{"id":133,"date":"2004-08-30T21:06:42","date_gmt":"2004-08-30T20:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randomwire.com\/2004\/08\/30\/past-present\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T22:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T20:47:14","slug":"past-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/past-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Past &#038; Present"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:11230,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.magiclantern14.btinternet.co.uk&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20071009070013\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.magiclantern14.btinternet.co.uk:80\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-02 19:58:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-16 20:32:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-17 08:04:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-30 18:54:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-03 14:34:24&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 00:18:34&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 06:30:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 06:30:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11231,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.magiclanterns.org&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250126092719\\\/https:\\\/\\\/magiclanterns.org\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-02 19:58:34&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-16 20:32:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-17 08:04:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-30 18:54:28&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-03 14:34:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 00:18:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 06:30:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 06:30:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:530},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Made it back from London in one piece! Had a very nice weekend with my grandparents &#8211; my grandfather is an excellent amateur photographer who has won many awards for his photos (one of which you may have seen on posters in the London Underground last year) and he helped me tweak and print off a number of my better shots on his decent printer. It&#8217;s amazing how making a few adjustments in Photoshop can dramatically improve a photo, and I was pleasantly surprised how some, which I didn&#8217;t think much of, came out. As ever, my grandmother cooked up some excellent food, proving that she hasn&#8217;t lost her touch since my early visits a fair few years ago now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent today wandering around central London, visiting various places and taking lots of pictures. I&#8217;ll upload them over the next couple of days as and when I have the time, right now I&#8217;m a little too tired to do it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something fascinating which emerged over the weekend was that my grandfather just happened to have a &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.magiclantern14.btinternet.co.uk\/\">Magic<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.magiclanterns.org\/\">Lantern<\/a>&#8216; glass plate slide made in the 1890s, which he acquired from a second-hand shop years ago, of the huge amphitheatre at Pompeii that is almost identical to a <a href=\"\/\">photo<\/a> that I took this year on holiday. I&#8217;ve arranged them side-by-side below for comparison:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1025\" height=\"418\" src=\"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/pastpresent_hr.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-69064\" srcset=\"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/pastpresent_hr.jpg 1025w, https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/pastpresent_hr-768x313.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1025px) 100vw, 1025px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s most noticeable between the two images is that the trees have grown a lot over the last 120 years and that whoever did the colouring of the plate (they were individually hand-painted as the photo was in B&amp;W) probably hadn&#8217;t been there because the colours aren&#8217;t very faithful to reality. It&#8217;s weird how these things just turn up at the right moment sometimes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Made it back from London in one piece! Had a very nice weekend with my grandparents &#8211; my grandfather is an excellent amateur photographer who has won many awards for his photos (one of which you may have seen on posters in the London Underground last year) and he helped me tweak and print off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1028,5],"tags":[884],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-photography","tag-heritage"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":49,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/goings-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":0},"title":"Goings on","author":"David","date":"4th April 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Just got back from London after spending a very nice weekend with relatives who live down that way. Activities undertaken were wide ranging from the installation of garden trellises to a bit of web design consultancy! I managed to get quite a few nice pictures from the relative excursions we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":335,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/time-flies\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":1},"title":"Time Flies","author":"David","date":"10th November 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Well I meant to post last Sunday but I blinked and suddenly it\u2019s Thursday\u2026 role on Friday! The previous Saturday was of course Guy Fawkes Night in the UK and I went to see and excellent display in Ravenscourt Park which greatly outshone last years valiant efforts in Durham. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/modernarchitecture.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":231,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/hmm-upgrades\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":2},"title":"Hmm&#8230; Upgrades!","author":"David","date":"2nd January 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"You may notice a few changes to the site today, mainly due to the fact that I've upgraded to the latest & greatest version of WordPress (1.5alpha) and have tweaked the graphics of the template a bit. The new version of WP feels extremely polished and the updated admin interface\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/traffic.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":301,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/london-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":3},"title":"London 2012","author":"David","date":"6th July 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Congratulations to London for winning the bit to host the 2012 Olympics after Beijing in 2008. Like so many I was expecting Paris to win so it came as a bit of a surprise! Hopefully if I\u2019m still living in the capitol in seven years time I\u2019ll be able to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/london2012.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":303,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/london-attacks\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":4},"title":"London Attacks","author":"David","date":"7th July 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"As you probably already know there has been a major terrorist attack in London on the transport infrastructure which has led to many fatalities. At the time I was on a train North bound from London Kings Cross station (where one of the explosions occurred) when it was announced that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":507,"url":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/88-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":133,"position":5},"title":"88 London","author":"David","date":"28th January 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"See you on the other side!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;London&quot;","block_context":{"text":"London","link":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/uk\/london\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/london_westminster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94116,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/94116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomwire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}