Christmas surprise

 

I wonder if Ryanair will take note.

Silly me.

At the moment this computer I’m writing my usual drivel on is situated on a table in the kitchen. This is because Mrs FE doesn’t like the sound of keys clicking and me swearing at the monitor, whilst she’s watching the X Factor. ( personally I think my screaming sounds better than any of the X Factor contestants).

However the computer has to be re-sited elsewhere as Mrs FE wants one of those big American fridges to take it’s place. A new venue has been found in a small bedroom, but a new desk will be required.

I’ve just spent an inordinately length of time scouring the internet for a suitable table to fit in the space allotted and was up to page 32 on  Amazon and beginning to despair at finding one suitable for my needs.

You’re probably wondering why that should be a problem? The answer is I was trying to find one with a shelf to hold my rather large printer. Could I find one with a suitable shelf? Yes of course I could, but I’m not paying £450 fucking quid for a desk!

Just in case I might find one eventually with a shelf I decided to measure the dimensions of the printer. Immediately I realised what a fuckwit I was. On top of this new printer was a small glowing blue icon in the form of a transmitting antenna. I’d completely forgotten that this new printer was WiFI and therefore doesn’t need to be near the computer at all.

Mind you Mrs FE and myself will never agree where the printer will have to be sited. (I wonder if it’ll fit on top of the fridge freezer?)

A plus side as pointed out by my kids and their partners. is the existing larder fridge can now become a dedicated ready use beer fridge.

I’ll drink to that.

Sign language.

Below is a simple set of chalked shapes. These shapes are used by a gang of burglars in Surrey to classify which properties are worth the risk of breaking into. So if you live in leafy Surrey it’s worth checking to see if you have any strange chalk marks on the front of your house. (I’m looking at you, Huw and Lizi).

A public service announcement from The Filthy Engineer

Wind turbines are……..

Crap. Today when we actually have some wind, most of the turbines are stationary. As an example this pic shows the output for a wind farm in Kent, rated capacity 59.8 MW. Look at what it’s producing. Sweet EFF all. In fact it is probably using power to enable the turbines to rotate slowly to protect the gearboxes from damage.

Temperature outside is 3 deg C at the moment.

SOURCE

Street Lighting

My local council is considering dimming or even switching some of the county’s street lights to save money. A position that I don’t think they have thought through.

Dimming:

All that happens in a simple dimming system is that you exchange lots of light and heat for less light and loads more heat. This defeats the object of saving power.

An ordinary resistor is a piece of material that doesn't conduct electrical current well -- it offers a lot of resistance to moving electrical charge. A variable resistor consists of a piece of resistive material, a stationary contact arm and a moving contact arm.

As the charge works to move through the resistor, energy is lost in the form of heat. When you put a resistor in a series circuit, the resistor's energy consumption causes a voltage drop in the circuit, decreasing the energy available to other loads (the light bulb, for example). Decreased voltage across the light bulb reduces its light output.

The problem with this solution is that you end up using a lot of energy to heat the resistor, which doesn't help you light up the room but still costs you. In addition to be being inefficient, these switches tend to be cumbersome and potentially dangerous, since the variable resistor releases a substantial amount of heat.

TFE note: There are no, dimmers fitted in my area as there was never considered  any justifiable cost.

Switching off:

Apart from the obvious dangers of  the running down of pedestrians on a more regular basis, there may be legal ramifications. Consider the 30 MPH speed limit in towns, villages and cities. There is more than just the signage to consider.

Scenario:

The Beak: “Mr Filthy Engineer. You were stopped for exceeding the 30 MPH speed limit. How do you plead?”

TFE: “Not guilty”.

(Stunned silence in court as everyone rushes out to get popcorn.)

TB: “Please state your reason for your plea as we have the statement from two Officers that you were at the time exceeding the limit”.

TFE: “I didn’t know there was a limit, your honour. I’ve never driven through that area before”.

TB: “Didn’t you see the sign”?

TFE: “Maybe that was when I had a sneezing fit.”

TB: “But didn’t you see the street lights?”

TFE: “There were no street lights”.

TB: “How can you say that? They are clearly visible”.

TFE: “Not when it’s raining, dark, and it’s a cloudy night. AND the bloody things are switched off”.

TB: (Consults clerk) “Case dismissed”.

.

Now to deliver.

\i must stop droning on about deliveries.

Lies, damn lies, and fiddled statistics.

“Science is not always a neutral, disinterested search for knowledge, although it may often seem that way to the outsider. Sometimes the story can be very different.”

This should be required reading for all those rabid anti smokers out there.

How times change.

Smoking and health have been the subject of argument since tobacco was introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century. King James I was a pioneer antismoker. In 1604 he declared that smoking was "a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." But like many a politician since, he decided that taxing tobacco was a more sensible option than banning it.

By the end of the century general opinion had changed. The Royal College of Physicians of London promoted smoking for its benefits to health and advised which brands were best. Smoking was compulsory in schools. An Eton schoolboy later recalled that "he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking". As recently as 1942 Price’s textbook of medicine recommended smoking to relieve asthma.

The times they were a changing (Apology to Bob Dylan).

Then we had the Doll and Hill study.

These strong opinions for and against smoking were not supported by much evidence either way until 1950 when Richard Doll and Bradford Hill showed that smokers seemed more likely to develop lung cancer.

But were their study results correct?

Sir Ronald Fisher, arguably the greatest statistician of the 20th century, had noticed a bizarre anomaly in their results. Doll and Hill had asked their subjects if they inhaled. Fisher showed that men who inhaled were significantly less likely to develop lung cancer than non-inhalers. As Fisher said, "even equality would be a fair knock-out for the theory that smoke in the lung causes cancer."

I’m not going to further plagiarise the document but suggest that smokers and anti smokers both have a read of the article. I think as an antismoker you may be disturbed, if not slightly guilty about your persecution of smokers. I leave you with this:

But the continuation of Hammond’s work, with its demonstrated faulty methodology, was used by the Australian authors to deduce that smoking causes premature death to the extent of 17,800 per year in Australia. Their conclusions should be compared with the results of a survey by the Australian Statistician in 1991 of 22,200 households, chosen at random. This showed "long term conditions", including cancer and heart disease, to be more common in non-smokers than smokers.

Hah.

Where there’s a will there’s an allotment.

My local railway station is about a mile and a quarter from any main habitation and is situated out in the open country. I always thought it a bit strange that all the country lanes in walking distance from the station had double yellow lines on both sides of the road. Go more than a mile and you’ll never see double yellows anywhere.

Anyhoo. The station has a large car park that charges the princely sum of £5.50 per day to catch an expensive train to London. If for instance you commute for 48 weeks of the year it’ll cost you the princely sum of £1,320 to park your motor.

However a local entrepreneur came up with a clever solution to make money and deny it to the owners of the station car park.

The solution was to buy a large field and get planning for allotments. Of course he charges the allotment holders a rent of £500 per year. Rip of, you say. Well, actually no. Because the crux of the matter is that each allotment holder has a dedicated parking space!

It means that if you’re a keen gardener you can save £820 per year.

Mind you, I find it quite strange to see cars leaving the allotments in the evening with the owners dressed in suits. Obviously very up market gardeners.

Lovers

That John Lewis Christmas advert.

The real ending.