What with being ill over the past few days, I have committed a heinous familial sin; I have missed my brother Paul’s birthday and needs must make amends. In addition Angie has just caught the nasty little virus I’ve just had, so while I’m having a few days off I shall be playing nurse while she sits in bed and catches up on her viewing of ‘Millennium’. I’m not so keen on it, but then again, I never really liked the X files or any of that genre all that much either. It’s okay, but I’m really just not that interested.
Notwithstanding; I have presented Paul with a small pewter pocket flask and an unusual Malt Whiskey to fill it with for his birthday along with an apologetic birthday card and hope he forgives me for my failing. Perhaps he can wet his lips with it when he goes playing his bagpipes and think well of his erring younger brother once in a while.
I haven’t written much this last week. It’s not that I’ve been lazy, it’s just that what with one thing or another, the mental cogs have not been meshing very well; ergo, my output has been waning. To be honest I think I just need a good rest.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
Up a bit, down a bit
Almost collapsed on Wednesday whilst doing my day job. I had been suffering with a mild cough and ended up almost needing to be carried home. Well, considering I’m just short of 18 stone, they would have had a job, but I managed to get transported to my front door before collapsing onto the front room sofa for a couple of hours. Very light headed and woozy, very unstable on my feet. Went to the Doctors today, which I didn’t do me much good as he concluded I’ve got a viral infection which antibiotics or other medications won’t touch. Water, lots of, fresh air when I feel up to it, paracetomol for the fevers. Oh yes and rest.
On the writing front I’ve managed a few hundred words on the upstairs laptop, but nothing I take any real pride in. My head is all wrong ways round at the moment and I’m having difficulty thinking straight for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch.
Never mind; on the plus front an old mate who has asked to remain nameless says he has been passing copies of one of my old patented inventions around. On any number of occasions I must have bored the poor sod senseless with just how good it was for taking the edge off road and rail congestion. Poor sod. Never mind, it never did me any real good; but then I’m good at finding solutions, but not so wonderful at persuading the people who matter of their merits. More often than not; whenever I’ve put these ideas forward they’ve been dismissed as ‘crank’ stuff without a proper hearing from the money men.
The invention we were talking about was my part solution to congestion; quite an elegant bridging solution between roads, foot or rail. Well at least I thought so (But then I would, wouldn’t I?). The overhead Minitram system is a simple solution to a complex problem. I got the idea for the switching system one day in London whilst doing a job near Oxford Circus in November 2003. After that, everything just slotted into place. Routing systems, rail switching, the whole enchilada.
There have been similar solutions in the past, but none have ever been lightweight enough or flexible enough to provide the extra layer of public transport with the privacy and security that a car provides for example.
This one for example looks good, but how are the disabled to use it? You need to go up a flight of stairs to get to a boarding point for crying out loud. The same for all the other lightweight overhead monorail systems. They all end up being too heavy or too inflexible and complex.
You get round all the stability and switching complexity issues with a simple fixed lightweight primary & secondary rail system and cantilever arm like the one I came up with in 2004. Simple, proven technology that is both practical and cheap. Most of it comes in a ‘bolt together’ package that uses existing devices to deliver. Sensor packages which have been available since the 1990’s. Proven lightweight material technologies.
Is trundling along 4-5 metres above the street safe? Well let me think; the door interlock only opens if the sensors confirm it is on the ground in a stop, or a special override is used. If the power fails, the cab trundles to the next stop under battery power and shuts down there using the same kind of shutdown routine as a UPS does with a computer system. All the safety aspects have been thought through. About the only thing I was never sure of was the bending moment of the rail section.
All that and it’s scalable; you build it in loops, one to a street. You want a new interchange, you stick on a new secondary rail loop which can’t be accessed until the Wi-Fi guidance points go in. Want to add a street to the system? You stick in a new primary loop and download the upgrades to every autonomous cab unit. The day to day working of the system is, saving the passengers getting on and off, a mostly people free affair. Which is what you want from public transport. The cab software will even choose an alternate route if the loops between it and it’s destination is too congested, or even shut down because of an accident.
Oh bloody hell, I’m pontificating again. Must be the fever.
On the writing front I’ve managed a few hundred words on the upstairs laptop, but nothing I take any real pride in. My head is all wrong ways round at the moment and I’m having difficulty thinking straight for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch.
Never mind; on the plus front an old mate who has asked to remain nameless says he has been passing copies of one of my old patented inventions around. On any number of occasions I must have bored the poor sod senseless with just how good it was for taking the edge off road and rail congestion. Poor sod. Never mind, it never did me any real good; but then I’m good at finding solutions, but not so wonderful at persuading the people who matter of their merits. More often than not; whenever I’ve put these ideas forward they’ve been dismissed as ‘crank’ stuff without a proper hearing from the money men.
The invention we were talking about was my part solution to congestion; quite an elegant bridging solution between roads, foot or rail. Well at least I thought so (But then I would, wouldn’t I?). The overhead Minitram system is a simple solution to a complex problem. I got the idea for the switching system one day in London whilst doing a job near Oxford Circus in November 2003. After that, everything just slotted into place. Routing systems, rail switching, the whole enchilada.
There have been similar solutions in the past, but none have ever been lightweight enough or flexible enough to provide the extra layer of public transport with the privacy and security that a car provides for example.
This one for example looks good, but how are the disabled to use it? You need to go up a flight of stairs to get to a boarding point for crying out loud. The same for all the other lightweight overhead monorail systems. They all end up being too heavy or too inflexible and complex.You get round all the stability and switching complexity issues with a simple fixed lightweight primary & secondary rail system and cantilever arm like the one I came up with in 2004. Simple, proven technology that is both practical and cheap. Most of it comes in a ‘bolt together’ package that uses existing devices to deliver. Sensor packages which have been available since the 1990’s. Proven lightweight material technologies.
Is trundling along 4-5 metres above the street safe? Well let me think; the door interlock only opens if the sensors confirm it is on the ground in a stop, or a special override is used. If the power fails, the cab trundles to the next stop under battery power and shuts down there using the same kind of shutdown routine as a UPS does with a computer system. All the safety aspects have been thought through. About the only thing I was never sure of was the bending moment of the rail section.
All that and it’s scalable; you build it in loops, one to a street. You want a new interchange, you stick on a new secondary rail loop which can’t be accessed until the Wi-Fi guidance points go in. Want to add a street to the system? You stick in a new primary loop and download the upgrades to every autonomous cab unit. The day to day working of the system is, saving the passengers getting on and off, a mostly people free affair. Which is what you want from public transport. The cab software will even choose an alternate route if the loops between it and it’s destination is too congested, or even shut down because of an accident.
Oh bloody hell, I’m pontificating again. Must be the fever.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Water Torture
Whenever something is wrong in a house it has a distinct knock on effect. Stuff which shouldn’t matter becomes part of the daily abrasion that wears down even the strongest spirit. A constantly dripping tap is one such. Especially when dealing with one girl beginning to feel the loosening of parental bonds that come with her own new life. One wears you down, like water on rock, and weakens you for dealing with the other.
Making a difference in a century old terraced house like ours isn’t difficult; all it takes is money. Regrettably, money is one thing which is perpetually in short supply, despite two full-time incomes coming into the household.
This payday, Angie and I decided to make a small change in the kitchen. The fifteen year old pillar taps over the kitchen sink were running slower and slower and becoming ever more unsteady on their bases. This situation was getting to the point where getting enough water in the sink to do the washing up was taking half an hour. We can’t afford, nor do we have space for, a dishwasher; so we opted for replacing the taps over our old fashioned butlers sink.
These sort of tasks generally fall to me as we can’t afford the plumbers round here, and I am, amongst my many micro-skills, someone who can handle copper pipework; not to mention being quite capable of doing the odd bit of electrical wiring. The only things I really lack to do the job full time is the right piece of paper to say I can. Having started my working life as an Engineer and so learned the basics of wiring, machining and pipework as part of an old fashioned apprenticeship. Notwithstanding; you don’t need all that knowledge to fit a new set of taps, but it helps with knowing details like sealing off the joints with PTFE tape on the fitting threads to ensure there are no leaks – simple stuff like that.
The difference a simple thing like stopping a dripping wonky tap makes to a household is enormous. Almost like a shadow has lifted and the light shines again into a once darkened hovel. Angie is a little more relaxed, therefore so am I; which means I can get on with my writing in relative peace and quiet. “The life and death of a Bill Sticker” Manuscript has picked up, and I know where I’m going with it now. How to engage with the reader and maintain a thread of suspense throughout the narrative. The Cerberus Conspiracy trilogy goes in fits and starts, and I really need time out to bang my head out on the keyboard.
My trouble is that I need uninterrupted writing time to focus on the entire narrative thread. When I can see the story outline in its entirety, everything just flows. Rather like water from new taps really. Wonder what I need to replace in my head to make it all flow like that?
Making a difference in a century old terraced house like ours isn’t difficult; all it takes is money. Regrettably, money is one thing which is perpetually in short supply, despite two full-time incomes coming into the household.
This payday, Angie and I decided to make a small change in the kitchen. The fifteen year old pillar taps over the kitchen sink were running slower and slower and becoming ever more unsteady on their bases. This situation was getting to the point where getting enough water in the sink to do the washing up was taking half an hour. We can’t afford, nor do we have space for, a dishwasher; so we opted for replacing the taps over our old fashioned butlers sink.
These sort of tasks generally fall to me as we can’t afford the plumbers round here, and I am, amongst my many micro-skills, someone who can handle copper pipework; not to mention being quite capable of doing the odd bit of electrical wiring. The only things I really lack to do the job full time is the right piece of paper to say I can. Having started my working life as an Engineer and so learned the basics of wiring, machining and pipework as part of an old fashioned apprenticeship. Notwithstanding; you don’t need all that knowledge to fit a new set of taps, but it helps with knowing details like sealing off the joints with PTFE tape on the fitting threads to ensure there are no leaks – simple stuff like that.
The difference a simple thing like stopping a dripping wonky tap makes to a household is enormous. Almost like a shadow has lifted and the light shines again into a once darkened hovel. Angie is a little more relaxed, therefore so am I; which means I can get on with my writing in relative peace and quiet. “The life and death of a Bill Sticker” Manuscript has picked up, and I know where I’m going with it now. How to engage with the reader and maintain a thread of suspense throughout the narrative. The Cerberus Conspiracy trilogy goes in fits and starts, and I really need time out to bang my head out on the keyboard.
My trouble is that I need uninterrupted writing time to focus on the entire narrative thread. When I can see the story outline in its entirety, everything just flows. Rather like water from new taps really. Wonder what I need to replace in my head to make it all flow like that?
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Birthday
My dear lovely wife Angela surprised me beyond measure yesterday by taking me first to a very nice lunch at the Golden Cross at Ardens Grafton, thence to a very pleasant health spa at a place that was once part of the timeshare boom.
Walton Hall is currently undergoing a £23 million makeover to Hotel and Health Spa. The Health Spa is only a Gym with a small pool and associated Sauna and Steam room facility at present, but once all the rough edges on the site are ironed out and a few more services offered should be very nice indeed. Our bedroom had not just a shower, but a ‘wet room’ facility, which I never used, as I took all my showers over at the Gym. We had a large flat screen wall mounted digital TV where I discovered that despite all the extra channel choices, all television broadcasting is still pretty lowbrow. The room was air conditioned and spacious and the bed a very comfy king sized affair. The room had patio style doors which opened out onto a small lawned area where we sat this morning, reading the Sunday Telegraph. Very civilised. All for £139 for the pair of us. Comfy chairs too.
We drank some mini bottles of champagne that we’d brought along with us, fooled around and generally misbehaved together. We ate well, did I mention that the food was good, although I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try some of the starters on the evenings menu and ended up with an omelette instead.
Although I didn’t do any writing, but read a lot instead, I feel I could get used to this. As Angie observed; my big wide schoolboy grin was back after too long an absence. Don’t know what I’d do without her.
Walton Hall is currently undergoing a £23 million makeover to Hotel and Health Spa. The Health Spa is only a Gym with a small pool and associated Sauna and Steam room facility at present, but once all the rough edges on the site are ironed out and a few more services offered should be very nice indeed. Our bedroom had not just a shower, but a ‘wet room’ facility, which I never used, as I took all my showers over at the Gym. We had a large flat screen wall mounted digital TV where I discovered that despite all the extra channel choices, all television broadcasting is still pretty lowbrow. The room was air conditioned and spacious and the bed a very comfy king sized affair. The room had patio style doors which opened out onto a small lawned area where we sat this morning, reading the Sunday Telegraph. Very civilised. All for £139 for the pair of us. Comfy chairs too.
We drank some mini bottles of champagne that we’d brought along with us, fooled around and generally misbehaved together. We ate well, did I mention that the food was good, although I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try some of the starters on the evenings menu and ended up with an omelette instead.
Although I didn’t do any writing, but read a lot instead, I feel I could get used to this. As Angie observed; my big wide schoolboy grin was back after too long an absence. Don’t know what I’d do without her.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Fifty
On the 12th of March this year (2007) I attain the age of fifty. This means I have lived for five decades. Fifty rotations of the Earth around the sun. Two hundred seasons. Fifty Springs, Summers, Autumns and Winters. Six hundred calendar months. Two thousand, six hundred weeks. More depressingly; two thousand, six hundred Monday mornings. Over Eighteen thousand rotations of the planet. Wow.
A lot has happened in that time; space travel, digital technology, the Internet. A lot of bad stuff has happened as well; Wars, Famines, plagues; but the good news is that humanity is still going strong. People still think it’s worth the effort and time to raise a family (Although for others, children are the unforeseen consequence of unprotected sex). Trees are still growing; the tide still comes in twice a day. The world is not dying; it’s thriving. Despite all the doomsayers and apocalypse addicts. Life adapts, it is a wonderful thing.
My downside is that writing success has so far eluded me, but I console myself it’s only a matter of time before the break happens and I make the transition from dilettante to professional. I’m still breathing and reasonably healthy; which is better than many of my contemporaries.
Of course I hate my day job; but doesn’t every writer? It’s just a means to an end even if my employers want me to treat it as the whole reason for my existence. Employers for me are simply a temporary resource; a meal ticket for which I have to pay the penance of hard graft and occasional physical discomfort. It’s also occasionally a source of humiliation, but again; it won’t be for much longer. I’ll either quit and go contracting for the last few months, or swallow my pride and carry on until July, when we pack up and try to make a new life overseas.
My raison d’etre sits in the next room and has intimated that she is going to treat me to ‘something very nice’ for my fiftieth birthday. Bless all of her tiny toes. I do so love that woman. Sometimes I wonder why she loves me, but she seems to.
A lot has happened in that time; space travel, digital technology, the Internet. A lot of bad stuff has happened as well; Wars, Famines, plagues; but the good news is that humanity is still going strong. People still think it’s worth the effort and time to raise a family (Although for others, children are the unforeseen consequence of unprotected sex). Trees are still growing; the tide still comes in twice a day. The world is not dying; it’s thriving. Despite all the doomsayers and apocalypse addicts. Life adapts, it is a wonderful thing.
My downside is that writing success has so far eluded me, but I console myself it’s only a matter of time before the break happens and I make the transition from dilettante to professional. I’m still breathing and reasonably healthy; which is better than many of my contemporaries.
Of course I hate my day job; but doesn’t every writer? It’s just a means to an end even if my employers want me to treat it as the whole reason for my existence. Employers for me are simply a temporary resource; a meal ticket for which I have to pay the penance of hard graft and occasional physical discomfort. It’s also occasionally a source of humiliation, but again; it won’t be for much longer. I’ll either quit and go contracting for the last few months, or swallow my pride and carry on until July, when we pack up and try to make a new life overseas.
My raison d’etre sits in the next room and has intimated that she is going to treat me to ‘something very nice’ for my fiftieth birthday. Bless all of her tiny toes. I do so love that woman. Sometimes I wonder why she loves me, but she seems to.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Freemans and flooding
I love freebies! Today I got a phone call from Angie at about 15:30. She'd been offered free tickets for the RST in Stratford. The tickets were for Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare's Roman plays. Now I've never actually read or seen the play, mainly because it has always slipped below my very cluttered radar.
Yes, I would see it again. A roaring study in vainglory and pride, of stupidity and revenge. As always I love the language the plays are couched in, which made a welcome change from the current idiocies of the day job.
On the way home it started to rain, and seeing as the river level in Stratford is quite high at present, I was wondering whether we were due for another inundation. On the far side of the river, the Recreation ground and cricket field are still under water, and what with rain forcast for tonight will remain so as the ground is quite saturated. No matter, we live far enough from the river not to worry. When the waters start lapping on my front doorstep I shall know we're in trouble.
Yes, I would see it again. A roaring study in vainglory and pride, of stupidity and revenge. As always I love the language the plays are couched in, which made a welcome change from the current idiocies of the day job.
On the way home it started to rain, and seeing as the river level in Stratford is quite high at present, I was wondering whether we were due for another inundation. On the far side of the river, the Recreation ground and cricket field are still under water, and what with rain forcast for tonight will remain so as the ground is quite saturated. No matter, we live far enough from the river not to worry. When the waters start lapping on my front doorstep I shall know we're in trouble.
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