And now the jelly lichen, also reinvigorated by the recent rain.
Having found the special cable, Windows 10 imported the pond picture without complaint, then announced that the Lumia 630 device was ready to use, then refused further interaction with the camera roll. But un-plugging then re-plugging brought things back to life with this second snap.
I was interested to find that, in the absence of a SIM card (if that is the right word for the chip which carries the telephone number), the Internet still worked on the old phone. That OneNote worked, but has declined to upload to OneNote Central. That the calendar synchronised. Maybe OneDrive will do something?
Given that the Lumia 630 pictures are not bad, if not as good as Cortana's on a good day, maybe I can live with Cortana for a while yet.
Saturday, 31 March 2018
Old phone one
The one for three pond, as seen by Cortana's predecessor this morning.
An effort prompted by Cortana's continuing problems with focus.
An effort prompted by Cortana's continuing problems with focus.
More tricks with memory
A second visit to the Royal Institution last week, this time to hear Jon Simons on 'The subjective experience of remembering', which turned out to be a slick presentation to a full house. Question time, possibly in consequence, a bit feeble - on which point see reference 3.
A dull overcast evening, which looked a lot colder from the inside than it was when I was actually outside. And I whiled away the wait on the platform at Epsom watching a pigeon strip the buds off the twig that it was sitting on, it striking me that a pigeon was quite a large bird and could get through a lot of buds if it had a taste for them. While associating back to childhood stone fruit trees, with much damage being done by various sorts of tits at this time of year, often resulting in lots of bare twigs, sporting just the odd terminal leaf which managed to regenerate after attack. Much unsuccessful pondering about how to ward off said attack, with the trees in question being rather too big and awkward to net.
Simons made use of a fine projector, able to project very sharp and very large images of objects placed on its table onto the screen behind him. A sort of higher grade version of the epidiascopes occasionally used in my day and which might now be called a document camera. Being a young person, he also worked mobile phones into the proceedings, with the idea being that we plugged our mobile phones into some special web site, he asked us various questions, we ticked various boxes on our phones and he got the scores back on his screen in real time - near three hundred of them.
The first test was his reading out a list of words, all related to windows in this case, and then testing us for the presence of particular words in the list just read out. All of us knew that the word 'banana' was missing, which indeed it was, while around half of us knew that the word 'window' was present, which it was not. Thus demonstrating that this sort of memory concentrates on the gist of things rather than the details. With all the words being window related, the brain assumed that window must have been one of them.
I think that the second test was another list, the details of which I forget, but it demonstrated that we were all much better at remembering things which involved us than things which were neutral. So we remembered denying that we were lazy while we forgot about the cheese.
A clever technique: the results of the polling a large number of people were decisive and it was hard deny the conclusion by means of some special pleading about one's special circumstances.
There was talk of memories being cued, with some people having favourite cues, perhaps smells or tastes. Various quotes from writers such as Proust. From where I associated to the work that Fernyhough has done on triggering memories with pictures, noticed at reference 2. While Simons thought that you say 'Fernyhoo' which was news to me and I would clearly have given myself away badly had I attempted to talk about him beforehand.
Then, in the context of testing people's memories, talk of both whether they remembered something or not and of the strength of that memory, with some memory defects being associated more with a lack of confidence in memories, rather than with those memories being wrong. Another angle was the quality of the memory, the amount of detail that was available. So you remembered that a bird flew into the church, but can you remember what sort of a bird it was or where it perched? Did you remember which way up the umbrella was?
Some people, for example those with what is now called PTSD, have a problem with memory inhibition, with blocking unpleasant memories. On which point a lady in the audience reminded us that most ladies were very good at blocking out the unpleasant parts of childbirth, good enough that they were not stopped from going around that bouy again.
While other people have a problem with sorting out fictional memories from real memories. Or a problem with reality testing. Which can sometimes lead to motor systems being put onto a state of alert, and sometimes to their being triggered, quite inappropriately. Something that schizophrenics know all about.
He closed with gyrus talk. First something called the angular gyrus, then something called the paracingulate gyrus. Not being completely sure about the last of these, I asked Bing, and he turned up the paper illustrated, a paper which was free unlike that noticed in the last post. Perhaps being older is what makes the difference. It confirmed that there was indeed something called the paracingulate gyrus, right in the middle of the brain and that it was mixed up with schizophrenia. While Simons was making the point that the length of this gyrus was correlated with both the propensity to hallucinate and with schizophrenia, an unusually simple linkage between undamaged brain anatomy and a problem. I worried about how you would measure the length of either a gyrus or a sulcus: absent, short, prominent fair enough ('... The paracingulate gyrus between the cingulate sulcus and any paracingulate sulcus was not included as part of the ACC [anterior cingulate gyrus]. However, variability in the presence of the paracingulate sulcus influences measures of ACC morphometry ... Therefore, the prominence of the paracingulate sulcus was coded using a 3 tiered rating system (0 for absent, 1 for present, 2 for prominent), according to the guidelines in ... and was used as a covariate in the analyses of the ACC measures ...'), but how do you convert a geographical feature of this sort into millimetres?
I also worried about the paper's conclusion: 'our findings suggest that decreases in the gray matter volume of the PCC occur in schizophrenia subjects and their siblings. The presence of such decreases in the non-psychotic siblings of schizophrenia subjects suggests that heritable factors may be involved in the development of cortical abnormalities in schizophrenia', eventually deciding that they were OK, with the proviso that the cortical abnormality was a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Out in time to catch a procession of fancy looking sports cars heading noisily down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps they were going to have one of those rich kids' races around the M25.
Two ones at the aeroplane game at Earlsfield, with the two planes coming into their run down to Heathrow from vary different angles over east London.
Home to Epsom, to a taxi which stank of air freshener. A taxi borne disease which I associate with Swindon, where more or less all the taxis are infected. I never did get to find out why, despite spending quality time there.
PS: next to me I had a Spanish lady who had lived in London, presently Ealing, for most of her married life and her children had gone to university here. She was an expert on lectures and told me about the ones put on by Imperial College and about a website which listed all of them. A WEA version of the Bachtrack website (reference 5) which I already knew about. Unfortunately I did not make a note of its name at the time and have now forgotten it.
Reference 1: http://www.memlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/madeleine-moments.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/dental-affairs.html.
Reference 4: Cingulate gyrus neuroanatomy in schizophrenia subjects and their non-psychotic siblings - Daniel R. Calabrese, Lei Wang, Michael P. Harms, J. Tilak Ratnanather and others - 2008.
Reference 5: https://bachtrack.com/.
A dull overcast evening, which looked a lot colder from the inside than it was when I was actually outside. And I whiled away the wait on the platform at Epsom watching a pigeon strip the buds off the twig that it was sitting on, it striking me that a pigeon was quite a large bird and could get through a lot of buds if it had a taste for them. While associating back to childhood stone fruit trees, with much damage being done by various sorts of tits at this time of year, often resulting in lots of bare twigs, sporting just the odd terminal leaf which managed to regenerate after attack. Much unsuccessful pondering about how to ward off said attack, with the trees in question being rather too big and awkward to net.
Simons made use of a fine projector, able to project very sharp and very large images of objects placed on its table onto the screen behind him. A sort of higher grade version of the epidiascopes occasionally used in my day and which might now be called a document camera. Being a young person, he also worked mobile phones into the proceedings, with the idea being that we plugged our mobile phones into some special web site, he asked us various questions, we ticked various boxes on our phones and he got the scores back on his screen in real time - near three hundred of them.
The first test was his reading out a list of words, all related to windows in this case, and then testing us for the presence of particular words in the list just read out. All of us knew that the word 'banana' was missing, which indeed it was, while around half of us knew that the word 'window' was present, which it was not. Thus demonstrating that this sort of memory concentrates on the gist of things rather than the details. With all the words being window related, the brain assumed that window must have been one of them.
I think that the second test was another list, the details of which I forget, but it demonstrated that we were all much better at remembering things which involved us than things which were neutral. So we remembered denying that we were lazy while we forgot about the cheese.
A clever technique: the results of the polling a large number of people were decisive and it was hard deny the conclusion by means of some special pleading about one's special circumstances.
There was talk of memories being cued, with some people having favourite cues, perhaps smells or tastes. Various quotes from writers such as Proust. From where I associated to the work that Fernyhough has done on triggering memories with pictures, noticed at reference 2. While Simons thought that you say 'Fernyhoo' which was news to me and I would clearly have given myself away badly had I attempted to talk about him beforehand.
Then, in the context of testing people's memories, talk of both whether they remembered something or not and of the strength of that memory, with some memory defects being associated more with a lack of confidence in memories, rather than with those memories being wrong. Another angle was the quality of the memory, the amount of detail that was available. So you remembered that a bird flew into the church, but can you remember what sort of a bird it was or where it perched? Did you remember which way up the umbrella was?
Some people, for example those with what is now called PTSD, have a problem with memory inhibition, with blocking unpleasant memories. On which point a lady in the audience reminded us that most ladies were very good at blocking out the unpleasant parts of childbirth, good enough that they were not stopped from going around that bouy again.
While other people have a problem with sorting out fictional memories from real memories. Or a problem with reality testing. Which can sometimes lead to motor systems being put onto a state of alert, and sometimes to their being triggered, quite inappropriately. Something that schizophrenics know all about.
He closed with gyrus talk. First something called the angular gyrus, then something called the paracingulate gyrus. Not being completely sure about the last of these, I asked Bing, and he turned up the paper illustrated, a paper which was free unlike that noticed in the last post. Perhaps being older is what makes the difference. It confirmed that there was indeed something called the paracingulate gyrus, right in the middle of the brain and that it was mixed up with schizophrenia. While Simons was making the point that the length of this gyrus was correlated with both the propensity to hallucinate and with schizophrenia, an unusually simple linkage between undamaged brain anatomy and a problem. I worried about how you would measure the length of either a gyrus or a sulcus: absent, short, prominent fair enough ('... The paracingulate gyrus between the cingulate sulcus and any paracingulate sulcus was not included as part of the ACC [anterior cingulate gyrus]. However, variability in the presence of the paracingulate sulcus influences measures of ACC morphometry ... Therefore, the prominence of the paracingulate sulcus was coded using a 3 tiered rating system (0 for absent, 1 for present, 2 for prominent), according to the guidelines in ... and was used as a covariate in the analyses of the ACC measures ...'), but how do you convert a geographical feature of this sort into millimetres?
I also worried about the paper's conclusion: 'our findings suggest that decreases in the gray matter volume of the PCC occur in schizophrenia subjects and their siblings. The presence of such decreases in the non-psychotic siblings of schizophrenia subjects suggests that heritable factors may be involved in the development of cortical abnormalities in schizophrenia', eventually deciding that they were OK, with the proviso that the cortical abnormality was a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Out in time to catch a procession of fancy looking sports cars heading noisily down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps they were going to have one of those rich kids' races around the M25.
Two ones at the aeroplane game at Earlsfield, with the two planes coming into their run down to Heathrow from vary different angles over east London.
Home to Epsom, to a taxi which stank of air freshener. A taxi borne disease which I associate with Swindon, where more or less all the taxis are infected. I never did get to find out why, despite spending quality time there.
PS: next to me I had a Spanish lady who had lived in London, presently Ealing, for most of her married life and her children had gone to university here. She was an expert on lectures and told me about the ones put on by Imperial College and about a website which listed all of them. A WEA version of the Bachtrack website (reference 5) which I already knew about. Unfortunately I did not make a note of its name at the time and have now forgotten it.
Reference 1: http://www.memlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/madeleine-moments.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/dental-affairs.html.
Reference 4: Cingulate gyrus neuroanatomy in schizophrenia subjects and their non-psychotic siblings - Daniel R. Calabrese, Lei Wang, Michael P. Harms, J. Tilak Ratnanather and others - 2008.
Reference 5: https://bachtrack.com/.
More teeth
Quite by chance this morning, I stumbled across a new paper by the Ungar of the post before last, lurking behind the Wiley paywall: 'Dental microwear and diet of Homo naledi' from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology - with the naledi having lived in what is now the Gauteng province in the north of South Africa.
Being a recent paper it has not yet leaked out into the world of freebies, even when I ask Google, rather better at that sort of thing than Bing, at least in my hands.
Maybe one could make this into a good MSc project for a Department of Internet Studies. Pick up a few hundred paywalled papers of this sort on their day of publication and track their leakage out from behind their paywalls. Where did they leak to and when?
Leakage which I do not regard as theft. Most of this sort of thing has been paid for out of public funds and I think it is wrong that we, the public, should then have to pay again to see the results of what we paid for in the first place. Fair enough that Wiley should be paid for their value-add - but not US$38 for the pdf. A business from which I believe Elsevier (aka Relx) for one makes a great deal of money and manage a dividend of around 2%, this despite their share price having climbed pretty steadily for the last five years. Furthermore, I associate to a story from a Wikipedia editor (Wikipedia speak for contributor), at the conference noticed at reference 3, that he got much better support and feedback from the Wikipedia community than he did from commercial publishers, suggesting that the value-add is not that great.
Reference 1: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajpa.23418.
Reference 2: https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=wikimania.
Being a recent paper it has not yet leaked out into the world of freebies, even when I ask Google, rather better at that sort of thing than Bing, at least in my hands.
Maybe one could make this into a good MSc project for a Department of Internet Studies. Pick up a few hundred paywalled papers of this sort on their day of publication and track their leakage out from behind their paywalls. Where did they leak to and when?
Leakage which I do not regard as theft. Most of this sort of thing has been paid for out of public funds and I think it is wrong that we, the public, should then have to pay again to see the results of what we paid for in the first place. Fair enough that Wiley should be paid for their value-add - but not US$38 for the pdf. A business from which I believe Elsevier (aka Relx) for one makes a great deal of money and manage a dividend of around 2%, this despite their share price having climbed pretty steadily for the last five years. Furthermore, I associate to a story from a Wikipedia editor (Wikipedia speak for contributor), at the conference noticed at reference 3, that he got much better support and feedback from the Wikipedia community than he did from commercial publishers, suggesting that the value-add is not that great.
Reference 1: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajpa.23418.
Reference 2: https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=wikimania.
Friday, 30 March 2018
Rickshaws
Cortana in a bad mood again, but this snap still serves to give the general idea of the rickshaws mentioned in the last post. Did the lady in the fancy brown dress get to ride in one?
Perhaps the core business of the owner of the rickshaws is hiring them out, dressed up for publicity events.
I was amused to find that one of the branches of this so very fashionable establishment is to be found in Hoxton, as, when we were small, we lived in the flat noticed at reference 2 and one of our neighbours was a young lady who had been brought up in Hoxton, at that time still a bastion of the old east end. At that time they still had pubs there where someone bashed out popular songs on the joanna all through the Friday and Saturday evening sessions, ending up with the top of the instrument being covered in half full pint glasses of stout, mild and bitter. Not to mention fag ends all over the place. Probably a bit of bashing went on outside too.
Oddly, this branch was called Unit 207, was visible to Bing, was said to be open from 1000 until 1900, but was not visible on the web site proper. Although to be fair, it was rather a tricky website, so I may well be missing something.
Reference 1: https://www.self-portrait-studio.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/snippet-3.html.
Perhaps the core business of the owner of the rickshaws is hiring them out, dressed up for publicity events.
I was amused to find that one of the branches of this so very fashionable establishment is to be found in Hoxton, as, when we were small, we lived in the flat noticed at reference 2 and one of our neighbours was a young lady who had been brought up in Hoxton, at that time still a bastion of the old east end. At that time they still had pubs there where someone bashed out popular songs on the joanna all through the Friday and Saturday evening sessions, ending up with the top of the instrument being covered in half full pint glasses of stout, mild and bitter. Not to mention fag ends all over the place. Probably a bit of bashing went on outside too.
Oddly, this branch was called Unit 207, was visible to Bing, was said to be open from 1000 until 1900, but was not visible on the web site proper. Although to be fair, it was rather a tricky website, so I may well be missing something.
Reference 1: https://www.self-portrait-studio.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/snippet-3.html.
Dental affairs
Getting on for a hundred years ago, my father was a bright young dentist who took an interest in the history and philosophy of teeth. By the time I was old enough to remember, this had moved on to his taking an interest in the work of a colleague on the growth of teeth and jaws, with the particular point of interest that I remember being how to superimpose one photograph of a mouth on top of another, taken some time previously. Where was the fixed point? A version of which issue which lives on to vex brain scanner scientists today.
So it seemed entirely proper to attend a talk at the Royal Institution given by Peter Ungar on 'Evolution's bite: A story of teeth, diet and human origins'. The Ungar of the University of Arkansas, who runs the laboratory noticed at reference 1.
But the evening started with South Western Railway, the nearly new franchisee for our part of south London, when at Wimbledon I was able to spot rolling stock in the old red livery of Southwest Trains, the new red livery of South Western Railway and a brand new stripy blue livery of South Western Railway. Possibly used on rather grander trains than those which run through Epsom.
Out at Green Park and into Albemarle Street to find one of the clothes shops there was having an event. Lots of pretty people, both male and female, sipping champagne. One looking very pregnant and wearing a very handsome brown dress, providing decent cover but otherwise entirely suitable for cocktail or evening wear. Lots of stocky looking security guards outside. Lots of rickshaws to carry the guests away afterwards.
Quick fix in the Goat and then on to the Institution. Which, for the first time in my experience, was barely half full. Usually more or less full, if one does not count the seats in the gods.
Ungar started by observing that teeth were useful in the study of evolution because they tell us something about the life of their one-time owners - with mammals being the owners of interest here - and because they survived. There are lots of teeth out there and the shape of the various teeth and the way they are fitted into jaws tells us something about what their owners were intended to eat. Grass, flesh, fruit or nuts? While the way that they have been worn tells us something about what their owners actually did eat. But one had to have a care as sometimes the habits of opportunistic mammals outstripped their equipment. And plenty of mammals had a seasonal diet, a diet which was hard to sort out from a small sample of teeth fossil frozen at some particular point in time.
One of his specialities was the application of the tools of geographical information systems to the small world of teeth. An interesting example of how one discipline can inform another. It's just a matter of bringing the right people together and getting them motivated...
Monkeys and apes were interesting because there are lots of different sorts, with lots of different life styles and diets, spread over large parts of the world. Lots of teeth.
Many people in the western world had small jaws, particularly small lower jaws, which meant that wisdom teeth got impacted and lower front teeth got muddled up - both of which complaints I recognise. It seems that while the size of teeth is pretty much determined by genes, the size of jaws is not and heavy use when young does stimulate their growth. So Ungar was able to point to a particular tribe of hunter gatherers who, for this reason, very rarely suffered from either complaint. But nor were they able to pronounce the sound for 'F', which is, it seems, much easier with the western jaw.
Considerations of this sort were part of the reason why people selling diet fads were able to do so well out of the Paleo Diet, big in the US and illustrated above. A diet which takes you back to the good old days when we chewed mammoth flesh in our caves and had perfect teeth. And died at 20 or so, if we were lucky enough to survive that long. But the diet people probably leave out that bit of the story. I associated to another story about the back teeth of mummified Egyptians, worn down to their gums by all the grit which found its way into their flour. Perhaps they would have done better to stick to hippo steak.
An interesting, but not particularly well organised talk - which was perhaps why there were good questions, provoking good answers. The better quality talks don't leave the chinks you need to be able to stir things up a bit.
Rounded off the proceedings with a second visit to the Goat. Where we learned that there had been a Goat tavern since 1697. Not clear whether the tavern has moved house in the interval, but it is a London public house of the old style, plenty of brown wood and cut glass, of a sort which is becoming rare outside the West End - with the Sutton Arms near the Barbican, noticed at reference 4, being the exception which proves the rule.
Up the stairs at Vauxhall to be overtaken by no less than three young people. One thin gent. bounding up the stairs two at a time. Two short, young females who just about managed to pass me, but were definitely puffing by the time they reached the top. I can't remember the last time that anyone other than me was climbing up the hard way.
Reference 1: https://ungarlab.uark.edu/.
Reference 2: Evolution's bite: A story of teeth, diet and human origins - Peter Ungar - 2017. The talk was, at least in part, a book promotion and Ungar was up for signing. Very tempted, but decided that my pile of unread books was quite high enough already.
Reference 3: https://thepaleodiet.com/. Only in the US of A - at least so far. Maybe when the Tories have finished smashing up the health service, we will see more of this sort of thing over here.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/citadine.html.
So it seemed entirely proper to attend a talk at the Royal Institution given by Peter Ungar on 'Evolution's bite: A story of teeth, diet and human origins'. The Ungar of the University of Arkansas, who runs the laboratory noticed at reference 1.
But the evening started with South Western Railway, the nearly new franchisee for our part of south London, when at Wimbledon I was able to spot rolling stock in the old red livery of Southwest Trains, the new red livery of South Western Railway and a brand new stripy blue livery of South Western Railway. Possibly used on rather grander trains than those which run through Epsom.
Out at Green Park and into Albemarle Street to find one of the clothes shops there was having an event. Lots of pretty people, both male and female, sipping champagne. One looking very pregnant and wearing a very handsome brown dress, providing decent cover but otherwise entirely suitable for cocktail or evening wear. Lots of stocky looking security guards outside. Lots of rickshaws to carry the guests away afterwards.
Quick fix in the Goat and then on to the Institution. Which, for the first time in my experience, was barely half full. Usually more or less full, if one does not count the seats in the gods.
Ungar started by observing that teeth were useful in the study of evolution because they tell us something about the life of their one-time owners - with mammals being the owners of interest here - and because they survived. There are lots of teeth out there and the shape of the various teeth and the way they are fitted into jaws tells us something about what their owners were intended to eat. Grass, flesh, fruit or nuts? While the way that they have been worn tells us something about what their owners actually did eat. But one had to have a care as sometimes the habits of opportunistic mammals outstripped their equipment. And plenty of mammals had a seasonal diet, a diet which was hard to sort out from a small sample of teeth fossil frozen at some particular point in time.
One of his specialities was the application of the tools of geographical information systems to the small world of teeth. An interesting example of how one discipline can inform another. It's just a matter of bringing the right people together and getting them motivated...
Monkeys and apes were interesting because there are lots of different sorts, with lots of different life styles and diets, spread over large parts of the world. Lots of teeth.
Many people in the western world had small jaws, particularly small lower jaws, which meant that wisdom teeth got impacted and lower front teeth got muddled up - both of which complaints I recognise. It seems that while the size of teeth is pretty much determined by genes, the size of jaws is not and heavy use when young does stimulate their growth. So Ungar was able to point to a particular tribe of hunter gatherers who, for this reason, very rarely suffered from either complaint. But nor were they able to pronounce the sound for 'F', which is, it seems, much easier with the western jaw.
Considerations of this sort were part of the reason why people selling diet fads were able to do so well out of the Paleo Diet, big in the US and illustrated above. A diet which takes you back to the good old days when we chewed mammoth flesh in our caves and had perfect teeth. And died at 20 or so, if we were lucky enough to survive that long. But the diet people probably leave out that bit of the story. I associated to another story about the back teeth of mummified Egyptians, worn down to their gums by all the grit which found its way into their flour. Perhaps they would have done better to stick to hippo steak.
An interesting, but not particularly well organised talk - which was perhaps why there were good questions, provoking good answers. The better quality talks don't leave the chinks you need to be able to stir things up a bit.
Rounded off the proceedings with a second visit to the Goat. Where we learned that there had been a Goat tavern since 1697. Not clear whether the tavern has moved house in the interval, but it is a London public house of the old style, plenty of brown wood and cut glass, of a sort which is becoming rare outside the West End - with the Sutton Arms near the Barbican, noticed at reference 4, being the exception which proves the rule.
Up the stairs at Vauxhall to be overtaken by no less than three young people. One thin gent. bounding up the stairs two at a time. Two short, young females who just about managed to pass me, but were definitely puffing by the time they reached the top. I can't remember the last time that anyone other than me was climbing up the hard way.
Reference 1: https://ungarlab.uark.edu/.
Reference 2: Evolution's bite: A story of teeth, diet and human origins - Peter Ungar - 2017. The talk was, at least in part, a book promotion and Ungar was up for signing. Very tempted, but decided that my pile of unread books was quite high enough already.
Reference 3: https://thepaleodiet.com/. Only in the US of A - at least so far. Maybe when the Tories have finished smashing up the health service, we will see more of this sort of thing over here.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/citadine.html.
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Sequoiadendron giganteum in focus
Following Cortana's failure noticed at reference 1, I had another go yesterday with rather better results, with about one shot in three more or less in focus. Another go which involved a not very successful attempt to play with the focus button, one of several available. Bring back point and click!
BH tells me that this planting may have been the work of the Tree Fund of Epsom's Civic Society, in some part plugging the hole in council finances. Pleasing evidence that the society is now doing rather more than worrying about '...many historic and architecturally valuable buildings and houses in Epsom and Ewell were being threatened by developers...'.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/sequoiadendron-giganteum.html.
Reference 2: https://epsomcivicsociety.org.uk/.
BH tells me that this planting may have been the work of the Tree Fund of Epsom's Civic Society, in some part plugging the hole in council finances. Pleasing evidence that the society is now doing rather more than worrying about '...many historic and architecturally valuable buildings and houses in Epsom and Ewell were being threatened by developers...'.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/sequoiadendron-giganteum.html.
Reference 2: https://epsomcivicsociety.org.uk/.
Fritillary
Most of the daffodils in the new daffodil bed have come up blind this year, once again. Contrariwise, the tulips in the same bed seem to be breeding and coming up fine, with flower heads. So what do the tulips know which the daffodils don't?
The snowdrops and winter aconites are also missing, but the snake head fritillaries seem to be doing alright, as illustrated. Maybe they are breeding too.
PS: maybe there is a lonely aconite leaf head showing through, just below and to the right of the fritillary front middle. But no flower bud to be seen, at least not yet.
The snowdrops and winter aconites are also missing, but the snake head fritillaries seem to be doing alright, as illustrated. Maybe they are breeding too.
PS: maybe there is a lonely aconite leaf head showing through, just below and to the right of the fritillary front middle. But no flower bud to be seen, at least not yet.
Tome XV
Just finished the second pass of volume 15 of the collected Maigret, previously noticed at reference 1.
At the end we had two short stories, both just about 15 pages, one from 1959 (on the road, but not like the near contemporary road noticed at reference 2 at all) and one from 1939 (sale by candle, as mentioned by Pepys, September 3rd, 1662).
The first story is an account of walking a man into the ground by following him around Paris until he drops, falling through all the ranks of society as he goes. The second is an account of Maigret solving a murder mystery while holed up with all the participants in some run down pub in the middle of the Vendéen marshes, perhaps something like the shed illustrated. A version of the near contemporary country house murder from Agatha Christie. Both stories were quite interesting, but both suffered from the mise-en-scène being wildly improbable, which irritated me at the time of reading.
But this morning, I started to wonder why this mattered. The story loses a bit of credibility by not being situated in the real world, but that is not to say that it could not have been. Perhaps Simenon was just being lazy, was in a hurry or simply couldn't manage it in the compass of something destined to be published in the middle of a Sunday newspaper?
Is it so different from telling a fairy story, a science fiction story or a spy story, all of which play fast and loose with the truth in order to make some perfectly valid point about the human condition?
But how can one be sure that this point has any relevance to the real world? If the events as told could not possibly be translated into the real world, does the point survive? For some reason, at this point in the argument, I associated to real and imaginary numbers. The former might be more real than the latter, but the latter are still useful.
PS: we once spent a happy day in a punt in the Vendéen marshes, a punt knocked up with fairly raw slices of tree, not like the sort of fancy - and very expensive - mahogany jobs you get in the Oxbridge rivers at all. While the pole was just a bit of trimmed but not very straight bit of branch. Punts which serve well enough for holiday makers in the summer, but their real purpose was duck hunting at some other time. I might say that the owner of the punt was very impressed that I was able to drive the thing, without needing an hour or so to warm up. Sprog 1 was with us at the time, but was probably too young to remember anything about it now.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/les-memoires-de-maigret.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/on-road.html.
At the end we had two short stories, both just about 15 pages, one from 1959 (on the road, but not like the near contemporary road noticed at reference 2 at all) and one from 1939 (sale by candle, as mentioned by Pepys, September 3rd, 1662).
The first story is an account of walking a man into the ground by following him around Paris until he drops, falling through all the ranks of society as he goes. The second is an account of Maigret solving a murder mystery while holed up with all the participants in some run down pub in the middle of the Vendéen marshes, perhaps something like the shed illustrated. A version of the near contemporary country house murder from Agatha Christie. Both stories were quite interesting, but both suffered from the mise-en-scène being wildly improbable, which irritated me at the time of reading.
But this morning, I started to wonder why this mattered. The story loses a bit of credibility by not being situated in the real world, but that is not to say that it could not have been. Perhaps Simenon was just being lazy, was in a hurry or simply couldn't manage it in the compass of something destined to be published in the middle of a Sunday newspaper?
Is it so different from telling a fairy story, a science fiction story or a spy story, all of which play fast and loose with the truth in order to make some perfectly valid point about the human condition?
But how can one be sure that this point has any relevance to the real world? If the events as told could not possibly be translated into the real world, does the point survive? For some reason, at this point in the argument, I associated to real and imaginary numbers. The former might be more real than the latter, but the latter are still useful.
PS: we once spent a happy day in a punt in the Vendéen marshes, a punt knocked up with fairly raw slices of tree, not like the sort of fancy - and very expensive - mahogany jobs you get in the Oxbridge rivers at all. While the pole was just a bit of trimmed but not very straight bit of branch. Punts which serve well enough for holiday makers in the summer, but their real purpose was duck hunting at some other time. I might say that the owner of the punt was very impressed that I was able to drive the thing, without needing an hour or so to warm up. Sprog 1 was with us at the time, but was probably too young to remember anything about it now.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/les-memoires-de-maigret.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/on-road.html.
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
More animal game
From time to time I have reported playing either the animal game (reference 1) or, rather more frequently, the aeroplane game. Here my concern is with the animal game, a game which is almost invariable played in bed, either while waiting to go to sleep or in the morning, after waking, but before rising. Eyes shut.
The idea of the animal game is to silently recite a list of names of mammals, one for each letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order.
Rule 1 is that in any one game it must not be the case that a name names a subset or superset of a preceding name. So if one has done ‘E’ with elephant, one cannot then do ‘I’ with Indian elephant. Or if one has done ‘A’ with African elephant, one cannot then do ‘E’ with elephant. With the understanding that one is allowed to skip ‘Q’ and ‘X’ for which there appear to be no mammals.
And with the idea that using the names of places to prefix the name of the mammal, as I have just done, is not good form. Nor is the use of the names of colours. Not against the rules, but without style or panache.
For the purposes of the game, my authority is reference 3.
Rule 2 is that one cannot use a mammal that one has already used in some previous game in the session.
Rule 3 is that nothing must pop into consciousness, at least not in the form of words or pictures, other than the name of the next mammal.
So all that should happen in consciousness, all that one should experience, is the silent voicing of a series of names of mammals, with gaps in-between. I can’t say anything about timing, the duration of the voicing and the duration of the gaps; one would need an EEG machine attached to an EEG expert to do that.
There are lots of other categories which lend themselves to this sort of thing. Birds is much the same as animals, although here we have both Q birds (for example, the quetzal) and X birds (for example, Xantus's Hummingbird – with Xantus being a Hungarian ornithologist who gave his name to several birds). While with countries the rule is the names must be the English names of members of the United Nations. But there are lots of towns, so one usually adds a qualifier, perhaps something like ‘coastal towns going clockwise around the British Isles’. First names, men and women separately, is another possibility.
In what follows I concentrate on the subjective experience of playing the animal game. I doubt if the variations would add much.
If one has not played for a while it takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. But we suppose for present purposes that one has been playing reasonably regularly, that enough names of suitable animals are reasonably close to the surface.
Sometimes one gets into a groove, perhaps to the point of tapping a finger in time to the words, and the game swings along quickly, with nothing popping into consciousness other than the name of the next mammal. Anteater, beaver, colobus monkey, duck-billed platypus, elephant seal, flying fox, gorilla and so on. Or maybe not duck-billed platypus, as long names can be a bit disruptive.
Then for no apparent reason one makes a mistake. The word that pops out does indeed start with the right letter, but it is, perhaps, a fish or a bird rather than a mammal. Another common mistake is gerbil for ‘J’, when the mammal I am looking for is jerboa – there not being a lot of ‘J’ mammals, with jackal being the only other one that I use regularly.
Sometimes one gets into a groove, but one is saying each name twice. Once rather quietly, as it were, just testing the water, then, having decided that the name qualifies, rather more loudly. So one might have anteater (loud), beaver (soft), beaver (loud), caracal (soft), caracal (loud) and so on. Again, I can’t say anything about timing and once again one would need an EEG machine attached to an EEG expert to do that.
Sometimes one gets stuck, often but not necessarily on a letter which is not well populated with mammals, perhaps ‘I’ or ‘Y’. At this point, all kinds of thoughts and words pop into consciousness and one is, as it were, disqualified.
Sometimes, having got stuck, one forgets the rules and moves onto the next letter, perhaps rehearsing the names of a number of mammals for the next letter, hoping that the diversion will allow a mammal for the letter on which one got stuck to drift to the surface. Quite often this works.
What has to be done, what is the algorithm?
In the snap above I have sketched some of the processes involved in this game.
We have some data stores in orange, some mixture of working memory and longer term memory. Then some more or less unconscious processes in blue, with the arrows suggesting the flow of activity.
Leaving aside starting up and closing down, we need something to generate the next letter. A something which will need to have access to both the current letter and an alphabet. Perhaps a pointer to the current letter in the alphabet. Sometimes this next letter process will go wrong: one might have gone backwards in the alphabet rather than forwards or one might have gone too far forward, skipping over one or more letters.
We then need something to extract objects from memory or to locate objects in memory with names starting with the newly current letter – in the snap I use the word retrieve to cover both possibilities. Objects might be all objects, all mammals or something in between and I suspect that this depends on who is playing, on the context of the game and on how much he or she knows, on how many objects there are there to be extracted.
We then need to scan those retrieved objects to find one which satisfies the various criteria. Get object, test object and branch according to the result. If fail, get next object. If succeed, pass the name of this object on for silent voicing in consciousness.
At this point I get the impression that there is a final check, a check which is carried out unconsciously but which returns some sort of feeling of confidence to consciousness. One has got it right and one can move on to the next letter.
Consciousness should then remain silent, empty and inactive, until the next object is ready for silent voicing. The trouble here being that no one process has exclusive access to consciousness and it is all too likely that something else will be made conscious during what was supposed to be a silent time. Perhaps something from the process under consideration, perhaps something from some quite different process. This is suggested by the two boxes top right.
For example, if one is at ‘E’ the word ‘eel’ might pop into consciousness, before it has been tested, before it has been failed, with the intended inhibition of work in progress having failed. Interestingly, it is the words which pop into consciousness, the names of animals rather than their portraits. A different sort of failure would be passing ‘vervet monkey’ for ‘V’ when one had already had ‘primate’ for ‘P’. A straightforward error, rather than some work in progress slipping into consciousness which should not have. Different again would be starting to worry about whether one had locked the back door before going to bed.
Perhaps if one practised seriously, one could get both the unconscious and the conscious to behave themselves.
Odds and ends
The name ‘duck billed platypus’, a favourite for ‘D’, is possibly too long to hold in consciousness in entirety in the sound form needed here. Maybe it needs to be played word by word in three or four successive frames of consciousness, which would imply some more machinery to do this. But it may also be that reading the words on the page would be different, their not looking nearly so clumsy as they sound.
I have tried and more or less failed to play the game while one on one of my matinal walks. I think there must be too much other stuff going on for the brain to be able to cope with the extra load.
When only half awake there is a tendency to slip from one version of the game to another, without at first noticing. And, more often, just to drift off somewhere else, to stop playing altogether. Or to drift off into sleep, which may have been the idea in the first place.
Just plain counting – one, two, three, four and so on – is a related activity which is apt to block out any other conscious activity. On the other hand, I believe that I sometimes count unconsciously, at least for a short while, while thinking about something else altogether. Most often when I am climbing a long flight of steps, perhaps up from the tube train platform at Tooting Broadway or Vauxhall. One knows because the counting suddenly surfaces. Such counting is reasonably accurate on the few occasions that I have bothered or been able to check.
A game I do not play very often is just plain counting, usually while I am on one of my matinal walks, with the objective being to see how far one can get before one’s attention wanders. I think I have sometimes got to 100, but not much beyond that. Even silently, saying a number like ‘one hundred and twenty three’ seems to contain too many syllables and to occupy too much time to be able to settle to a rhythm.
Counting is also apt to entrain some kind of rhythmic activity, in the case that that is not what one was counting in the first place.
A successful round of the animal game requires a lot of work of the unconscious, with just the answers making it to consciousness.
Implications for LWS-N
LWS-N is about what is in consciousness, it is not about how that what is selected or put together. That said it is quite possible that the LWS-N compiler would get mixed up with the sort of processing described above; it all depends on how compartmentalised things are, and about that we know little.
There is however the requirement that LWS-N be able to be silent, while otherwise up and running. Perhaps analogous to the rests in music, important in classical music, perhaps more or less absent in popular music.
And despite its apparent simplicity there are also various technical problems about how the information involved here is to be expressed in the frames of LWS-N. What do we do with long names like ‘duck billed platypus’, names which possibly span more than one frame? How does it encode the ‘some sort of feeling of confidence’ mentioned above?
Conclusions
Part of the interest of this animal game arises from it being a simple game with simple rules which does not involve any external sensory activity: one can work out exactly what has to be done, even if one cannot be sure about how exactly it is done. It is also a game which nicely illustrates both how much is going on in the unconscious that we are not aware of and how little control we usually have over what does appear, does pop up into consciousness.
But perhaps there is also a hint that one can train oneself to have more control. Perhaps this is part of what Buddhists get up to, so perhaps I should go back to the book noticed at reference 6.
PS: I can manage Tooting Broadway and Vauxhall, coming in at between 60 and 70 steps, without too much puffing. Some central London tube stations come in in at around 100 steps and I do not attempt those unless they are moving, which seems to cut the number of steps to be climbed by around 50%.
References
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/new-game.html.
Reference 2: http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/birds/beginning-with/X. A useful website turned up by Bing.
Reference 3: Systematic Dictionary of the Mammals of the World – Maurice Burton – 1962. With my copy of this excellent book coming from somewhere on Dalhousie Street in Ottawa. See reference 4.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dalhousie.html.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/on-counting-variations.html. A post about a rather different sort of counting.
Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/buddha-rules.html.
Reference 7: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/beaney.html. There is a stuffed duck billed platypus at the Beaney Museum in Canterbury; the only one that I know of.
Group search key: srd.
The idea of the animal game is to silently recite a list of names of mammals, one for each letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order.
Rule 1 is that in any one game it must not be the case that a name names a subset or superset of a preceding name. So if one has done ‘E’ with elephant, one cannot then do ‘I’ with Indian elephant. Or if one has done ‘A’ with African elephant, one cannot then do ‘E’ with elephant. With the understanding that one is allowed to skip ‘Q’ and ‘X’ for which there appear to be no mammals.
And with the idea that using the names of places to prefix the name of the mammal, as I have just done, is not good form. Nor is the use of the names of colours. Not against the rules, but without style or panache.
For the purposes of the game, my authority is reference 3.
Rule 2 is that one cannot use a mammal that one has already used in some previous game in the session.
Rule 3 is that nothing must pop into consciousness, at least not in the form of words or pictures, other than the name of the next mammal.
So all that should happen in consciousness, all that one should experience, is the silent voicing of a series of names of mammals, with gaps in-between. I can’t say anything about timing, the duration of the voicing and the duration of the gaps; one would need an EEG machine attached to an EEG expert to do that.
There are lots of other categories which lend themselves to this sort of thing. Birds is much the same as animals, although here we have both Q birds (for example, the quetzal) and X birds (for example, Xantus's Hummingbird – with Xantus being a Hungarian ornithologist who gave his name to several birds). While with countries the rule is the names must be the English names of members of the United Nations. But there are lots of towns, so one usually adds a qualifier, perhaps something like ‘coastal towns going clockwise around the British Isles’. First names, men and women separately, is another possibility.
In what follows I concentrate on the subjective experience of playing the animal game. I doubt if the variations would add much.
If one has not played for a while it takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. But we suppose for present purposes that one has been playing reasonably regularly, that enough names of suitable animals are reasonably close to the surface.
Sometimes one gets into a groove, perhaps to the point of tapping a finger in time to the words, and the game swings along quickly, with nothing popping into consciousness other than the name of the next mammal. Anteater, beaver, colobus monkey, duck-billed platypus, elephant seal, flying fox, gorilla and so on. Or maybe not duck-billed platypus, as long names can be a bit disruptive.
Then for no apparent reason one makes a mistake. The word that pops out does indeed start with the right letter, but it is, perhaps, a fish or a bird rather than a mammal. Another common mistake is gerbil for ‘J’, when the mammal I am looking for is jerboa – there not being a lot of ‘J’ mammals, with jackal being the only other one that I use regularly.
Sometimes one gets into a groove, but one is saying each name twice. Once rather quietly, as it were, just testing the water, then, having decided that the name qualifies, rather more loudly. So one might have anteater (loud), beaver (soft), beaver (loud), caracal (soft), caracal (loud) and so on. Again, I can’t say anything about timing and once again one would need an EEG machine attached to an EEG expert to do that.
Sometimes one gets stuck, often but not necessarily on a letter which is not well populated with mammals, perhaps ‘I’ or ‘Y’. At this point, all kinds of thoughts and words pop into consciousness and one is, as it were, disqualified.
Sometimes, having got stuck, one forgets the rules and moves onto the next letter, perhaps rehearsing the names of a number of mammals for the next letter, hoping that the diversion will allow a mammal for the letter on which one got stuck to drift to the surface. Quite often this works.
What has to be done, what is the algorithm?
In the snap above I have sketched some of the processes involved in this game.
We have some data stores in orange, some mixture of working memory and longer term memory. Then some more or less unconscious processes in blue, with the arrows suggesting the flow of activity.
Leaving aside starting up and closing down, we need something to generate the next letter. A something which will need to have access to both the current letter and an alphabet. Perhaps a pointer to the current letter in the alphabet. Sometimes this next letter process will go wrong: one might have gone backwards in the alphabet rather than forwards or one might have gone too far forward, skipping over one or more letters.
We then need something to extract objects from memory or to locate objects in memory with names starting with the newly current letter – in the snap I use the word retrieve to cover both possibilities. Objects might be all objects, all mammals or something in between and I suspect that this depends on who is playing, on the context of the game and on how much he or she knows, on how many objects there are there to be extracted.
We then need to scan those retrieved objects to find one which satisfies the various criteria. Get object, test object and branch according to the result. If fail, get next object. If succeed, pass the name of this object on for silent voicing in consciousness.
At this point I get the impression that there is a final check, a check which is carried out unconsciously but which returns some sort of feeling of confidence to consciousness. One has got it right and one can move on to the next letter.
Consciousness should then remain silent, empty and inactive, until the next object is ready for silent voicing. The trouble here being that no one process has exclusive access to consciousness and it is all too likely that something else will be made conscious during what was supposed to be a silent time. Perhaps something from the process under consideration, perhaps something from some quite different process. This is suggested by the two boxes top right.
For example, if one is at ‘E’ the word ‘eel’ might pop into consciousness, before it has been tested, before it has been failed, with the intended inhibition of work in progress having failed. Interestingly, it is the words which pop into consciousness, the names of animals rather than their portraits. A different sort of failure would be passing ‘vervet monkey’ for ‘V’ when one had already had ‘primate’ for ‘P’. A straightforward error, rather than some work in progress slipping into consciousness which should not have. Different again would be starting to worry about whether one had locked the back door before going to bed.
Perhaps if one practised seriously, one could get both the unconscious and the conscious to behave themselves.
Odds and ends
The name ‘duck billed platypus’, a favourite for ‘D’, is possibly too long to hold in consciousness in entirety in the sound form needed here. Maybe it needs to be played word by word in three or four successive frames of consciousness, which would imply some more machinery to do this. But it may also be that reading the words on the page would be different, their not looking nearly so clumsy as they sound.
I have tried and more or less failed to play the game while one on one of my matinal walks. I think there must be too much other stuff going on for the brain to be able to cope with the extra load.
When only half awake there is a tendency to slip from one version of the game to another, without at first noticing. And, more often, just to drift off somewhere else, to stop playing altogether. Or to drift off into sleep, which may have been the idea in the first place.
Just plain counting – one, two, three, four and so on – is a related activity which is apt to block out any other conscious activity. On the other hand, I believe that I sometimes count unconsciously, at least for a short while, while thinking about something else altogether. Most often when I am climbing a long flight of steps, perhaps up from the tube train platform at Tooting Broadway or Vauxhall. One knows because the counting suddenly surfaces. Such counting is reasonably accurate on the few occasions that I have bothered or been able to check.
A game I do not play very often is just plain counting, usually while I am on one of my matinal walks, with the objective being to see how far one can get before one’s attention wanders. I think I have sometimes got to 100, but not much beyond that. Even silently, saying a number like ‘one hundred and twenty three’ seems to contain too many syllables and to occupy too much time to be able to settle to a rhythm.
Counting is also apt to entrain some kind of rhythmic activity, in the case that that is not what one was counting in the first place.
A successful round of the animal game requires a lot of work of the unconscious, with just the answers making it to consciousness.
Implications for LWS-N
LWS-N is about what is in consciousness, it is not about how that what is selected or put together. That said it is quite possible that the LWS-N compiler would get mixed up with the sort of processing described above; it all depends on how compartmentalised things are, and about that we know little.
There is however the requirement that LWS-N be able to be silent, while otherwise up and running. Perhaps analogous to the rests in music, important in classical music, perhaps more or less absent in popular music.
And despite its apparent simplicity there are also various technical problems about how the information involved here is to be expressed in the frames of LWS-N. What do we do with long names like ‘duck billed platypus’, names which possibly span more than one frame? How does it encode the ‘some sort of feeling of confidence’ mentioned above?
Conclusions
Part of the interest of this animal game arises from it being a simple game with simple rules which does not involve any external sensory activity: one can work out exactly what has to be done, even if one cannot be sure about how exactly it is done. It is also a game which nicely illustrates both how much is going on in the unconscious that we are not aware of and how little control we usually have over what does appear, does pop up into consciousness.
But perhaps there is also a hint that one can train oneself to have more control. Perhaps this is part of what Buddhists get up to, so perhaps I should go back to the book noticed at reference 6.
PS: I can manage Tooting Broadway and Vauxhall, coming in at between 60 and 70 steps, without too much puffing. Some central London tube stations come in in at around 100 steps and I do not attempt those unless they are moving, which seems to cut the number of steps to be climbed by around 50%.
References
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/new-game.html.
Reference 2: http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/birds/beginning-with/X. A useful website turned up by Bing.
Reference 3: Systematic Dictionary of the Mammals of the World – Maurice Burton – 1962. With my copy of this excellent book coming from somewhere on Dalhousie Street in Ottawa. See reference 4.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dalhousie.html.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/on-counting-variations.html. A post about a rather different sort of counting.
Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/buddha-rules.html.
Reference 7: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/beaney.html. There is a stuffed duck billed platypus at the Beaney Museum in Canterbury; the only one that I know of.
Group search key: srd.
Tuesday, 27 March 2018
This evening I chanced across a Facebook group called the 'Hespeler Heavy Smokers Group', with Hespeler being a place near Cambridge, Ontario, a place which has a village pond which is host to visits from aliens.
But I was rather disappointed to find that the heavy smoking in question was nothing to do with tobacco, let alone weed (which I think is more or less legal there), rather to do with smoked meats. Smoked meats which are, as explained by a recent exposé in the Guardian, extremely unhealthy on account of all the sulphites used in the curing and smoking.
Reference 1: https://www.hespelervillagebia.ca/.
Reference 2: http://www.paullangan.com/.
But I was rather disappointed to find that the heavy smoking in question was nothing to do with tobacco, let alone weed (which I think is more or less legal there), rather to do with smoked meats. Smoked meats which are, as explained by a recent exposé in the Guardian, extremely unhealthy on account of all the sulphites used in the curing and smoking.
Reference 1: https://www.hespelervillagebia.ca/.
Reference 2: http://www.paullangan.com/.
Drivers' refuge
There used to be quite a lot of these huts dotted across central London, dedicated to the provision of refreshment for tired taxi drivers. All the same, the same green hut with the same pointed roof. Run, I used to believe, by taxi drivers' wives.
From having been an institution in their day, I also believe they were reduced to selling tea and sandwiches to all comers. And now more or less at vanishing point.
So I was pleased to come across this one in the Cromwell Road the other day, more or less opposite the main entrance to the V&A, still functioning, as I saw someone go in.
Not so pleased that this snap lifted from Google's Street View was better than anything that I could manage with my telephone, with only one of my dozen shots being in focus, and even then the hut was a bit lost in a busy street scene.
PS: thinking that there must be a bit of history about them somewhere, I looked in our London Encyclopaedia from Messrs. Weinreb & Hibbert, which failed to provide any information at all about either taxis or Hackney Carriages, never mind their huts. While Bing turned up reference 1 (amongst a lot of other entirely relevant stuff) on the search term 'green taxi driver huts london'. Internet, search engines and Wikipedia beats the print encyclopaedia hands down. Maybe time for decent burial.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabmen%27s_Shelter_Fund.
From having been an institution in their day, I also believe they were reduced to selling tea and sandwiches to all comers. And now more or less at vanishing point.
So I was pleased to come across this one in the Cromwell Road the other day, more or less opposite the main entrance to the V&A, still functioning, as I saw someone go in.
Not so pleased that this snap lifted from Google's Street View was better than anything that I could manage with my telephone, with only one of my dozen shots being in focus, and even then the hut was a bit lost in a busy street scene.
PS: thinking that there must be a bit of history about them somewhere, I looked in our London Encyclopaedia from Messrs. Weinreb & Hibbert, which failed to provide any information at all about either taxis or Hackney Carriages, never mind their huts. While Bing turned up reference 1 (amongst a lot of other entirely relevant stuff) on the search term 'green taxi driver huts london'. Internet, search engines and Wikipedia beats the print encyclopaedia hands down. Maybe time for decent burial.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabmen%27s_Shelter_Fund.
Morning illusion
An illusion which seems to work best using one eye at a time, so not some artefact of binocular vision, in the way that being able to see through a finger held close to the nose is.
So, one holds one's two index fingers up together, nearly but not quite touching, a couple of inches in front of one eye or the other, against a bright, pale ground. Perhaps the sky, a pale coloured wall or a pale sheet of paper. With the result that the fingers look black against white.
As one brings the two fingers closer together, the sharp image of the inner surfaces of the fingers starts to break down. The inner surfaces of both fingers acquire a faint halo and various artefacts appear between them, in the grey area in the snap, perhaps a quarter of the top joint of one of the fingers in height. Perhaps a sliver of black, perhaps several slivers of black of graduated size, along the lines illustrated right. Sometimes blisters formed on one finger or the other, again along the lines of the three such illustrated right. Blisters which grew as the fingers moved closer together, eventually merging into the other finger, well before the fingers actually touched. At one point I thought I detected a frequency modulated sine wave spreading across the gap. All in all, quite complicated.
At which point I remembered about diffraction, once introduced at school and now introduced at reference 1. Perhaps this kicks in as the fingers get close enough together and the brain processing module which keeps the subjective images of things like fingers nice and tidy, the messy signal being turned in by the retinas notwithstanding, starts to break down. While a perfect brain, the sort of brain a robot of the future might have, would know how to make allowances.
Which diffraction might explain why I can't reproduce the effect on a Powerpoint slide, as Powerpoint does not do slits. A simpler explanation might be that one does not have enough control over the size of the gap.
PS: at one point I thought that the illusion might have been something to do with the fact that I was looking at the sky through a net curtain, with it being well known that net curtains generate all kinds of odd optical effects. But I have now discarded that theory.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction.
Monday, 26 March 2018
Still more Waterloo
Towards the end of the book noticed at reference 1, Cornwell mentions the must-see model of the battlefield of Waterloo at the National Army Museum in Chelsea. So off I go.
Detrained at Clapham Junction to be reminded how large one of the big new four engine jets can look from the ground. Also that they have not necessarily settled onto the flight path down into Heathrow by the time they get to Clapham. Still plenty of time left to veer to the left or the right, depending.
Managed the run from Grant Road (East) to Manresa Road (Chelsea) in 14 minutes and 6 seconds. Which was fine, but I should probably have gone a few more hundred yards down Kings Road if minimising the walk to the Army Museum was important. As it was, I found out at all the Kings Road public houses which were famous when I was young have now been repurposed as banks or clothes shops. Also that the Neal's Yard people overreached themselves. Let's hope the contagion does not spread to their cheese operation.
Popped into the church of St. Thomas the Martyr. Quite grand but a slightly shabby feel to the place. All the altars hooded, as that at Weston Green had been a week earlier. Hooded, as it happens, in a very similar shade of pale purple. Lilac if you will.
The Army Museum has been refurbished and is now a light and modern space, complete with a cafeteria, various study rooms and study areas, in addition to the museum itself. Most of the visitors were pensioners like myself, a good proportion of whom I supposed to have served in the forces. There was also a clutch of young men who looked and sounded as if they were officer cadets.
I only did the Waterloo exhibit on the top floor and was a little surprised that, apart from the model of the battlefield, an antique in its own right dating, from 1838, there was not a great deal. One captured eagle, some uniforms and weapons and that was about it.
The model was around 10 feet square, made up of sections which were maybe 2 feet by 3 feet. I thought it was rather good. They had not tampered with the model but they had linked it into interactive displays so that you could get some idea of where the main events of the battle took place. I even got to see the point of models of battlefields complete with model soldiers. I had thought them a bit silly, but now, using model soldiers, cavalrymen and guns to mark the positions of the main formations seems as good a way as any, short of hiring an army, in the way of Bondarchuk. There also seems to be a good range of Waterloo war games and animations out there - and I dare say some of them are a good adjunct to more conventional aids to learning.
Both Cornwell and White-Spunner make the point that a big battle like this is complicated and confusing, complications and confusions not easily dispelled by the very large number of contemporary accounts, not to mention all those which came later. No way that you can hold it all in consciousness, rather one needs to be able to use memory and memory aids to zoom in and out, to pan around, to the bit of interest. Overviews might be necessary, but one needs to remember that overviews squash lots of tricky details which don't quite fit. I resist the temptation to carry on.
But to close out this section, I share a thought from this morning's Ewell Village anti-clockwise. Wellington needed to very nearly lose to make sure that Napoleon kept going, committed everything he had to this last throw. Had Wellington clearly been winning, Napoleon might well have pulled back in one piece. I associate to a story about Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz, where baiting the trap that pulled the Russians down off the Prazten Heights, was a calculated risk which really did weaken his position. But he had to offer the Russians something real, not just chicken feed. Le Carré makes much the same point in connection with the complicated trading of secrets conducted by spies.
From the museum I took a reasonably circuitous stroll to Daquise for a Polish lunch. First starter, brandy while I waited. Second starter, some kind of small sausages with an excellent horseradish sauce. Main course, a sort of large sausage roll made with a cabbage leaf rather than pastry. A little disappointing. Dessert, apple fritters topped with cream and some kind of red jam. Fresh and excellent. Chablis - a Petit Chablis from 2011 and Domaine Besson - a little disappointing, but I covered that with a drop more brandy.
No.14 bus to Fortnum & Mason where I was able to buy a couple of chunks of what turned out to be a very respectable Lincolnshire Poacher. Better than Waitrose, up to the standard of Neal's Yard. I was also very impressed by their stock of wine, with a much bigger selection of north European white wine, particularly German, than one usually finds. Good range of prices, nicely bracketing what I am prepared to pay for wine. I actually settled for Fortnum's own Greco di Tufo. Yet to be drunk.
Interesting young lady on the train home, not particularly good looking but both attractive and inaccessible; from some other world. I was reminded of the stories by both Hardy and Maupassant concerning arty old men who become infatuated with improbable young ladies in a vain attempt to hold onto, or rather recapture, their own lost youth.
Balanced by a clutch of thirteen year old school boys having a very serious conversation about the football or rugby match that they had been playing that afternoon. I don't think I ever took sports that seriously - or make any serious attempt to pretend that I did.
Tedious train guard who tried to entertain us with a run of weak jokes and witty remarks. All very tiresome, but luckily I was changing at Raynes Park.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/more-waterloo.html.
Reference 2: http://daquise.co.uk/.
Detrained at Clapham Junction to be reminded how large one of the big new four engine jets can look from the ground. Also that they have not necessarily settled onto the flight path down into Heathrow by the time they get to Clapham. Still plenty of time left to veer to the left or the right, depending.
Managed the run from Grant Road (East) to Manresa Road (Chelsea) in 14 minutes and 6 seconds. Which was fine, but I should probably have gone a few more hundred yards down Kings Road if minimising the walk to the Army Museum was important. As it was, I found out at all the Kings Road public houses which were famous when I was young have now been repurposed as banks or clothes shops. Also that the Neal's Yard people overreached themselves. Let's hope the contagion does not spread to their cheese operation.
Popped into the church of St. Thomas the Martyr. Quite grand but a slightly shabby feel to the place. All the altars hooded, as that at Weston Green had been a week earlier. Hooded, as it happens, in a very similar shade of pale purple. Lilac if you will.
The Army Museum has been refurbished and is now a light and modern space, complete with a cafeteria, various study rooms and study areas, in addition to the museum itself. Most of the visitors were pensioners like myself, a good proportion of whom I supposed to have served in the forces. There was also a clutch of young men who looked and sounded as if they were officer cadets.
I only did the Waterloo exhibit on the top floor and was a little surprised that, apart from the model of the battlefield, an antique in its own right dating, from 1838, there was not a great deal. One captured eagle, some uniforms and weapons and that was about it.
The model was around 10 feet square, made up of sections which were maybe 2 feet by 3 feet. I thought it was rather good. They had not tampered with the model but they had linked it into interactive displays so that you could get some idea of where the main events of the battle took place. I even got to see the point of models of battlefields complete with model soldiers. I had thought them a bit silly, but now, using model soldiers, cavalrymen and guns to mark the positions of the main formations seems as good a way as any, short of hiring an army, in the way of Bondarchuk. There also seems to be a good range of Waterloo war games and animations out there - and I dare say some of them are a good adjunct to more conventional aids to learning.
Both Cornwell and White-Spunner make the point that a big battle like this is complicated and confusing, complications and confusions not easily dispelled by the very large number of contemporary accounts, not to mention all those which came later. No way that you can hold it all in consciousness, rather one needs to be able to use memory and memory aids to zoom in and out, to pan around, to the bit of interest. Overviews might be necessary, but one needs to remember that overviews squash lots of tricky details which don't quite fit. I resist the temptation to carry on.
But to close out this section, I share a thought from this morning's Ewell Village anti-clockwise. Wellington needed to very nearly lose to make sure that Napoleon kept going, committed everything he had to this last throw. Had Wellington clearly been winning, Napoleon might well have pulled back in one piece. I associate to a story about Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz, where baiting the trap that pulled the Russians down off the Prazten Heights, was a calculated risk which really did weaken his position. But he had to offer the Russians something real, not just chicken feed. Le Carré makes much the same point in connection with the complicated trading of secrets conducted by spies.
From the museum I took a reasonably circuitous stroll to Daquise for a Polish lunch. First starter, brandy while I waited. Second starter, some kind of small sausages with an excellent horseradish sauce. Main course, a sort of large sausage roll made with a cabbage leaf rather than pastry. A little disappointing. Dessert, apple fritters topped with cream and some kind of red jam. Fresh and excellent. Chablis - a Petit Chablis from 2011 and Domaine Besson - a little disappointing, but I covered that with a drop more brandy.
No.14 bus to Fortnum & Mason where I was able to buy a couple of chunks of what turned out to be a very respectable Lincolnshire Poacher. Better than Waitrose, up to the standard of Neal's Yard. I was also very impressed by their stock of wine, with a much bigger selection of north European white wine, particularly German, than one usually finds. Good range of prices, nicely bracketing what I am prepared to pay for wine. I actually settled for Fortnum's own Greco di Tufo. Yet to be drunk.
Interesting young lady on the train home, not particularly good looking but both attractive and inaccessible; from some other world. I was reminded of the stories by both Hardy and Maupassant concerning arty old men who become infatuated with improbable young ladies in a vain attempt to hold onto, or rather recapture, their own lost youth.
Balanced by a clutch of thirteen year old school boys having a very serious conversation about the football or rugby match that they had been playing that afternoon. I don't think I ever took sports that seriously - or make any serious attempt to pretend that I did.
Tedious train guard who tried to entertain us with a run of weak jokes and witty remarks. All very tiresome, but luckily I was changing at Raynes Park.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/more-waterloo.html.
Reference 2: http://daquise.co.uk/.
Asset management
About a year ago I was worrying about the lack of management of the cable boxes that utilities plant on our sidewalks. See for example reference 1.
Then this morning I noticed that the box at the end of our road had come open, with the door being hinged at the bottom and so possibly dangerous to the inquisitive child from the school around the corner, rather than at the side, more usual in my limited experience of such matters.
However, inside the box was a large sticker from Virgin Communications giving one the box number and the telephone number to ring. Which I did, to get their computer suggesting that I key '1' should I be reporting that one of their boxes was open. Further palaver with the computer, which was after various other details, after which it promised me a text message to confirm receipt of message. The text message never arrived, but it does look as if asset management has come on a bit in a year. Perhaps Virgin are better at this sort of thing than BT: I remember that Mr. Branson used to make a great parade of occasionally descending on a customer with chocolates and flowers when things had gone wrong. Provided, that is, that his office had managed to arrange for media coverage of said descent.
I also thought that the computer, if provided with the information asked, should be able to have a fair crack at grouping together all the reports it gets about any one box, without needing to trouble a human.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/asset-tagging.html.
Then this morning I noticed that the box at the end of our road had come open, with the door being hinged at the bottom and so possibly dangerous to the inquisitive child from the school around the corner, rather than at the side, more usual in my limited experience of such matters.
However, inside the box was a large sticker from Virgin Communications giving one the box number and the telephone number to ring. Which I did, to get their computer suggesting that I key '1' should I be reporting that one of their boxes was open. Further palaver with the computer, which was after various other details, after which it promised me a text message to confirm receipt of message. The text message never arrived, but it does look as if asset management has come on a bit in a year. Perhaps Virgin are better at this sort of thing than BT: I remember that Mr. Branson used to make a great parade of occasionally descending on a customer with chocolates and flowers when things had gone wrong. Provided, that is, that his office had managed to arrange for media coverage of said descent.
I also thought that the computer, if provided with the information asked, should be able to have a fair crack at grouping together all the reports it gets about any one box, without needing to trouble a human.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/asset-tagging.html.
Immortality is coming!
A bit of three year old news, brought to me by the Kurzweil Organisation, Mr. Kurzweil being a chap who is quite keen on immortality, preferably for himself.
It seems that a method for the preservation of a more or less intact mammalian brain has been developed, opening up the possibility of reactivating that brain, or more probably a copy of that brain, at some point in the future. Provided that is that you can find a company you can trust with your brain until some unspecified point in the future.
It sounds like a variation of the embalming techniques that have been around since the time of the pharaohs of old Egypt - with the difference that the Egyptians embalmed the bodies in coffins, pickled the innards in jars and just chucked the brains away, regarded at that time as unimportant.
Back in the here and now, first you gradually introduce an embalming fluid into the brain. When enough of this fluid has been delivered and it has had time to work its way into all the nooks and crannies, you pop the brain into a industrial quality freezer and the job is done. It seems that if you defrost such a brain, days, months or even years later, you can use an electron microscope (or something of that sort) to read off the neurons and their synapses in just the state that they were at the time of the embalming. Read off and ready to be written back into a nice new brain, possibly mechanical or silicon. All 150 trillion (150 million million) of them. All fine and dandy, to the extent that you are your neurons and synapses. To the presently unknown extent that you are the chemical soup in which those neurons and synapses live, not so clever. That bit is work in progress.
At the time of writing, back in 2015, all this had been successfully tested on rabbits and pigs.
PS: haven't quite got to the bottom yet of when the host for such a brain might be deemed to have died in the ordinary sense of the word.
Reference 1: Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation - Robert L. McIntyre, Gregory M. Fahy - 2015.
Reference 2: https://nectome.com/.
It seems that a method for the preservation of a more or less intact mammalian brain has been developed, opening up the possibility of reactivating that brain, or more probably a copy of that brain, at some point in the future. Provided that is that you can find a company you can trust with your brain until some unspecified point in the future.
It sounds like a variation of the embalming techniques that have been around since the time of the pharaohs of old Egypt - with the difference that the Egyptians embalmed the bodies in coffins, pickled the innards in jars and just chucked the brains away, regarded at that time as unimportant.
Back in the here and now, first you gradually introduce an embalming fluid into the brain. When enough of this fluid has been delivered and it has had time to work its way into all the nooks and crannies, you pop the brain into a industrial quality freezer and the job is done. It seems that if you defrost such a brain, days, months or even years later, you can use an electron microscope (or something of that sort) to read off the neurons and their synapses in just the state that they were at the time of the embalming. Read off and ready to be written back into a nice new brain, possibly mechanical or silicon. All 150 trillion (150 million million) of them. All fine and dandy, to the extent that you are your neurons and synapses. To the presently unknown extent that you are the chemical soup in which those neurons and synapses live, not so clever. That bit is work in progress.
At the time of writing, back in 2015, all this had been successfully tested on rabbits and pigs.
PS: haven't quite got to the bottom yet of when the host for such a brain might be deemed to have died in the ordinary sense of the word.
Reference 1: Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation - Robert L. McIntyre, Gregory M. Fahy - 2015.
Reference 2: https://nectome.com/.
Sunday, 25 March 2018
Fake 30
The nearly new M&S in Ashstead High Street.
The original scheme was that Tesco's were going to take this site, a scheme which resulted in a huge row among the shopkeepers who were already there and the villagers, some for, some against. Plus Tesco might have been thought, quite unfairly to my mind, to have been a bit common for Ashstead.
M&S, however, were not thought to be common, and their scheme went through. Involving, I believe, a number of flats (which may or may not be affordable) and this cod old style frontage, presumably deemed by the heritage crew to be in keeping with the rest of this parade. Needless to say, the building behind is perfectly ordinary concrete construction.
My bet, for what it is worth, is that this shop may well knock out a few convenience stores, but will also breathe a bit of life into the parade as a whole and will prove to be a good thing. What I believe retail consultants call an anchor. Whether it will be any good for basic groceries, such as red lentils and carrots, in the way of our Costcutter in Manor Green Road, is another matter.
Reference 1: https://www.costcutter.co.uk/location/9-15-MANOR-GREEN-ROAD-KT19-8RA/.
The original scheme was that Tesco's were going to take this site, a scheme which resulted in a huge row among the shopkeepers who were already there and the villagers, some for, some against. Plus Tesco might have been thought, quite unfairly to my mind, to have been a bit common for Ashstead.
M&S, however, were not thought to be common, and their scheme went through. Involving, I believe, a number of flats (which may or may not be affordable) and this cod old style frontage, presumably deemed by the heritage crew to be in keeping with the rest of this parade. Needless to say, the building behind is perfectly ordinary concrete construction.
My bet, for what it is worth, is that this shop may well knock out a few convenience stores, but will also breathe a bit of life into the parade as a whole and will prove to be a good thing. What I believe retail consultants call an anchor. Whether it will be any good for basic groceries, such as red lentils and carrots, in the way of our Costcutter in Manor Green Road, is another matter.
Reference 1: https://www.costcutter.co.uk/location/9-15-MANOR-GREEN-ROAD-KT19-8RA/.
Trolleys 135 and 136
Captured this morning from the passage between the station and the High Street. One for Waitrose and one for Marks & Spencer. Different sizes so I had to make two trips of it, back across the High Street. So reasonable to score them as two trolleys.
Both equipped with £1 deposit devices, but no £1's forthcoming when I clipped them into their stacks on return. Perhaps I did not have the trick of it.
Both equipped with £1 deposit devices, but no £1's forthcoming when I clipped them into their stacks on return. Perhaps I did not have the trick of it.
More Waterloo
As advertised at reference 1, I have now finished the story teller's version at reference 2. And Max Hastings notwithstanding, I think Cornwell did a pretty good job of writing this nicely produced book. Bit of a mystery why it had been marked down so much.
One up side was that he did a good job of conveying a sense of the topography of the battlefield. One down side was that he was a bit hot on the glory side of things, while White-Spunner, perhaps as a former soldier, was better on the price of glory.
So regarding topography, I learned that there was a tricky if small river between Wavre and Mont St. Jean, La Lasne, at which it would have been easy enough to hold Blücher up, with fatal results for the allies, had the French thought so to do. Plus I continue to wonder how Blücher managed to be a fighting general into his seventies. He must have been a lot stronger, both mentally and physically, than I am.
Cornwall also provides more context for the battle, including the uncertain allegiance of the French speakers of the Netherlands, the inhabitants of what is now Wallonia, many of whom regretted the passing of Napoleon. He reminds us that while Wellington could be generous after the battle, our islands never having been invaded and trashed by the French, the Germans were not so forgiving and were all for shooting him. At the very least, blowing up the Pont d'Iéna in Paris - with Wellington not even allowing them this satisfaction.
Cornwall also digs up some statistics from somewhere which tell us that only a very small percentage of the millions of shells, cannon balls and bullets that were fired found their mark. Also that shrapnel was named for the Mr. Shrapnel that invented the stuff.
Quite a lot on how easily Napoleon might have won, or failing that, pulled away to fight another day, rather than fight on to destruction. He might, for example, have been more hands-on, in the way of Wellington, rather than delegating so much to Ney. The Ney who did not have enough friends in Paris, so got shot, while his colleague Soult went on to have an amicable meeting with Wellington in the margins of Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838.
Quite a lot on the Richmond ball, which White-Spunner talks down, almost a non-event.
Quite a lot on the game of scissors, paper and stone - which I thought not a bad analogy for the manoeuvring of infantry, cavalry and artillery for advantage. With heavy penalties for mistakes.
Cornwall rated the battlefield care of the French wounded, while White-Spunner talks of the high survival rate of those who made it back to allied base hospitals. And I was struck by the high mortality rate among the ensigns holding up their unit's colours, and by their often being as young as fifteen. According to Cornwall, soldiers of the period had an almost mystical regard for their colours, with their loss being a disgrace worse than death. I also learned that the original role of colour sergeants was to provide a guard for said ensigns and colours. Presumably chosen from among large burly men who could hack down most comers.
Reading of the loss of La Haye Sainte towards the end of the battle, I was reminded of having read somewhere that one allied unit at Waterloo, at or above La Haye Sainte, used an unusual calibre of ammunition, which the commanding generals forget about, with the result that they ran out of ammunition at an awkward moment. But now, although the troops holding La Haye Sainte did indeed run out of ammunition, I can find no reference at all to the unusual ammunition, even with the combined forces of books, Bing and Google. Which all goes to show how easy it is to lose one's grip on the facts if one does not write down chapter, verse and reference when one has the chance.
PS: quite by chance, I read yesterday that Lord Uxbridge, the second in command at Waterloo, got into a bit of a pickle at the coronation of 1821 at which he was Lord High Steward, charged with riding into the coronation banquet and then dismounting to do his business (whatever that was) with the new king. Unfortunately, he used one false leg for riding and another for walking, but forgot to bring the latter with him, which meant he was in trouble when he dismounted in front of said new king. Things are managed so much better nowadays.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/waterloo.html.
Reference 2: Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles - Bernard Cornwell - 2014.
One up side was that he did a good job of conveying a sense of the topography of the battlefield. One down side was that he was a bit hot on the glory side of things, while White-Spunner, perhaps as a former soldier, was better on the price of glory.
So regarding topography, I learned that there was a tricky if small river between Wavre and Mont St. Jean, La Lasne, at which it would have been easy enough to hold Blücher up, with fatal results for the allies, had the French thought so to do. Plus I continue to wonder how Blücher managed to be a fighting general into his seventies. He must have been a lot stronger, both mentally and physically, than I am.
Cornwall also provides more context for the battle, including the uncertain allegiance of the French speakers of the Netherlands, the inhabitants of what is now Wallonia, many of whom regretted the passing of Napoleon. He reminds us that while Wellington could be generous after the battle, our islands never having been invaded and trashed by the French, the Germans were not so forgiving and were all for shooting him. At the very least, blowing up the Pont d'Iéna in Paris - with Wellington not even allowing them this satisfaction.
Cornwall also digs up some statistics from somewhere which tell us that only a very small percentage of the millions of shells, cannon balls and bullets that were fired found their mark. Also that shrapnel was named for the Mr. Shrapnel that invented the stuff.
Quite a lot on how easily Napoleon might have won, or failing that, pulled away to fight another day, rather than fight on to destruction. He might, for example, have been more hands-on, in the way of Wellington, rather than delegating so much to Ney. The Ney who did not have enough friends in Paris, so got shot, while his colleague Soult went on to have an amicable meeting with Wellington in the margins of Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838.
Quite a lot on the Richmond ball, which White-Spunner talks down, almost a non-event.
Quite a lot on the game of scissors, paper and stone - which I thought not a bad analogy for the manoeuvring of infantry, cavalry and artillery for advantage. With heavy penalties for mistakes.
Cornwall rated the battlefield care of the French wounded, while White-Spunner talks of the high survival rate of those who made it back to allied base hospitals. And I was struck by the high mortality rate among the ensigns holding up their unit's colours, and by their often being as young as fifteen. According to Cornwall, soldiers of the period had an almost mystical regard for their colours, with their loss being a disgrace worse than death. I also learned that the original role of colour sergeants was to provide a guard for said ensigns and colours. Presumably chosen from among large burly men who could hack down most comers.
Reading of the loss of La Haye Sainte towards the end of the battle, I was reminded of having read somewhere that one allied unit at Waterloo, at or above La Haye Sainte, used an unusual calibre of ammunition, which the commanding generals forget about, with the result that they ran out of ammunition at an awkward moment. But now, although the troops holding La Haye Sainte did indeed run out of ammunition, I can find no reference at all to the unusual ammunition, even with the combined forces of books, Bing and Google. Which all goes to show how easy it is to lose one's grip on the facts if one does not write down chapter, verse and reference when one has the chance.
PS: quite by chance, I read yesterday that Lord Uxbridge, the second in command at Waterloo, got into a bit of a pickle at the coronation of 1821 at which he was Lord High Steward, charged with riding into the coronation banquet and then dismounting to do his business (whatever that was) with the new king. Unfortunately, he used one false leg for riding and another for walking, but forgot to bring the latter with him, which meant he was in trouble when he dismounted in front of said new king. Things are managed so much better nowadays.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/waterloo.html.
Reference 2: Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles - Bernard Cornwell - 2014.
Saturday, 24 March 2018
Fake 29
A poor quality a snap of a striking fake fire in the dining area of Chessington Garden Centre. Popular with diners both young and old.
I did not have time to make a close examination, but I think that we had a clear glass panel in front. Then the black twigs which do not burn behind that. Then the flickering flames behind them. There was also a modest amount of smoke or steam to be seen. I assumed that it was some kind of gas fire, but I suppose there are other possibilities. Is it all just a cunning computer monitor?
The occasion was our taking advantage of some half price coupons in the local free paper, coupons which meant that we had two cooked breakfasts for £6.94. Four cooked items for me, seven cooked items for BH, toast, one of those short baguettes you bake up from frozen (with which to make up my sausage sandwiches) and tea. Sausages good, bacon average.
Friendly staff, spacious cafeteria. A large shed which manages to disguise the fact by the use of hefty, laminated wooden beams holding up the roof. Various semi-rustic ornaments hanging on the walls. They are clearly trying to muscle in between the Assembly Rooms (Wetherspoon's) on the right and Polesden Lacey (National Trust) on the left. With a car park to trump the former and distance to travel to trump the latter. With, I imagine, a couple of hundred seats altogether, including the dog friendly area. With the coupons, a very reasonable proposition indeed. Although it should be said that I would not want such a breakfast very often these days.
The clientèle included a squad of police men and women who told us it was the best café in the area as far as they were concerned. Which was just as well as it seems that the Metropolitan Police have closed all the canteens they used to run in police stations. It also seems that police persons working from patrol cars have no access to desk space or any other kind of space at police stations and are expected to do the necessary from their cars, using their handheld computers in place of real ones. They were cheerful enough about it, but it sounded to me as if the cuts have gone a bit too far for comfort, even if they were gilding the lily a bit, as it were. We also wondered about getting physical with the bad guys, with all the stuff they have strapped around their waists these days.
Walked back along the western section of the newish cycle track between Malden Rushett and Epsom, paid for by some deal between the council and some developer and pushed for by some gang of well-meaning ecos. Probably non-smoking, teetotal vegetarians as well. No cyclists on the track, but there was a knot of them coming the other way, somewhere between 10 and 20 of them, very firmly on the road and causing some inconvenience to other road users - not that I blame them particularly as I am not very keen on cycle tracks either and much prefer to use the road, as I have done for the last sixty years. To which rant I add two qualifications. First, I have finally been pushed onto the cycle tracks springing up in central London, like that running up the western side of Farringdon Road. Second, cyclists can be a right pain when one is driving on country roads on a Sunday.
I did not have time to make a close examination, but I think that we had a clear glass panel in front. Then the black twigs which do not burn behind that. Then the flickering flames behind them. There was also a modest amount of smoke or steam to be seen. I assumed that it was some kind of gas fire, but I suppose there are other possibilities. Is it all just a cunning computer monitor?
The occasion was our taking advantage of some half price coupons in the local free paper, coupons which meant that we had two cooked breakfasts for £6.94. Four cooked items for me, seven cooked items for BH, toast, one of those short baguettes you bake up from frozen (with which to make up my sausage sandwiches) and tea. Sausages good, bacon average.
Friendly staff, spacious cafeteria. A large shed which manages to disguise the fact by the use of hefty, laminated wooden beams holding up the roof. Various semi-rustic ornaments hanging on the walls. They are clearly trying to muscle in between the Assembly Rooms (Wetherspoon's) on the right and Polesden Lacey (National Trust) on the left. With a car park to trump the former and distance to travel to trump the latter. With, I imagine, a couple of hundred seats altogether, including the dog friendly area. With the coupons, a very reasonable proposition indeed. Although it should be said that I would not want such a breakfast very often these days.
The clientèle included a squad of police men and women who told us it was the best café in the area as far as they were concerned. Which was just as well as it seems that the Metropolitan Police have closed all the canteens they used to run in police stations. It also seems that police persons working from patrol cars have no access to desk space or any other kind of space at police stations and are expected to do the necessary from their cars, using their handheld computers in place of real ones. They were cheerful enough about it, but it sounded to me as if the cuts have gone a bit too far for comfort, even if they were gilding the lily a bit, as it were. We also wondered about getting physical with the bad guys, with all the stuff they have strapped around their waists these days.
Walked back along the western section of the newish cycle track between Malden Rushett and Epsom, paid for by some deal between the council and some developer and pushed for by some gang of well-meaning ecos. Probably non-smoking, teetotal vegetarians as well. No cyclists on the track, but there was a knot of them coming the other way, somewhere between 10 and 20 of them, very firmly on the road and causing some inconvenience to other road users - not that I blame them particularly as I am not very keen on cycle tracks either and much prefer to use the road, as I have done for the last sixty years. To which rant I add two qualifications. First, I have finally been pushed onto the cycle tracks springing up in central London, like that running up the western side of Farringdon Road. Second, cyclists can be a right pain when one is driving on country roads on a Sunday.
The trifid returns!
After a little more than a year, the triffid has returned. That is to say the vegetative daughter of the trifid at references 1 (end) and 2 (beginning) is now in bud - more or less in the middle of the snap left - and we look forward to flowers in May.
PS: I notice in passing that the ship of the line noticed at reference 3, is now the subject of a full length book, noticed at some length in today's DT. Odd subject for a lady who is now in her early nineties (but who had once been a lancer and after that a member of the team which bagged Everest for Colonel Hunt).
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-end-tip.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/both-old-triffid-and-new-triffid-aka.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-ship-of-line.html.
Group search key: tfc.
PS: I notice in passing that the ship of the line noticed at reference 3, is now the subject of a full length book, noticed at some length in today's DT. Odd subject for a lady who is now in her early nineties (but who had once been a lancer and after that a member of the team which bagged Everest for Colonel Hunt).
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-end-tip.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/both-old-triffid-and-new-triffid-aka.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-ship-of-line.html.
Group search key: tfc.
Almost a personal best
The dough for this morning's 462nd batch of bread weighed in at 5lbs 9oz, equalling the best so far of batch 454 on 2nd February and batch 456 on 10th February. So not a personal best, but trying.
5lbs 9oz is three ounces more than the nominal weight of flour and water combined - although room for manoeuvre is provided by traces of yeast, salt and oil.
Heritage balance scales anonymous, with no maker's mark that I can find.
5lbs 9oz is three ounces more than the nominal weight of flour and water combined - although room for manoeuvre is provided by traces of yeast, salt and oil.
Heritage balance scales anonymous, with no maker's mark that I can find.
The fate of all fakes
This snap being of the corner of one of the early fakes, from the first eager flush of collecting, back in August of last year. See references 1 and 2. Perhaps accidentally bashed in by some heavy object.
A fake which nicely illustrates our modern way of going wrong, the graceless degradation of things modern. A genuinely wooden tool box might have got shabby, might have started to rot a bit around the back, but would not have cracked up in the way of this plastic. And even if it had, one could have always cut out the offending bit of wood and let in a new bit. Almost an invisible mend.
From where I associate to modern shoes, composites, made of dozens of bits and bobs, where one piece of leather would have done in the olden days, more or less impossible to mend at all. That is not to say that modern things are not all of cheap, clever and good-looking, just that they do not mend. They do not grow old gracefully.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/fake-2.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/diy-time-at-network-rail.html.
A fake which nicely illustrates our modern way of going wrong, the graceless degradation of things modern. A genuinely wooden tool box might have got shabby, might have started to rot a bit around the back, but would not have cracked up in the way of this plastic. And even if it had, one could have always cut out the offending bit of wood and let in a new bit. Almost an invisible mend.
From where I associate to modern shoes, composites, made of dozens of bits and bobs, where one piece of leather would have done in the olden days, more or less impossible to mend at all. That is not to say that modern things are not all of cheap, clever and good-looking, just that they do not mend. They do not grow old gracefully.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/fake-2.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/diy-time-at-network-rail.html.
Friday, 23 March 2018
Trio Sunday
Last Sunday saw the third of our clutch on Sunday morning concerts at the Wigmore Hall, with the Gould trio giving us a couple of Beethoven trios - Op.1 No.3 and Op.97.
There had been snow overnight, and while it was melting by the time we were out at around 0930, it was still cold. An Openreach gang had beaten us to it and were working away in the margins of the trench that they had dug and refilled the week before at the bottom of West Hill, just before the bridge. One chap was busily taking a long length of drain rods apart without the benefit of gloves and he explained that the men from Openreach were tough.
Various young ladies at the station preferred to use the ticket machines, rather than either of the two ticket clerks, ready and waiting behind their window. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for them to be talking to strangers.
Onto the Regent Street All Bar One to be greeted as regular guests. And to be downgraded from two tubs of smarties to one, not very full. Perhaps this was a consequence of being served by a young man rather than a young lady.
Wigmore Hall pretty full, no moribunds and just one child. This last equipped with a special cushion so that he could see something.
Once again struck by how much we like piano trios, having done a few last year, most recently at reference 2, not, as it happens, a BH occasion. And struck this morning by the first of them being one of the first of the many pieces of music published by Beethoven - at the time it having struck me as youthful - but not the work of a beginner at all.
I don't hardly use TB any more, but we thought we would mark its former importance by taking lunch at 'Il Pizzaiolo' in Blenheim Street, just off New Bond Street. Which turned out to be a cheerful, old-style Italian flavoured restaurant both run and used by genuine Italians. With ambience being set by semi porno pop videos on one screen and an important football match - MIL vs. CHI - on the other. We learn that CHI is the television acronym for A.C. ChievoVerona. Prezzo seemed a long way away.
Interesting and entirely acceptable white wine - although not the one I thought I had asked for - sporting the words 'feudo Apiano Fiano Campania Lapio', some of which Bing suggests stand for something in the world of southern Italian wine. He also suggests that 'Apanio' should actually be 'Arancio'. Perhaps there was something fishy going on.
Starter good, penne flavoured with dried tomatoes. Main course adequate, a large slice of crumb fried chicken, that is to say damp inside with a coating rather like that of a fish finger, a dish which I suspected of coming straight out of the freezer, more or less ready cooked. Plus a dollop of spaghetti. Tiramisu good. Brandy good. Service good - despite the rather weak English.
All in all, a cheerful lunch.
Out to admire the prices of the clothes in the fancy shops nearby. While another shop, for the second week running, offered us the brightly coloured lumps snapped above. Fortunately the English of the chap handing it out was good enough that I learned that the stuff was soap rather than sweet, before I tried eating it.
Tube to Waterloo where we had just missed a train, so up to 'Cabin' for a spot of their newly arrived Calvados - a place where I have had a very grand bacon and egg sandwich. Very reasonably priced, but the bar, up in the roof, was very cold and nearly empty. Plus their train departure repeater screen was not working, which I mentioned to a couple of station staff loafing on the stairs back down to the platform. One of them seemed concerned and I have every hope that it will be repeating again next time I visit - the angle meaning that you cannot read the main indicator board from your seat in the bar.
Onto platform 1 where we were interested to see that it was a young lady down on the tracks, uncoupling the front train from the back train. Which seemed to be taking a while but they got there in the end, as did we.
Reference 1: http://www.gouldpianotrio.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/trios.html.
Reference 3: http://www.chievoverona.it/.
Reference 4: http://www.feudoarancio.it/.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/master-builder.html.
There had been snow overnight, and while it was melting by the time we were out at around 0930, it was still cold. An Openreach gang had beaten us to it and were working away in the margins of the trench that they had dug and refilled the week before at the bottom of West Hill, just before the bridge. One chap was busily taking a long length of drain rods apart without the benefit of gloves and he explained that the men from Openreach were tough.
Various young ladies at the station preferred to use the ticket machines, rather than either of the two ticket clerks, ready and waiting behind their window. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for them to be talking to strangers.
Onto the Regent Street All Bar One to be greeted as regular guests. And to be downgraded from two tubs of smarties to one, not very full. Perhaps this was a consequence of being served by a young man rather than a young lady.
Wigmore Hall pretty full, no moribunds and just one child. This last equipped with a special cushion so that he could see something.
Once again struck by how much we like piano trios, having done a few last year, most recently at reference 2, not, as it happens, a BH occasion. And struck this morning by the first of them being one of the first of the many pieces of music published by Beethoven - at the time it having struck me as youthful - but not the work of a beginner at all.
I don't hardly use TB any more, but we thought we would mark its former importance by taking lunch at 'Il Pizzaiolo' in Blenheim Street, just off New Bond Street. Which turned out to be a cheerful, old-style Italian flavoured restaurant both run and used by genuine Italians. With ambience being set by semi porno pop videos on one screen and an important football match - MIL vs. CHI - on the other. We learn that CHI is the television acronym for A.C. ChievoVerona. Prezzo seemed a long way away.
Interesting and entirely acceptable white wine - although not the one I thought I had asked for - sporting the words 'feudo Apiano Fiano Campania Lapio', some of which Bing suggests stand for something in the world of southern Italian wine. He also suggests that 'Apanio' should actually be 'Arancio'. Perhaps there was something fishy going on.
Starter good, penne flavoured with dried tomatoes. Main course adequate, a large slice of crumb fried chicken, that is to say damp inside with a coating rather like that of a fish finger, a dish which I suspected of coming straight out of the freezer, more or less ready cooked. Plus a dollop of spaghetti. Tiramisu good. Brandy good. Service good - despite the rather weak English.
All in all, a cheerful lunch.
Out to admire the prices of the clothes in the fancy shops nearby. While another shop, for the second week running, offered us the brightly coloured lumps snapped above. Fortunately the English of the chap handing it out was good enough that I learned that the stuff was soap rather than sweet, before I tried eating it.
Tube to Waterloo where we had just missed a train, so up to 'Cabin' for a spot of their newly arrived Calvados - a place where I have had a very grand bacon and egg sandwich. Very reasonably priced, but the bar, up in the roof, was very cold and nearly empty. Plus their train departure repeater screen was not working, which I mentioned to a couple of station staff loafing on the stairs back down to the platform. One of them seemed concerned and I have every hope that it will be repeating again next time I visit - the angle meaning that you cannot read the main indicator board from your seat in the bar.
Onto platform 1 where we were interested to see that it was a young lady down on the tracks, uncoupling the front train from the back train. Which seemed to be taking a while but they got there in the end, as did we.
Reference 1: http://www.gouldpianotrio.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/trios.html.
Reference 3: http://www.chievoverona.it/.
Reference 4: http://www.feudoarancio.it/.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/master-builder.html.
Sequoiadendron giganteum
I like big trees, so I like sequoiadendron giganteum, also known as giant redwoods or wellingtonias, of which we must have a few dozen fair size specimens scattered around the borough. Yesterday I find that the council have planted two more of them down Longmead Road, presently three or four feet high. I wish them well.
Cortana failed to rise to the occasion with the only snaps, out of the thirty or so that I took, which were in focus were the two close ups of the label, and those were not great. Dark thoughts gathering about Samsung.
PS: I have not yet dug deep enough to find out whether wellingtonias are anything to do with the Iron Duke, the one so-named for the iron shutters he put on the windows of his house to keep out the brickbats of rioters.
Cortana failed to rise to the occasion with the only snaps, out of the thirty or so that I took, which were in focus were the two close ups of the label, and those were not great. Dark thoughts gathering about Samsung.
PS: I have not yet dug deep enough to find out whether wellingtonias are anything to do with the Iron Duke, the one so-named for the iron shutters he put on the windows of his house to keep out the brickbats of rioters.
Thursday, 22 March 2018
Choral Saturday
Last Saturday was a Ripieno Choir day at Weston Green, on this occasion supported by most of the Brook Street Band.
The band's line up on this occasion included a cello, a very large viol, that is to say a violone, and a keyboard. We were somewhat amused to have this juxtaposition of old and new offered by musicians who are keen on the old, sometimes offering antique oboes and trumpets. The newness of the keyboard was masked by the use of a tasteful, folding wooden screen, a screen which I now recall we have seen before. I had always assumed, without checking, that the keyboard was some sort of miniature organ!
The two altars in the church were hooded for Lent, a practise which I had forgotten about - assuming that I had ever known about it.
Excellent concert, not altogether sure why. They have, for example, done Handel before now, not that far removed in time or space from Schutz and Bach. Maybe I would find out if I were to read the programme more carefully.
Audience generally respectful, although a lady near me found it hard to be without her mobile phone and another spent the interval engrossed in her puzzle book.
We spent the short journey home pondering about which countries did choirs, in the way that we do in the west. Back home Cortana was not terribly helpful: the east was clearly into choirs now, but it looked as if they were mainly doing our music rather than theirs. So a subject to be gone into properly.
Reference 1: http://ripienochoir.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.brookstreetband.co.uk/.
The band's line up on this occasion included a cello, a very large viol, that is to say a violone, and a keyboard. We were somewhat amused to have this juxtaposition of old and new offered by musicians who are keen on the old, sometimes offering antique oboes and trumpets. The newness of the keyboard was masked by the use of a tasteful, folding wooden screen, a screen which I now recall we have seen before. I had always assumed, without checking, that the keyboard was some sort of miniature organ!
The two altars in the church were hooded for Lent, a practise which I had forgotten about - assuming that I had ever known about it.
Excellent concert, not altogether sure why. They have, for example, done Handel before now, not that far removed in time or space from Schutz and Bach. Maybe I would find out if I were to read the programme more carefully.
Audience generally respectful, although a lady near me found it hard to be without her mobile phone and another spent the interval engrossed in her puzzle book.
We spent the short journey home pondering about which countries did choirs, in the way that we do in the west. Back home Cortana was not terribly helpful: the east was clearly into choirs now, but it looked as if they were mainly doing our music rather than theirs. So a subject to be gone into properly.
Reference 1: http://ripienochoir.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.brookstreetband.co.uk/.
Creation time
Yesterday's Guardian continued its tradition of showcasing interesting looking jobs, this one offering up to £85,000 to put Waltham Forest at the centre of the artistic, not to say creationist, universe. All this at a time of unparalleled austerity in local government, although to be fair, the advertisement says nothing about the job being permanent and pensionable, never mind final salary pensionable.
£85,000 being more than I ever earned, I thought I would nip in early before all those creationists from reference 2 get up from their overnight orgies and get onto the case. The people who leave all their orgy supply trolleys lying around, as noticed at reference 3.
However, I can find no trace of the job at the address suggested, that is to say reference 1, so perhaps I am too late after all. Was it just a leg-pull on the part of the Guardian?
Reference 1: https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/execjobs.
Reference 2: https://www.uca.ac.uk/.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/a-stash.html.
£85,000 being more than I ever earned, I thought I would nip in early before all those creationists from reference 2 get up from their overnight orgies and get onto the case. The people who leave all their orgy supply trolleys lying around, as noticed at reference 3.
However, I can find no trace of the job at the address suggested, that is to say reference 1, so perhaps I am too late after all. Was it just a leg-pull on the part of the Guardian?
Reference 1: https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/execjobs.
Reference 2: https://www.uca.ac.uk/.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/a-stash.html.
Wednesday, 21 March 2018
DIY
We think we had four of these door catches when we arrived in our present house, probably original fittings so around eighty years old, with one having collapsed some years ago and replaced with something quite different and with one having been refitted, its door having moved away from its frame. The third is illustrated, rather luridly in telephone flash light, after repair, left. The fourth, so far, is as we found it.
If you click on the image and look carefully, you should be able to pick out the white paper pad that I have inserted to bring the keep up a few thou to match the position of the latch.
Is was the latch which failed, with the knurled knob which moved it back and forth on a spring, being completely jammed, after some years of creaking & catching action. So after the exploits with my clasp knife, noticed at reference 1, I was moved to attempt a bit of DIY.
Take the larger, right hand part, off the door, to find, to my surprise, that it is not a sealed unit. The back is open to view. But not to take apart, it having been brazed together in some cunning way.
The trouble was that the free end of spring loaded plunger which pushes the latch into the keep had come out of the hole which was intended to keep it in place. It must have been made with the plunger only just catching the hole when it was fully extended, this being how it was forced into position in the first place. Then, with wear over the years it slipped out and the loose end of the spring slipped into the hole, blocking any further movement.
Much deep thought, after which I though the answer was a slip of metal, perhaps 15mm by 5mm, to hold the plunger and its assembly down, to stop the free end of the plunger springing up from its hole. First attempt, sawn from a Chubb © keep plate, was too fat. Second attempt, sawn from some cheaper brand of keep plate, was just right at maybe 0.5mm. Held in place with sellotape © while the catch was screwed back onto the door.
All of which may give our successors pause to think, should they ever take it down again in some year to come.
Meantime, the catch now seems to be more or less working, although we shall try to remember not to shut the door in question by slamming it. And we shall look out for a replacement. And wonder how much we would have to pay an engineering shop to make up an exact replica.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/trolley-134b.html.
If you click on the image and look carefully, you should be able to pick out the white paper pad that I have inserted to bring the keep up a few thou to match the position of the latch.
Is was the latch which failed, with the knurled knob which moved it back and forth on a spring, being completely jammed, after some years of creaking & catching action. So after the exploits with my clasp knife, noticed at reference 1, I was moved to attempt a bit of DIY.
Take the larger, right hand part, off the door, to find, to my surprise, that it is not a sealed unit. The back is open to view. But not to take apart, it having been brazed together in some cunning way.
The trouble was that the free end of spring loaded plunger which pushes the latch into the keep had come out of the hole which was intended to keep it in place. It must have been made with the plunger only just catching the hole when it was fully extended, this being how it was forced into position in the first place. Then, with wear over the years it slipped out and the loose end of the spring slipped into the hole, blocking any further movement.
Much deep thought, after which I though the answer was a slip of metal, perhaps 15mm by 5mm, to hold the plunger and its assembly down, to stop the free end of the plunger springing up from its hole. First attempt, sawn from a Chubb © keep plate, was too fat. Second attempt, sawn from some cheaper brand of keep plate, was just right at maybe 0.5mm. Held in place with sellotape © while the catch was screwed back onto the door.
All of which may give our successors pause to think, should they ever take it down again in some year to come.
Meantime, the catch now seems to be more or less working, although we shall try to remember not to shut the door in question by slamming it. And we shall look out for a replacement. And wonder how much we would have to pay an engineering shop to make up an exact replica.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/trolley-134b.html.
Trolley 134c
A version of the snap at reference 1 which has come unstuck in a curious way, with the appearance of several wavy, more or less parallel bands across the image. Bands which have survived whatever it is that the blogger people do with the images they upload, my notion being, for some reason, that they do not store the raw image, as supplied. There is some compression going on. Maybe part of that reason is the fact that the raw image is 3.68Mb while what you get if you right click and save the image from the blog is 18.3Kb. About the same as what you get if you copy and paste chunks of blog into a Word document.
To my mind, evidence of the images being as much under the control of software as of hardware. What comes through the lens is only part of the story.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/trolley-134b.html.
To my mind, evidence of the images being as much under the control of software as of hardware. What comes through the lens is only part of the story.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/trolley-134b.html.
Eugene
Last week to Wyndham's to take in an evening performance of Eugene O'Neill's 'Long day's journey into night', featuring, inter alia, Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville, the latter of whom I had not before heard.
No picnic on this occasion as we did not want to walk from Waterloo to Leicester Square. Which meant that we were able to make a rare use of the steps directly down from the overground platforms at Waterloo to the underground concourse. Quite a lot of walking involved and I am not sure that it actually saves any time, but we got there.
A plus was that we came across the handrail illustrated, just like those we used to have in what used to be the Treasury building opening onto Parliament Street, aka GOGGS. No idea how the bends were made a hundred years ago, but I do have an idea that it would be very expensive to make them now.
Onto the tube, where yet again, I was offered a seat by a young lady.
Onto the Salisbury, which we thought was rather crowded, but an Australian gentleman at the bar assured me that it was nothing. Nothing like a proper bar, down under. In any event, service was fast enough, with a bonus being that a theatrical looking gentleman gave up his seat so that I could sit with BH. Perhaps he too was about to be sitting down for an evening performance and wanted to keep his circulation going as long as possible. His wife, however, had no such concerns and remained seated.
We were then reminded how florid Wyndham's was inside - and we rather liked it.
I thought that the set had been designed by the same chap who had done 'An Inspector Calls', with lots of dark corners, angles and fake perspective. See reference 1. But then again, maybe not, because although the inspector had run at Wyndham's for a long time, a long time ago, we actually saw it at the Playhouse, by the north end of Hungerford Bridge. One feature of the fake perspective was that a bookcase at the back of the set looked improbably tall, until someone stood next to it and you realised that it was not very tall at all.
Most of the cast spoke quite quickly which meant that one had to concentrate to catch what they were saying, what with the US accents (presumably put on for the occasion) and slang. But this did not stop the show lasting a little over three hours (excluding interval) which was more than an hour too long for BH and less than an hour too long for me. Unusually, it was the second half which seemed too long, rather than the first half, with my usual experience being that I, or the show, pick up steam in the second half. Maybe the double shot of whisky usually taken in the interval helps me along - but omitted on this occasion in favour of an ice cream for BH. An ice cream from a very grumpy ice cream girl, who completely failed to warm to attempts to be pleasant. Perhaps she was on minimum wages on a zero hours contract?
Apart from being too long, leaving one wondering how on earth they could keep up, it was a good show, albeit one which reflected the US taste for sweaty dramas about dysfunctional families. Irons was well cast as a once successful actor and made full use of his smoking rights, getting through bits of several cigars in the course of the evening, enough to amount to something of a habit given that he does it every evening. I think he inhales and one supposes that he is a smoker. Oddly, I did not smell cigars; odd because in the street I can a lighted cigar from a fair distance, say fifty yards if the wind is right.
There were plenty of good lines, funny lines in a black humoured way, liberally sprinkled through both halves.
Mention in dispatches for Jessica Regan as Cathleen, who did a splendid job on the sort of jolly but hopeless maid which the O'Neill family could run to.
We were pleased to just catch the 2309 from Waterloo. Half an hour can seem a long time at that time of night, especially in the winter. One might be tempted to take on drink.
Back home, reading Wikipedia, we find that the play was based pretty closely on O'Neill's own family. With the family home being called Monte Cristo for the role which made his father's money.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-inspector-calls-again.html.
No picnic on this occasion as we did not want to walk from Waterloo to Leicester Square. Which meant that we were able to make a rare use of the steps directly down from the overground platforms at Waterloo to the underground concourse. Quite a lot of walking involved and I am not sure that it actually saves any time, but we got there.
A plus was that we came across the handrail illustrated, just like those we used to have in what used to be the Treasury building opening onto Parliament Street, aka GOGGS. No idea how the bends were made a hundred years ago, but I do have an idea that it would be very expensive to make them now.
Onto the tube, where yet again, I was offered a seat by a young lady.
Onto the Salisbury, which we thought was rather crowded, but an Australian gentleman at the bar assured me that it was nothing. Nothing like a proper bar, down under. In any event, service was fast enough, with a bonus being that a theatrical looking gentleman gave up his seat so that I could sit with BH. Perhaps he too was about to be sitting down for an evening performance and wanted to keep his circulation going as long as possible. His wife, however, had no such concerns and remained seated.
We were then reminded how florid Wyndham's was inside - and we rather liked it.
I thought that the set had been designed by the same chap who had done 'An Inspector Calls', with lots of dark corners, angles and fake perspective. See reference 1. But then again, maybe not, because although the inspector had run at Wyndham's for a long time, a long time ago, we actually saw it at the Playhouse, by the north end of Hungerford Bridge. One feature of the fake perspective was that a bookcase at the back of the set looked improbably tall, until someone stood next to it and you realised that it was not very tall at all.
Most of the cast spoke quite quickly which meant that one had to concentrate to catch what they were saying, what with the US accents (presumably put on for the occasion) and slang. But this did not stop the show lasting a little over three hours (excluding interval) which was more than an hour too long for BH and less than an hour too long for me. Unusually, it was the second half which seemed too long, rather than the first half, with my usual experience being that I, or the show, pick up steam in the second half. Maybe the double shot of whisky usually taken in the interval helps me along - but omitted on this occasion in favour of an ice cream for BH. An ice cream from a very grumpy ice cream girl, who completely failed to warm to attempts to be pleasant. Perhaps she was on minimum wages on a zero hours contract?
Apart from being too long, leaving one wondering how on earth they could keep up, it was a good show, albeit one which reflected the US taste for sweaty dramas about dysfunctional families. Irons was well cast as a once successful actor and made full use of his smoking rights, getting through bits of several cigars in the course of the evening, enough to amount to something of a habit given that he does it every evening. I think he inhales and one supposes that he is a smoker. Oddly, I did not smell cigars; odd because in the street I can a lighted cigar from a fair distance, say fifty yards if the wind is right.
There were plenty of good lines, funny lines in a black humoured way, liberally sprinkled through both halves.
Mention in dispatches for Jessica Regan as Cathleen, who did a splendid job on the sort of jolly but hopeless maid which the O'Neill family could run to.
We were pleased to just catch the 2309 from Waterloo. Half an hour can seem a long time at that time of night, especially in the winter. One might be tempted to take on drink.
Back home, reading Wikipedia, we find that the play was based pretty closely on O'Neill's own family. With the family home being called Monte Cristo for the role which made his father's money.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-inspector-calls-again.html.
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