ghost-blog

Shoreham Cement Works trek.

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:59:04 +0100

The page for Shoreham Cement Works is now up and running. The photos are all there, but the commentary needs to be completed - TBA.

Forum Links appearing domain-wide.

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:57:28 +0100

There is now a link to the ghost-of Forum on YUKU.com on every single page within ghost-of. I've also been through most of the pages correcting alignment and spelling mistakes.

Fault finding update

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:14:24 +0100

1. The Blog is hideously out of date and needs to be brought up to the minute. I've got to try and remember to put a heads-up on the blog when I do anything on here - it's just that there's so much to do and after large bouts of major geekery and programming, I usually forget to stick what I've been doing into the Blog page as well.

2. Future Projects is so far out of date it defies belief. Most of the stuff we were planning to do back then has been done plus several locations not even listed! eg: we did the Fruit and Veg market 3 months ago...!

3. There's no link to the UKU ghost-of/ghost-trains Forum from either of the main websites. This is incredibly important as it would allow people to cut and paste their own reports together and upload them to the forum, rather than having to do them in ghost-of's native YOLA compatible format.

4. Problems with PayPal account found inside "Make a Donation". Has to be manually authorised and cannot see how to change this yet. Work in Progress here.

5. "Contact us" often no longer works as I have a new Email address. I will have to now go through every page with this feature and change it.

6. Edit "Future Visits" - it's massively out of date.

7. Link to Maplins Electronics website not present in "Clothing & Equipment"

8. "How Levers Work" isn't present in "on site". The video is no longer available. Need to find a new video or explanation on Wikipaedia etc.

9. Spacing of page breaks in "On Site" and "Things to Watch out for Inside".

10. Donate Now button doesn't have an attached link in "ghost-of goes 3D"

11. Need to commence the "ghost-of Panoramics Library" - just HTML links there at present with a 404 not found warning....!

General changes, new locations and Fault finding progress

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:01:24 +0100

Yet again it looks like I haven't been on here for months, but there has been so much going on that I haven't been able to list it all in the blog!

2 New locations have been added, uploaded, photographed and commented on - Surbiton Hospital and the Shoreham Cement Works. They are both fantastic locations and I'm particularly happy with the photographs.

We have also been on this year's first railway trek - Shoreham to Steyning (Downslink) Railway. This ties in and will be linked to the report on Shoreham Cement Works.

I have also initiated a Forum to be linked to ghost-of to allow other Urbexers to upload their reports a la 28DL. This is a slow and arduous process and will take a few more months to perfect.

I have also made provision for any Panoramic Shots on ghost-of or ghost-trains to be viewed in a 3 dimensional environment, enabling people to see the places we visited as though they were actually there with us at the time. This is very exciting as no other Urbex website has anything like this available. It does, however, necessitate the provision of a library of source images for the locations we have been to and these will have to be put together, again over a long period of time. The 3D viewer software (Photovista 3.0) is available on a 15 day trial as freeware and a link for this has been programmed into the site in the last 4 months.

I am slowly catching up with reports that are beyond their production date and I am aware that a few of them haven't been completed, so I'm keeping tabs on it all and gradually tidying up loose ends and things as I go along.

General changes and new reports.

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:15:18 +0100

Latest Hellingly report completed (Feb 2011), pictures, pans and commentary completed.

Latest trip to West Park is 60% complete. Pictures, pans, photos all uploaded, commentary is 60% complete. Video footage has still to be uploaded to Youtube for inclusion into the report.

Future Projects updated

The process of includuing a downloadable version of the Panoramic software has started. I am currently trying to find a freeware version of this software and a licence that allows me to share it online in a small group ad research context.

I am currently looking into the viability of including the JVR file bank on the website for download, as this will allow the panoramics from the 2 websites to be viewed in 3D.

Started investigating Guestbook, Message Board and Chatroom to create a ghost-of forum.

Watch this space.

General additions and updates

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:59:27 +0100

Ghost-of domain paid for for another year up to March 2012.

West Park 4 The Tunnel Tour photos uploaded, pans constructed, photos enhanced and fixed, page constructed, commentary constructed, links placed and checked - all okay. Link placed in Places.

Pillbox tour photos stitched, processed, enhanced and placed in File Manager pending page production. No location info will be given due to the delicate nature of the structures along with their geographical situation being largely in people's gardens.

Latest Hellingly pictures (sad and pathetic though they are) uploaded to PC ready for stitching and processing / enhancing.

New source and historical images located and requested (in line with copyright) for Kemptown railway and Hellingly sections on both domains.

Error Fixing

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:38:45 +0100

1/    Failed and missing video links removed from "Hellingly - a Grand Day Out".
2/    Failed and missing video links removed from "The Great Hall".
3/    Intro placed in "Ascent of the Water Tower".

New Stuff!

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:04:08 +0100

After another embarassingly long gap of almost 3 monts, it looks, again, as though I have been doing nothing! But, as usual, we know that's not true because a great deal of stuff has been going on behind the scenes and it's usually the case that after a late night compressing and stitching images and putting them in order in a folder and associated pages on here, I'm often barely able to keep my eyes open, let alone create a blog entry. So, now I have to play catch up!

Right! What have we been up to?

1/    Our monthly visits to Hellingly have been going very well and whilst the photos have been Photoshopped, stitched, uploaded and placed in easily retrievable folders, it's a lot of info to put together.

The work on the site has slowed down a bit as the centre of the site is now clear and we don't think they'll start splitting the rest of it into individual blocks until the weather improves (there's currently a foot of snow outside at the time of writing), so the gaps between our visits have been slightly longer than a month the last 2 visits. The site is totally open now, so it is better for us to go at weekends as access is excellent and we have free reign over the entire site, but it is getting difficult to get everyone together at weekends due to differing work patterns.

I am currently in the process of cataloguing similar views of locations over the time scale we have been visiting in order to try and put together a "Then & Now" page for Hellingly. There is a lot of contention surrounding this, as it is quite harrowing for some members to see the differences to the site. We will do it, though, because I think it needs to be done. And I'm the boss. So there.

2/     Our Trek to The Cuckoo line for the 3rd installment has been uploaded, compiled, commentary applied and it's out there ready to view.

3/    I have recently been through the who of the ghost-of project and thoroughly tested all the links and parts of the site including videos and external software modules. There are plenty of faults and things which I think could be improved!

One of the problems I am encountering (and having considerable trouble dealing with) is where some members of the team have reconfigured their Youtube accounts, bits of Video footage have disappeared. In one case, they have been removed altogether, which I am remarkably pissed off about. In this instance, I am being forced to remove key footage from my website, which has taken a huge amount of time and effort to program and install.

I am currently attempting to locate the video footage lost in other instances and re-establish the links to their new locations. All faults will be ticked off the list and detailed (hopefully) in the Blog, as and when I can deal with them.

I have also noticed that any comments left on the ghost-of website in the comments boxes don't appear! This is because they are in black, on a black background, which is fucking stupid, really. I haven't found a way round this one yet and it is going to require a bit of thought, as changing the background means drastically altering the entire website. Having paid out for the lovely brickwork background, it would be a shame not to be able to use it because all the comments left are sodding invisible...!!!

New Developments in General

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:39:14 +0100

Now I know everyone thinks I've been sitting on me arse since June, but that's not happened! Things have been remarkably hectic here at ghost-trains. Here is a rundown of what's been going on:

I ran out of space on "ghost-of" at the end of July, so I bit the bullet and expanded the site domain, so we now have potentially 25 times as much storage space available!! That should keep us raving for a while...

A new "skin" has been purchased for "ghost-of" and I think the new brickwork look fits in beautifully with the whole ethos of the site, whilst suggesting an excellent link to the architectural aspects of our art that we love so much.

We have been on a few more monthly checkups to Hellingly and these are starting to come together gradually now that we have space to add them into the website. The photos for June, July and August's visits have been uploaded into their appropriate folders in "ghost-of". The June page has been fully populated with photos today and the main crux of the commentary has begun. I have to go into it in due course and input the comments for each photograph where appropriate.

We have had another trek in the last month, this time returning to The Cuckoo Trail and covering the Heathfield Tunnel and a short stretch of the track between Hellingly and Horam, particularly around Hellingly Station and the area where the Hellingly Tramway joined the main trackbed. A page for this will be created in due course, the pictures uploaded and the commentary prepared while I can still vaguely remember what we got up to that day...

There have been a few items in the local newspaper about The Astoria Bingo Hall in the Old Steine. This is a beautiful building sporting many art deco features. It is looking increasingly as though this building may be up for the chop soon as there have been hints made of redevelopment. To this end, I have begun the process of attempting to get in contact with the selling ageny Graves Jenkins, in the hope that we might be able to thoroughly photograph the place before anything bad happens to it. This is work in progress and still in the formative stages, but I hope to have some good reesults soon, as at this stage things look quite positive.

More treks appear on ghost-of

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:40:20 +0100

We've been on some more treks! There have been 2 more to Hellingly and one to a completely new location: Runwell Hospital in Essex.

As a result, I have spent the last 3 weeks collating and sorting out Panoramas and sorting out and improving pictures from these treks, which is a complicated and highly time consuming process.

I have uploaded the images into 3 new folders in the File Manager, pending production of pages for these treks.

We in the ghost-of team have agreed that we will be returning to Hellingly once a month to chart the progress of the demolition as the place gradually changes over the next 3 years, so what I intend to do is just put a new tab under "places", which will take the viewer to a sub-page and the treks will be listed by date, rather than numbered, as there is so much information available in this context. This will take place over th coming few weeks.