Here’s today’s toy that number 1 son took to nursery. He likes cooking!
Toys of the Sun part 9
Today’s toys that number 1 took to nursery.
Just a Sunday afternoon
What a lovely afternoon! Spent time in Whitstable, Kent. Lunch, play, skipping stones and an ice cream. It doesn’t get much better than that. My children were a delight! And I skimmed an 8er.
The Union flag through the orangery roof:
Castle turrets:
More of the castle and a lovely sky:
No real sea movement. Reminds me of Flatford Mill or it would if it was raining!
And here’s the beach 3D style! From Photosynth:
End of the Walnut Tree
The end of one of the pubs in the Kent village of Eccles. It’s a bit of a shame really. They are going to build some houses on the ground because at least they’ll make money for the land-owners. We do have one pub left in the village and I guess I can’t complain as I went into the Walnut Tree just once in the 6 years it was open and I lived in the village.
Toys of the Son part 8
Today’s toys that number 1 took to nursery.
Latest iPhone background
My latest lock screen background.
It’s the Shrike for those of you who don’t know. For more information look up Hyperion or Dan Simmons.
Winter Solar Farm
Here’s the local solar farm in the winter. It’d be interesting to know the power output of the whole farm. Also, the panels don’t face south, more south-east. Perhaps that’s when the sun is most useful? Or perhaps clouds tend to cover the sky in the afternoon? Not sure. Perhaps an email to the company is needed. Watch this space.
Just found this information:
The 4.9 megawatt solar farm covers 26 acres of the former SCA paper mill site, which closed in 2009 with the loss of 130 jobs.
So that’s 0.19 MW/acre. For comparison the Magnox nuclear reactor Sizewell A in Suffolk created 420MW for a land area of 245 acres. This gives 1.7 MW/acre, nearly ten times the power. It’d be interesting to compare running costs!
Toys of the Son Part 7
Today’s toys taken to nursery. A double decker bus and a camper van.
Lego 5 Model 5761
Number 1 got this for no particular reason. Possibly because he loves diggers – JCB yellow might be his favourite colour!
BBC Headline #6
BBC Headline from the iPhone app today:
Motorists warned of ice ‘hazard’
Problems with this headline are:
Quotation in Headline
No Shit Sherlock
Quotation in Headline
Normally the weasels at the BBC use a quotation so they can state anything they want in the headline. Get some whacko to spout off: “them there aliens have stolen my memory and taken body probe photos for their files” and you can use it in your headline. You don’t really have to ask someone outside the office. Just ask the journalist next to you and claim them as a “source”. Now in this case the word HAZARD is in quotations. Does that mean that the conditions aren’t really hazardous? Or does it mean that the level of hazardness is open to some form of personal interpretation? Is ice on the roads considered a hazard or not? What knobs they are – these headline writers.
No Shit Sherlock
We have had snow reports for about a week now and the Met Office were lovely and accurate (or rather chaos didn’t interfere!). We have known it was going to be cold. You only have to look out of the window to see snow and frozen paths. Isn’t it a bit obvious that the roads might be icy too? My car shows me the outside temperature when I have the electrics turned on. Could the negative sign before the numbers mean something important? How about that funny snowflake symbol I see on the dashboard whenever it’s really cold? I hate how much the obvious needs to be stated to make people think.
Avoidance
This week I shall be mostly trying to avoid the Super Bowl result. I recorded it last night but will take a few days to watch it.
Kids, you see. They don’t get it. Gone are the days of missing lectures because I stayed up until x o’clock watching the Super Bowl and getting a bit drunk. Now I have kids I have the issue that they don’t seem to want to get out of bed late or have a lazy day. They always wake up by 06:30 and just rush, rush all day. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
So I’ll be watching the NFL final game over a few nights, trying to make the next play before falling asleep and getting up with the kids. I guess it beats my college days of not really seeing past the first quarter while playing Chase The Ace and making far too much noise in the hall’s tv room!
Weather Happens
So, the snow that had been forecast for about a week has arrived. There’s about 8cm in the garden but it’s not good for snowballs. Looking forward to taking number one son out later. Probably do some sledging.
First thing on the news was the chaos that the snow brought! Now, we generally have about 2 or 3 days of snow a year. There’s no reason for us to be used to it and no reason for everything to work once it does snow. Other countries are more organised because they have weeks or months with snow on the ground and have to live with it. We don’t, so there!
Range Rover Drivers
It has taken a long time but I think it is now the time to relegate BMW drivers from the much coveted top spot of the Charts of Arrogance. They have been surpassed by a more irritating and rude bunch of gits. I speak, of course, of Range Rover drivers.
This collection of people who drive the huge, gas guzzling, aero-dynamically inefficient, four wheel drive vehicles are quickly turning out to be a bunch of BMWankers.
It used to be that BMW drivers failed to realise that their car had indicators or that to drive too close to another car was dangerous. Everyone knew that if there was a car doing dangerous stuff (and it wasn’t a Citroen Saxo driven by a baseball cap wearing, pierced youth) then it was going to be a BMW. Their reputation was awful. If you were being cut up on a motorway, or cut up at a junction or a car just braked infront of you and turned without warning then it was a BMW. It was just their right to do that.
Now, I find (spot the confirmation bias) that it is Range Rover drivers who do all the nasty stuff on the roads and endanger my life. They don’t indicate. They pull infront of you. They drive too close to you. They are the NEW and CROWNED arrogant arses of the tarmac. Whether it is the height that these drivers have to sit or just the money they must have to own one of these behemoths they really don’t seem to care about any other drivers. Roadcraft to them is just doing what you want, selfishly ignoring the safety of the rest of us.
What would the roads be like if everyone drove Range Rovers? Perhaps, because BMWs are rather ubiquitous and affordable it means that they have regressed back to the norm? Or it could be an economic thing. The type of person who thought that BMWs were cool and nice 15 years ago has now morphed into the type of middle aged man who thinks that owning a Range Rover means that they “own” the road and the right to endanger my safety. If they really used these cars for off-road and risked their own safety then good for them. But, they don’t.
I would like to appeal to these drivers’ sense of community and social responsibility in an attempt to make them see the error of their ways but it is clear they have none. So I won’t.