Bathed in Glory

None of which is getting boats built, though this might well be!

Let me touch on it by including the CEO's latest press release:

"I'm delighted to have signed off last thing Friday on this, our first hydrostatic test facility, thought to be the largest in Europe if you don't count the hot-tub next door. It was built by Armitage Shanks, a firm well-known here in the UK for maritime test-facilities as well as gents urinals. And while it cost £16.15 on eBay on a buyer-collect basis, it will be essential in driving the proj forward at a sub-scale that I shall speak more of in the weeks to come. Amen."

Gaining Traction

What a spot on the M6 motorway!

It's an old Nuffield, a 1500cc beauty built in 1969.

Know this from the government's 'Tax Your Vehicle' website ~ so pleased I taxed it for him!

Electoral Guide

People wonder how politics works in Britain ~ and like elsewhere in the world it does not. Here then a guide to the parties here in our disunited kingdom, and I've used a seat in Edinburgh as it's as good as any other.

First off the recent local elections were extended in Wales and Scotland to devolved nation elections, and in short the Scots and Welsh want to be separated altogether from the English, given our own politicians are drongos.

Viewing from left to right:

Long-haired guy. Don't know, get off.

An independent, invariably individual crackpots exercised by pot-holed roads.

Labour Party, exclusive to metrosexuals within the M25 motorway around London.

Lib Dems, for rich people who've gone off the Conservatives.

Conservatives, the oldest party in the UK and clearly demented.

Reform UK, more Conservative than they and more working-class than Labour.

The Gannets, campaigning for a heavier fish diet.

Scottish National Party, who normally win here but didn't in this case.

Green Party, big in Europe whom they'd like to re-join and smoke pot.

And if ever there was an argument for less democracy, this was probably it. As the gannet said as it left, "Good-bye and thanks for all the fish".

Rising Inflation

We do ourselves down in the UK too often, and on the maritime front we've created a whole new class of vessel that to my knowledge didn't really exist prior. This fine inflatable is yours for less than £1200 on Alibaba, where the online world is buoyed up with 'super dinghies' in all different colours and sizes and with a range of fittings. Though marketed as 'high-quality rescue boats', law enforcement is raining on their parade by calling them 'DIY deathtraps'... as they do my own efforts.

Some super dinghies now carry as many as many as 130 people, so that's less than a tenner each if there's 129 of my readers out there who'd like to chip in and go for a ride with me this summer, celebrating a unique form of transport on a day that includes baguettes in Calais and scones at Dover Castle; and a lecture by me on the origins of inflatables (see merch page, 200 people are also looking at this and there are just two seats left at this price).

For my readers elsewhere the English Channel is just twenty-two miles wide and is viewed by most Britons as a shittier Straits of Hormuz. It is also the world's busiest shipping channel, hosting super-tankers and container-ships besides inflatables like these. Occasionally the Royal Navy uses it and there are spotters online who like  'twitchers' race to the coast to see them. Beside all this the RNLI do a sterling job in re-rescuing people during the inevitable deflation that starts a mile into the journey.

We began keeping figures on the number of tourists arriving by these means back in 2018, since when over 200,000 have done so... thus it is reasonable to assume we can celebrate a quarter of a million arrivals of this kind. They peak whenever the weather's nice and the seas are calm, though the French police sometimes spoil the show by taking box-cutters to these fine craft, which in my view is a crying shame. 

As a result, travel agents organising these tours have upped oars and decamped to Ostend for departures from farther shores, a place we'd often drop into for cheaper aviation fuel beside an ample choice of crossings. My only beef about this is ~ and I wrote to Skier Starmer about it ~ that revenue could be diverted to treasury coffers instead of being steered into East European accounts.

Quite why anyone would want to come here escapes me anyway, but it's probably considered a spring-board to life in North America the way they use tenders to ferry you to cruise-liners from ashore. You must admit then that we are among the nicest people in the world, and even publish stats on how many use 'small boats' ~ a description stemming from days they sat seven including the skipper. It is too an alternative to tracking merchant ships, as we do here on the blog on quieter days!

People moving from one place to another in great numbers is, when it comes to the way law-enforcers might handle it, not unlike prostitution, drink or drugs. Because we've a protestant ethic in the UK and US and despite the fact Luther swore like a trooper and was obsessed with the scatological (poo-poo to Christians reading), we don't do it very well at all.

In Holland they have cafes where you do drugs and Danish pastries, and Germans have official brothels of a kind I visit by way of research for the blog. So instead of gang-banging like Skier Karmer does and sound-bites like 'Smash the Gangs!', why don't we take a sensible view and instead of letting others price-gouge migrants, organise the trips and accommodation ourselves? What better way to celebrate a unique means of travel that's up there with hovercraft I once used from Ramsgate?

I can do PR for a pink super-dinghy that includes a cocktail bar, water-slide, Richard Branson figure-head and 'Pump It Up With Virgin Rescue!' along each side... has to be an improvement on the PM moaning and droning! I do have a friend who arrived on a small boat, who is studying English as I write and that's no mean feat for a Georgian... and that's the real one, for any Americans reading. She's also our fastest female park-runner: so she may be an economic migrant, but she's our economic migrant!

Ed. And that's me migrating to the troll-shelter.

Face Lift

Sorry Bill, I think that's Marilyn Manson you're next to?

Oh go then, if we must, but go and get a bowl of popcorn and settle down!

The Pictorial Key Pad in summary, to save a walk to the Digital Commons:

What I was intrigued by ~ and turns out Y Combinator were too until they found out who was behind it ~ was the notion that the one thing we're exceptional at from the course of our evolution was recognising faces. So idea was, slip a few you recognise into an array of those you don't, and you've something easier to remember than the components of a PIN code... but which cannot really be relayed in ways that would assist a hacker.

For instance, who'd I most associate with up there? Yes! Paris Hilton, because she shares a surname, and because I'd like to see her with no clothes on! You however have only a 1-in-50 chance of guessing the same way (Ed. unless you're male, so maybe granny would be a better random pick after all...).

The problem that rapidly became apparent was that you'd need a database of looks like faces generated most easily by AI to avoid copyright and GDPR (GPDR?) issues, and that was looking (a) tricky and (b) expensive.

All that changed when I realised ~ too late as it happened ~ that now it'd be easier simply to buy the software generating the faces, with things moving fast and getting so cheap. Another issue though was the fact the passcode you see on a phone from the get-go is proprietary and difficult to break into in more ways than one. Thefts of mobiles though remains massive; this an intriguing step in a more secure direction.

Thus what would happen would be that you'd swipe the phone and in just an inst it would produce an array of AI-generated mugshots, among which would be people only you would be expected to know. In the pitch to YC I used their own faces in a sad effort to appeal to their vanity... which clearly worked*.

For the fact is any number of ideas briefly flourish and die before their time, and when I did the due diligence the idea of recognising shapes say or icons or emojis that you'd pre-selected for example dated as far back as 2003. Not faces as I recall though, perhaps because it was prior to the explosion of images we're used to now.

But nothing as Victor Hugo observed can stop an idea whose idea has come, except perhaps VCs in San Fransisco whom you've just pissed off in a blog-post?

(Incidentally every pic up there is in fact a famous mug-shot due arrest or detention except for Ronald McDonald, who I'm currently being sued over... spot him kids?).

* Ed. He's a rare form of Tourettes affecting only typing, but I won't be contacting Paris for him.

The overlay... took me ages.

California Dronin'

Latest worldwide download-ership is in for my "academic" papers that I upload to the digital commons ~ after that argument with the Patent Office ~ are in, and this time I thought I'd take you for a tour of who likes what where, beginning in the US. Let me then take you by the digital hand, and we shall fly across America like that brat and the snowman seem to do every year on TV at Christmas!

I'll work from west to east with Mr. Mercator's permission and accordingly kick off in Redmond WA, where the maritime drone has 'dropped', principally because it is free but also because they've got water nearby... we wish them bon voyage!

Meantimes in San Jose CA (simply 'the valley' to Elon and I)  they've gone for a SLB or self-launching boat, which I'm pleased about because with their smarts and my angle-grinder I feel we can make it happen. Meanwhile down in LA it's the Pictorial Key Pad that's going down a storm and on the next post I'll say why, and how it can be improved. I do that for the good of humanity, and so people in Ormskirk nudge each other in Wetherspoons once they realise they're in the presence of greatness.

Over in Vineyard UT I'd hoped they'd downloaded my patented "Method and Means for Moving Nineteen Teenage Brides" and I won't be welcome there again, though frankly wasn't the first time, but in fact it was the Pictorial Key Pad again, so they may want to read the next post if that laptop hasn't been thrown against the wall.

Moving swiftly on we're at Warren Air Force base, YES SECRETARY HEGSETH SIR, HILTON SIR, G2626058 who've gone for my Drone Adapted to Human Carriage. I cannot even remember what that involves, but clearly it's impressed somebody. Or maybe it's just been taking home for the kids' Year Six show-and-tell?

Down in Dallas TX they've gone for the very same thing, and I like to think that's a 'droid that works for Elon who's perusing that with the AI brain bolted into his skull.

At Cedar Hill TN though it's back to the Maritime Drone and zooming in here to the most granular of detail from my perch in Lancashire ~ Mwah ha, mwah ha, mwah ha ha ha ha ha ~ I can see that they're planning to use it on the Piney River, where the women are fast and the current's beautiful?

But we can't stay long, can we snowman because we're flying through the digital air to a high school in Duluth, Georgia we're the teacher has just printed off thirty-six more Maritime Drones and the kids are saying, "Can we go now, loser?".Exciting!

Bye kids, bye, for we're off now to Pittsburgh (guessing PN?) which is consolidating the trend with these maritime drones. I've actually been to Pittsburgh on a Sunday afternoon, though mostly to escape Cleveland.

Over to Riga now, and though I've not been there I have been on an airline training course in the original in Latvia, where I was kicked out for pointing out that most of us had been silently watching YouTube videos during the type conversion (which in fairness I'd done time and again in accordance with EASA's senseless dictates). In Riga NY they to ~ oh, come on ~ went for the Maritime Drone.

Thank goodness in Ashborn VA they've gone for a Virtual Quadcopter instead. This is simply a way to reduce the size of a quad with two props on each arm by having them overlap whilst mounted above and below; remembering they've to run in the same direction so that their don't, in short.

At Perth Ambay (g?) in New Jersey, no prize for guessing it's the maritime drone in view of all the water thereabouts, and finally as we direct our weary wings toward New York City itself, and the heart of its financial district, it's the Drone for Human Carriage once more. Perhaps the guy just wants to escape the grind, like a slower version of Batman?

There are downloads across all the continents that we could analyse this month, but what the snowman said to the idea is something you don't want children hearing.

Ed. The author's re-view of the Pictorial Key-Pad may be a few posts from now... we live crazy lives like that, and might even leave the breakfast bar one day.

Deliver...ong

Arrived home yesterday to find an unwanted Deliveroo on my door-step, in the form of a family breakfast from some eight hours previous. What would you do? Like any man I put it in the oven and afterward ate it all, washed down with beer and tequila purchased with the savings. Horrendous shits this morning ~ which can only improve my Parkrun times ~ although it was good while it lasted.