Some new developments! At last!
May 4, 2010
After a month or so of deglitching and messing around doing little bits and pieces, we got our heads together and got back out there! We have had 3 very successful treks this month: 2 to Hellingly Lunatic Asylum and one to West Park Lunatic Aylum. We were always a little unsure about going back out to Hellingly and West Park, because we had heard so much about the places being locked down, overly secure and numerous arrests made. However, we just couldn't help our curiosity and figured that, as we could more or less stroll onto the grounds unchecked, we would have a look around outside the place and see for ourselves what had changed.
In the last week, I have compiled the photos which should be panoramic stitches, produced the stitches and uploaded to ghost-of, for both Hellingly treks. I have produced the commentary for the first trek in which the external investigation was made. 2 pages have been produced for the treks and the photos have been laid out for the second trek page. The first page is entirely complete.
There have also been some improvements, changes and alterations over the last month:
In the last week, I have compiled the photos which should be panoramic stitches, produced the stitches and uploaded to ghost-of, for both Hellingly treks. I have produced the commentary for the first trek in which the external investigation was made. 2 pages have been produced for the treks and the photos have been laid out for the second trek page. The first page is entirely complete.
There have also been some improvements, changes and alterations over the last month:
- Additional material added to the Hollingdean website.
- New links back to master page have been installed into all the West Park pages in ghost-of.
- A new skin and layout has been purchased for ghost-of and I am in the process of fixing the glitches this has caused.
- Reinsertion of banner images
- More work on optimising images and improving loading speed across the entire project
- The new skin and layout for ghost-of has caused some issues with centred text being offset, so instances of this are in the process of being found and corrected.
- Video footage of both Hellingly Treks and the West Park trek have been processed and uploaded to Youtube, pending inclusion and appropriate links added into the appropriate web pages.
- A preliminary trek to the National Gas Turbine Engineering Centre at Pyestock near Fleet provided a couple of interesting photos, but the place is patrolled very well and they have huge guard dogs loose inside the barriers, so we will not be checking this place out any time soon!
Posted by Lawrence Russell. Posted In : New stuff
Ninja photographer, editor, web designer, programmer and the maniac who started all this off in the first place almost a decade ago!
I just can't let this project slip because I feel so strongly about the complacency of the people of the UK in their need to destroy, remove and replace perfectly serviceable buildings (albeit with a little care and attention to detail). Most of these buildings could be pressed easily into alternative useage and easily modernised rather than replaced, such is the strength and longevity of Victorian Architecture.
Where most of today's structures have a life of just 35 years at the very most, The Victorians considered that their creations were the last word in construction and would be there for a very long time to come.
So, when they disappear or are threatened with removal as so many of the abandoned structures in this project are/were, it is nice to have some sort of record of them, hence the undeniable purpose of my crusade.
