links

What a Lot We Missed!

In our occasional (well it’s been something like three weeks since the last) series we have a really bumper crop of links to items I’ve spotted but which you may have missed — and which I think may be of interest.

First up we have an item on cracking codes, specifically in this case the easy (to us) but confusing (to our ancestors) Pigpen Cipher

And then there’s a cabal of crackers who have opened a 250-Year-Old Code to find (some variant of) freemasonry within.

Not quite a code? Well maybe it is, because this amazing 120-year-old “musical box” just so perfectly mimics a bird. Well it would be perfect if they could work out what the bird was!

And so to another amazing piece of Victorian engineering: Tower Bridge. Apparently the walkways high above the river are to get (part) glass floors, so people can look down on the bridge when it opens. I wonder how many heads will manage that one? Sadly I doubt mine will.

If a little red wine is good for you … Why you really should prefer red over white.

And talking of red, some clever chemists have been able to tweak one of the key pigments in our visual system so it is sensitive further into the infra-red. The implication is that this would give us much richer red vision. Yep that should be easy, just change the metal in the complex … oh wait there is no metal!

So yes, it’s all down to experimental science; time spent at the laboratory bench. But what about when you have an experiment that outlives you? Yep, you have to find an heir. The story of two such experiments from the same university.

Back to colour for a moment … So why is the sky blue not violet? Excellent trick if you can pull this one off!

We all know how people of Pompeii died, right? Well maybe not so fast. Some interesting perspectives both here and here.

Ash on the floor? Oh dear, you need to know how to clean your house in 15 minutes. No, I don’t believe it either!

Is it a filter? Is it a manufacturing plant? It’s a cleanroom — which is actually a plant that manufactures pure air. And it’s all done by big fans and gravity. An interesting read, especially when you consider this was one of the gateway technologies to our modern electronically connected world … some part of whatever device you’re reading this one was made in a cleanroom.

Ten well-known facts that are nothing of the sort.

But then, once upon a time, we didn’t know how to make cheese either. Seems we learnt longer ago than was thought, like 7500 years ago!

Which is all probably down to some variant of the restless genes which have (and still do) driven some to explore further afield.

Meanwhile back at home in the UK there’s been a project running for the last 10-ish years to photograph and put online images of every oil painting which is owned by the nation. All 211,861 of them! And it has finally achieved it’s aim. Telegraph article about the project. And the Your Paintings website itself which is free for anyone to use. What a fantastic achievement and a wonderful resource!


So from the sublime to the prosaic and worse …

Amusing snippet detailing the top ways we (well Americans) manage to accidentally (one assumes) injure their genitals. Be warned, boys and girls: don’t play with your genitals!

And at long last the UN has got round to approving an agreement on banning female genital mutilation. I don’t care how ancient and how supposedly important a ritual this is, it should have been stamped on long, long ago.

Mind you it seems that pubic hair is in even greater danger extinction than we thought. Oh dear! As if they don’t have anything better to do with themselves.

After all of which we probably all need a bit of stress relief.

Happy popping!

words

Word : Peavey

Peavey

Well, neither the OED:

A lumberer’s cant-hook having a spike at the end of the lever.

nor the more US-centric Free Dictionary:

An implement consisting of a wooden shaft with a metal point and a hinged hook near the end, used to handle logs

actually help us a lot here.

Fortunately Wikipedia is more forthcoming:

A peavey or peavey hook is a logging tool consisting of a handle, generally from 30 to 50 inches long … with a metal spike protruding from the end. The spike is rammed into a log, then a hook (at the end of an arm attached to a pivot a short distance up the handle) grabs the log at a second location. Once engaged, the handle gives the operator leverage to roll or slide or float the log to a new position.

The peavey was named for blacksmith Joseph Peavey of Upper Stillwater, Maine, who invented the tool as a refinement to the cant hook …

And just so’s you know a cant hook is a peavey with a blunt end.

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 57

OH — MY — GOD. Week 57 of the experiment has been just the most truly awful week. I’ve spent effectively the whole week with the most dreadful UTI. 7 days on and I’m getting better but I’m certainly not there yet. This week has been the lowest in terms of depression/mood since records began in September 2010 — and that includes the time of the complications following my colonoscopy. Bastard!

So that’s why this week’s report is late — I ran out of “go” yesterday.

Nevertheless I have managed to find a few things that cheered me pathetic soul during the week …

  1. Le Truc Vert. On Monday, Noreen and I both had early afternoon meetings in central London. We trundled off mid-morning and had lunch at Le Truc Vert in North Audley Street, just a few yards from the US Embassy. This is Mayfair, so we’re not talking the “cheapskate” end of the market, although Le Truc Vert isn’t outrageously expensive either. We indulged ourselves with some mouthwatering steak and a glass of red wine before parting for our respective meetings. Le Truc Vert promises to become a firm favourite.

    [It is about this point when the week started to go to hell in a handcart. And no it wasn’t the bistro; the signs were there before that.]

  2. Fog. On Tuesday night it was thick with fog. No, not a pea-souper. Almost no-one under the age of 65 has seen a proper London pea-souper; the last big one was I think in 1952. Even the thick, dirty fogs of my childhood in outer London, when you could see only about 3 feet, were pretty tame. No, this was just good, old-fashioned, clean white fog. And it was freezing. Visibility here was probably down to about 100 yards. I like fog; I always have; even those nasty dirty ones of my childhood. It’s disorientating; mysterious; ethereal.
  3. Rime on Trees. On Wednesday morning the freezing fog had left the trees covered in rime. Beautiful filigree white lace in an ethereal mist. Our silver birch tree looked gorgeous; real picture-book stuff that we hardly ever see in London.
  4. Beans on Toast at Midnight. This is the sort of daft thing that happens when you’re ill. Very late, like gone 1130, on Thursday evening, having eaten almost nothing for two days, I needed beans on toast. Why beans on toast I have no clue! Now Noreen is a great believer in eating what you fancy, when you fancy it, at such times. So she trotted off and brought me beans on toast. So there I am, at a few minutes to midnight, sitting in bed, eating beans on toast. And at times like this such things are stunning by how good they are.
  5. Noreen. Generally during the experiment I have refrained naming Noreen amongst my five selections, despite that she deserves it every week! But this week she really has been magnificent. She’s mopped up all the things which needed doing urgently and which I couldn’t do, as well as providing me food when I needed it and company. She organised all the Christmas cards (luckily I had already printed address labels) just leaving me a pile I needed to scribble in. And she has wrapped and posted all the parcels. I just could not have done any of that this week. I’m not sure Noreen appreciates just how much I appreciate what she does, and her input to the “partnership”. Somehow words never seem to say it quite right!