Rate My Ride Car

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Wildlife recording is one area i’d like to concentrate more on but it takes a huge amount of patience, in that sense it’s not too dissimilar to Railway audio recording: in that you hunt out a good spot, set up and wait… hoping for that moment when you “catch” the sound you want. And of course it also suffers from nay of the same problems of railway recording, unwanted environmental noises like cars, tractors, people and planes can ruin an otherwise perfect recording.

Pop over to the London Sound Survey and lose yourself in the sounds of the capital – you might be surprised at what you find!

Although a lot of our railways are predominantly run by volunteers the marketing of our railways has gotten to the point where they are now undeniably in the entertainment industry, the people visiting these attractions are there for a “day out” in recent years I’ve seen a huge increase in the number of families, especially when it comes to “Thomas Days” Pete Waterman has made a very thought provoking blog post about this.

Take the Clifton Hotel in Scarborough for example owned by English Rose Hotels. I stayed there on Friday the 21st August. The exterior is quite impressive and has excellent views over Scarborough’s North Bay. The staff were incredibly friendly and polite, the food was ok… but the room I stayed in… was hideous. Dirty, damp, peeling wallpaper, mould patches… the lot!

There’s a plaque in the hotel informing you that Wilfred Owen the WW1 poet stayed in the Hotel… on entering our room I wondered whether it had been cleaned since he left! What’s was so mind boggling about the room was that tea and coffee making supplies had been carefully arranged on the side but the filthy windows remained uncleaned. Take a look at this photo, this isn’t a few days worth of dirt… its a long and steady build up of muck!

Filthy window at the Clifton Hotel Scarborough

We we’re staying as guest of my parents, who I must admit had a slightly cleaner room, so at the time I didn’t feel like complaining especially as we we’re only there for one night. But for £65 for a night had I been paying myself I’d have kicked up a real fuss! Generally the Hotel needs some TLC all around, a lot of the hallways had stained on the ceilings, bits of woodwork or panelling coming free etc. The decoration in the lounge was dated but I’m not the interior design police so I can put up with that.

The saddest thing about the hotel is that every single member of staff I met was very friendly and seemed to enjoy their jobs, even the younger staff members who so often tend to be a little grump in other hotels we’re polite and helpful.

To see the peeling wallpaper, mould and dirt look through the gallery below

So what are the cons? well unless you choose to upgrade to Vimeo Plus then you’ll be restricted to uploading only 500mb a month (not a problem in my case but might be a problem for others) standard members videos also get put into a “processing queue” that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours+ (depending on the site traffic at the time of upload) however it’s worth noting that in my experience I’ve often found my videos are ready before the time given, maybe that’s because mine are so short? Unlike YouTube you can’t batch upload either.

Another con for iPhone and iPod Touch owners is that to date there is no app that plays Vimeo videos, though it’s something that Vimeo staff say they are keen to remedy in the future.

Overall I much prefer using Vimeo, it’s true that my sound clips won’t get the exposure and viewers they will on YouTube… but I’m not doing this to be popular, I post to this site because I want to.

Although Vimeo has been running for a couple of years now I suppose there is always that concern that its running on a finite amount of resources, it’s well known that YouTube with its billions of visitors and videos doesn’t make a profit, indeed Credit Suisse estimate that it makes an annual loss of $500m – though recent reports suggest that figure might be much less.

Hopefully Vimeo will survive, it has built up a nice community and the content on offer there is very good, the Plus package should help bolster running costs… but just incase I’ve also uploaded all of my sound clips to YouTube too!

Is it Art? Possibly. But if so it’s not particularly great – it’s hardly a touch on Banksy!