Click the image to play the video: (WMV 02:12 13.7MB)

On Wednesday evening I joined a group from the IET and took a special tour of the East Anglian Film Archive. This is a fascinating place, filled with hundreds of thousands of films and tapes covering over 100 years of moving image recording. Here’s a short taster of the visit.

I left inspired by their enthusiastic dedication, despite continuing paucity of funding, and the possibilities for collection of today’s video alongside the images of long ago.

Special thanks to Louise Lawrence and Pete White for taking us round and explaining everything so helpfully.

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 01:19 9.7MB)

After leaving Vancouver we picked up our RV (camper van) and headed north into the mountains. At home we barely even have hills, so this was an exciting (if rattle-clattery) adventure all of its own. By the time we returned the RV I had driven around 1500 km of these kinds of roads.

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 02:12 16MB)

Margaret and I got married in August 1995. Our recent trip to Canada was a kind of second honeymoon, and brought back memories of what it had been like thirteen years before. For this video I delved right back to the first tape I recorded with my first camcorder, a Canon UC8Hi which I bought specially.

As you can imagine, I was kind of busy on the day of the wedding, so I just handed the camcorder around to guests and friends and asked them to film anything they liked. Here are a few little clips to give a flavour of the day. Apparently I never stopped grinning the whole day!

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 01:13 8.2MB)

This is probably the last Vancouver video for a while. It’s from our last day in BC. We were a little sad because we had dropped off the camper van which had been our home for ten days, and were due to spend a night in a very ordinary hotel before flying across Canada to Ontario the following morning. Luckily, before we left we managed to fit in this perfect evening, playing in the last glorious rays of the setting sun.

Beautiful memories.

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 01:50 11.2MB)

Another tiny slice of Canada. This time a trip up Grouse Mountain, Vancouver’s nearest and most popular recreation peak. You can walk up if you really want to (some people even run), but we took the cable car.

The music is “Earls Breakdown” by The Backsliders, via The Internet Archive.

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 01:09 6.9MB)

This year we spent most of August travelling around Canada, I took a lot of photos and video, so don’t be surprised if some of our experiences appear here

Our first stop was Vancouver, and this video is a snippet of a visit to the “lookout” at the Vancouver Harbor Tower
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Click the image to play the video: (WMV 00:54 5.3MB)

Yesterday lunchtime I found two of my colleagues enjoying their sandwiches while cooling down after a run. For no obvious reason, they wanted to tell me all about bread!

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 00:47 2.2MB)

I was doing something or other in my home office back in June 2006, when I noticed that some unexpected object on my windowsill was casting a beautiful rainbow right across the ceiling. I recorded a bit of video and took a few stills, and now I have set it to a snippet of public domain music from 1928 (via the Internet Archive.)

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 01:11 8.7MB)

In May 2006 we were staying for a few days in Norfolk. One rainy day we took a trip out to see the otters at the nearby Otter Trust. It was a fun day despite the poor weather – the otters were cute and we all learned something about native wildlife.

The Otter Trust is now no longer open to visitors. Sometime since our visit they decided that there are now enough wild otters to sustain the population, and stopped the breeding program.

Click the image to play the video: (WMV 00:31 2.4MB)

I’m having a lot of fun digging around my various hard drives and tapes looking for inspiration about what to post as a videoblog. This one is very short, but it made me smile when I found it.

The story is that we had stopped in some fast food restaurant while driving somewhere (I don’t recall exactly where), and the girls had had some sort of kids meal which cane with a toy dog. In the manner of fast food, the meal was soon over, but I needed a bit more break before continuing with the driving (and probably to finish my coffee, too!) I thought the little bored dance they did with the toy dog was cute, so I recorded it. It eventually sees the light of day over three years later.