Thursday 31 December 2009

it's just typical isn't it

I went to Carmarthen the other day to have my annual eye check and they found that my prescription needed some minor changes , I'm basically becoming more long sighted in my old age.... which means I can see a car number plate at 7 miles but can't read a book unless it's attached to a broom handle and held out in front of me .... anyway ...... I agreed to have different lenses fitted to my existing frames because despite being practically bullied into buying new frames...... I resisted, because my existing frames are comfortable so why change ?... so far so good you might think ?


This morning I sat on my very expensive frames shearing the left arm off completely on the day I was supposed to be having my glasses re-glazed ..... Joy !!

ahhh well, apparently they can fix broken frame arms, although knowing my luck I'll end up looking like Jack Duckworth complete with sellotape fixed arm....


Not too bad I've just got back from the opticians only £10 to repair the arm or £24 if they have to replace both.... (that makes sense ?)

Sunday 27 December 2009

Duran Duran

Has finally given up its secret for not starting reliably in the mornings/afternoons and nights... in fact any time was a bad time to start the Pug unless it was tinder dry and everybody was gasping for moisture in the zero humidity of the Gobi desert .... I had suspected for a long time that the underlying cause was electrical not carburettor related and today I finally got around to stripping down the electrics to see the what was causing the engine to turn over with not so much as a cough or even promise of a cough from the engine.....

I started at the coil and bridged a hefty screwdriver from the coil to about 1/2 inch off the bodywork turned the engine over and it flashed several times an even heftier blue/white spark.... with that evidence I saw absolutely no need to test it with my tongue whatsoever.....

Which led me to take off the distributor cap...everything seemed in order .... no cracks, arc burns , small furry animals or hibernating hedgehogs ......or anything in fact remotely suspicious... so I turned my attention to the rotor arm on first inspection it looked ok.... and I was about to put it back on but then I noticed a tiny gap between the centre contact and the arm outer contact .. I noticed on closer inspection less obvious HT arc damage I tested for continuity and there was none....Duhhhhhhhhh.... of course the HT would jump across the gap before it even got to the distributor cap contacts... which would account for why it was incredibly hard to start on damp mornings.... the slightest amount of damp would re-route the spark to earth... hence no ignition or very little.... The reason I had sort of ignored the rotor arm was because I had changed it less than a year ago... it just goes to show never assume anything... it must have been a faulty rotor arm for it to fail so quickly !!!

So left with no choice I have had to call on my father to give me a lift into Halfords to get a new rotor arm.... I await his arrival with duff rotor arm in my pocket !! :)

Ohhh and I've got a new phone.... Andrea was shamed into buying me a new one after losing mine just before Christmas (I've never lost a phone in my life !!!) .... She seems to think I'm not grateful ... but I am.... even if I have lost all of my numbers ........ not that anybody ever rings me.... but you never know Mrs Pitt may tire of her husband ;¬)


addendum :- It's the next day now .... and I can confirm that Duran Duran starts within a few seconds..... even on a bitterly cold and frosty morning.... previously it would have entailed endlessly turning the engine over.... flooding it with petrol.... flattening the battery.... getting out the boost starter/charger and eventually and probably more luck than anything the engine would start.... but it springs to life now !!! :) brilliant !!

Monday 21 December 2009

There is going to be a big bang soon .....

This 2460 metre (8070 foot) monster volcano called the Mayon volcano in the Philippines..... is showing signs of stirring, it's only slightly smaller than Mount St Helens.... So I have a feeling it may go when it does with an enormous big bang..... apparently tremors increased from 200 a day to over 500 a day and they have started evacuating people...... ahhh well it will keep temperatures down for a few years ;¬)

I just hope they get everybody evacuated from the danger area before she blows......

The only other thing of note is that I've lost a huge filling in one of my back molars its the one that had it's root canal dug out after a failed attempt/stab at by the ex spetznatz trained KGB dentist "Yolanda" ..... who has now been exiled back to Poland and is supplementing her salary by digging ditches in Poland in addition to her full time job of coal mining and power lifting in the Polish Olympic team..... to be honest I think it's beyond repair now .... :( but what a time to lose a filling on the 21st December !!! Well technically it wasn't a filling it was a small boulder of white resin which had I lost whilst chewing would have smashed my remaining teeth into small shards.... because you never stop chewing until you hear the bone shattering "CRUNCH" do you .... and you always think it's something you've eaten before you even register that it could be a filling..... Well in my experience that's what happens .......Anyway we shall see what year the dentist can fit me in when I eventually get through to the receptionists who NEVER answer their phone......

We are having my parents over for Christmas dinner, so that should be nice after their trip to Australia....(spoiled they are) even though they have already had a Christmas dinner in Australia albeit an early one....

Freya is stupidly excited about Christmas, although we are unable to put any presents under the Christmas tree because we would simply come down one morning to find them all opened and Freya probably playing quite happily with the empty boxes.... it's her first Christmas that she is going to remember probably.... She is at least showing some recognition that something is building in the excitement department... We will only have my step daughter and Freya present over Christmas Andrea's ex is having the boys, and that's because my step daughter is going Skiing to France, although the recent snow may well hamper the school's plans to fly from Luton Airport on boxing day..... we shall see .....

Well here is wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year and don't cane the Baileys too much ;¬)


Saturday 19 December 2009

Aren't mothers great ???

She has given me all her remaining photographs she has of me and anything else relating to me, When I left (spelt D.U.M.P.E.D) my first wife I didn't take the photographs my mother had given to me and my ex wife, so I had very little left to show my new family.... but thankfully a few have survived the many many years tucked away in a drawer....

My mother even found a collection of stories and pictures by Rhiannon my middle daughter.... she had quite a fixation with Disney characters especially dogs it seems... some of the stories are lovely .... even if they only go to one chapter... but all very well laid out and neatly done :)


This one above is of me in primary school at around Christmas the twatty hats kind of give it away I think, the things you could do with crepe paper and glue in those days .... I'm probably about 5 or 6 years old here ..... I'm the one third row back left.... it's weird I can still remember some of their names ... Andrew Declaire with the hat over his eyes.... Andrew Mculloch.... Nicola Bainbridge (I think).... but it's over 40 years ago now so a lonnnnnnnnnnnnng time ago....

And here is me with my elder sister Christine on my first day at school.... I remember it vividly .... and Gawd look at the modern car in the back ground ;¬)

... It's mad looking back at your life in photographs.... they take you right back there... something you can't do with a digital photograph.... you can't actually hold it in your hand..... ahhhh well .... I guess I must be getting a bit sentimental over Christmas.....

We'll be having NONE of that !!!


Bahhhh Humbug !!!

Friday 18 December 2009

How ridiculous


Some thieves in Poland have stolen the iconic sign above the Auschwitz camp, first off if it was stolen to order, who in their right mind would want to display it ? .....even if it is in a private collection and secondly if it was stolen in the hope that somebody might buy it on the open market I think they will have a hard job getting rid of it..... I certainly hope it doesn't get destroyed.... because it symbolises the cruelty and inhumanity and also highlights the sneering Nazi's of the time stating that "work makes you free"...... I hope they bring the thieves to justice quickly and it gets put back in it's rightful place as a symbol to all that was wrong with the Nazi regime.....

it just goes to show that even these days if something IS bolted down they'll steal it, and nothing is too sacred to be considered off limits.....

Monday 14 December 2009

Woohoo it's official

I'm a veteran !!


I have no idea what all this is about, I guess it must be some kind of PR stunt by the government. The only thing it's done is make me feel old !!!


Damn I'm going to have to practice the......

"you don't know what it was like man.....you weren't there man !!! (and of course the famous thousand yard stare)...."


I'll probably get another letter next week saying "due to your acceptance of your veterans badge this equates to acceptance of continued colour service" .....next stop is being booted out of a C31 transport on Khandahar air strip blinking in the bright sunshine, wearing a teflon sauce pan for a helmet and armed to the teeth with a pitchfork (not that the MOD is underfunded or anything) .....

Joking aside and although I don't actually agree with with war in Afghanistan, I've got to take my hat off to the lads and lasses out there who don't have a choice whether they fight or not, it's politicians who go to war not soldiers, soldiers just fight it for them, whether the war is right or wrong...and in the words of Lord Tennyson :-

"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:"


I should imagine if you put an assault rifle into most politicians hands and told them to go to war instead, there would be far fewer of them.......wars....... not politicians that is.... but fewer politicians would work equally well :) .... I would also imagine that the majority of them would actually and finally, be able to sprout diarrhoea from the correct orifice.....and who knows it may reduce the expense claims in Parliament.... In fact I think national service for politicians should be compulsory !!!

Good luck the lot of you out there..... and keep your heads down and hopefully one day you'll get a veterans badge too !! ....(although don't hold your breath like all things Army/Navy/Air force it's all brass and bullshit) ;¬)



Friday 11 December 2009

Unbelievable !!

A London gallery is looking for a £3,000 brick called "revolting brick" by artist Gavin Turk which went missing and was replaced with a worthless 40p equivalent.... no doubt titled "cheap trick brick"

No !!

They are looking for a signature on a worthless 40p brick .... he didn't make it !! (actually I personally think the brick is worth more than Gav's signature any-day !!)

I find some modern art unbelievably pretentious, first off who would pay £3000 for a brick with a signature on it ??? Some idiot no doubt will....where it will sit on some equally pretentious £6000 coffee table with a box of matches tipped into the centre of it .... "That's a Gavin Turk that is....." .... "Really ? I thought it was a brick" ..... "Oh please don't strike the match on it.... it's modern art!!"

I'd have been more impressed if he had actually made the brick from scratch rather than just write his name on it with a black Sharpie Pen.... apparently he did (signed) ten bricks and the one that's been nicked is 8th in the series....

That's about all that needs to be said about this pathetic excuse for art...


On a slightly different note, I've just been reliably informed that the old Milk factory in Carmarthen which houses the Nolan Windows factory is in the process of burning to the ground !!! So all you people who have ordered new double glazed windows and conservatories .... I think your order may be delayed until after Christmas ... or possibly forever ..... I should imagine 1st KMH are pretty worried as well, because they are right next to the old milk factory... and it must be true because I can see a pall of black smoke drifting across where the dual carriageway is about 5 miles away and seagulls are dropping from the sky.... The insurance company isn't going to be pleased but at least Nolan's ledger will look slightly better after they've paid out.... (call me cynical)


Ps/ I have 2600 bricks personally signed by me at the bargain price of just £2999 each .... paypal or bank transfer only ... Thank you :)

Sunday 6 December 2009

Gordon Brown is an arse.....

Not only has he brought this country to it's knees with his long standing economic policies, but now he is saying climate sceptics are .... and I quote :-

There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change

Flat Earthers ???? Anti Science ???

There are plenty of real "scientists" who dispute climate change being man made, which I presume is what he is harping on about by carefully wording it as climate change rather than global warming or even worse anthropogenic global warming...

The climate on earth is an immensely complex subject, and the problem with some scientists is that they seem to think they have accurately described the mechanisms of climate and what it is doing and why.....

We sent man to the moon on hard science, we knew what was ahead of us, how gravity effected orbits and the complexities of propulsion and trajectory.... and we succeeded, because we knew what was out there.

Climate on the other hand is not a cut and dried equation that has been solved by any means, I would go as far as to say that as a "science" it is still very much in it's infancy... but here we are about to discuss and possibly make laws at the Copenhagen summit on emissions and carbon trading, which will have far reaching effects on developed countries economies, increased taxation, and spiralling costs..... do they seriously think that by buying carbon credits to offset their pollution it is in some way going to radically alter Earth's climate ? and furthermore who is going to oversee the billions of dollars that will flow into the carbon credit fund ??? This isn't about "saving the earth" this is about "making money" ..... The only "tipping point" we have reached is the one where we are about to tip all our money into an enormous sink hole of bureaucratic waste and spiralling costs......

Saturday 5 December 2009

Rockbox !!


Since updating my iPod to version 1.3 I've had nothing but problem after problem with it... so I've completely given up on Apples software for my Ipod 30G Video, because it was simply hanging the ipod or it would behave sluggishly on the click wheel, or simply stop working and required a hard reset .......

So I dug around on the internet to find something to replace it.... As some of you know the Ipod is basically a mini computer and some clever people have reverse engineered it and compiled a linux version to control the ipod

you can read about it here

It's a bit different to Apple Ipod software but doesn't take very long to get used to, plus it extends the battery life of my ipod by about 20% !! .... AND it loads it with games including DOOM! !!! would you believe it !!! and of course you can choose from a plethora of themes, some of the themes are pretty damn amazing.... and if you're interested you can even get right down into the nuts and bolts of your iPod and control "exactly" what it gets up to .... you can even record sound with it !!

The real beauty is that you can still use Itunes to update your Ipod but honestly .....once you have it installed and it comes with an idiot proof installation program, you'll never look back to Apples software to run your Ipod again ....

It doesn't invalidate your warranty, and if you don't like it you can simply restore your Ipod via Itunes ( you will lose your music library on your iPod if you do a restore mind you !!) and you're back to the normal software provided by Apple....

I'm very pleased with it now... it's actually usable again instead of it being a very expensive white doorstop/paperweight which sometimes works as a music/video player....when it feels like it :)

Friday 4 December 2009

what is going on with Google/Yahoo/Bing

Something funny is going on .....I've been following Climategate on Google/Yahoo/Bing search engines... and you know when you put in the search item on Google for instance it offers a drop down box of possible things you could mean ..... well yesterday if you typed in "Clima" and nothing more it would suggest "Climategate" ... similar on Yahoo and Bing.... basically it's showing you what is popular and most searched for on the net....

Today if you type in anything to do with Climategate it produces nothing but I know for a fact that Climategate is probably THE hottest topic on the internet right now.... What is going on ?

Censorship ?

it's the same with Yahoo and Microsoft Bing... although Bing does show Climate-Gate with a hyphen still..... although I'm watching it to see if that disappears today .... hmmmmmmm

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR !!!

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Climategate Again.....

<--- This is him, Professor Phil (in-the-data) Jones


Have you noticed that very little is being said in the news about Climategate ??? I'd say that maybe the media has been warned off this little gem ? Apparently the BBC had hold of the stolen emails a few weeks before the story broke...but they didn't break the story themselves...... what does that say to you ? Surely not the impartial BBC sitting on a story of this magnitude for what ends ??? makes you wonder doesn't it ?

I suppose when you get wind of corruption in a multi-billion dollar industry and potential green tax cash cow, which I might add has sprung up out of nothing .... maybe bending a few arms to your own ends is beneficial ?? The problem is that the whole Global Warming (Anthropogenic or otherwise) debate is practically over, the spin has been spun, the suckers sucked in, the sharks are actually in the feeding frenzy.. the pigs are in the trough....the billions of dollars pumped into research.... to do a U-turn now would be catastrophic .... not to say a tad embarrassing....

Think of Kyoto and all the other summits held to reduce CO2 ..... it doesn't matter how many times you hammer home that an increase in CO2 follows a rise in temperature not the other way around..... the die has been set, CO2 is evil, petrol engines are evil, Oil Consumption is evil, Coal burning is almost satanic, each cow that farts knocks a penguin off it's perch in Antarctica ....... the same old song off the same old songsheet, the record's stuck again...blah de blah.....

But the really maddening thing is, if you don't believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and have never eaten a lentil in your life......then you must be some kind of nutjob, who is blind to all the evidence from all those well respected climate scientists....

I say what evidence ? a string of numbers so badly mashed by a climate modelling computer program which has added all the numbers from the telephone book and then averaged it by the combined salary of the CRU "Team" and then divided it by the number of mammoths dug up in Siberia ??? ..... I think not....

People seem to forget that CO2 is food for plants and through photosynthesis they make sugars and and grow and that their natural by product of this process is Oxygen.... which we happen to breathe..... but then we go and spoil it all by breathing out CO2 again.... DAMN !!!

Governments are in a no win situation here ......it will take major back peddling by any government to admit they were wrong, they got it wrong because they listened to bad science , peer reviewed by "mates" on the same gravy train. (20 Million quids worth of gravy train)..... so I'm going to predict the death of Anthropogenic Global Warming but long live Global Warming....

They will save from the carbon free ashes the golden tax cash cow from slaughter..... Actually I'm quite resigned to the fact that we are going to be taxed to the eyeballs on something based around very shaky science .... and I would have been far happier if the government had re-introduced window tax, at least then it's far more honest of them and you could decide how bright you wanted your home to be... but lets face it the governments have taxed us up to the eyeballs on everything we buy or use.... they may as well tax us on how much wind we pass.....

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Climate modelling at its best .....

; PLOTS 'ALL' REGION MXD timeseries from age banded and from hugershoff
; standardised datasets.
; Reads Harry's regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
; with missing values set appropriately. Uses mxd, and just the
; "all band" timeseries
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
loadct,39
def_1color,20,color='red'
plot,[0,1]
multi_plot,nrow=4,layout='large'
if !d.name eq 'X' then begin
window, ysize=800
!p.font=-1
endif else begin
!p.font=0
device,/helvetica,/bold,font_size=18
endelse
;
; Get regional tree lists and rbar
;
restore,filename='reglists.idlsave'
harryfn=['nwcan','wnam','cecan','nweur','sweur','nsib','csib','tib',$
'esib','allsites']
;
rawdat=fltarr(4,2000)
for i = nreg-1 , nreg-1 do begin
fn='mxd.'+harryfn(i)+'.pa.mean.dat'
print,fn
openr,1,fn
readf,1,rawdat
close,1
;
densadj=reform(rawdat(2:3,*))
ml=where(densadj eq -99.999,nmiss)
densadj(ml)=!values.f_nan
;
x=reform(rawdat(0,*))
kl=where((x ge 1400) and (x le 1992))
x=x(kl)
densall=densadj(1,kl) ; all bands
densadj=densadj(0,kl) ; 2-6 bands
;
; Now normalise w.r.t. 1881-1960
;
mknormal,densadj,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
mknormal,densall,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot them
;
filter_cru,20,tsin=densall,tslow=tslow,/nan
cpl_barts,x,densall,title='Age-banded MXD from all sites',$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
zeroline=tslow,yrange=[-7,3]
oplot,x,tslow,thick=3
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
endfor
;
; Restore the Hugershoff NHD1 (see Nature paper 2)
;


===========================================================

Why are these people getting paid to produce this kind of artificial data manipulation ? ..... I was particularly amused that he called the variable that applied the artificial smoothing the fudge factor.... (see link) .....

There are rumours that Professor Phil from the CRU has stood down whilst a full review of his "team" and his "teams" practices get under way..... lets hope it's not a whitewash like his AR4 report/data to the IPCC ??? They've had 20 million of public money to hack up a valid data set, manipulate it to show what they want it to show, throw a few hockey sticks ....and then promptly lose the original data...when somebody asks for it through a freedom of information request..... incompetent doesn't even cover it .....

There is a particularly good article about all of this here ... it's in pdf format and well worth a read