h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jim

Would it be a big job to produce a list of all blobs? Not just official "edited entry" blobs, but all the other ones too? I just want the blob numbers. I'll provide my own descriptions etc. It's for a community art project that Mina was asking me about.

I presume that the art pages that exist aren't complete, then.

Apparently every blob that was used in an edited entry is on record in the h2g2 Picture Library, but various people have also produced art, for example in the Post, and nobody seems to know exactly what's there. It seems to me that it should be an easy thing for somebody like yourself to produce a complete list of all the blobs stored in the filing system, wherever or whatever that may be.

Thanks Jim! I got the list of all blobs. I'll be careful with it.

Hang on a minute here. Does this mean that, after all the hard work we put into trawling through past issues of the Post earlier in the year, Jim could have provided us with a full list after all?

Of course Jim could produce a list. He can do anything. But when I suggested it to Mina months ago at the start of the Community Art project, she said Jim was far too busy. I finally got up courage to ask him a couple of weeks ago and he obliged.

Jim gave me a list of all blobs. It is purely the blob numbers. There are 4,500 of them. I have to now trawl through this identifying which ones are in the Picture Library, which ones are in the Community Library and so on. I've put about 2 hours work into it so far and have identified only about 200 of them. When I have picked out the ones which are definitely not official entry blobs, I'll make it into short lists of blobs which I will ask people to identify.

I made a blob tester. It's a bit flaky but you might be able to adapt it.

http://www.amytheant.co.uk/temp/blobs.htm

I have all the blob numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. There is a formula which converts them into a hyperlink so I can jump straight to the picture.

There are some really weird blobs in h2g2, as well as the normal ones. Look at B766 for example.

I'll let you know how I am progressing.

Thanks for taking the task on. You're a .