I mention this for no real reason, other than the fact that currently for my course, Case 1: The Case of the Missing Pig, the first script, has been rewritten. I’m rather annoyed that the original productions have gone missing (except for Case 2: The Case of the Missing President, which is actually my favourite one but not really one that I can rewrite for use) as it’d be really interesting to hear the difference between the two. As it happens, I can put the two scripts side-by-side to compare once it’s fully done, but that will have to wait.

I can’t actually remember why I decided to write this post. I’m sure it will come back to me soon… I think I’m just wasting time waiting for a lecture to start…

Case 3: The Case of the Missing Wheat was an interesting one. I won’t tell what it was about as it could well work with a rewrite should I ever do the whole series again.

Case 4, one I can’t remember the actual title for (actually, I made up Case 3‘s title here and now as I couldn’t remember that one either) was another interesting one, where our heroes are told something that only made sense when they realised what had gone missing, byt they wouldn’t have lost it if they weren’t told what they were. Or something.

UPDATE: I’ve found the original recording of Case 4. And here it is:
Stanley & Miller Case 4 by richietheg

We started work on a second set of scripts, covering the potential change in narration rather spendidly (“My voice broke, so I had to get a new one”), but the story was rather far-fetched, even for Stanley & Miller. I don’t mind retelling the story here as I doubt I’ll use it. They went to the moon after NASA found something there that should be right up their street. Turns out it’s the phone box from the end of the street that had been missing for a week or so.

Right, enough talking about it, I need to sort some sound effects out (something which the original didn’t actually have…).

I do have some new theme music for it though, courtesy of ‘trustno1′ on Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/434170. Nice bit of 70s music. (The idea of which based through Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, and his take on the 70s cop show music.)

It’s actually been quite interesting, looking at my old posts, something I haven’t really done. I had forgotton some of the things I’d written (and I will admit, some posts have been edited slightly and some aren’t going to be transferred). One of the post was entitled ‘Musings on the Internet how it used to be‘, in which I commented on a website that I happened to visit which had a link to a ‘large’ image with a warning about its size and that browsers may not be able to cope.

Which brings me to today.

One thing that I like about the BBC News website is that they don’t use CSS ‘properly’. By that, I don’t mean that it’s not valid code or anything, (although I am now curious to know… bear with me… I’m really surprised now – it doesn’t… oh well) no, what I mean is that when I was doing web design at college, and I see this around quite a bit too, CSS is so you can change the whole site design in one easy go, so your pages are kept to the same design as you go across your website. The BBC News website don’t seem to have grasped this, which is a good thing.

It means that when you search for archive news since their website started, such as this article about the safety of the Pacer trains, you see their old site design. Click on that link now, go on – I’ll wait. Just make sure you come back because I’ve still got stuff to say and unless you’re a train geek who is interested in a news article from 1999 then you’re not going to be interested in the actual article.

Welcome back! See how narrow that website looks on your monitor? How pixellated the banner at the top of the screen looks? The weird thing is that the text size for the article isn’t (noticeably) a different size to what it is now. The site now is just wider than it used to be.  Incidentally, in case you were wondering (because I was so there’s an outside chance you might’ve been), the old BBC News website does have valid CSS code.

Anyway, back a little while ago, can’t recall exactly when, First Red Bus, now First Devon & Cornwall, had a change of their routes, renumbering the 307 bus the number 7, truncating it at South Molton, again occasionally out here to North Molton but not to Taunton.  (The 346 service that did the same route but continued onto Tiverton became the 155 and was taken over by Stagecoach Devon.) The 7 recently became the X7 and now zips down the North Devon Link Road direct between Barnstaple and South Molton, occasionally extending to North Molton, and leaving Filleigh without a bus service as Swimbridge and Landkey are now served by either the 5 or 6 (can’t remember which) new service.

The 307, it would seem, is no more.

Except…

Recently, I have noticed a couple of Stagecoach Devon buses with 307 showing on their matrix display (‘blinds’ sounds better but buses don’t have those anymore…) and heading to Bampton.  So Taunton still doesn’t have a direct bus service from Barnstaple anymore, but the 307 Bus is once more.  The bus doesn’t go directly to South Molton either like the X7 and the 155 do, but trundels its way along the old 307 route through Landkey, Swimbridge and Filleigh, then continues on what I assume to be the old route (along the B3227) to Bampton.

ADDITIONAL: Yesterday (21/03) I was in London doing a Random 15 Tube Challenge and at one stage was on the Picadilly Line for a fair stretch.  The train number of this particular service?  Yep, that’s right: 307. Another addition:When doing the Tube Challenge, one of the buses that comes in handy is numbered 307…

• DriverHeaven.net: where I am referred to as ‘A Stupid Brit’, where ‘renovation’ reveals himself as the guy who went to pay £30,000 for the Banana, ‘MIG-31′ implys he’s bought two things off eBay without paying, and British irony seems to be lost on these people.
• PCA Forums: which looks to be the same site, where the original SS Blog post was quoted, the potential buyer gives a sarcastic apology, and informs us that this was reported to eBay before the high price appeared.

However, a few important points are made here – well, one – and that is that the Ebay Banana would have cost me in listing fees, especially should it have gone through at £30,100. I’m not sure how much I would have owed Ebay had that have happened, but even so it is a good point they have there.

Still, I got my fifteen minutes of fame out of it.