Honey I Shrunk the Drone

I’d be the first to admit that we failed to get T-motor’s U7 and Flame’s shitty 80A ESC working at all. You’re disappointed, I’m disappointed and we’re all hurting. I’m off to a McKinsey wedding in a French chateau this summer though, and a classical strategy among consultants is to circumvent obstructions rather than spend undue time tackling them head on.

Accordingly there are currently two issues prevailing at the moment and these are the facts are that (a) an eBay bath is a cost-effective 67” Hearty Italian sub to test the the models with and (b) if electrical components must also be subbed then small is beautiful. 

Taking the measure of our hydro-static test-facility, which is how Archimedes got his big break, it would appear that a 2/3rds scale of what we have currently would suit both contingencies. With a centre-section 400mm or 16” wide it’s a comfortable fit and that would allow it to be upto 1500mm long or 60”, to fit lengthwise too: but bear in mind that both cat and bath slope upward at what will be the forward end.

By such means we can look at alternative suppliers of both motor and ESC, whose head we can hold a gun to pending such time as they get an RC transmitter to talk to the two of them.

It just so happens too that I used a pair of 10mm laminated backer-boards to panel the bath with during the renovation we all enjoyed in recent posts ~ and sufficient over to build a pair of centre-sections like the previous, except a little shrunken. I realise Elon Musk is probably not wondering what he can do with a left-over bath-panel and whether he might build a space-ship with it, but I'm cutting a wet-suit to suit our cloth here.

At the same time, the family sit here requires that the conservatory is co-opted as a means of entertaining guests instead of drones, the way the front rooms of my past were preserved for occasional visits by the vicar, and ready should ever royalty call.

It does mean the proj is relegated to the garage, which is where I'd already decided to locate the bath; not wanting to be considered (more of) a nut-job by neighbours. 

Let me take you then by your digital paw then as we plan and build one of the most spectacular test-facilities the UK is still able to muster!

Financial OVOtures

Sale of energy firm OVO to German company EOn, which already has a sizeable slice of the dysfunctional UK energy market, for a reputed £600 million; a sum that should help restore its founder’s fortune following his contribution to a newer venture altogether in the form of flying taxi developer Vertical Aerospace. The latter is something the UK government ~ in a desperate effort to place all its chips on one of the few remaining gambles less likely to decamp abroad at the first opportunity ~ is practically the only electrified form of flight that it has backed in a substantial way.

An obvious reason for doing so is that politicians rarely know anything much beyond the palace of Westminster and how to profit personally from it, and thus rely upon what they consider to be the safest bet. This is generally, and especially when it comes to defence, companies like BAE Systems that already enjoy financial backing from abroad… combined with the fact that companies like Vertical can afford the salaries of people either skilled in pursuit of government grants or otherwise skilled in kissing the asses of those responsible for signing them off. Back-handers may or may not feature, the likes of BAE proven to be expert in that department too.

The energy market is another thing that we have to thank Thatcher for, and is something that sticking-plaster socialist governments are unlikely to improve, which is why they are so unpopular ~ like so much of life in the 21st century, they (and it) stand for little else beside handouts, as it’s something simple that requires none of the imagination they lack anyway.

What struck me about it was around the time of the Covid pandemic they said over eighty had gone bust, the best-known of which was ‘Bulb’ although there are many shittier names than that, not least OVO… or new-biological OVO as we expect Germans to call it. This reflects the fact that whereas state-run entities like the electricity boards had to put an infrastructure together, what modern energy firms (and broadband operators) need is a billing system and a silly name. OVO garnered customers with a claim to only use green energy, which you may believe. You may also believe the Earth is flat and the Moon made of cheese, as I do.

If you watch the YouTube channel Economics Help, which is like WWE wrestling to the likes of me, you’ll see how the only real ways that the UK can dig itself out of long-term decline is either by printing money ~ which is like ordering beer during a party that you’ll never be able to pay for ~ or else flogging off the family silver to foreigners. 

As this great green hope has done ~ but who’d blame them when the house is folding?

Ed. More cheery posts soon!

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.