June 26, 20241 yr https://nltimes.nl/2024/06/25/campaign-collects-eu30000-homeless-amsterdammer-returned-lost-wallet-eu2000
July 2, 20241 yr those two examples of movement were based on the precession of gyroscopes. When you don't touch the gyroscopes, they conserve their energy of angular momentum. A spinning gyroscope will try to keep its centre where it was. If you push at the top of the gyroscope, your force is transferred to the opposite side of the gyroscope, like a seesaw across its centre. In the first video, he lifted the gyroscope and let it go. Gravity pushes the gyroscope to the left, the gyroscope reacts by moving the assembly to the right. The gyroscope will wobble (or preceeds) until it uses all its momentum energy.
November 30, 20241 yr Man who found smooth Mars bar gets £2 compensation “I think £2 is great, it will be two free Mars bars. Maybe they could have sent me more but I’m not being ungrateful. I think it’s amazing after everything that’s happened that I got the £2 voucher.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx247dwx1p7o
December 8, 20241 yr 25 Years of DPReview: 6 camera features that didn't make the cut https://www.dpreview.com/articles/2434062374/25-years-of-dpreview-6-camera-features-that-didn-t-make-the-cut
August 3, 2025Aug 3 Yesterday I was watching a video by some Swedish Adventure bike riders who were riding in Northern England and Scotland, and they came across our very own member Matthew Slack with his remarkable solar electric charging trailer. It was June 2024 and Matthew was camping by the shore of Loch Ness. When he came on and I saw the trailer and heard the gentleman explain how it worked - especially the part about how he had connected the two batteries with big diodes to isolate them from charging one another, I thought -'That has got to be Mathew Slack.' I recognised the description he gave of how it all worked with the Shimano battery and how he had described the connection on here. They even saw Nessy - right after the bit with Matthew in it!!! See it here from minute 14:30 - but I highly recommend the whole video - it is one of the best Vlogs I have seen in some time - though 'Itchie Boots' takes some beating too - as far as 'adventure riding' goes. She now has about 20 million views. Matthew meets Swedish viking riders at Lock Ness - Edited August 3, 2025Aug 3 by Tony1951
August 3, 2025Aug 3 Oh dear! Do you still believe in trump's economics? He just fired the chief of Labour statistics service because they revised down the job creation numbers that he bragged about by -258,000. Wall Street reacted accordingly. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/trump-erika-mcentarfer-jobs-report-fired.html Trump collected about 20B to 30B a month in tariffs. Lutnik's old firm now run by his son apparently bet that he will have to pay it all back. The case is going through appeal atm, supreme court in September. The case is so clear cut, I can't see Trump win this time in supreme court. Lutnik's family business is going to make tons of money betting against Trump.
August 3, 2025Aug 3 Man who found smooth Mars bar gets £2 compensation “I think £2 is great, it will be two free Mars bars. Maybe they could have sent me more but I’m not being ungrateful. I think it’s amazing after everything that’s happened that I got the £2 voucher.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx247dwx1p7o True fact. I was training a student about quality control, when I went to the vending machine to get a Mars bar and it delivered one that was about an inch shorter than normal. To get the exact evidence, I took it into the lab and weighed it on our calibrated equipment. This gave me the opportunity to explain to the student about variance, process controls and measurement errors. As part of that discussion, I bought another 5 bars from the vending machine and we weighed them. They were all a few grams short of the stated weight on the wrapper of 65g, except the short one, which was around 50g. I told the student that it would be a good idea to find out about the Mars production line process controls, so I wrote a long letter addressed to the Mars Quality Manager that explained our findings and asked about what sort of statistical controls they used and what sort of variation was normal and why the results we had seemed to indicate defective products. I returned the short Mars bar with the letter, so the postage was about £1. A week later, I got a letter from Mars, addressed to me as the Quality Manager of Keiper Recaro. It was from the customer relations department. "Dear sir, We're sorry that you're unhappy with your Mars bar. Here's a £1 postage stamp to cover the cost of a replacement." This was about 1995, so nothing has changed. Unfortunately, I ate the remaining evidence and Mars didn't return the short one, otherwise I would have referred the matter to trading standards so that they would have taken the issue seriously. This also reminds me of an incident at Avondale Caravans, where I had just joined as their Quality Manager. A guy, who was the type to wear an anorak, wrote in to say that he noted that our caravans were certified to meet various electrical standards, but from his expertise in the field, he could see that they didn't. The Customer Service guy replied to him that the certifications were done independently by the Caravan Council, and Avondale was happy with the standard of the caravans, plus the blue litmus statement that nobody else had complained. He therefore gave his evidence to Trading Standards and asked them to investigate. I won't bore you with the details, but that created a massive problem for both Avondale and the Caravan Council that took around a year to sort out and cost them all a lot of money. There was also a knock-on effect to all UK Caravan manufacturers because they all used the same electrical equipment and certification. All the guy wanted was recognition that he'd spotted the anomaly. He didn't even want it fixed.
August 3, 2025Aug 3 True fact. I was training a student about quality control, when I went to the vending machine to get a Mars bar and it delivered one that was about an inch shorter than normal. To get the exact evidence, I took it into the lab and weighed it on our calibrated equipment. This gave me the opportunity to explain to the student about variance, process controls and measurement errors. As part of that discussion, I bought another 5 bars from the vending machine and we weighed them. They were all a few grams short of the stated weight on the wrapper of 65g, except the short one, which was around 50g. I told the student that it would be a good idea to find out about the Mars production line process controls, so I wrote a long letter addressed to the Mars Quality Manager that explained our findings and asked about what sort of statistical controls they used and what sort of variation was normal and why the results we had seemed to indicate defective products. I returned the short Mars bar with the letter, so the postage was about £1. A week later, I got a letter from Mars, addressed to me as the Quality Manager of Keiper Recaro. It was from the customer relations department. "Dear sir, We're sorry that you're unhappy with your Mars bar. Here's a £1 postage stamp to cover the cost of a replacement." This was about 1995, so nothing has changed. Unfortunately, I ate the remaining evidence and Mars didn't return the short one, otherwise I would have referred the matter to trading standards so that they would have taken the issue seriously. This also reminds me of an incident at Avondale Caravans, where I had just joined as their Quality Manager. A guy, who was the type to wear an anorak, wrote in to say that he noted that our caravans were certified to meet various electrical standards, but from his expertise in the field, he could see that they didn't. The Customer Service guy replied to him that the certifications were done independently by the Caravan Council, and Avondale was happy with the standard of the caravans, plus the blue litmus statement that nobody else had complained. He therefore gave his evidence to Trading Standards and asked them to investigate. I won't bore you with the details, but that created a massive problem for both Avondale and the Caravan Council that took around a year to sort out and cost them all a lot of money. There was also a knock-on effect to all UK Caravan manufacturers because they all used the same electrical equipment and certification. All the guy wanted was recognition that he'd spotted the anomaly. He didn't even want it fixed. I think that behind the scenes there is a vast amount of complex work going on in just about every enterprise servicing the public, to ensure standardisation of products and quality. Most people never give that sort of thing a second thought and a lot of people think of themselves as being of a far better sort than the people who are doing those jobs. Total snobs - but very common in my experience. I remember once, a long time ago having a tour behind the scenes at a large supermarket where we were shown their ordering and stock control systems. I think some of the people on this tour thought themselves 'a cut above' people who worked in supermarkets.... I'll just say that their systems were a marvel of complexity and effective control. Every item sold was registered on the system as it passed through the check out and re-ordered when a certain number had been sold, so that there was always stock in store at the right amount. Production quality is a bit different, but just another aspect of how we have all come to take for granted that what we want to buy is available and functional and of the correct standard. Does it go wrong sometimes - obviously, yes. But not as much as it would do without a lot of careful people doing a good job.
August 8, 2025Aug 8 Geoff sums up all the current stories so we don't have to post them separately.. Do you know that the world adds 1GW of solar every other day? Thorium molten salt reactor is on schedule? Hydrogen can now be transported as powder in trucks under atmospheric pressure and ordinary temperature?
August 8, 2025Aug 8 If you have any doubts about the future of renewables, here is the recent share price of Rolls Royce, since they got a grant to develop SMR
August 8, 2025Aug 8 yeeha but can i buy one and what happens if it blows up ? They cost about 1.5 billion pounds each. Delivery in 10 years or less. What happens if it blows up? Nothing. It's designed with automatic shut down, not to blow up when no one is around.
August 8, 2025Aug 8 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2xezw3dkpo Ha ha ha Nearby, giant gas planet? Alpha Centauri is 26 trillion miles from here. Our most rapid space craft would take about 75,000 years to reach it. It is the nearest star system to the Sun, but saying it is 'just four and a half light years away' and that it is in our 'neighbourhood' doesn't really tell it like it is. The human species has only existed in its current form as opposed to some shambling ape like thing for about twice as long as it would take our fastest probe to get to this system.
August 8, 2025Aug 8 Do you know that the world adds 1GW of solar every other day? Thorium molten salt reactor is on schedule? Hydrogen can now be transported as powder in trucks under atmospheric pressure and ordinary temperature? How are they making the hydrogen? Last time I looked - 99% of hydrogen available to industry and domestic users (and that includes hydrogen injected experimentally into gas mains) was made by steam reformation of methane gas. This is a vastly more carbon intensive process than simply using methane gas directly for whatever process the hydrogen was used in. Methane gas CH4, is simply 4 hydrogen atoms attached to one carbon atom. It is a very clean fuel. Wasting energy removing that one carbon atom from the methane and then sending it up a smoke stack, and in the process burning a lot more methane to generated the necessary heat to get off that carbon atom is a VERY STUPID kind of idiocy. The outcome is more carbon emission than just burning the methane in the first place. If we had endless supplies of free and carbon neutral electricity, using surplus power to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen (H20) might be useful, but as a fuel we would be wasting energy because the process produces perhaps 60 - 70% efficiency. Better to have simply used that electricity as electricity. Why chuck away 30% to 40% of the power in an inefficient process if the hydrogen is to be used as a fuel anyway?
August 9, 2025Aug 9 Hydrogen economy is unimportant at the moment. I only mentioned it as worthwhile area of research. The main efforts of research are still on nuclear reactors of all types and nuclear fusion. The main development of renewables is solar and wind, onshore and offshore. I invest a fair bit into renewables so try to keep informed.
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