Reliability

I had some difficult car fault finding, driving, and bodging to do this week.

My Fiat Panda wouldn't start, but with jump leads from my sports car it would start. It ran, but it ran badly. I drove it to the shops where it died and wouldn't restart. I walked home and got the sports car and the jump leads and went back to the shops. This time it started but it would only run when my foot was on the throttle. I had an incredibly nerve wracking drive to get it home again without taking my foot off the throttle. I operated the brake with my left foot, I made violent and harsh gear changes at high revs and I had to select neutral in plenty of time before I wanted to stop. I then walked back to the shops, did my shopping and drove home in the sports car.

I convinced myself that the only problem was the battery. I charged it for a few days but it still wouldn't start the car so I took the battery to the battery centre by motorbike, had it tested, and bought a new one.

With the new battery the starter motor would run and the car would sputter into life for a few seconds, but it would die again if you took your foot off the throttle.

During all the jump lead shenanigans I had noticed that the air filter box was  skewiff. Underneath it I found witness marks on the throttle cable adjustment. I messed around with it a little bit and the car is again completely serviceable, although the tickover is now a little high.

My best guess is that the garage slowed down the tickover during the MOT to squeeze it passed the emissions test and it has wandered a little bit since.

Richard "What do One Car Households do in Situations Like This?" B

Scones

Do you like Welsh Cakes? For me it's an almost impossible question to answer. On one hand they're like a flat disappointing fruit scone. And the fruit scone is the second worst scone, behind only the cheese scone.

On the other hand they're an excellent substrate on which to deliver clotted cream.

On the gripping hand, If I'm buying them I'm in South Wales. If I'm in South Wales it's because I'm going to a track day at my favourite circuit. If I'm buying Welsh Cakes, then the Llanelli Co-op is still open. If the Co-op is still open then I got there nice and early. If I got there nice and early, then the M5 and M4 were flowing smoothly.

So I only eat a Welsh Cake on a really excellent day.

So, yeah.

Richard "I Haven't Even Read The Mote in God's Eye" B

Every Day is a School Day

 I've had a couple of funny experiences at the climbing gym. Firstly I split my pants open. I was reaching out wide with my leg and there was the sound and sensation of tearing fabric around my nether regions. I got down from the wall quickly and examined myself. Nothing was on display. It was my underwear which was destroyed, the trousers and my dignity were mostly intact. I'm proud of the achievement, I think it means that my hip flexibility and strength are improving.

Secondly, I was working on a climb at the same time as a group of students and their coach were working on the same climb. One of the students showed me how much further than me she could get. The coach tried to make me feel better by giving me hints, advice and encouragement. For a few minutes I joined the coaching session even though I hadn't booked, I wasn't paying for it, and I wasn't supposed to be part of it. It was the girls under 12 (advanced) group.

Richard "I know my place" B

Conic Section

 Children often ask their maths teacher when they'll use what they're being taught. For me it's so that I can waste a huge proportion of my weekend worrying about concepts that have already been explored centuries ago.

Inside you there are two wolves. One wolf sees interesting maths problems in everyday life. The other wolf likes solving maths problems.

I'm currently down a worse rabbit hole than recognising bad kerning https://xkcd.com/1015/ There are many things that artists get wrong when they paint the moon and I've learned to spot a load of them. I started wondering what shape the terminator (the line between the light side and the dark side) should be and it got a little out of hand.

The moon is a sphere (to all intents and purposes) and the sun is a point source of light (for all intensive porpoises). What shape does the illuminated section have? The limb (the outside edge) is a semicircle. My contention is that the terminator is another arc but I needed to prove it.

Let's say that the outside edge of the moon is described by 𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1

(yes, the coordinate system of my painting is based on the plane of the ecliptic). Let's say that the sun and the painter are looking at the moon from 60° apart so the terminator will be half way between the limb and the centre line. I know that the 1/2 seems arbitrary but if the maths works out I'll go back and replace it with a Greek letter. This will be true all the way up and down the moon because horizontal slices of the moon are all circles, they're all similar, just different sizes. So the question becomes what curve is half way between 𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1 and the vertical line 𝑥 = 0 ?

𝑥₁ = 𝑥⁄2
𝑥 = 2𝑥₁
𝑥² + 𝑦² = 1
(2𝑥₁)² + 𝑦² = 1
4𝑥₁² + 𝑦² = 1

Does that look like it describes a circle? No it doesn't, that's something to do with an ellipse. An ellipse! Hardly are those words out when an image out of maths books troubles my sight. If the moon is a peeled orange (you don't get poetic metaphor like that from amateurs like Yeats and Tennyson) the terminator is the shape of one of the segment lines and they're circles around the orange but angled towards us somewhat.That's the same as saying it's the shape made by cutting a cylinder at an angle and that's the same as saying it's the shape made by cutting a cone at an angle and that's the same as saying it's an ellipse.

So to do the terminator on a moon in your painting you'd seem to need to trace round an ice-cream cone that's been cut off at an angle. Or a traffic cone for larger works.

Richard "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise" B

Bedford Autodrome

 You and I are not the same.

I went on a track day with my boss. It's a long, hot and tiring day and by the end of it we were both tired and sweaty and our hair was moulded to our crash helmets. He magically produced a clean freshly ironed shirt. I did not. He untousled his hair. I did not. He put on good quality sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes. I put on a frayed and faded baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.Ninety minutes later we arrived at our motel and sadly there was a mirror in reception. During the drive he had seemingly been further restored while I had continued to wilt.

When we checked in he looked like a stylish and successful gent. I looked like an elderly and frail vagrant who would need to be disinfected and washed before he was allowed into the restaurant.

Richard "quick shower" B

Film Review

At the weekend I saw The Odyssey in the cinema and (like book Odysseus) I have the hubris to assume you might be interested to hear what I thought of it.

Not much. It's not terrible. The best I can say is that it's three hours long and I wasn't bored. William Shakespeare seems to have been able to review the film more than four hundred years before it was made. "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

It's a Chrisopher Nolan film so the sound should be bad, but in this case it's abhorrent. He also seems to have misunderstood who Odysseus was, but I think I know why. I very much like the idea that at some point some papers got muddled up between a beverage company planning a restaurant guide and a tyre company getting in to racing. We now have the Red Bull racing team and the Michelin restaurant guide (joke courtesy of https://xkcd.com/3269/)

A few years ago Nolan worked on Barbie Oppenheimer about the father of the atomic bomb. I suspect that some of his research notes from Oppenheimer got muddled in with the Odyssey because in the film Odysseus is riddled with guilt and regret, whereas he should have been boasting about being the craftiest general ever. It's his hubris and boasting that gets him cursed by Poseidon and makes the whole journey back to Ithaca rather arduous.

The gods, the sex, the beauty and the colour are missing from the film, so it seems like a very boring world for a fantastical story.

Richard "Scouring of the Shire Suitors" B