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Friday, October 31, 2014
A budding cricket star
Warwickshire Cricket Club have signed an upcoming young man this year. He bats right handed and bowls right arm medium pace offbreak. He is only 19 years old and was born of British parents in Hong Kong - surprisingly after the end of British rule there (but cricket continued, we must presume). He was brought up, for the most part, in Australia and fast-tracked into their Under-19 cricket side as a 16-year-old already. The major teams he has played for include :- Australia Under-19s, Queensland Under-17s, Queensland Under-19s, Warwickshire 2nd XI and Warwickshire, where his batting average is 51.43 already. I was disappointed to discover that he was actually born on 16th July because - given his name - I would have expected him to have been born on October 31st at sunset (=Halloween) ! Didn't I mention his name? It's Sam Hain ;-) Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Early Steam EnginesWhen I was in London at the beginning of the month, I spent half of sunday doing a quick tour through the science museum.Regular readers of this blog will know that I still have a childhood fascination with steam trains, so I went and took some photos of early steam locomotives. The first photo, below, is of Stephenson's Rocket. Built in 1829, it won the Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1829 to choose the best design to power the railway. It became the template for most steam engines in the following 150 years. This one is the original! 
Contrary to popular opinion, the Rocket was not the first steam locomotive. Earlier, Robert Stephenson had built the primitive and inefficient Blüchner in 1814, the Lancashire Witch in 1828 and before that, the Locomotion No.1 (shown below) in 1825, the first to pull a passenger train (Stockton & Darlington Rwy). I know it blew its boiler to bits in 1827, so this is not quite the original. 
Progress was rapid and by the time the Metropolitan Railway was building the forerunner of the London Tube (=subway system) it was using broad gauge locomotives like the one shown below, which dates from 1868. 
Now smoke, fire and coal dust etc are obvious disadvantages for an underground railway, so 20 years later along came Thomas Parker who electrified the London Tube. It has been electric ever since. Thomas Parker also built electric cars, like this one, from 1884. Range and speed unknown. 
Wooden spoked wheels, rim brake on the left rear wheel, passengers inside but the chauffeur (=driver) outside exposed to the elements, leaf springs, solid tyres, and obviously a converted (horse-drawn) carriage. However, there was no place for a postillion [lest he be struck by lightning? ;-)].
Comments (1) : Monday, October 27, 2014
Clock of the Long NowHuman civilisation has been going a mere 10,000 years and has (sadly) evolved into today's "faster/cheaper" mindset where everything is done in a hurry. The Long Now Foundation wants us to assume long term responsibilites, measured in centuries. To this end, they are trying to build a clock which will run for the next 10,000 years, chiming once every millenium. The Clock of the Long Now. The prototype shown here is on display in the Science Museum in London, where I took this photo earlier this month.
Some of the things to be taken into consideration over ten millenia are :- Earthquake/ weatherproof location. Minimal human intervention (e.g. for regular or occasional/emergency maintenance). Easy to repair if man's knowledge gets lost. 'Eternal' / unlootable energy source (e.g. no batteries or springs to wind manually). Made of valueless materials to avoid looting. Friction and lubrication over 10,000 years. But consider this : If you also want to display not only time but also a date (with a 5-digit year (02014)) then you will want to gear down the rotations. Assume you use Worm gears, let's say 50 revolutions of the worm gear turns the cogwheel once. The torque on the worm gets multiplied by 50 too. Two worm gears in series multiply the torque by 50*50=2500. You would need five wormgears to cover the 10,000 years. But that implies that the torque multiplication is so large that it would exceed the shear strength of the material ( be it brass or steel) of the last gear pair if it siezed :-( Then there is the issue of friction. If you use jewel bearings as regular watches do, then looting may become an issue. If you use a drop of oil occasionally, this may dry out over the decades, clogging the mechanism. Anyone who has restored an old clock knows what I mean. You can read more about the design (and other) issues at the Wikipedia entry for The Clock of the Long Now. Fascinating subject, go read up on it please.
Comments (9) : Saturday, October 25, 2014
Summertime ends in the EU tomorrowTomorrow, theoretically at 3 a.m. sunday morning, we put our clocks back on winter time (to 2 a.m.) and get an extra hour sleep :-)Nevertheless, there are still people who get confused as to whether it should be forwards or backwards. The rule is straightforward, you can see it in my sketch below :- Always move the clock towards the summer! So that's forwards in spring and backwards in autumn (=fall). 
There's an apocryphal anecdote about the person who set their alarm to 3 a.m, awoke when the alarm rang, reset the clock to 2 a.m., forgot to turn off the alarm, alarm went off at 3 a.m., etc etc ad infinitum....
Comments (3) : Friday, October 24, 2014
Formation farmingMy house is at the edge of our village with an uninterrupted view south. So just last week I got to watch how my neighbour harvests his maize crop. It is done by formation farming! One vehicle is the harvester which collects the corn cobs and ejects the shredded rest of the stalk & leaves via a steerable multi-section pipe, hurling a continuous stream of green stuff into the air. That's the whitish "Claas" vehicle in the foreground. Right behind him is a green tractor pulling a large reddish recepticle container keeping close formation, so that the green stream lands in the red container (to be later used as cattle food?). Between them they juggle their relative positions so that the stream of green stuff gets spread out evenly in the red container, without any heaps. Fascinating to watch with what well-trained skill they kept formation so that none of it missed the container despite 30 foot long green-stuff arcs on occasions!
BTW: Over on the left of the photo you can just see a small herd of wild deer ½ mile away, grazing peacefully in the field beyond the harvesters, knowing that all the noise was no danger to them. I see them often at dawn & dusk.
Comments (3) : Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Eric Arthur Blair, revisitedWhen I got back to London I took a walk down the Portobello Road, just for nostalgia's sake. And discovered a blue memorial plaque on the wall of the house where George Orwell lodged from 1927. George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He is probably best known for his novels Animal Farm and of course 1984 (the original pre-Stasi, pre-NSA, pre-GCHQ, Big-Brother-is-watching-you, dystopian story). Thus I thought it particularly ironic to see a surveillance CCTV camera right in front of the blue plaque displayed on the first floor wall in his memory :-(
Comments (2) : Monday, October 20, 2014
Greenwich : Cutty Sark photosWe spent a day in Greenwich, looking at the covered market, the Royal Observatory (and the Null Meridian), the Longitude Exhibition (incl. Harrison's four chronometers) and the Maritime Museum (with Nelson's ship in a bottle on a huge plinth outside). I also did a tour of the Cutty Sark, a tea clipper, the fastest ship of her age (1869 ff). Here are some of my photos of her.
Cutty Sark's ornate gilded bow and carved nameplate. 
Cutty Sark's three tall masts. 
Some of the rigging and the manual winch for the ropes. 
At the visitors' entrance you can see some of the original oaken planking from the hull which survived the fire during the restauration. 
Inside, much of the original ribbing structure has been saved too. 
The 'deck' you are walking on is actually the top of the tea-chests which were often Cutty Sark's valuable freight. 
Later, the Cutty Sark also brought back wool from Australia to the UK. 
And since it was a rainy day and I had to wait a while for the ferry back to London Bridge, I happily partook of some
Cakes and Ale (sly book tip) ;-)
Comments (1) : Sunday, October 19, 2014
Social freezing, extrapolatedWhat is "social freezing"? Both Facebook and Apple will pay their female employees to delay their wish for children by freezing their eggs for re-implantation at a later date (no guarantee of successful birth of course). This way the ladies can keep their productive noses to the grindstone, benefitting said corporations.I suppose the next logical step for Facebook, Apple and co is to pay for abortions, so that their female employees can keep their productive noses to the grindstone, benefitting said corporations again and again and again. This should upset both the Vati-can't and the Christian fundamentalists so prevalent in the USA who would see it as another step down the slippery slope into Hell. Truly, corporations are one of the Devil's best inventions ;-) Since the USA has laws about gender equality, US courts will require Facebook, Apple and co to fund male employees similarly, viz. free condoms for life or paying for reversible vasectomies or freezing their sperm (preferably in situ?). Gay employees of Facebook, Apple and co - this time not subjectively disadvantaged - will be in the ideal position, just keeping their noses to the -erm- grindstone ;-) /satire
Comments (2) : Friday, October 17, 2014
Peculiar road signWTF does this UK road sign mean?I thought that traffic signs in Europe had been pretty much standardised, thanks to big-gov EU and the Eurocraps. 
But then I came across this roadsign in Greenwich (UK) last week. My first guess was that there was a zoo on one side of the road and that seabirds waddled across the road here to the Thames for a bit(e) of fishing. Presumably the seabirds were angry (=humped?) and so to be avoided by traffic lest they try to bite a car etc?? My next parse was that 'Humped Pelicans' were a Darwinian subspecies, probably bred by Quasimodo??? Alternatively - third try - the pelicans had just been for a shag as part of a breeding program and so were rather tired and thus likely to cross the road slowly???? Further examination revealed that the noun was in the singular; so only one large quasimodal/angry/breeding seabird was likely to waddle across the road. Is it worth putting up a sign for just one? So I must conclude that they are a rare subspecies ;-) Such roadsigns are just not intelligible to we furriners ;-) But from the triangular shape I could deduce I was supposed to take care and watch out for any traffic light. Otherwise, who knows?? UK readers may enlighten us all by sending me an explanatory Email pls.
Comments (6) : Wednesday, October 15, 2014
HMS Belfast photosWhile I was in London, I took the opportunity to visit HMS Belfast, a WW2 cruiser opened for public viewing by the Imperial War Museum. I hadn't been on a surface warship for many a long year and had forgotten how strenuous it is climbing up and down between those nine decks :-( Wikipedia has all the details of HMS Belfast, so I'll just show you some (only eight) of my photos with interspersed commentary below them.
HMS Belfast has been repainted in her WW2 camo (Admiralty Disruptive Camouflage Type 25). On this cloudy day it was all grey in grey, 50 shades perhaps ;-) That's Tower Bridge in the background, which had to be opened to let her get to her mooring which is just east of London Bridge. 
The first thing you see upon boarding is the ship's bell with a nominal rescue-ring on each side. Nominal only, because they cannot be removed, being for decoration only afaik. 
Main armament is 12 6-inch guns in 4 turrets, 2 fore and 2 aft. Knowing about inter-service rivalry between the UK forces, I asked innocently where the guns were currently aimed since both fore turrets pointed in the same direction. I was told they could reach to Barnet, "Coincidentally, would that be where the RAF museum is located?" I replied. The sailor merely grinned ;-) 
The guns are fed from the four shell magazine rooms (below the waterline). This is one of the shell feeds. And yes, the shells have been emptied of explosives at the behest of those health-and-safety naggers. 
At the other end of the feeds are the breeches, like this 6 inch one. 
HMS Belfast was one of the ships which sank the German battleship Scharnhorst during the Battle of the North Cape in WW2 in 1943. After several hits with her 6 inch guns, she sank the Scharnhorst with a torpedo, like this specimen stored in one of the gangways for our inspection. 
I just included this shot of her anchor to give you a sense of scale. 
For defense against aircraft she was fitted with twin 40mm Bofors guns in 1943. I took this photo from a deck higher so it's a top-down view. I had expected the Bofors to be equipped with a trapezoidal Stiffkey sight for calculating lead angles, these were state of the art at the time; but no :-( I lost track of the time on board - probably a couple of hours - because it was informative, historical, educational fun. Not TOO crowded either. Well worth the £5 pensioners' entrance fee, except for the choices in the mess:(
Comments (4) : Monday, October 13, 2014
Heads up, Apple fans!38 years ago, back in 1976, The Great Woz designed the Apple 1. They built only 200, of which 15 are still working. A working example is coming up for auction at Bonhams in New York on wednesday 22nd october. When first built, the main board cost $666 (sic!), but Bonhams expect to get $300,000 to $500,000 for theirs. Methinks it is particularly ironic that the Lot number is 286; if the folks at Bonhams had the slightest feeling for history, they should have called it Lot 6502 :-)
I took this photo of an Apple 1 main board myself fairly recently, the board is still mounted on its wooden chassis
via rubber grommets. This is afaik a non-working example, so presumably worth a lot less.
At least I still have the photo! Apple fans, this is the greatgrandfather of your iWatches, iPads and iPhones.
Bow down and worship! :-) Saturday, October 11, 2014
Looking at London
Of course, while I was in London last
weekend, I took a whole bunch of tourist-style photos of which I'm going to share some with you here.
But I have made a deliberate choice to avoid showing you the usual touristic targets, such as full-frontals of Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square etc etc. Instead, I'll show you popular venues but from unusual angles and some photos of the London you don't get to see perhaps. A lot are zoomed to the max though. The photo on the left, taken from a bus on the south bank of the Thames shows what many people (still) call Big Ben. However, Big Ben is really the nickname for the Great Bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower which is officially known as the Elizabeth Tower. Confusing huh? I'd taken the bus to the London Eye which is a large ferris wheel giving great views across London on this (good weather) day, I could see all the way to Alexandra Palace (in north London). From the London Eye, I took this shot of Charing Cross Station on the opposite (north) side of the Thames. The cylindrical building in the background is the Post Office Tower. 
Another photo which I took from the London Eye, and taken at maximal zoom, shows the familiar dome of St.Pauls Cathedral. 
Next I walked along the riverside walk to London Bridge. The Freemen of London have an ancient right to drive their sheep across London Bridge. They exercise this right once every year, lest they lose it. Thankfully for commuters, they did so on the sunday :-) I screwed up the photo of the Freemen, so all you are getting is a photo of their sheep. The Freemen are the guys in the red robes in the background of this photo. Ooops! 
From London Bridge I took a shot of HMS Belfast, the cruiser famous for sinking the Scharnhorst in WW2. HMS Belfast is now docked between London Bridge and Tower Bridge (seen in the background here). It is open to the public, so my internal photos of this warship will be the subject of a separate post, boring you even more ;-)
From the decks of the HMS Belfast, I got this shot of the Mayor of London's office, which is where Boris Johnson "works" (for want of a better word) ;-). 
Disembarking from HMS Belfast after an hour or so I walked 200 yards to Hay's Galleria which was a brewhouse in 1651, a covered wharf in the 19th century and is now a mall which houses this famous steampunk sculpture, The Navigators, by David Kemp. Is THAT cool, or what??? 
Near my hotel in up-and-coming trendy Islington, the small triangular park in the middle of Upper Street contains a topologically interesting sculpture, shown below, but nowhere did it name the artist :-( 
I took a stroll then through Chapel Market. The stalls were shutting down for the day, so you could pick up leftover perishable stock very cheaply, like from this fish stall... 
Good public transport but you should be aware that London is overcrowded, expensive, sometimes even dilapidated and smelly, because people throw their rubbish onto the street, no garbage bins are used :-( 
And, talking of trash on the streets of London, let's wrap up this blogpost with a selfie at the Tower of London :-) 
Comments (2) : Thursday, October 9, 2014
Class of 66 Physicists' Reunion :-)Popped over to London (UK) last weekend for the 48th reunion of the Class of 66 at City University (London,UK) where 10 of us who had all finished a B.Sc.(Hons) in Physics in 1966 got together to reminisce, enjoy a dinner and a tourist trip to Greenwich etc, about which more later.
Left to right, front row : Peter, Ron,Derek,Bill and Mike. 
We were given an ill-prepared slide presentation by the Dean on how the Alma Mater has changed over the last 50 years and given a tour of old and new buildings, seeing founding documents on display etc. Since the Dean is also responsible for the Computer Science faculty, I gave him a signed copy of one of the textbooks I've written, by way of thanks (or revenge ;-). 
This is the old entrance under the clock tower on St.John's Street which was the main entrance in our day where we'd go to squeeze between (or past, mostly past) the pillars of wisdom (shown below) ;-) 
Actually, we were probably more likely to be found just across the square in the nearest students' pub [which has changed its name several times we were told, so that it might regain its licence maybe ?] ;-) 
Alternatively, I could be found down in the basement, using the Pegasus computer which used valves (=tubes). Less power than your iWatch has nowadays, but had 40-bit words, just 56 of them in main memory and 5120 on a drum. There was also a Mercury computer there. Both had a 'high-level' language called Autocode. Wikipedia has the instruction manual as a PDF. 
And so, just to show you where we earned our wings, I took this angelic selfie at the nearby Angel, Islington. Looks more like Thor's helmet though! 
Comments (2) : 
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Taxi! Maybe not?Currently taxi drivers in Germany get paid about €6 to €6½ per hour, I'm told. However, due to new legislation on the minimum wage, this may have to increase to €8½ per hour. So, either taxi prices will rise by 25% which may cause some loss of demand or there may be a change of business model by the taxi fleet owners.Consider the following weekdaily demand curve for taxis, hypothetical but not improbable. I'm ignoring bad-weather effects. 
After midnight revellers have been brought home, demand drops to a low level overnight. It then rises as work begins, peaking with people being transported to airports, train-stations etc. During the day there are patients to and from hospitals etc, maybe a small peak as others go out for a business lunch. In the evening passengers want transport back from airports, stations etc and want to go out for a meal, party etc. At a low pay-level for the drivers (level A), fleet owners may operate (some of their) taxis 24/7 so there are taxis available on call even at times of low demand. If the drivers' pay rises to level B, fleet operators may change their business model. Taxis stay in the garage at times of low demand, third-shift drivers perhaps being laid off, taxis not being profitable at these times. Taxi operation becomes profitable again at the morning peak and continues until the end of the evening peak (where level B intersects the demand line). This implies the end of 24/7 taxi operation perhaps, or at least longer waits to get one of the remaining 3rd-shift taxis. You might want to note the phone-number of self-employed taxi drivers rather than fleet operators. So maybe Torsten was right to get out of the taxi-driving business before the minimum-wage induced layoffs start? Now, I am neither an economist nor a taxi driver so maybe Hans-Georg and/or Torsten (or others) may care to comment on this post???? Comments (4) : 
Karel (CZ) tells us "Minimum wage will raise the average (mean) wage but leave the median wage unchanged." Yes, that's what I meant by "robust". Guido (D) wrote " Your attitude in favour of a minimum wage is noble and understandable but wrong from an economic point of view. A student of mine wrote a very short and pointed summary which reflects the state of the scientific debate - unfortunately in German: http://www.blickpunkt-vwl.de/Aktuell/blickpunkt-vwl_3.pdf." His GG wage ignores the GG-wage employee being an "Aufstocker", which means that we taxpayers are subsidising the cheapskate employer, surely? Thursday, October 2, 2014
Patchwork QuiltsSeveral of my lady readers - especially those in the USA - are into quilting. So when I saw that the quilting-ladies of a nearby village (Fürstenburg) were displaying their quilts (on 27/28 Sept), SWMBO and I went along to see them and I took a bunch of photos so that you quilters can see what the local fans do. This first photo shows six of the seven Fürstenburg ladies who do the quilting, I'm afraid I took no names as I didn't have my (analog) notebook with me :-(
And here is a selection of the quilts which I photographed, so that you quilting experts can compare styles. 
The colour mismatch at the top of the photos below is not real, it is an artefact of my camera-flash not illuminating the wide-angle photo uniformly. 
My favourite quilt, on display outdoors, gave an illusion of being in 3D :-) 
It inspired me to point one of the ladies to the art of M.C.Escher, who did a lot of pictures tesselating planes, here, here, and here, which might inspire them to some interesting quilts in the future ;-) I have a contact Email address for the ladies there, it is Comments (3) : |
Recent Writings
A budding cricket star Early Steam Engines Clock of the Long Now Summertime ends Formation farming Eric Arthur Blair, revisited Cutty Sark Social freezing ;-) Peculiar road sign HMS Belfast photos Heads up, Apple fans! Looking at London Class of 66 Taxi! Maybe not? Patchwork Quilts The Screwtape Letters Unplugged :-( Rosh Hashanah Eppur si muove! Jings! Crivvens! :-( World Alzheimer Day Vincents @ Tonenburg :-) Speed trap day tomorrow Riaghaltas na h-Alba ! Gyrocopter Flight :-) Blogroll Ain Bulldog Blog Badtux... Balloon Juice Cop Car Curmudgeonly... Earth-Bound Misfit Echidne of the snakes Fail Blog Finding life hard? Hattie (Hawaii) Making Light Mockpaperscissors Mostly Cajun Murr Brewster Not Always Right Observing Hermann Pergelator Rants from t'Rookery Scary Duck Spork in the drawer Squatlo Rant The Alternate Brain The Magistrate's Blog XE Express Yellowdog Grannie Archive 2014: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Archive 2013: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2012: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2011: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2010: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2009: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Link Disclaimer ENGLISH : I am not responsible for the contents or form of any external page to which this website links. I specifically do not adopt their content, nor do I make it mine. DEUTSCH : Für alle Seiten, die auf dieser Website verlinkt sind, möchte ich betonen, dass ich keinerlei Einfluss auf deren Gestaltung und Inhalte habe. Deshalb distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten und mache mir ihren Inhalt nicht zu eigen. This Blog's Status is 
Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153FWIW, 153 is a triangular number, meaning that you can arrange 153 items into an equilateral triangle (with 17 items on a side). It is also one of the six known truncated triangular numbers, because 1 and 15 are triangular numbers as well. It is a hexagonal number, meaning that you can distribute 153 points evenly at the corners and along the sides of a hexagon. It is the smallest 3-narcissistic number. This means it’s the sum of the cubes of its digits. It is the sum of the first five positive factorials. Yup, this is a 153-type blog. QED ;-) Books I have written
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