“AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER
“Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert beneath the endless night
“The End”
Ook
[Sad]
Don’t Try This At Home
The wonderful Oliver Sacks basically talking about taking a shit load of drugs during the 1960sMy parents, both physicians, were away, and, having the house to myself, I decided to explore the drug cabinet in their surgery on the ground floor for something special to celebrate my thirty-second birthday.
Oliver Sacks in Hallucinations
If you must keep me on hold playing dreary music please don’t keep interrupting to play a recording saying how important my call is and apologise. Every time the music cuts out and I hear a voice I get excited I may be about to speak to a real human…
[Grrrr]
How Modern
If you hang around an industry long enough all sorts of fluff attaches. One bit of such fluff that dropped onto my desk earlier today was the latest issue of a free magazine that I’ve somehow ended up on the mailing list of. It’s the normal type of such fluffiness, filled with articles written to get a company name out there and thinly disguised adverts in between the real ads. What made me smile is given the name of the publication is “Modern Building Services” it seemed a bit of a strange choice for a cover:
Cover of Modern Building Services
A cover photograph from an issue of Modern Building Services
That’s a picture of 35028 Merchant Navy Class Clan Line, preserved by the Merchant Navy Locomotive Preservation Society and frequently run as the Belmond British Pullman. It turns out, after flicking through twice to find a reference, it’s actually there as part of a small story ad for Ambirad’s Nor-ray-vac system. Cool train though.
What Colour The Sea
BBC News has a piece about railways running right next to the sea. All very fluffy and light but what really struck me were the maps. Here’s one:
What Colour The Sea?
A detail map from the BBC, showing sea as white and land as blue/green
Note how they have chosen to represent the sea as white and the land as a blue-green colour (an equal mix—a quick check gives the colour as RGB(191,222,222)). That had the effect I spent a moment or two wondering when Carlisle had been flooded! The detailed view of Carlisle to Barrow-in-Furness line actually sits alongside an image of the whole of the UK:
Green-Blue UK
The UK is much easier to identify in this colour scheme than a close up detail
In that image the familiar outline of the entire country immediately makes the land/sea divide obvious in a way which vanishes in the close up view. In short they’ve got consistency but no sense. Either that or there’s a tunnel going to Dawlish:
A Tunnel To Dawlish
BBC map tricking the mind into thinking the railways have tunnelled to Dawlish
A Not Very Surprising Hiccup Cure
There’s a Journal of Internal Medicine paper doing the rounds of the internet which describes the curing of hiccups using “digital rectal massage”. The thing is this shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, even the internet. What sometimes seems another life time ago I accidentally collected hiccup cures beginning with my favourite, a spoon full of vinegar. The thing is back in 2006 that paper actually took a share of an Ig Nobel.
There’s nothing new really—we know, if you have persistent hiccups try sticking a finger up your arse; though I still think the alternative recommendation of an orgasm sounds better.
Leaving You In Time
As I write this, tapping on a phone, I am sat in the Green Dragon. Our pub; our place. How many times have I sat tapping like this, messaging you? How many times have I sat here with you, the madness around us?
There are things different, the subtle changes unnoticed with constant attention but jarring when time is allowed to intervene. I am left in a world where I sat and loved so much with you but with a disconnect, a side step, into a slightly different place.
Today I went to Coe Avenue for likely the last time. It was empty. The one place we ever shared, however disrupted. There is so much familiar and yet so much empty.
I carry on. Things change when unobserved by the eye’s blinking. And somehow you are left in time, seconds subtly mounting while no one looks. I do not want you so far away.
I can close my eyes in such a familiar place and you are there, within the blinks. You are there and I feel you and sometimes I do not want open those eyes again and see all those changes. Do not want you to be somewhere in the blinks of time.
A Slinky Paper
Via the always wonderful What if? what may be my new favourite silly paper. , Math. Proc. Cambridge. Philos. Soc. 50 (2) p347 (1954) “On Slinky: The Dynamics of a Loose, Heavy Spring”
I can’t help but think there are some fun A-level/undergrad experiments to be had out of that. Come to think of it, I have a staircase, so if I get a slinky…
Straight To The (Power)Point
The things you find lying in draft…
Photo Op
No photographs people
Having gone all the way to Liverpool to see him only for him not to be there, Heather and I finally did get to see Dave Gorman at the Eventim (AKA Hammersmith) Apollo.
The was a surprise at the start with effectively a full set (all the way to the interval) warm-up by the funny Nick Doody (who needs a website!). That didn’t detract from Dave’s show at all though, once he got going. Ubiquitous projector behind him, his observations were as always spot on and, above all, funny. I’ll even forgive the discussions of selfies which made me feel old when Dave pulled up photos I recognised from earlier tours and realised just how long ago they were!
Just noticed the outcry over changes to Cadbury Cream Eggs. I’ve resisted them so far this year, despite their appearance in shops being my personal sign that Christmas has arrived. If half of what I’m reading is true then this is a national disgrace. It was bad enough they changed the shape of Dairy Milk but this, this is a total outrage!!! War may be declared.
[Angry]