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Other / 01.04.2016

Today I handed over the latest instalment of the image library to Michelle Ryan of the Queensland Museum. She is drafting a new agreement based on the one I entered into with the State Library. There are 367 new video frames and 131 new photos. For the statiscally-minded, this is my 400th post.

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Other / 31.03.2016

Today Steve and I uploaded six new videos, after we had to abandon work because of the major systems failure which came to light on March 1. The videos are based on recent tapes, whereas the inaccessible data includes older tapes and whatever comes to light as we start from scratch, retitling the SD videos for the NFSA.

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Other / 24.03.2016

Collected the camera from Dev’s office. He thought he needed some software to make the required adjustments to the back focus, but Steve found out from Sony in New Zealand that the software is not applicable for the model and will now contact a local camera repairer to see if he can solve the problem and at what cost. Meanwhile, the raided system’s register cannot identify the data contained on the hard drives because, unlike the drives, it was not part of the mirror image backup. Steve is trying to find software to overcome the impediment, but if not, we will have to load up the data anew to progressively carry out our scheduled work.

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Other / 08.03.2016

A week ago my fortnightly evening with Steve had to be curtailed because two of the hard drives crashed, preventing us from accessing the files we needed for the work we were scheduled to do. Steve set about rebuilding the drives, which takes 30 hours or more. After the first rebuild the computer shut down and the process had to begin anew. Meanwhile Steve has acquired two replacement drives, only one of which he was able to install. I was supposed to be with him this evening, but this had to be postponed until Thursday (March 10). Meanwhile, last Thursday I took my camera to Steve’s office and met with Dev, one of his technicians, who is attempting to fix the problem which causes the right side of the frame to be out of focus on wide shots, the result of the camera falling onto an earth bank one night, a year ago. Fingers crossed for hard drives  and camera fixes.

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Other / 19.02.2016

Showrunner Productions are a no show for my possum clips. Perhaps my refusal to provide uncompressed material for free cooled their ardour. The good thing to emerge from their initial interest is that I was reminded about my Ringtail Possum footage which I had not made into a video, but have now.

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Other / 08.02.2016

A few days ago I told Jaap that he could photograph a cycad (an ancient and slow-growing palm or fern-like form of plant life) across the road from the Eagle Heights Post Office. I thought no more about it until I opened my eyes and saw, to my horror, that in the intervening sixteen years since I filmed its companion next to the footpath, a White Cedar tree had all but smothered this cycad. I had simply walked by day after day, year after year without registering the unwanted intrusion of a non-native on one of Australia’s glorious endemic flora species, Lepidozamia peroffskyana. It has the largest (reproductive) cones, about 1 metre long, of all the earth’s cycads.

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Other / 03.02.2016

The five latest videos Steve and I finished uploading today bring the total to just over 375. Among them is the ‘Ringtail Possum’ resulting from the Showrunner email (see 72 Cutest Animals below). We passed the 350 mark nine months ago. The reason it has taken so long to add the 25 plus to reach the newest milestone is that Steve and I have been busy re-titling the videos so that they can be included in my National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) footage. We went from 300 to 350 in the space of a little over 3 months. After sorting out anomalies we have 215 HD videos ready to be delivered to the NFSA once Steve has sourced a hard drive and loaded it with data files. Lately we have been working our way through the SD videos, of which we have re-titled 50 or so.

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Other / 30.01.2016

Two days ago I received a vimeo message from Showrunner Productions in Perth asking permission to use my Brushtail Possum footage for ’72 Cutest Animals’ a follow-up series to their 2014 ’72 Dangerous Animals Australia’ which included footage by me. That series has been airing on Foxtel for the past year and a half, my contribution being “really appreciated”. I won’t repeat the mistake of last time in falling for Showrunner’s no budget, but being credited for my material ploy while actually incurring costs to provide uncompressed footage for the programme. I have two possum videos on vimeo, one featuring mothers and young. The request fortuitously reminded me of having filmed a Ringtail Possum three years ago feeding on leaves that, for reasons now completely beyond my fathoming, I had not made into a species video. Today, on the way to shot-selecting the possum footage, I found material for four more videos on the same tape. The one video I had selected from the tape was from footage which ended around the 19 minute mark and was the last of the HD Species Videos 2. We uploaded it to vimeo in December 2014. In starting HD Species Videos 3, I… Read Complete Text

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Other / 09.01.2016

After Steve and then Jaap set up the spreadsheet listing the data files of the re-titled High Definition species videos for the National Film & Sound Archive, earlier in the week, I entered the last video on it today. There are 219 videos, though I could not identify one that Steve named and it unexpectedly transpired that another three had not been uploaded to vimeo. There were some technical issues with incomplete copying from vimeo to excel which Jaap has offered to work on next week. Also, I need to check with Steve that I have entered the correct information for the few videos with the same title which appear together in alphabetical order as here, though not when in date order as on vimeo and my website. This was my first spreadsheet.

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Other / 31.12.2015

Although a map showing the world’s ant species was launched by the University of Hong Kong last August, I feel it is opportune to now bask in the reflected glory of Queensland being home to the highest number of native species, 1,458 out of approximately 15,000 globally. You can find out more at antmaps.org The diversity view makes fascinating studying. The UK has 62 native species, France 224.