ejstubbs

The South African Grand Prix was a regular fixture on the F1 calendar from 1962 to 1985, with another two races post-apartheid in 1992 and 1993. There had been efforts to reinstate South Africa in the F1 calendar, and even a provisional/leaked calendar for 2023 showing South Africa taking Belgium's place, but that initiative eventually fell apart. Rather more obscure is the Moroccan Grand Prix. The first Moroccan Grand Prix was run in 1925, but of course there was no F1 in those days, and no drivers or manufacturers championships. Various other Moroccan Grand Prix took place at a couple of different circuits on and off during the 1930s and 1950s, but the only year it was an official part of the F1 calendar was in 1958, when it was run at the Ain-Diab circuit near Casablanca as the final race of the F1 season. That race was notable as the one where Mike Hawthorn won the drivers championship by one point from Stirling Moss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Moroccan_Grand_Prix

APS did not use 35mm film, it was 24mm wide. 35mm cameras are not obsolete: you can still buy 35mm film, either ready-loaded in cassette or on 50ft or 100ft bulk rolls that you can load into your own cassettes (I chore I used to subject myself to in order to save money as an impecunious youth). I still have a small collection of 35mm film cameras, including my Dad's old Yashica rangefinder camera with a built-in CdS meter, a Zenit (which could also be used as a self-defence weapon, it's that heavy), an early 1980s Chinon SLR (which was actually available with autofocus lenses back in the day) and a couple of more modern compact rangefinder cameras. I've put film through each one of them in the last year and had perfectly good prints from all of them.

You need a 12ft ladder: https://12ft.io/https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/five-volunteers-suspended-from-north-yorkshire-moors-railway-after-station-group-accused-of-carrying-out-unauthorised-work-and-taking-safety-risks-4411596 or a copy from an archive https://archive.is/uOG0x According to a post on the Rail UK forums, the suspension happened a while back, and followed a warning that appeared to have been ignored: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/nymr-is-there-an-issue-at-levisham.253670/post-6386675 (note the date of that post).

Why do RB (and AM) have to attend?

Reported here that Russell has got a two-place grid penalty for the Brazil race for "driving slowly" in the pit exit. Inconsistently applied rules yet again?

Anyone know how to disassemble the Hornby long i.e. corridor clerestory coaches? I know how to do the short, non-corridor ones: undo the screw underneath to remove the underframe 'detail' and release the roof, then carefully ease the roof locating tabs at each end out of the slots in the coach ends. Job done. Is it a similar process for the long (corridor) clerestories or are other tricks required? And are the 'new' long clerestories (R4198,R4120 etc) different to the old (R435,R436 etc) ones in this respect?

That'll be the ex Royal Bank of Scotland Fettes Row data centre and Dundas Street IT department offices, now being turned in to bijoux apartments and the like IIRC. Must have been around 2015/2016 when I last worked there, on a programme that literally no-one doing actual work on it (as opposed to the senior management who'd dreamed the thing up) believed would ever see the light of day - and not long after I moved on to pastures new it was, to no-one's surprise, canned. But only after several millions had been spent, including renting capacity for the not-so-new system to run on, in a data centre which was owned by an American corporation - despite the potential ramifications of the PATRIOT Act on any bank data held there being spelled out in some detail when the idea was first floated... King George V Park, next to the playground which now occupies the site of Scotland Street Station, was a pleasant place for a lunchtime stroll to get away from the madness within. A hundred years or so previously it had been the site of the Royal Patent Gymnasium, a Victorian outdoor fitness centre - which does sound a trifle bonkers, but was apparently quite popular for a while. It might have been entertaining to include a session on the 'Great Sea Serpent' during my lunchtime peregrinations. Remnants of the aforementioned attraction have been now discovered under what used to be the Royal Bank's not-really-a-car-park* during the new construction work. * It was never properly surfaced. According to RBS folklore this was some kind of business rates fiddle, in that they could argue that it wasn't a staff car park as such, just a piece of empty ground that staff happened to park on. How they explained away the manned security barrier was never explained. Every six months or so an e-mail would be sent round announcing the temporary closure of the not-really-a-car-park while the surface, such as it was, was regraded. As I used to take the bus to work there, it made no odds to me.

Unless I imagined it, there was a 'trailer' between programmes on the Beeb the other night saying that they're releasing a number of Classic Who series on iPlayer at around the same time as the 60th anniversary specials. IIRC there was a Tom Baker one and a Peter Davidson, plus at least one other. Or maybe I read it somewhere? There is a brief mention of it in Digital Spy's announcement of the 60th anniversary specials (starting 1st November) so it seems it's not a complete figment of my imagination. (I didn't think Jodie Whittaker was as bad as some people seem to, though I do think a lot of the stories during her time on the show pandered rather too much to her "just playing herself", per the interview with her in this week's Radio Times. And a few too many of the stories were just weak and unengaging, perhaps partly for that reason.)

I just checked my copy, and there's nothing of substance about the Alnmouth to Alnwick branch. It does briefly mention that it was opened in 1850. According to Wikipedia and Railscot, what is now Alnmouth Station was originally named Bilton, though your dad's book refers to the junction as Lesbury. The Alnwick to Cornhill railway opened 37 years later, running from a significantly upgraded Alnwick station compared to the original terminus of the Alnwick branch (the passage in your dad's book about this is quite interesting reading). There is (or certainly was, last time I passed by that way) a set of ex-NER coal drops still in-situ in the old goods yard of Belford station: These photos were taken about ten years ago. The latest Google Streetview photo suggests that the drops are still readily visible beyond the somewhat menacing-looking metal gate. That photo seems to show rails at ground level in the yard, but there's nothing like that visible in my photos, or in the 2009 Streetview photo. Google's satellite view does show a single siding, but it stops short of where the 2023 Streetview photo seems to show rails, so I assume that it's just materials being stored there.

That's a bit of a rip-off if you ask me. The Certificate of Conformity for my two Skodas was free of charge.

I used to work for a multinational computer company called Tandem Computers. The UK CEO once received a "cease and desist" letter from a representative of the Tandem shoe shop chain. They were swiftly advised to get lost. AIUI (though IANAL) you can only trademark a term for a defined use, or range of uses (which can nonetheless be quite wide), and the primary cause for complaint by the trademark holder would be if there was a potential for confusion of the businesses, either intentionally or by accident, or damage to the reputation of the trademark holder e.g. "borrowing" the name, or a clear reference to the name, for a wholly unrelated business of questionable legality/ethics. In the case of Tandem, it was pointed out that anyone confusing the computer company with the shoe shop would quickly realise their error, or have it politely corrected for them. I suspect that the band Easy Life could have had a good chance of defending their case in court, but absolutely couldn't have afforded to do so, and EasyGroup Ltd knew that. So not dissimilar to a SLAPP in some ways: a large corporation bearing down on a largely innocent third party pretty much just because they could. I suppose it's possible that they may have felt that the content of some of the band's songs was not something they would want people to associate with their insurance products. Conversely, the band may have decided, on having the potential for confusion pointed out to them, that they didn't want people mistakenly to associate them with insurance salesmen (a sentiment I can sympathise with).

We've had a good year for butterflies here, as it seems everyone has: UK butterfly numbers at highest level since 2019. One highlight for me was a comma landing on my arm when we were out walking in Roslin Glen. Apparently they've only recently started to recolonise southern Scotland after recovering from a population crash in the mid-1800s which saw it pretty much confined to the Welsh border counties. We do have one buddleia, in fact we've had it for years, but we never see butterflies on it. The only lepidopteran we've ever seen feeding from it was this year and it wasn't a butterfly, it was a hummingbird hawk moth. Which was nice, since we've not seen one in our garden before. Fortunately the butterflies seem quite happy with the other nectar-bearing plants we have. I spotted a Silver Y moth the other day on my way to the bus stop. I can't remember the last time I saw one of those here so that was nice, too.

Interesting/amusing article about just that here Travis Kelce says NFL is ‘overdoing’ his connection with Taylor Swift:

All I can find on the Guardian web site is: "A man in his 60s has been arrested by officers investigating the felling of the world-famous Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland, police have said." The individual is not named (I can't turn up any mention of his name on the web site) and the only other thing it says in relation to the arrest is that he remains in police custody assisting officers with inquiries. The Mirror is carrying a similar story to that in the Mail and the Independent. Going solely by Google hits, The Sun seems to be all over it like a rash. I can't see any reference to Renwick being sacked in any of the articles I've scanned. According to the Mirror piece: I'm not sure where you're getting a "previously established propensity for ill-advised direct action" from, unless you meant it as applying to whomsoever does turn out to have committed the deed - but as yet we still don't know what their motivations might have been, so this seems to be fairly speculative. I have a feeling that this may start to get a bit Christopher Jefferies-ish (and if anyone recognises the reference they will no doubt also be aware of the financial penalties which were imposed on certain newspapers for fomenting false speculation in that case).

Apparently the rumour going around the local mill is that the 60yo had some kind of a grudge against the National Trust, and co-opted the lad to carry out the work. Very much an unsubstantiated rumour at the moment, though, so don't be surprised if the truth turns out to be entirely different.

Difficult as it may seem to some people to believe, Detroit have a 26:14 winning record vs Atlanta: https://www.footballdb.com/teams/nfl/atlanta-falcons/teamvsteam?opp=11

Quite an interesting piece with Lando Norris in The Observer: McLaren driver vents his frustration at F1 regulations which mean managing tyres takes precedence over aggressive racing Some interesting detail figures about the growth in size and weight of F1 cars, too:

And in similar locations around the UK people bring their own "disposable" barbecues which leave scorch marks on turf, set fire to heatwave-desiccated vegetation when they're chucked away into undergrowth while still hot, and ditto waste bins when they're disposed of [not very] 'responsibly'.

The thing about loudspeaker cones is that they weigh relatively very little. I think it might be possible to deaden drumming from the track a bit by attaching additional wood,(maybe dense hardwood, to the underside of the baseboards. But I imagine that might be a tad inconvenient and/or impractical when it comes to wiring, fitting point motors etc. So I think you're right: it's definitely preferable to try to isolate the track from the baseboard so the vibrations never reach it, rather than trying to dampen the vibrations once they've already reached the 'sounding board'.

How much is a modern F1 grid grid "worth"? Obviously you can't calculate it by auction prices, but would it be valid to base it on the teams' costs for construction of the cars? And are such figures available?

Great stuff. I do enjoy historic racing. And then there was this episode: https://www.goodwood.com/grr/event-coverage/goodwood-revival/2023/9/what-really-happened-to-karun-chandhoks-ferrari-250-gto/ From which this quote captures the attitude of the cars' owners very well: “The owners deserve so much credit. They send these cars that were designed 60 years ago out racing, that are worth so much, understanding that things can go wrong and that these things happen. He told me, he wants to get the car fixed and get it back on track at Goodwood soon.”

Are they really much sought after? Blimey, I built one of those when I was about 10 or 11 years old - I recall that I made a pretty good job of it, too, though it wasn't a particularly complicated kit. That was before I'd even seen the series on TV, so I had little idea who the Angels were, or what they were doing flying around in futuristic fast jets. I remember my pals at school having the Corgi Dinky models of the SPV and Patrol Car, the former at least of which I thought was pretty cool, and I probably read comic strip Captain Scarlet stories in TV21 comic at around the same time or a bit later, but I don't recall seeing the actual programmes until we moved up to Derby in 1970 and I watched the (innumerable) repeats on ATV. Which is a little odd, since I'm pretty sure I saw Thunderbirds on its first release, when we were still living in Sarf London, and Stingray before that.

And by now a lot of the smart people who worked hard to make sure it was successful have either retired, or passed on. It's an issue that NASA ran in to when they decided to start doing manned missions beyond Earth orbit again: most of the people who knew how to do it because they'd done it before weren't available to help this time around. One thing I distinctly remember from my days as an engineering student at Cambridge was the long corridor lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves groaning with NASA journals. I'm sure the knowledge is all in there...somewhere, but I suspect that finding it in millions of pages of hard copy would be a daunting task. OTOH, starting afresh with a blank sheet of paper can lead to usefully innovative new ways of doing things. Like lowering landers onto the surface of Mars from rocket-powered hovering cranes (which still sounds bonkers, but seems to work a lot better than surrounding the lander with airbags), and returning vertical launch vehicles to Earth in a controlled manner so that they can be re-used.

IPA - which is also present in WD40 Contact Cleaner, as I pointed out in my post. My point being that the guy in the video spent a lot of time propounding some dubious arguments as to why IPA is a bad thing to use - and then went on to suggest that a product which does actually contain IPA is OK to use. In other words, I was highlighting a hole in his argument. I wasn't trying to suggest that WD40 Contact Cleaner is a bad product to use.

White Spirit is a turpentine substitute. It's much cheaper than turpentine (around £4 a litre on Amazon vs ~£20 a litre for turpentine) and you can use it as a solvent for many of the same kind of jobs for which you might otherwise use turpentine - probably the most common one being cleaning paintbrushes. Turpentine is derived from plant resin, and has a very different chemical composition to white spirit. The term "white spirit" encompasses a number of different grades of napthta-based solvents. White spirit sold as such in the UK has to comply with British Standard BS 245 which specifies "Not more than 5 mg per 100 ml" of residue on evaporation (which might still be enough to be problematic on model railway track). Products sold as simply "turpentine substitute" don't have to meet that standard, and typically contain a higher proportion of less volatile components which are more prone to leaving an oily residue.