Despite What You May Expect
This is not an Intro about post-punk bands, not indeed pop music in general. Since you are far too young to possibly remember, 'Post-punk' was the musical wave that came after the two-chord thrash-and-shriek merchants of punk, it being composed of bands that could actually play music. Art!
Artwork courtesy Brian Bolland
For your information, this is the debut of Judge Death, long-time fan favourite. I have this sheet here because of the DJ. Art!
I'm sure you're please to know that yes, Electric Eyes is one of the first victims of Judge Death, at which incident the sound, most pointedly, stops abounding. Conrad wonders if one couldn't invite Judge Death into our world to wreak a little - er - 'judgement' upon similar odious persons.
ANYWAY we did mention post-punk, and sound, so by the laws of inference I have to include a cover from The Sound. Art!
A very good band in their day, one has to say.
ANYWAY, manifestly, none of that is anything to do with the real Intro. Which is about Lithium Wafer Battery Design a photographic spread featured in "The War Illustrated", entirely separate from that montage I was whanging on about yesteryon. Art!
This, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is a depiction of a Sound Ranging unit of the British army in Italy, a technology Your Humble Scribe was unaware of being used in the Second Unpleasantness. The First Unpleasantness, O yes, very much aware Dan Dare. The Second? well now .....
The idea behind sound ranging is quite simple; one listens for the sound made by enemy artillery, records it, plots it and works out where the enemy guns are located, upon which discovery the Royal Artillery unloads fifty tons of shells upon them. Turning the theory into adequate practice took about a year in the First Unpleasantness, arriving in 1917. I've already dug up the references to this scientific approach in "Battle Tactics Of The Western Front" and Farndale's "Western Front 1914 - 1918" history of artillery, so the odds are good you'll get a potted recount. In the meantime - Art!
An observer in the front lines reports in via radio link when he hears the sound of enemy guns, giving an approximate direction (if you look closely you can see his compass on the berm). Art!
Here a couple of uniformed minions are installing a protective cover over a microphone well behind the front lines. These were positioned by the half-dozen in an arc, picking up the sound of artillery firing and transmitting the data to a central point. There it would either be recorded on a drum graph, or be measured onto film for collation and interpretation. Art!
Here you see a couple of more cerebral minions in uniform working out from the unspooled drum graph where the Teutons are hiding their guns.
One refinement that the First Unpleasantness lacked was radio transmission between the different units, which hence didn't have to be in the same place. Art!
He also provided a useful cross-check for the calculations and a time-stamp, too. The last shot illustrates how those scribbled lines on a drum are plotted onto a map, locating the enemy guns. Art!
Matey is adjusting clips holding a length of string, already having three crossing at the same location, which is where the Teuton gun or battery is hiding.
There is no indication of how accurate this methodology is in TWI, and I don't have the time or inclination to wade through technical manuals. Briefly put, in the First Unpleasantness a British sound ranging section could locate an enemy gun to within 30 yards on a good day so Conrad anticipates the chaps above doing as well if not better. It made the Teutons extremely wary of firing if the wind blew towards Allied lines.
Or up
Lording The Hoarding
I warned you about this, so don't go whining. Okay, Periscope Films run a business where they rescue, retrieve, restore and record 8mm and 16mm films, permitting we the public to view the end results on Youtube*. They make money by licencing films as stock footage for other broadcast media. Nine months ago they got a call to rescue a huge collection of celluloid film reels that had been collected by a person no longer able to care for them. Art!
This is only part of the many thousands of reels that were collected, before they became landfill. Not only did they fill the truck, they filled a trailer as well. Becoming waste is the sad fate of a lot of old film stock, I'm afraid. Art!
Where viable, the film is run on this HD recording deck, transferring it to digital medium, because the celluloid one is ephemeral, sensitive, delicate and vulnerable to extremes of temperature or humidity. Art!
You can't tell from a photographic image, so you'll have to take it on trust that this particular reel is giving off a very strong odour of vinegar, better known as acetic acid, which means that it's beginning to decompose. Nick (co-founder) points out that it's 'hexagoned', meaning it's contracted physically and lost the required flexibility for being run through the sprockets. Not only that, it's become a single solid block. Art!
Another tweak. The cyan part of older film stocks from the Sixties and Seventies faded over time, leaving a print that played back in red tones. Esteban uses colour-correction tools to add the blue back in, giving a faithful reproduction of a film fifty or sixty years old.
Go check 'em out, they're free.
Dotty
No! Not Yayoi Kusawa, who is dotty in every sense of the word. Art!
Conrad found this inside the pages of a military history book he was cataloguing, where it had lain undiscovered and unlamented for years. DtD is a music festival, held on 3 consecutive days in Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester. It's still going. Not that I went to the one above, this is a flier picked from an associated venue.
The date of the above was - allow me to illustrate. Art!
2015, if you can't make it out. I went over the whole band list and the only one I recognise is Rag'n' Bone Man. More probably a showcase of local talent than any step to the big time, one surmises.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor is both plotting and transporting, and doubtless getting a great big kick out of doing both on the go.
Plotting on the go meant being creative ,
mused the Doctor. Like keeping a
multitude of plates spinning on poles whilst cycling round them on a unicycle,
blindfolded. He led them back to the Tardis,
nodding and smiling to passers-by, children running errands, fishermen hauling
nets, farriers and carpenters. Alex
looked around in muted wonder, seeing, smelling and hearing activities he knew
of only at third hand or via a computer monitor. Terry hared on ahead, desperate to get to the
bizarre structure standing atop the dunes, allowing the Timelord to pass Ace a
small silver cylinder unseen by any Euclans.
‘Pocket radio transciever, Brigadier’s personal issue. Keep it with you,’ he whispered from the
corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t call me,
I’ll call you. And don’t give it
away!’ He paused again. ‘In fact, make sure nobody from Arc One ever
gets their hands on it. Bad idea. Germs.’
‘Alex!’ he called, loudly. ‘I’m
going to whiz Upstairs with Ace and Terry, drop them off in Arc One and come
straight back here. I want you to wait
for us.’
By this time they were slogging up the sands of the low ridge to the Tardis. Alex didn’t bother at being left behind,
cocking his head to catch a low, continuous rumbling roar he hadn’t noticed
when they arrived, since he’d been so overwhelmed with the perception of a
distant horizon. He sprang backwards
when the big blue box vanished with a wheezy howl, only for it to reappear less
than a second later, making him wonder if the incredible box of tricks had gone
wrong.
O Alex, never venture that theory to the Doctor. Never!
One Has To Wonder
Over the past few days there have been several unconfirmed reports that Peter The Average is dead, having had a coronary and <insert umpteen possible scenarios including polonium tea and twelfth-storey windows>. The Kremlin, somewhat mystified about where these rumours are coming from, has been issuing denials, well aware that if they loudly proclaim Bloaty Gas Tout as alive, an awful lot of people, the Ruffians first, will automatically parse that as meaning that he is very dead indeed. Art!
The thing is - if he were dead, his body doubles would be wheeled out to keep up the pretence of him still breathing, and he always has a 'library' of video clips that are used to pretend he's busy working when he's actually off getting a blood transfusion or surgery. Meanwhile the FSB will be trying to choose a new leader amongst those in power who haven't fled the country on a private jet loaded down with gold bullion.
If a new leader does arise, expect it to be an utter unknown who's been quietly working away in the background. Kinda like -
Yeah
Finally -
Just because we can - Art!
* For FREE!
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