General comments – Page 6 – Fooyah

March 5 2013March 6 2013

Jack Frost

This Fooyah Communication concerns the weather and cars. It does not concern the fact that my car doesn’t like starting if the temperature is below 2 Celsius and nor does it concern the run of cold weather recently. I also have not done any controlled, scientific tests to confirm my observations but I would be interested in doing so.

Observation:

When there is a frost and the cars in my street have ice on the windows the side of the car that is closest to the buildings has less or zero ice.

Hypothesis:

One side of the car is warmer than the other resulting in less ice.

Mechanism:

The nearby buildings radiate heat and keep that side of the car warmer or slow its loss of heat.

Pretty picture:

Cars parked in the road in position A have less ice on the SW facing side which is nearest the buildings in the street. Cars parked in position B have less ice on the NW side which is closest to the buildings there. It is not a phenomenon to do with the sun as both of these positions are shaded from the sun’s rays in the early morning and there isn’t any sun when I go out to the car in the deep dark midwinter.

Most of the houses in these streets were built around 1880 and so have brick-thick walls and no cavities to insulate. Therefore they radiate the heat energy of the house quite efficiently. I need to park my car outside a modern house with cavity insulation to see what effect that has on the frost of the car.

Some not-very-sciency-maths-stuff:

I have made a huge number of simplifcations in the following calculations but the order of the result will be about correct and if it isn’t then I am sure that one of the F5 +1 will let me know. Essentially I have estimated the amount of energy lost by the air in my whole house and have assumed that about one third goes through the front of the building (the roof is quite well insulated). I have also assumed that the bricks of the house will lose some heat over the night and that this is radiated out although some will be radiated in. Then the car absorbs the energy without any loss. Basically, the final answer is a big ISH.

So the car absorbs about a couple of Watts per metre squared. That seems about right, but what do I know? Thermodynamics freaked me out at college!

March 3 2013March 3 2013

Not Green Fingers

Just spent a wonderfully pleasant hour with #1 son sowing seeds in the garden. We tidied the vegetable patch and got rid of the weeds and then planted this year’s selection of veg. It’s going to be carrots, parsnips and chillies. I don’t think the chillies are going to survive the cold so I’ll get some more and grow them inside.

We also read the instructions for the tomatoes and are actually going to grow them inside. They are on the kitchen window sill.

February 5 2013March 5 2013

A New Fallacy

I would like to introduce a new logical fallacy into the world.

The argument from “PROFESSIONALISM”.

This argument is provided by those who wish to change organisations and structures. The conversation might go something like:

“We want to make you work 20 hours more in a week. As a professional you must agree that this would increase the time you have to work.”

Essentially it seems rather a hard argument to try and battle. If you are a professional then you want to do your job to the best that you can. You also think that you are open to change and improving outcomes. So, this “you should agree with me” approach seems rather hard to argue against.

My problem with this argument backing up changes in an organisation is that pretty much anything can be justified using the “you’re a professional and so would want the best for your sector”. This is why the argument shouldn’t be used. If your argument can be extended (a bit like the slippery slope) to back up anything then it invalidates the points you are trying to put across.

“You can’t disagree with these new standards as they surely improve what it is that is expected of you as a professional.”

Again this seems hard to argue against. But there is a counter argument to be made. As a professional I should be expected to do all that I reasonalby can to ensure that I work my best. There is a limit to what can physically be done and the expectation on professionals should stop before that limit is reached.

Time for the world to use arguments that really back up what they want to do. Some evidence wouldn’t go amiss either [not just anecdote].

December 11 2012December 12 2012

Bring The Noise

The latest fashion for drinking water from a bottle with a “sports top” has caused an epidemic of slurp sounds as people release the bottle from thier lips and air rushes into the bottle.

As an aside, I would have to say that the bottled water industry is an utter con. In the UK practically all tap water is potable. It is such a waste of resources and CO2 that water is put into plastic or glass bottles and then moved around the country by truck to be sold in shops as an alternative to the (often purer) water that is supplied into every home by the kitchen tap. Bottled water should be taxed greatly to compensate for the waste. The marketers of bottled water have done a marvellous job and the environment is going to suffer. I can’t think of a single argument for selling bottled water in the UK.

So, the prefered delivery recepticle for bottles of water at the moment is the sports top. A bottle top that doesn’t have to be turned to open the bottle, just pulled with the hands and teeth. This, in itself, is not a problem. The problem is the small aperture for the movement of water into the mouth. When squeezing the bottle to force liquid refreshment into the mouth the bottle compresses and sometimes crackles as it does so, this is reasonably noisy. But the most annoying part is when the lips are removed from the bottle and the air rushing back into the bottle causes an awful slurping sound. The gust of wind pushing past the lips and teeth and through the aperture can make a sound that just grates.

When bottle tops were screw tops there was plenty of space for air to enter the bottle IF you chose to have a small gap for air at the top of your lips, just under your nose. Now, apparently, this is an incovenient method of bottle top. Everyone should be using the sports top but not everyone is doing sport. I think it should be renamed the common top for lazy people. Let’s have a new design top for proper sports people.

To stop the slurp you just need to blow air into the bottle and allow the water to flow out into your mouth without creating the negative pressure in the bottle. Simple.

October 2 2012

Changing Appearance

I’ve just been editing my theme files of this website to remove the “leave a comment” link at the bottom of pages. I have no idea about php but I can see how it works from looking at the files stored on my server. A little bit of searching of the internet (world wide web really) and I found the sections to remove from my index.php file. I think this has meant that the website looks a little neater.

However, I do need to have another look and edit out the | symbol that appears at the end of each communication after the tags for that communication. One of the issues is that it is hard to see where these parts of the php file are when you already have deleted the “leave a comment” bit.

Anyway, it’s been about 14 months since I started this website and I am finally doing some tidying up. If they update the theme that I am using then I’ll have to do the whole editing thing again, BOO.

July 8 2012July 9 2012

Peanut Butter

The picture should be quite evident. It started as a quarter of a slice of bread with peanut butter on it. Then #2 got hold of it!

May 6 2012

Still Life Study

Number 1 took this photo. I guess it shows his main interest: Nutella! Perhaps it signifies the path of growing knowledge?

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