BBC BASIC strikes again
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Dalek Dave wrote:
Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
They just don't make them like they used to :) These days it's all throw away, my first cell phone lasted 3 years (and before me a couple more years, was second hand). Now I'm lucky if it lasts 1.5 years, and no I don't throw it against a wall or anything like that ;P
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Dalek Dave wrote:
Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
They just don't make them like they used to :) These days it's all throw away, my first cell phone lasted 3 years (and before me a couple more years, was second hand). Now I'm lucky if it lasts 1.5 years, and no I don't throw it against a wall or anything like that ;P
When I get my new phone (contractually obliged to take upgrade), I pass my old one on to friends and family. No point throwing away a perfectly good phone.
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Amazing. As an aside and many, many years ago I worked for the BBC and wrote an application that catalogued (bar codes) every video tape (blank or otherwise) as they had realised that they were losing something on the order of £100k worth of tapes every year (a large amount back then). Only a small percentage were being stolen: the rest were 'borrowed' and simpky not returned or accounted for in departmental budgets. Once people had to check out every tape and people were employed to walk around the various buildings scanning tapes at random losees trailed off to almost nothing. Have to say it was good place to work. ps Patrick Troughton was the best Doctor: Pertwee and Tom Baker were awful, camp characters.
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Happy days....back when the Archimedes could pull data off an HDD far faster than a PC, and had a desktop with anti-aliased fonts....a real opportunity lost by Acorn. :(
I hope you realise that hamsters are very creative when it comes to revenge. - Elaine
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When I get my new phone (contractually obliged to take upgrade), I pass my old one on to friends and family. No point throwing away a perfectly good phone.
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
I keep mine till they break, it's just an observation from me and friends that these days they break a lot faster than they used to. I'm all for going back to the days where a phone was a phone and not a tool for inane twatter on twitter ;P Basically for me all it has to do is call and send messages, but those days are over I guess, I think they call it progress ;P
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Amazing. As an aside and many, many years ago I worked for the BBC and wrote an application that catalogued (bar codes) every video tape (blank or otherwise) as they had realised that they were losing something on the order of £100k worth of tapes every year (a large amount back then). Only a small percentage were being stolen: the rest were 'borrowed' and simpky not returned or accounted for in departmental budgets. Once people had to check out every tape and people were employed to walk around the various buildings scanning tapes at random losees trailed off to almost nothing. Have to say it was good place to work. ps Patrick Troughton was the best Doctor: Pertwee and Tom Baker were awful, camp characters.
Have 5 for the camp doctor comment, even worse than Blakes Seven.
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I keep mine till they break, it's just an observation from me and friends that these days they break a lot faster than they used to. I'm all for going back to the days where a phone was a phone and not a tool for inane twatter on twitter ;P Basically for me all it has to do is call and send messages, but those days are over I guess, I think they call it progress ;P
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Dalek Dave wrote:
'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this)
A hybridized spelling really - British spelling would be "colourise", American would be "colorize". The hybridized spelling ends up with no "u", and an "s" (instead of the expected "z" for an American spelling).
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Dalek Dave wrote:
'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this)
Shouldn't that be 'recolorize'?
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Dalek Dave wrote:
'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this)
A hybridized spelling really - British spelling would be "colourise", American would be "colorize". The hybridized spelling ends up with no "u", and an "s" (instead of the expected "z" for an American spelling).
Read a dicitionary. The prefered spelling in English for soft sibilants is Z, S is an Americanism, so says the OED and Collins. I have had this argument before and won every time by the expediency of pulling out a dictionary and showing it to disbelievers! So I am right, Recolorise is the American way, Recolourize is the British (and therefore correct) way! :0
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Dalek Dave wrote:
'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this)
Shouldn't that be 'recolorize'?
Go to bookcase. Remove Dictionary. Read. Z is prefered before S in English soft sibilants. Z is purer, coming from the Ancient Greek, whereas the S is the bastardized French Form.
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Read a dicitionary. The prefered spelling in English for soft sibilants is Z, S is an Americanism, so says the OED and Collins. I have had this argument before and won every time by the expediency of pulling out a dictionary and showing it to disbelievers! So I am right, Recolorise is the American way, Recolourize is the British (and therefore correct) way! :0
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Dalek Dave wrote:
Read a dicitionary.
I'm an American - I don't read the dictionary. And I use a Z, not an S. Therefore - I am right. :)
OK, we are both right, Z is correct, S is French and therefore automatically wrong :)
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Go to bookcase. Remove Dictionary. Read. Z is prefered before S in English soft sibilants. Z is purer, coming from the Ancient Greek, whereas the S is the bastardized French Form.
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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OK, we are both right, Z is correct, S is French and therefore automatically wrong :)
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
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Did some more checking, and this isn't such a simple issue. Refer to this Wikipedia article [^] for more information (there are quite a few other sources as well). Seems that all British sources aren't consistent in their opinion on this.
Endeavour agrees with DD. Therefore it is a fact! Indisputable.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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I watched a remarkable thing last night. During the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who many of the original tapes were wiped as a cost saving exercise. (The tapes themselves were £100's of pounds each, and the storage was expensive too). Many of the colour prints were recovered from overseas customers, or from the hands of private collectors and so eventually every JP episode exists in one format or another. Unfortunately there are 13 episodes that only exist in black and white. There was an effort back in the early 90's to 'recolorise', (American Spelling as it was an American firm that did this), a couple of the black and white episodes, and they did a good job, but there was a lot of colour clash. Sometimes it was due to scanning differences between NTSC and PAL systems, or there were timing differences between the 24fps of film and the 25fps of TV etc. Then, quite recently, when watching what is known as a TeleCine Transmission (Basically for some foreign sales they pointed a film camera at a TV Screen), one chap noticed that the TV picture kept trying to put colour into a black and white film. This guy is a genius, because he realised why. When the B&W film was being made from a colour image, it captured colour data in the image, even though there was only a black and white scale. Each pixel from the TV image was captured, and if they could be read, they could be interpreted and recombined into the original colour image. He designed a system that scanned each frame of the B&W film, and attached a corresponding value to each part of it and lo and behold, thence came colour! It took a while, (24 fps x 24m30s x 6eps = 211680 frames), but they did it. The year was 2009, the computer was an Archimedes and the language used to write this remarkable program? BBC BASIC! Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this. All Praise Be on old tech!
------------------------------------ To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Dalek Dave wrote:
Seriously Cool that a 25 year old version of BASIC, on a 22 year old machine can do this.
Not too surprising, though. It's a computer, and BASIC is a programming language that tells computers what to do. just 'cause something's old doesn't mean that we're any cleverer than the people who made it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!