched this premiere on Saturday evening after winning the Captivity Pub Quiz Part II by a whole half a point. Really good evening, and some good memories of seeing them really live back in 2012.

Will we ever do concerts again? I wonder.

In the meantime: more online gigs, please.

My Instagram

I get quite a few requests for details of my Instagram account, despite it being linked to just over there on the right.

Anyway, here it is, along with a few other of my accounts you might want to follow:

My Instagram
My Flickr
My Twitter
My Facebook
My Youtube

And a couple of my Spotify playlists:

inspired by 6
just another indie/britpop playlist

I look forward to record (no pun intended) numbers of listeners.

 

Please feel free to add me on your social network(s) of choice.
Unless you’ve had enough of me already; in which case, why are you still reading this?