Fatso

 Over the course of just one year I've put on 5kg in weight and 2 inches in girth. I have found the whole thing rather undignified and I've put myself on a gentle diet. The diet is called "no biscuits in the building". I'm still eating my normal meals, but I have no snacks or treats. No pastry with morning coffee. Nothing to keep me going in the afternoon. No biscuits with tea. No chocolate in the evening. No sweeties to relieve the monotony of long car journeys.

My weight is trending in the right direction, but since talking to one of my team I feel rather stupid about my diet. She has a very handsome and intelligent dog who's very popular when she shows up on video calls. I explained my diet to my teammate and she said "That's the same diet my dog's on!" The dog has put on a couple of kilos and is now no longer allowed snacks and treats. Just like me.

Richard "just kibble and water" B

Homeostasis

 I own a rather wonderful temperature controller. It has two mains sockets and a temperature probe. You could, for example, plug in a heating pad and a cooling fan to keep your pet lizards' environment in a closely controlled temperature range. I use it with a fan heater to keep from getting frost in my conservatory. I also thought I might use it for brewing projects.

I recently bought an electric under blanket and thought it would be interesting to connect it to the temperature controller. After some experimentation I'd say that 25C is a nice temperature to have your bed when you get in to it on a cold night, but that's not quite warm enough to pre-heat your pyjamas to a really luxurious toastiness.

On the first night I was experimenting with it I left the temperature probe in the bed. In the middle of the night I was woken abruptly by a loud bleeping and a dull red flashing. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on, but my body heat had warmed my bed up to 30C and it had set off the over-temperature alarm.

Richard "Your Lizards are in Danger" B

Dad Joke

 bolingblog.com has been accused of plagiarism. His words not mine.

Join the Ancient Yuletide Carol

 For context I used to go out with a harper, and I look back very fondly on her and the instrument. The best question I asked somebody on a first date was "so on a harp do you get seven notes or all twelve?"

I also have a lot of affection for the Black Sabbath song "War Pigs" because it's taken the general public over 50 years to notice that the cadence of the vocal melody is the same as "Deck the Halls" and now that they have the crossover is epic.

"Generals gather in their masses"
"'Tis the season to be jolly"
"Just like witches at black masses"
"Deck the halls with boughs of holly"

I like it when youtube throws me a curveball. I usually don't like videos of the form "x reacts to y". The real entertainment is in y, and watching x's face change as they watch the video, or listening to x whitter on about it doesn't add anything. However I was absolutely captivated by a classical musician reacting to the heavy metal song "War Pigs". This was a pretty middle aged woman with a harp and a piano behind her listening carefully to heavy metal from 1970 and explaining it. At one point she leaned her harp towards her and picked out the main notes that Ozzy Osbourne was singing to show us that it was an E minor arpeggio. At another she was trying to understand what Tony Iommi was playing and she was playing it on an imaginary air harp.

Richard "Blogger reacts to Classical Musician Reacts to Heavy Metal" B

Stripper Name

 The human brain is a pattern matching machine and some people can spot unnecessary patterns in speech. There was a guy I remember who was seemingly checking the cadence and emphasis of everything you said in case it matched "Old McDonald Had a Farm". If you were to say "My big brother got a car" he would instantly say "Ee aye ee aye oh".

When I was on holiday in Salcombe my niece showed us an even better filter that she can run over other people's speech. She can hear very quickly when a word or two sound like somebody's name, and she will claim to have gone to school with them. "Your objection is duly noted". "I went to school with Julie Noted!".

Richard "I went to school with Sarah Tonin" B

Fry Up

 After all why not? Why shouldn't I go to bed now and leave this massive pile of washing up until the morning?

On Saturday I found myself speedrunning "Make and Eat a Cooked Breakfast". One of my friends had agreed to come climbing with me, we were to meet for breakfast at the local supermarket, and then drive to the climbing wall where he had an induction booked. When we got to the counter to order breakfast we discovered that there was a 30 minute wait for food and that would have made us miss our booking.

We were already in a supermarket, and we were close to my house. In 18 minutes I bought bacon and eggs, donned my motorcycle clothing, rode home, cooked 6 rashers of bacon, fried 2 eggs, made 2 slices of toast, and served a reasonable breakfast. The cooking was done at the same time as taking off my motorcycle clothing. I turned the stove on still wearing the helmet, the bacon went in the pan while I still had the jacket on, and I think I was still wearing boots when I sat down to eat.

Richard "My Kitchen Was Embarrassingly Untidy" B

Serial Killer

 As I've been preparing firewood for bonfire night (and my subsequent experiments with cooking on a chiminea) I wanted to use an axe. I have an axe which came from my parents' house, but it was rather blunt so I looked up how to sharpen it on Youtube. What I have found out is that a good quality axe should be just softer than a good quality file, and you can do most of the sharpening with a file. I have also had to accept that my 10" bastard file, given to me on my 30th birthday (mainly because it has "BASTARD" stamped into it) is rather worn out and needs to be replaced.

My axe is now as sharp as a razor, youtube thinks that all I'm interested in is axes and knives, and I have a new file that just says "1" on it.

Richard "can I turn the old file into a knife?" B

Wee Timorous Beastie

 When I was a child it was completely normal on November 5th to go to a friend's house, or to have friends over and stand around a large fire with an effigy on top. (it was a different time, it also seemed normal that there were unattended coin operated machines that would dispense 2 pints of paraffin into whatever container you pointed the nozzle). Children's tv at the time would tell you to check for hedgehogs in the bonfire before you lit it because they would often think that the unlit fire would make an excellent nest for the winter.

This year I had friends over and we lit the biggest fire we could manage (rather small) in a chiminea. The chiminea is quite small, and the grate doesn't fit well so it will sometimes spit out burning sticks and embers, but I did supercharge it with a hairdryer and a length of exhaust pipe.

Anyway in preparation for bonfire night I sawed the firewood that I had harvested from my hedge into suitable lengths. Under the log pile there was an excellent collection of dry leaves and twigs which I thought I would use as kindling for the fire. I scooped it all up into a bucket and discovered that it also contained a hedgehog. I put it all back where it was and I hope that I haven't scared the hedgehog away.

Richard "On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" B

Analysis

 Some bits of faultfinding require obscure, expensive or cumbersome equipment. When I had faulty audio equipment I pretty much always had to get the oscilloscope and the signal generator out of the loft. Many times I've wanted an OBD reader for cars, or an exhaust gas analyser, or a rolling road. Or the tuning software for my ECU. I have found myself wanting for various gauges, stroboscopes, microscopes, boroscopes, pressure vessels, vacuum chambers, smoke generators, …

In contrast I LOVED the equipment needed to find where a washing machine is leaking. You can put a sheet of cardboard under it to witness where it drips. You can close a sheet of kitchen roll in the soap drawer or the door to see if it's dry, and you can wrap kitchen roll around any hose, pump, or fitting to see if it gets wet.

While I did find the leak in my washing machine (small crack in the tub) I was unable to fix it and still ended up buying a new one.

Richard "waste of time" B

Chaise Longue

 During my trip to Norfolk I managed to collect several of the things that can make you feel light headed, by accident. On the day that I helped my brother in the woods I didn't have a proper lunch (low blood sugar). While he was waving a chainsaw around as effortlessly as a conductor's baton I didn't want to admit what a wimp I was so I worked myself hard with the hedge trimmer (Exhaustion) and built up a proper sweat (Dehydration). We hadn't taken any water with us, and when he bought me a pint (Diuretic, Vasodilator) to say thankyou I forgot to drink any water. We got home filthy and tired so I relaxed in a hot bath (Vasodilator). When I stood up (Postural Hypotension) I very nearly fainted. I ended up feeling thoroughly unwell, crawling on the bathroom floor with tunnel vision and ringing ears.

Thankfully there was a fainting couch just a few steps outside the bathroom door. I relaxed there while they brought me ghetto isotonic drinks and I made a full recover before tea was served.

Richard "got to catch 'em all" B

Titan Submarine

 A few weeks ago I was discussing the loss of the OceanGate Titan tourist submarine with my brothers, one of whom is a skilled mechanical engineer. Apparently everybody expected it to collapse because a cylinder with domed ends on it is a really bad shape to put under pressure. I still find it rather had to believe, but as a species we only know how much pressure you can put on a cylinder if it's perfect. As soon as it goes slightly out of round it's much much weaker, but we can't really calculate how weak.

To demonstrate this effect to me they devised this beautiful practical demonstration. The beer can can hold my weight while it's intact. They then introduced the tiniest imperfection (by prodding it gently with a cotton bud) and it collapses catastrophically.

https://youtu.be/SCj_wf7J89U

My least favourite thing about the loss of the Titan - apart from the loss of life - is the system of acoustic sensors and strain gauges supposed to keep it safe. Everybody was a naysayer and didn't believe they would work. They naysayers were kind-of right, in that the submarine collapsed and killed everybody inside, however, they did pick up a loud click (probably a delamination) on dive 80, and the strain gauges did show that the performance of the hull was degraded after the click. If only they'd known how to analyse the data.

Richard "I went to school with Euler Buckling" B

N.R.T.E

 Norfolk Residential Teambuilding Experience [1]

All inclusive luxury accommodation at a 400 year old thatched Norfolk cottage. (Free Parking)

Arrival

• Check-In
• Welcome Package
• Spa Facilities (attended) [2]
• Evening Meal
• Open Bar [3].

Day 1

• Circuit Driving Experience (refreshments available)[4]
• Evening meal at historic Norfolk Inn.
• Ale Tasting[5]

Day 2

• Continental Breakfast[6] (includes all you can drink barrista coffee[7])
• Guided Nature Reserve Walk (includes exclusive meeting with the landowner and philanthropist)
• Tour of Historic Central Norwich Cemetery (includes opportunity to volunteer at cemetery upkeep)[8]
• Lunch at Historic Coaching Inn
• Vehicle Maintenance Challenge (you will be paired with a suitable partner, there is no instructor for this exercise)[9]
• English Pub Games (refreshments available)[10]
• Period Themed Snacks[11]
• Open Bar

Day 3

• Continental Breakfast (includes all you can drink barrista coffee)
• Haute Cuisine Cookery Tuition (in well appointed kitchen using wood fired range)[12]
• Knife Grinding and Sharpening Workshop[13]
• Relaxation Period (in modern oak garden room)[14]
• Forestry Management and Firewood Production Lesson (hands on)[15]
• Off-Road Driving Experience[16]
• Spa Facilities (attended)
• Haute Cuisine Cookery Tasting[17]
• Open Bar

Dear Sir. I recently attended your Norfolk Residential Teambuilding Experience. I very much enjoyed it, I would like you to extend my thanks to everyone involved, and I believe it represents excellent value for money.

HOWEVER

There are some points which I feel fell below what could have been expected from the experience:

Free Parking: While my allocated space was close to the cottage, it was accessed along a lane which was clearly marked as "Road Closed" and then up a steep and narrow driveway made of slippery wet gravel. I also feel that my car was not as safe as it could have been as the organisers were moving several other vehicles around in the same car park.[18]

Circuit Driving Experience: I enjoyed the day, but I thought that the preponderance of vehicle maintenance tasks and safety checks detracted from the driving experience. I was also unimpressed with the organisation of crash helmets and intercoms. One of my fellow attendees had a crash helmet with an intercom, I had a crash helmet and an intercom but the two were incompatible and I had to remove my intercom because my helmet wasn't suitable for the other attendee. Then there was a third intercom system for the instructors which was incompatible with the first two.

English Pub Games: The rules seemed to be poorly explained, and while I bonded with my partner during the doubles pool, the session seemed more competitive and divisive than team-building

Forestry Management and Firewood Production Lesson: I don't think that the brochure made clear how tiring this lesson would be, or gave any minimum standards for the physical fitness of the participants[19]. There was no water available at the site, and I feel that the PPE provided was wholly inadequate[20].

Off-Road Driving Experience: I think that the instructor assumed too much knowledge of the vehicle involved on the part of the guests.[21]

Breakfast: The continental breakfasts really consisted of toast and a selection of jams and preserves. This seems bizarre when you discover that they are served in the same well appointed kitchen that is used for the cookery lessons.

And this gets to the crux of my complaint. While the individual activities were generally excellent, taken as a whole the course is incoherent and disjointed. We did the vehicle maintenance challenge a day AFTER we did the circuit driving experience, yet there was a heavy emphasis on vehicle maintenance during what should have been a driving experience. On day 3 we had a breakfast of toast, literally minutes before we started cooking hot food. We used sharp knives during the cookery tuition, but were then shown how to sharpen them AFTER having used them. Surely you can see that there would have been a narrative through line to the day if we'd gathered the wood and sharpened the knives BEFORE we started using them for cooking, and that the tasting should have come straight after the cookery tuition.

There was very poor coordination between the attendees which seems weird for a team building event. I felt that I started to develop a bond with my fellow attendee at the circuit driving experience, but his itinerary precluded him from attending the evening meal at historic Norfolk inn and the ale tasting. He was staying in a separate cottage and we met him again for English pub games, but he seemed not to even have been invited on the nature reserve walk even though I understand it was very close to his accommodation.

Best Wishes,

Richard "Fussy Git" B

1. I went and stayed with my brother for a few days
2. I absolutely took the piss using all his hot water to take long hot deep baths
3. and tried to drink his fridge and his wine-rack dry
4. we went to Snetterton to shakedown and test my sports car's newly rebuilt engine
5. we had to try a couple of beers at the pub before we found one in good condition
6. toast
7. I've been shown how to use his bean-to-cup coffee machine
8. we tidied up the family plot at the cemetery
9. between us we pretty much sorted out the tracking on his worn out Toyota Hilux.
10. games of pool at the pub
11. toasted sandwiches made in a genuine 1970 Breville sandwich toaster
12. I helped him cook a really good curry and stew
13. I wanted to piss about with a wetstone and a strop on one of his knives
14. coffee, fags, and chatting
15. I helped him clear the lane into his woods
16. and I had to drive the Hilux up it
17. we ate the curry
18. my sister in law forgot my car was there and nearly reversed in to it
19. I wasn't up to the job. I got tired and dehydrated, then drank a couple of pints of beer, and then nearly fainted when I got out of a bath.
20. I got thorns through my gloves, thorns through my trousers, thorns in my bootlaces and nettles up my arms.
21. I didn't understand the transfer box on the Hilux

Horse Karen

 They say it's the 95% of lawyers that give the rest a bad name. Something similar happens for motorcyclists. Those with loud exhausts, dazzling headlights and poor road manners give the rest of us a bad reputation. This week I saw something similar with horseriders.

Horses can be quite temperamental and easily startled, and they're not excellent in traffic, so those of us with motor vehicles are taught to pass them wide and slow. Last week I was on Dartmoor in my sports car. I was on a winding road with a 30 m.p.h speed limit and I was already going slower than that when I saw a horse coming the other way. My exhaust is loud so I switched off the engine and put the car in neutral to coast past it. My brakes and tyres can be squeaky so I decelerated gradually and coasted quietly past the horse at around, I would guess, 10 m.p,h.

The rider, rather than waving her thanks to me, was red faced, gesticulating wildly, and shouting at me to SLOW! DOWN!

Richard "Reputational Damage" B

Side Quest

 Last week I met one of my team for the first time, he'd come to Plymouth from Lancashire for a company celebration. What's odd is that I, one of my colleagues, and his girlfriend are all NPC's. His girlfriend asked him to bring back a memento of the Westcountry - ideally a plush seagull. His colleague knew exactly where you could buy one - the Students' Union shop, and I was able to walk with him to the S.U. shop.

This is a straightforward fetch-quest from an unimaginative video game. His girlfriend is the quest giver, his colleague is a helper character, and I'm either another helper or the map.

Richard "Non Player Character" B

Dyno

 My Caterham has been to the dyno and it's good news all around. The replacement lambda sensor is working correctly, and it's fuelling correctly.

Everybody is very pleased with the engine rebuild, and it's making more power than the advertised power when it was new.

In the top graph the blue line is power, the red line is torque. the bottom graph is air:fuel ratio. What's interesting is that it's enriched at low revs. This is probably to make it easier to drive in traffic, but it might be a childish ploy to make it pop and burble on the overrun so it sounds like a racing car. Or something to do with the way they're tuned the variable valve timing.

They think the most important bits of the process were skimming the head for slightly increased compression, 3 angle valve seats, and careful valve grinding.

Richard "chef's kiss" B

Caterham Lambda Sensor

 I have a Caterham Seven with the 1.6l "Sigma" engine.

The original lambda sensor was Ford 1351337 These are now unobtainable or fiendishly expensive. I have replaced it with Ford 1327547. The sensor and the plug are identical, it's just that the cable is a bit shorter.

I can now say with confidence that the new sensor is functionally identical too, because my car has just come back from the dyno and it's fuelling correctly.

Richard "I hope this helps someone" B

Dyno

 This week my car goes to the dyno to find out how it's running. As I understand the procedure they're going to strap it down on a rolling road and measure the speed and power at the wheels at various different throttle settings and loads. They're also going to do an exhaust gas analysis because there are some questions around the lambda sensor and the fuelling. If things don't go as I hope, then I'll be charged (handsomely) to find out that the engine rebuild (for which I paid the same people a king's ransom) hasn't solved all of my engine problems.

Richard "fingers crossed" B

Running In

 Before we get to the outdated-cultural-reference part of this blog, I should say that I used to work with a South African guy, who was friendly and charming and once helped me to get home when I'd drunk too much.

Over the course of a week and a half I've driven my car 1000 miles, slowly, and without holding constant revs, to run in a newly rebuilt engine. I've been karting in Menheniot, I've been to Weston Super Mare for coffee, I've been to Exeter for pizza, I've been to Redruth to pick up oil, I've been to Collumpton for McDonalds, I've been to Bradford-on-Avon for a house call, and I've done a lap of Dartmoor. (outdated-cultural-reference:) But I've never met a nice South African.

Richard "10w40 Semi Synthetic" B

Drip Tray

 Every now and again I have to demote a pair of jeans to gardening/painting/workshop duty. I see it as a useful and productive end of their service life after they've taken me to work and social events for what may be a number of years.

This week I've made a much more rash and serious demotion. I'm running in a rebuilt engine in my sports car and it demands an oil change at 60miles, 500miles and 1000miles. I'm trying to do it all as quickly as I can and putting the car on stands to drain the oil is a time consuming chore. As such I wanted a drip tray that fits under the sump. I have demoted a roasting tin that I've been using happily for about 25 years, it has built up a good non-stick seasoning, and is the only thing I have big enough to roast a big fowl or a decent joint.

Its very convenient, but I bet I'll regret it come Christmas.

Richard "speed run 1000 miles driven slowly" B

Reading List

 There's a rather wonderful Youtube channel called Overly Sarcastic Productions that talks about storytelling. I almost wholeheartedly recommend it – other than the main woman sometimes seems to lend the channel to her boyfriend who is much less personable and much less interesting.

Anyway the last time I had anything to do with the novel "Watership Down" was in the 1970s. My dim childhood recollection is that it was both very hard to understand and very very sad. However now that I've heard OSP talk about it, I might have to put it back on my reading list. She puts it in a category almost all by itself called "Dramatic Irony Cosmic Horror" and I think she's right.

Dramatic irony is when we as the audience know something about the story that the characters don't. We know there's a hungry shark under the waves and we can hear it ominously playing the cello (I think) but the woman swimming doesn't know it's down there. We know that the dates have been poisoned, and we don't want the hero to eat one, but the characters haven't seen the telltale poisoned monkey yet.

Cosmic horror is when the main point of the story is that it's a cold, unfeeling and unfathomable universe that we live in.

Watership down is about a group of rabbits that get poisoned and their warren dug up. For us it's dramatic irony because we understand housebuilding, and we know what trains and cars and things are. For the rabbits its senseless, arbitrary and cruel.

OSP says it's like reading Colour Out of Space if we were the Eldrich abominations. "Oh yeah that makes sense, that colour (never before seen on earth) would be very bad for biological life there"

Richard "The Cello is Non-diagetic" B

Very Superstitious

 In Latin the left hand side is sinister and the right hand side is dexter. My advice is not to make a Latin joke and say that she's sinister when you find out that your infant niece is left handed.

Anyway there are lots of superstitions about left and right hand sides. I had a cooked breakfast at the weekend and ended up with some salt in my hand (there was more in the sachet than I wanted to distribute between the eggs and hash browns) and I naturally threw it over my left shoulder – so it goes in the devil's eye. Apparently the devil is speaking in to your left ear and angels into your right. It's not clear to me how antagonising the devil by throwing salt in his eye is going to have a positive effect, but this is what I've always done.

It got me thinking about right and left had drive cars. Whenever I've been driving and somebody in the rear seat wanted to talk to me they leaned forwards between the front seats. In a right hand drive car they'd be speaking in to my left ear, in a left hand drive car they'd be speaking in to my right ear. It seams to me that in the UK (and Japan and Australia) The devil has prime position to influence drivers. And that rear seat passengers are more likely to get salt thrown at them.

Richard "Thirteen month old baby broke the lookin’ glass" B

GH370S

 I don't know whether this makes me feel tough and manly about my gardening, or wimpy and effeminate about my motorcycling, but I now own a woodchipper with a bigger engine than my motorbike.

It's easy to start but it requires a long pull on the starter cord. You almost have to take a step backwards as you pull it.

I once heard a story about someone in the bow of a small boat who had his nose broken by the elbow of to the guy in the stern who was vigorously pulling the starter on an outboard motor. I told this story at a party once with vigorous gesticulation and mime and my elbow ended up striking the sternum of the guy who had just got out of hospital following a heart bypass. It didn't kill him.

Richard "Briggs and Stratton" B

John Kongos

 This week combines two of my favourite tropes: "I was today years old when I found out x" and "outdated cultural reference".

At the weekend I wasn't able to go to a racing circuit because my car's engine is currently in bits at the engine builders. However I still went about the rest of my itinerary in the midlands. I went drinking with a couple of lads that I've known for over 40 years. As often happens we ended up back at home drunkenly over-appreciating music. This time it was done on youtube, painfully typing into the search box using the arrow keys on the tv remote.

In 1990 The Happy Mondays released "Step On" as a single.

I was today years old when I found out it was a cover version.

And let us also never say another word about how come the woman in Ghostbusters looks a lot like Ripley in Alien.

Richard "You're Twisting My Mellon, Man" B

TV Times

 Last weekend was the best weekend I've ever known for watching stuff on TV. I barely went to sleep on Friday night because the Alex Balwin trial was so exciting. It ended up with the prosecutor herself on the witness stand trying to explain why the defence hadn't been allowed to see all of the evidence. The lawyer who's livestream I was watching was shouting "plead the 5th and call a lawyer".

Then Donald Trump was shot – but barely scratched.

Then England was in the finals of the European football championship – we lost.

I did also do some of the gravel project outside my house, but I run out of energy and enthusiasm much earlier than I run out of daylight hours.

Richard "Arec Balrin" B

Your Powers are Weak Old Man

I’m old! Last year I turned 50, I made a big deal out of it, I had a celebration and I quite liked being able to say "I'm 50!" Now all I can say is the much more pedestrian "I'm in my 50s". While I did have a very nice meal and some good wine on my birthday, it wasn't a celebration of my birthday, it just happened to coincide with another event. I got a smattering of gifts, and nobody made a big deal out of it.

Richard "1973" B

Throwaway Culture

 There seems to be a complete lack of tuning parts available for my kettle. I bought it in Woolworths in 1998 when I moved into my first house, so it's almost brand new. There's a power switch on the kettle itself with an over-centre latch. The kettle gets power from a circular base and when you lift the kettle off the base a little spring flips the power switch to off. The little spring broke, so the kettle was slightly too dangerous for me. I uprated the spring from 22SWG to 20SWG. Sadly the slightly different shape and size of the spring meant that I required a set of shims for the plunger that actuates it. Neither uprated springs nor matching shims seem to be available for my kettle (or any other kettle) and I had to manufacture both. I had a surprising amount of piano wire and small brass bar in stock, but I don't have anything (other than a cold chisel) to cut piano wire and I don't have a watchmaker's lathe to part off the shims.

Richard "Beyond Repair - no. Beyond Economical Repair - yes" B

The Good Life

 Outdated reference to an outdated reference: In the late 90s one of my best friends moved from Plymouth to Surrey. There he met a girl, and the first time I met her and her friends I made a very poor impression on them. We were at a party, one of these women had a ludicrously posh (to my westcountry ear) accent and a slightly imperious manner. I heard her say to her (then) boyfriend "Jason, fetch me another beer". I couldn't help but say "Chequebook Jerry" in my best Margo Leadbetter voice and the two people near me erupted in gales of laughter. Nobody else had heard what I said, but they heard the laughing, and then my friends proceeded to repeat and explain it.

The posh girl and her boyfriend are now married. I went out with one of the offended women for a number of years. My friend married somebody different.

Richard "Penelope Keith" B

Coram

 Welcome to the boring world of Positive Crankcase Ventillation systems. Little did I know that on modern (post 1960's) cars, they connect the crankcase to the inlet manifold so that blowby doesn't pressurise the crankcase, and so that the blowby and the oil mist get burned in the engine. Damn Los Angeles and their smog problem!

I took my sports car to Snetterton last week and had a miserable time. I got black flagged twice for making excessive smoke. So much in fact that people came out on to the pit wall to gawp and speculate. While we did get to do some high speed driving (after the oil level had dropped), and engine ran pretty well it used A LOT of fuel.

I have since done a compression test and the engine looks a bit worn, but not catastrophically so. This is my best guess about what went wrong: The engine is just a bit more worn out than it was the last time I used it. The oil was topped up right to the top. There's a long right hand corner which pushed the oil up towards the PCV system. This combination of factors overwhelmed the PCV system and pulled a load of oil into the inlet tract and we burned it whenever we opened the throttle wide. The soot has messed up the lambda sensor in the exhaust, and it's now overfuelling wildly. The engine is already out of the sports car and in the back of the Fiat Panda waiting to go down to the engine builders.

I record this here just for the next time I have to do it: It takes more than a day, but less than two days to take the engine out of my Caterham. You have to have three people present when you crane it out. I know we've all seen Ed China do it with one assistant, but I simply cannot replicate that.

Richard "Catch Tank" B

Zip File

 The Mandela effect is nothing but data compression, but it's going on in the human brain. One of the main techniques in data compression is to look for commonalities and to encode repeated data in a shorthand form. Just as an example, imagine we're trying to compress some text. You could replace the word "the" with the letter "t" and it would save you a couple of characters each time it came up. You'd then lose a few characters if somebody used "t" as a word on its own and you had to disambiguate it. He was wearing a white do-not-expand-t shirt.

The Mandela effect is where a large number of people all have the same false memory: Nelson Mandela died in the 80s. Darth Vader said "Luke, I am your father" Pikachu has a black tip on his tail. It's fun to think that they're connections to alternate histories, or artifacts of programming changes in the simulation that we're living in. Sadly, after a long chat with my boss I now believe something much more prosaic.

The only Mandela memory that really bothers me is the Fruit of the Loom logo. It's a company that makes cotton goods, their logo is a pile of fruit. I remember the fruit being in front of a horn shaped basket, but it isn't. What we think is actually going on is that every time you see a pile of fruit in that style, it's in front of a horn of plenty. You've seen it on pub sigs, menus, invitations, and countless other places. When my memory filed away the Fruit of the Loom logo from when I bought a packet of sewing needles, it coded it as just another example of fruit in front of a horn of plenty. Every time I retrieve the memory it comes out with the basket included. It's quite disconcerting.

Richard "cornucopia" B

Grow Up

 Since my last blog a general election has been announced. I had a delightful chat about it with my barber, and we are now part of a grassroots political campaign. You should join us! Like me, she doesn't think that any of the political parties represent our views and our values. Unlike me, she was unaware of the idea of a spoiled ballot. She loved the idea that she would still have to attend the polling station, and so couldn't be accused of not taking part in the democratic process. She loved that spoiled ballots are counted, and that there could potentially be more spoiled ballots than votes for a particular candidate. She then correctly pointed out that we could draw a crude little picture – "like you used to at school".

The only political positions that I want to hear about for the rest of this campaign are when you spoil your ballot, whether or not there are going to be veins visible on the shaft, and whether there will be teardrop shapes shooting from the tip.

Richard "can I count on your support?" B

Imaginary Cat

 In my late 20s and early 30s I was in a serious relationship with a woman. There were a couple of memorable things about her.

Looking back at 20 years remove, I think that in one respect I was slightly less sympathetic to her than I now am to an imaginary cat. I lived in Plymouth, my girlfriend was studying in Southampton, so during term time I would travel up there by motorbike every couple of weeks. The journey was cold. noisy, uncomfortable and time consuming. It was made even more hasslesome by her worrying about me. I thought that I was the one taking the risk and who would be inconvenienced or injured if anything went wrong. I found all the checking in to re-assure her a chore. It didn't, however, discourage me from using a motorbike.

I now live alone and I often consider keeping a pet. I realised that if I had a cat at home which wouldn't get fed if I wound up in hospital, that I wouldn't dare to get on a motorbike for fear of starving the cat.

Imaginary Cat:1, Wendy:0

Richard "slightly autistic?" B

Hedge

 At the weekend I made several chainsaw mistakes. Not the types of mistakes that put your limbs in danger, but that type that spoil your day and hit you in the wallet. As well as a sweet little baby chainsaw I own a big hedge trimmer and I had agreed to help trim a hedge for a friend of mine's parents. Mistake number 1: I didn't go and look at the job before agreeing to do it. It sounded like I was just going to have to give an ornamental box hedge a haircut, but it turned out to be much more than that. Mistake number 2: I put my chainsaw in the back of the car, thinking that I might have to cut one or two bigger stems with it, but I didn’t bring the tools that go with it. I wore chainsaw trousers, sturdy boots, long sleeves, ear protection and eye protection. Mistake number 3: I didn't take a sunhat.

Giving the box hedge a haircut was simplicity itself. However there was an overgrown hedge on the other side of the garden made of leylandii, bamboo, and bramble. It was all too sturdy for the trimmer and the whole job had to be done with the chainsaw. Somewhere in the middle of the hedge was an iron post that I ran my chainsaw into and blunted it. Mistake number 4: It seemed to still be cutting, so instead of driving home and getting the sharpening kit I carried on. I overheated the bar and the chain jammed up. Mistake number 5: Even after seeing the householder's tools I still didn't drive home and get proper tools. I stripped the bar and the chain off it with inferior spanners that didn't quite fit.

When we had "finished" we discovered that the householders were in fact responsible for both sides of the leylandii hedge, and we had to go on a long steep walk to find the overgrown footpath at the side of their house, and start the whole job again.

They did give me £20 for the petrol, bar oil and my tea, and a VERY nice bottle of gin.

Richard "HS-45" B

Heavy Metals

 Over the weekend I did the first trackday of the year in my Caterham. It was quite a big deal for me because it's the first time the car has been used hard since my friends and I had then engine out to change the clutch. We've also rebuilt the cooling system and some of the rear suspension. It all worked like a charm.

Unfortunately during the day a badly maintained Radical sprayed my car with oil. It didn't seem to cause any problems and we wiped the worst of it off. The next day I washed the paintwork, but when I checked over the car the front brakes seem to have been badly contaminated. There was a greasy, rusty residue on the inside of the disks and the pads seemed oddly "crumbly" when I tried to clean them. All of which is to say that I needed to buy a new set of front brake pads.

Environmentalists and bureaucrats can spoil all kinds of thinks that I like. We can't have proper solder any more, so all our appliances go wrong and get thrown away. We can't have low temperature silver-solder any more, we can't have real creosote, naptha, absinthe, and codeine is always cut with something.

Over the years I have discovered my favourite brake friction material. It's made by Mintex, it offers excellent braking and thermal performance on a car as light as mine, it doesn't produce a huge amount of dust or chew up the disks too badly, and it offers a good balance of cost and longevity. Although it is a bit squeaky. Back in the day it used to meet the basic European standards. For the last couple of years it's been marked "Not for Road Use". Now it's no longer available and has been replaced by a less poisonous, less polluting compound. I can only image it'll be inferior.

Richard "Farewell Mintex M1144" B

Outdated Cultural References

 My new favourite thing to spot is outdated cultural references. I introduced one of my friends to the pastime when she was visiting Plymouth. While I explained it we were driving past a carpet cleaning business called Captain Rugwash. Within a few seconds she'd also mentioned how much she liked a restaurant called Veggie Perrins.

Captain Pugwash was made from 1982 to 1984

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin was made from 1976 to 1982

Richard "Sunshine Desserts" B

People in Glass Houses

I live in a bungalow with a lot of windows and a conservatory. I'm also a cheapskate so I'm set on cleaning my own windows, rather than paying someone to do it. The caretaker at work has 30 years of window cleaning experience and he graciously agreed to give me a squeegee lesson. I'm starting to pick it up. There's a skill to it, and a sense of achievement when you start getting it right.

The two most valuable insights he gave me were: 1) Don't make too good a job of your own windows – your neighbours will ask you to do theirs. 2) Don't step backwards to admire your work – if you're up a ladder.

Richard "Ettore Steccone" B

Bush Bush Bush

 At the weekend I helped a friend of mine with some gardening. He had dug up a bush that he wanted to move, but it was too awkward and heavy to carry. Neither of us owns a wheelbarrow, but I am reasonably strong, and I was wearing dirty clothes. I thought that if we could get it up on to one of my shoulders I could walk round to the back garden with it. I was right about being just able to move it, I was wrong about the clothes that I was wearing. My dirty gardening jumper is quite loose at the neck and a lot of soil from the root ball went down my collar. I had forgotten that I was also wearing a fine lambswool vest which is now heavily soiled. Worse the vest funnelled quite a lot of earth into my trousers and pants. I had to shower and change all my clothes as soon as I got home. There was mud all over me, and I left a trail of mud wherever I took off a garment.

Richard "Beast of Burden" B

Cocktail Club

 My favourite cocktail is the French 75. It's gin, syrup and lemon juice shaken hard and then double strained into a glass and topped up with Champagne.

The most luxurious gin I've ever drunk is called Roku and it's Japanese - not to my eyes a nation famed for their gin making heritage.

A friend of mine recently turned 50 and I bought her a luxurious bottle of Bollinger Champagne. I chose it not because I know anything about high end Champagne, but for brand recognition - basically because that's what they used to drink in Absolutely Fabulous.

I engraved "50" in the bottle with a cheap diamond burr and a high speed drill. Sadly it was an awkward process and I don't have a steady hand so it looks rather childish.

I was very nervous putting a bottle of Champagne that I couldn't afford to smash into the big vice to engrave it.

I'm very glad to say that I was invited to drink the highest specification French 75s that the world has probably every known.

They were delicious.

Richard "don't think about the price" B

The First Rule of Nerd Club

 If you're trying to pluck up the nerve to ask a woman on a date, the standard advice is that "the worst that can happen is she says 'no'". This is clearly untrue. She might have later handed a loaded gun to Alex Baldwin who shot and killed a cinematographer, you might then be called as a witness at her trial. You would then have to answer questions before god, a judge, a jury, lawyers, the entire gawping general public at home, and the woman you asked out (looking quite delightful in her best "don't send me to prison" dress) about your advances towards her, about whether you hoped to pursue a sexual relationship, about how she ghosted you, and about whether you pestered her.

Worse, you might not have had any idea about how much cocaine she owned or used, and your presence at the trial turned out to be completely pointless.

My own experience is nowhere near as humiliating, but I should by now be old enough to know that nothing good comes from trying to impress people. I heard that one of the organisers at my nerds' social club was single, and I'm quite taken with her. In trying to make a good impression on her I agreed to deliver a short technical lecture at nerd-club. Some time between agreeing to do the lecture and actually doing so I got the opportunity to talk to her privately. She had no interest in going on a date with me, but I still had to do the lecture.

Richard "every girl's crazy about a TED talk man" B

Weekend Getaway

 I've recently come back from a weekend getaway in Norfolk. As well as socialising, eating, drinking, and looking after the family plot in the cemetery, it was mainly a residential safety course.

I got a demonstration of skid control and recovery. This was performed unexpectedly on a patch of diesel on the Norwich Distributor Road in an unloaded Toyota Hi-Lux which was in rear wheel drive.

I got a lesson in chainsaw practice and safety during which we felled and logged a tree.

I got a lesson in how to use lockwire. My final project was judged by a licenced aircraft engineer and was at a standard that would have been certified as safe for flight.

Richard "Tourist Information" B

City Break

 A couple of weeks ago I hosted my brother and one of his friends on their "gents city-break in Plymouth". We ate pasties and drank Plymouth gin. We maintained a length of my ancient Devon hedge. We observed bleak grey seascapes in heavy drizzle, we looked at moorland from indoors, we saw the ugly brutal architecture of the city centre in cold heavy rain, and we saw the inside of several (warm, dry) pubs.

I was reminded of a conversation that one of my colleagues had. "Isn't Plymouth beautiful?" "Yes, when you've got your back to it".

He's absolutely right, it's surrounded by moorland, rolling Devon hills and wooded valleys, cliffs, islands, estuaries, lighthouses, and harbours. But the city itself isn't much to look at.

Richard "Tourist Information" B

Molatov

 For the latter decades of my curatorship of the family lawnmower I had a very nice fuel mixing bottle, but I gave it away with the mower. Now I am a chainsaw owner I need the same thing again, but they're all trash. The top on the one I bought leaks terribly and I have been unable to fix it. Literally every other mixing bottle (except the expensive Stihl one) is the exact same moulding, and I can only assume is equally badly made.

Fine. I'll do it myself.

All I need is a clear bottle with a good screw cap, and a narrow neck, so that the measurements are somewhat accurate. I finished a bottle of rum and bought a measuring cylinder and I've now marked the empty bottle at 700ml and 714ml so that I can mix up a batch of 50:1 two stroke fuel.

Yes, since I own a measuring cylinder I did calibrate all the measuring jugs in my kitchen, wouldn't you

Richard "Lambs Navy Petrol" B

I Bet You

 I've got involved in a massively convoluted and expensive wager. One of my team can't drive and is starting to find it mildly inconvenient. I have previously wondered aloud whether I'm good enough at circuit driving that I could get a race licence. So we've challenged each other, who can get their respective licence first.

I will keep my readership informed of any important updates in this wager.

My rival has edged ahead as she's already applied for a provisional licence, while I still haven't actually ordered my Go Racing Pack from UK Motorsport. The bit I'm most worried about is what car I'm going to be in and which circuit I'm going to be at when I take the test. As far as I can tell the only hard and fast requirements for the car are that it has a passenger seat and an H pattern gearbox. Whether the driving school will accept my kit car, which has both of those, and which I'm confident driving, is another matter. Hiring cars at racing circuits is spendy.

Richard "Phileas Fogg" B

Fault Report

 Once, back in the old days I was adding a new feature to a ferry company's online booking system and I got the best fault report I've every received. I had added the feature to be able to take a bicycle on your crossing, and I'd done it exactly how they'd asked me to. However they had certain business rules at their end that I didn't know about. A bicycle is a type of vehicle and it makes its crossing on the car deck. When you book a vehicle their system might know exactly how much space it takes on the car deck, but if they've never heard of it before they assume that its 1.9m high and 5m long.

In reality bicycles are lashed to the handrail at the end of the car deck and take up approximately no space, however the booking system was assuming that they would take up 5m of space in an area that had a ceiling at least 1.9m high. You only had to book a few bicycles on a crossing and the car deck would be noticeably sparse, and vans would get turned away because the "wouldn't fit".

I was rung up by one of the people from the ferry company's computer centre. A woman with whom I had a friendly but professional relationship, and whom I had most certainly never heard swear.

"Richard" she said "bicycles are fucking massive this year".

Richard "lead passenger" B

Henry Porter and the Wizard's Rock

 I don't know very much about the Harry Potter cannon (I'll be Link if you are Gannon) but there are a couple of things I'd like to share with you.

Firstly: In the same way that adding "in bed" to the end of a fortune cookie message often makes it funnier, the title of pretty much every scientific paper is improved by adding "Harry Potter and the".
Harry Potter and the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Harry Potter and the Computability of Numbers
Harry Potter and the Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing one's own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments

Secondly: The sorting hat.

If I remember correctly each of the children are sorted in to one of a few houses when they start their magical studies. To start with this seems like a wonderful and fantastical invention by the author, but it happens in real life too. It doesn't happen to absolutely everybody, it's more men than women, and it happens at a later age, but it's the same. Something intrinsic about your character identifies you with your house. There's some degree of family lineage which might affect which house you're in. Each house has its own culture and heritage. Once you're part of a house, you can never possibly change.

I know you're sceptical, and you can't remember being sorted, but you will when you see the names of the houses:

De Walt. Makita. Ryobi. Bosch. Milwaukee.

Richard "De Walt" B

Problem Neighbour

 I have been burning hedge trimmings in a garden incinerator. I thought it was too difficult to light and burned too slowly so I modified it. There's now a hairdryer blowing fresh air in to the bottom like a blast furnace. This is what it looks like in oepration.

It was a qualified success, but I had to turn the hairdryer off shortly after this photo was taken because the incinerator was glowing red.

Richard "Max Power" B

Cheese plane

 I have a couple of unusual phobias. Door handles and cheesegraters. These aren't crippling anxiety inducing phobias, I'm just slightly more wary of these things than most people. They're not irrational either, I nearly broke my wrist when it got stuck behind a door handle, and I once cut then ends of my fingers on the grater while grating cheese.

One of my brothers used to live in the Netherlands and gave me a cheese slicer from there (he either thought I would find it interesting, or that it would be a safe alternative to a box grater). It's a bit like a smoothing plane, but the sole is short and wide, and the tote is before the throat (like a German plane). I have found this contraption singularly useless. The cheese crumbles rather than slices, and it binds up on the sole.

At the weekend I had a bona fide Dutchman in the house, and by coincidence the cheeseboard I put on the table included gouda – which is a Dutch cheese. "What you need is a cheese slicer" he said and I was able to find the one which has been cluttering up my kitchen drawers for the last 15 years. On the hard, solid and slightly waxy gouda the slicer worked like a charm – effortlessly producing thin uniform slices of cheese. I now think it's rather excellent, but not compatible with cheddar.

Richard "Grchghouda" B

The Bleaken

 In the run up to Christmas I was disappointed to see how many people in the shops were in a bad mood. Everybody is trying to live up to an impossible ideal of Christmas day and it causes a lot of stress. I've since been told that this is very common and that if you work in retail you're most likely to get shouted at or mistreated in the run up to Christmas.

I have to admit that I must have been one of those disgruntled shoppers because I started to find myself very critical of the rest of the general public with their miserable faces and short tempers.

On Christmas day itself I was walking to the pub with my sister and her husband and we were discussing Christmas stress and people being in a bad mood. A young woman stamped her way from her car to the front door and shouted "HOW THE F!*£ IS IT MY PROBLEM THAT..." and then slammed the door behind herself. I've thought about it many times, and I'd love to know what problem she'd got caught up in. I think it would be rude to go to a stranger's house and ask then if they could remember what they were arguing about on Christmas day.

Richard "that the mince pies are made with suet" B