The T-shirt I am wearing today has a 2001 film quotation on it. This is so I can quickly see the video.
Executive
Thanks to Hilton at Canary Wharf we just got upgraded to an Executive Suite. It’s nice! Top floor overlooking London’s Docklands.
Here’s our room:
The bathroom:
Here’s the breakfast table:
Dodgy Websites
Thank goodness for the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority). If we didn’t have them then the country would be full of misleading claims about products and services. However, there is an issue, adverts and websites can only be adjudicated once the ASA have received a complaint. This means that the misleading claims (lies) have to be made public before there is any action. Therefore most of the population aren’t aware of the fact that an advert might have been withdrawn. The damage will have been done. Perhaps adjuducations should be carried in a short segment at the end of the main TV news shows on ITV, BBC and Sky. This would cut some of the issues of publish and then retract, maybe making advertising even better than it is now.
If you are unsure of what sort of adverts have had adjudications then click here. This should take you to a page with the most recent rulings. Look carefully as this is a list of adverts and claims that have been ruled upon and not just those that are lies. Check the complaint to see what the issue was with the original advert.
The ASA also has a page of non-compliant online advertisers. The list is here. It will probably come as no surprise that a lot of these websites are for products or services that must be considered “woo“. If you can’t substantiate your claims then the chances are you are peddling bogus products or SCAMs.
I am proud to let you know that a complaint I sent to the ASA was acted on for print versions but the website of this company still (as of 7 Nov 2012) promotes amber necklaces for toddlers as a way of soothing teething pains. There is no good evidence that this works. The ASA page on this non-compliance is here. Avoid their products!
Alien
Here’s #2 son with a bike helmet on. Most amusing I think you’ll agree!
Reaper
This is not a communication about the TV show Reaper, although I thought that was good fun. It is also not about Mr Grimm as what could I say about death? It is definitely not about the rock classic “(Don’t fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. This communication is about the rare ambiguity that occurs in iTunes.
I rather like the music genre of Aggrotech or as it is also known – Hellectro. There is a band called Reaper who have released some music and recently it appeared that is was quite cheap on iTunes so I downloaded all of it.
The problem is that when I played back the EP “Monsters in my head” it was quite clearly a different genre of music. It was more electro than hellectro. Perhaps this was an early Reaper piece but I had my doubts. A little bit of Internet research and I discovered that there were two Reapers of similar music but different enough for me to spot. Bugger. “Monsters in my head” is a little too clean for me.
So I checked the other Reaper downloads and it turns out that the Reaper album “Gardens of Seth” is by a metal band and definitely not anything whatsoever to do with Aggrotech. The ban might be Italian, definitely not from an English speaking country. As it stands “Gardens of Seth” is rather outdated and has a rather late eighties sound. It is quite good at what it is but not quite what I want. Perhaps I will listen to it more when I’m having an Iron Maiden revival.
The moral of this communication is that you should check discographies on the Internet before downloading songs by an artist whose tunes so far you have rather enjoyed.
Bridge
Here’s two pictures of the Forth Rail Bridge taken (while moving) from the Forth Road Bridge.
Home Grown
Picture of a spider we found at the bottom of the garden. It was about 20 mm long in the body.
Best Place In The World
Here’s a few photos of the best place in the world. When you are an aircraft geek there’s only the Smithsonian in Washington DC, all other places pale in comparison.
Space Shuttle Discovery
Another of Space Shuttle Discovery
The Lockheed SR71A Blackbird
More Blackbird
A Grumman F14 Tomcat
315 Feet
The car had to go to the tyre and brake people this week. I had noticed the feel of the brake pedal was changing slightly from smooth to a bit jerky when releasing pressure. This didn’t really concern me but the fact that the rear discs were looking rusty and there was only a thin band of clean metal had me worried.
The car went in to ATS Euromaster at 08:30 and I’d had the call by about 09:30. New pads and discs at the rear (I’d expected that), two new tyres as the fronts were worn to just about legal. I hadn’t really expected that but then I don’t hang around and a little sliding when it’s damp is good fun (no kids in the car and only where it’s safe and there’s space). I had mentioned that there was a slow puncture on the nearside rear tyre and it’s just aswell.
When I went to pick up the car it was still on the jacks so the guys could show me the problem that was causing the slow puncture. The inside of the tyre where the join normally occurs and is “welded” nicely was just a split. It had gone down to steel and would eventually have caused some serious issues. They believe it was a manufacturing fault and the tyre has been sent back to Pirelli and I hope I get a refund and I ended up paying for 3 tyres.
An interesting little fact that I hadn’t considered was that the new tyres went on the rear of the car and the worn tyres were swapped to the front. This is to try and ensure that when the car is on the limit it will understeer rather than oversteer. Understeer is much safer that oversteer and so by keeping the grip at the rear of the car (especially an estate where the rear is quite light) the car is safer to drive. Nice.
315 feet is the stopping distance of a car travelling at 70mph. This is the number given in the Highway Code. Most cars will stop much shorter than that. Should you ever be lost for a stopping distance then the formula s=v+(v^2)/20 works to give you the Highway Code numbers. The thinking and reaction time is the same number of feet as miles per hour and then the actual breaking distance is proportional to the speed squared. It’s all down to kinetic energy! See the Wolfram|Alpha stopping distance calculation here.
One Night
Over the last week I have “borrowed” the soundtrack to the Megadeth live DVD recorded in Buenos Aires – That One Night. Once the soundtrack was ripped I had to separate out the tracks so I could import the files into iTunes. This was rather fun and I enjoyed using Audacity.
This process is now complete and I have a lovely album on my iPhone of Megadeth live. I have to say that the energy and quality of the music is brilliant. It really makes me want to listen to the original songs again.
There were some issues. The orignal rip was rather quiet and I had to try and increase that within iTunes. Also I cut the tracks without always listening to them and I had two which had some acoustic impovisation in front (which would make sense watching the DVD but not when listening to the soundtrack) so I have gone back to my original recording and re-cut those tracks. Going to import them back into iTunes and onto my phone tonight. Love it all. :-)