Crazy Cheese-Girl Grew Up!

A Morning's Snow

Well, I went over to my mother's house, -she's been away for a while, staying with my brother just north of London. First thing I noticed when I went in, that it was rather cool indoors. So I turned the thermostat up a couple of degrees. Then I thought I'd better check the fridge and chuck out anything that was a bit old.... She's got a tendency to keep stuff opened over-long... So that gave me the need to wash some dishes. Strange. No hot water, even though I let it run a while.

So I went upstairs to look at the boiler. Hm. Low system pressure. I topped it up to 1.5 bar. Still nothing. reset. Ahhhhhhh. I can hear the flue-fan running, click, air pressurs switch proving, click, tickticktickticktick, spark electrode, click, main gasvalve, click.... shutdown! Flashing fault light.... I go get a screwdriver, take the casing off... thinking... open gas test point on the main gas valve inlet, wet soapy finger... no bubbles.

No gas pressure....

Ahhhhh. And there's a basin-full of water too, the plug's out, and the cold tap's been dripping, so there's already a frozen waste pipe somewhere.

CLICK. oh yes. The brain clicks, go look out of the front window. Hm. There's a hole by the gate. Yes, I'd noticed it, assumed it was to do with the new streetlights they're putting in. I go outside to look. Sure enough, there's a gas pipe visible, and a water pipe ohhh and in Margaret's driveway and front-garden next door, about three inches of ice.

And as I stand up, there's a van coming up the street with a gas-company logo. I wave it down, it seems that the morning before, a water main had burst, eventually fountaining through the asphalt, but... at the same time, the ground movement had fractured the gas main, and water had filled it, causing troubles downhill from here.

But, according to them, the gas was back on.

Not at my mother's house, I told them. We're a different department, it's not our job... oh yes. A bit of argument, and one of the neighbours came out to ask how long it would be before she could have heat? given that it was over 24 hours.

I pointed out that my mother was 87, and if her house froze, and pipes burst, how would they feel? Ring your depot!

The end result was that within an hour we had three blue vans, and got it all back working. Nobody'd been told what was going on, and the gas men said "Things have been busy". I pointed out that the street has a high number of elderly, housebound people, and without heat, for a little longer, they could expect hypothermia, some, my mother's neighbour, Margaret, for instance has senile dementia, she wouldn't know to call for help.

All that sorted out, heating re-lit, I decided to go for a walk in the park, lunch at the Lakeside cafe.  This park, I grew up in it, I know its woods and secret places, its history; it was a hunting enclosure, at the time of King William the Conqueror, 1080 ad, and it was old then. In the late 19th century, a councillor, later mayor of the city, put together a consortium to buy the park from the private owners, he very wisely bought up parcels of land all around the estate, and he and his pals became very rich men, all out of creating a new, fashionable suburb, three and a half miles outside of town, around Roundhay Park.

That man whose idea it was to buy the park for the people of the city was alderman John Barran. And here, overlooking the lake, is his memorial, from a grateful populace;

Barran's Fountain.

Back, a couple of million years ago when I was at school, Barran's Fountain was one of the landmarks and waypoints on the cross-country running route. Sometimes, but not predictably so, there'd be a teacher lurking somewhere nearby, with a stop-watch and a clipboard, just to make sure you didn't take a short-cut.

The last half-mile of the route was across open fields toward the school. The head of the P.E. dept would often sit in an upstairs room, with binoculars. If, at any time between rising into view, cresting Hill 60, on the park edge, and arriving at the gym, he deemed you had slowed, weren't putting your all into the run, you'd be pulled aside. All the others would be going into the warm, and a few miscreants would be turned outside again. "Run around the running track, until I tell you to stop". "RUN!" And occasionally he'd forget, and we'd be stumbling and staggering on, an hour after school finished, until some teacher, on his way home would say "what are you boys still running for in the dark?" "Oh no, Mr Warham left half an hour ago, go get changed". And they say schooldays are the best days of your life.

with cheeky Squirrels

and another

A view down over the icy lake

I finished  with a stroll down to the Lakeside Cafe, built atop the victorian boathouse.  (concerts in the park by the likes of The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson paid for the cafe, and other infrastructure to be built)
Not so much a cafe, as a restaurant, I had a very good lunch of braised steak in red wine sauce, with seasonal root vegetables. The food is good, the surroundings a little drab, and the price? Significantly more than a good meal in the pub up the road, but I'd ordered before reading the prices.
What I really missed was my long gone dog, Dill, being in the snowy park made me think of him, how he'd race around in the snow, throwing himself into snow-banks and rolling with ecstatic joy... And how he'd have raced from tree to tree, doing his self-appointed job of policing squirrels. And how we'd have a snowball fight. Me throwing, and Dill seeking to catch and destroy them before they hit the ground.

Ha. Crazy things, dogs.

Oh! The Humanity! Latest News From The California Disaster Area!

This is the brother of Scott Adams, (Dilbert's pen-wielding alter ego).
Link to Dilbert/blog

Stop Press: I knew it... If I posted that title, then....

"6.5-Magnitude Quake Reported Near Eureka

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake has struck off the Northern California coast, about 27 miles southwest of Eureka.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit around 4:27 Saturday afternoon. Officials say they heard the quake caused some power outtages, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage.

USGS geophysicist Richard Buckmaster says the quake was felt as far south as Capitola, and as far north as Tiller, Ore.

Flying Car, anybody?

These'll be available by 1965.

I wonder, if when we finally get working time-machines, we'll all be lining up to go bludgeon the lying snivelling creeps who produced Modern Mechanix, and other magazines of that ilk.

So, Have You Had Any Snow in Britain Yet?

Nasa,  Earth Observatory Image

"Snow blanketed Great Britain on January 7, 2010, as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Snow covers most of England, from the east to the west coast. (The large image shows snow cover over the entire island of Great Britain.) The cities of Manchester, Birmingham, and London form ghostly gray shapes against the white land surface. Immediately east of London, clouds swirl over the island, casting blue-gray shadows toward the north.
Frigid temperatures followed snowfall, leaving roads and sidewalks treacherously icy, according to news reports. As of January 7, overnight temperatures had plunged to -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in isolated spots, with more widespread temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit). The heavy snowfall downed power lines, leaving several thousand homes in southern England without electricity."

Thank you, NASA, if you look in about the centre of the image, you'll see me shovelling snow.

(Also via BoingBoing)

Solid Potato Salad

I posted this once long ago, now Boing-Boing's reposted it and reminded me of how the Ross Sisters outshine any TV talent show competitors of the present day.
Their one and only remembered performance now is this, from the movie Broadway Rhythm, of 1944. I'd post a picture of them arriving in London to appear in a show called Piccadilly Hayride, but the Getty Picture Library would sue me for licensing fees, pretty rich for an image 56 years old, that's probably not been called on in fifty years. Dixie, the youngest of the sisters, married british singer/comedian Dickie Henderson, I remember watching the Dickie Henderson Show, about a million years ago. Sadly, she died at the age of 34.




Some people like their taters Lyonnaise, some prefer French fries.
I prefer mine with mayonnaise, cole slaw on the side.
Solid potato salad, that's solid salad, Jack,
Solid potato salad, boy, take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
Solid potato salad, and let's have no Yak Yak
Solid potato salad, boy, take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
The farmer said to the spud, your skin looks slightly pallid,
So I'll dig you later bud, with some solid …potato salad.
Solid potato salad, that's solid salad, Jack,
Solid potato salad, boy, take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
Take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
Take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
Take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back.
Solid potato ….salad, it'll be so fine that you better latch on,
Solid potato ….salad, whatever it takes get a plate before it's all gone.
The farmer said to the spud, your skin looks slightly pallid,
So I'll dig you later bud, with some solid …potato salad.
Solid potato salad, that's solid salad, Jack,
Solid potato salad, boy, take a plate… fill it up…
Take a plate, fill it up, and bring it right back.

Flying Cars

Dr Moller in 1967... Notice the altitude, and the somewhat iffy attitude control.

Moller Aircars, to be precise, I've been following their story, on and off, since the first glossy magazine articles of the seventies promised imminent production of flying cars at road-car prices.

1989, this one flew a little better, looked great, a flying saucer for the masses.

They tried to sell the prototype on ebay, in 2008, but nobody came remotely near the 3.5 million reserve price.

Ah! At last, the real thing.... or is it?
This one's supposed to fly even if two engines fail. Basic mechanics and seat of the pants physics suggest that that's somewhat unlikely, given that the centre of thrust is nowhere near the centre of gravity. Maybe diagonally opposite engines would be survivable. In dead calm. Ten feet up, Above something very forgiving, like a big haystack. Um, a big fireproof haystack.

"Please note, the Moller Skycar is currently only at the "concept" stage".
What's not said here is that the longest it's ever flown for is sixty seconds. That it's never  flown free, it's always attached to a crane. Sometimes, according to eye-witnesses, the crane performs the take-off, not the engines. Um. It flies without anyone in the cockpit. I wonder why?
Moller's publicity shots have often shown a smilling Dr Moller at the controls. However, there seems to be no evidence that this thing can fly with a human, untethered.

So, 45 years after he started, some 100 million dollars poured into the development, (some sources suggest it is closer to 200 million), we have a very pretty thing that flies for 45 seconds, travels ten yards, and lands badly.
In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Moller for civil fraud (Securities And Exchange Commission v. Moller International, Inc., and Paul S. Moller, Defendants) in connection with the sale of unregistered stock, and for making unsubstantiated claims about the performance of the Skycar. Moller settled this lawsuit by agreeing to a permanent injunction and paying $50,000. In the words of the SEC complaint, "As of late 2002, MI's approximately 40 years' [sic] of development has resulted in a prototype Skycar capable of hovering about fifteen feet above the ground."

"Moller International has an accumulated deficits of $45,525,462 and a working capital deficit of $11,376,885 as of September 30, 2009."

Doctor Moller filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in may 2009 , as reported in the Sacramento Business Journal .
Still, it's not all bad. Somehow, whilst pouring a lifetime's work and a mountain of money into a futuristic machine that has NEVER demonstrated the abilities claimed for it, Dr Moller declares his private, not corporate, assets to be over 46 million dollars.
There do appear to be some spin-off technologies,  they say their muffler/spark arrestors are sought after worldwide, that their wankel rotary developments are world beating... Hm. Maybe I'd better tip out my piggy bank and invest.

Oh, apparently those supergood wankel Rotary engines, air-cooled for weight control, don't actually cool very well... so they can't run for very long.

It seems to me that most people trying to develop a new technology work first on the technical aspects, build it out of old bedframes and lego, until they've got an ugly, but demonstrably workable prototype. Whereas it sems Moller works from the other end. Draw a Jetsons-like flying car, tell people it will travel 500 miles at 350 miles per hour, rescue people from burning buildings, commute more easily than by car, sell them in advance, promising FAA certification very soon, and, year by year, fail to deliver one single shred of evidence that your (extremely noisy, and therefore certain to be banned in any residential setting)  device will do any of the things you claim. In the YouTube video, it's shown taking off, hovering, and landing (in a rather unconvincing, unlevel, thump), all whilst tethered to a safety crane.
I've been unable to locate anything to suggest this lovely glossy thing can actually take off and transition into stable forward flight at 60, 350, 500, or any miles per hour at all.
Animations on Moller's website? Ha.


If you go to Moller's own website, there's  only happiness, sweetness  and light.
in "What people are saying" it's all upbeat. No mention of the chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Tiger's mistresses.

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