Metropol

The Domesday Reloaded site is now live. I remember writing some articles for it at school... and now, 25 years later it seems they weren't used - or were at least largely rewritten!

I am surprised at how basic the entries were! There are only 3 low-res photos - but I suppose the storage capacity of the Laserdisc was at least partially to blame.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/d ... /picture/3

It loads faster off the internet than it does off laserdisc!

I played with this last year at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park ( http://www.tnmoc.org/ )

I have to say looking through the site is genuinely fascinating! Kudos to the BBC for spending the time doing this - I am glad that they have done it while they can as I imagine the challenge of finding the working equipment to access all the information in a few years time would be verging on impossible.

From being super-excited to browse, I can't help feeling a wee bit let down at the limited amount of data, images and detail within rather large grid squares - Scotland, at least.

Why are the pictures so dark?

Managed to find my office - at the time an abandoned dockside warehouse. The closest thing to my family home was a horrid picture of vandalism wrecked shops in Livingston. Eurgh. But then, it did look like that.

I thought video was part of it - or was I mistaken?

I was talking about this sort of thing the other day while watching the thing on BBC2 involving poloroid failing.

There is going to be a lot of history that is just going to vanish as its kept on digital media that is not going to stand any sort of punishment over time.

How many times have important things been discovered in peoples loft or shed's that have turned out to give an insight into a time period or someone's life.
Most digital media is not backed up onto something like a DVD and is likely to be lost forever which is a shame.

Edit: this is pretty much outside my house where I grew up.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/d ... 000-360000

Well, don't forget that DVDR's don't last more than a few years without degradation..

Don't they?

Fuck.

Sput wrote:Well, don't forget that DVDR's don't last more than a few years without degradation..

We are all doooooommmeeedddd!

Gavin Scott wrote:Don't they?

Fuck.

They last longer if you keep them in a dehumidified environment.

Chie wrote:They last longer if you keep them in a dehumidified environment.

Well this explains your face...

[/had-to-be-done]

Not sure if any other BBC regions are running reports on their own evening news bulletins, but there's a feature on Domesday Reloaded on BBC Look North NE and Cumbria tonight.

Bizarrely, of the images I browsed from Northern Ireland, the DR site features photos of the hospital my father worked at then - and the hospital he later went on to work at.