Dronehenge

We don't really know why these people ~ at least as intelligent as the Neanderthals ~ should have erected such a structure in their back garden, but during the summer solstice it points the way to the local Aldi store. These structures could mark the site of ancient rituals, though they could also represent a futile waste of time and effort.

Kit Cat #2

Here are the uprights, and they are made in the same way as the decks. They could have been three-sided as they share an edge with each deck, but sometimes it is easier to use modular construction techniques even should it add extra weight.

The majority of the drones currently in production are not built by robots but human beings, for a number of reasons. Humans are cheaper to employ, faster to set up in manufacture and able to run away should bombs rain down upon their factory. And if you're a dictator, they're also easier to replace.

The first means of industrial mass production anywhere in the world took place in the UK ~ naturellement Rodney ~ and involved rigging-blocks for the largest naval force in the world. There is a picture of one below, and again they'd be made from wood and produced by hand.

So in a funny way, what goes around comes around.

Rebus

As Reno is alight and the Colorado empties out, UK agricultural production fails year on year and Europe burns... spare a thought for London's bus-drivers as all 1500 of them go out on strike today.

They're not allowed to talk about it under Labour's abuse of anyone providing labour but it is all about the fact that legislation forbids carriage of animals in temperatures above 30 degrees centigrade, but not bus-drivers. This has been exacerbated by the fact that there are so few public conveniences left that drivers are effectively denied any means of hydration.

Thatcher would have loved this, and will have been sorry not to have been around in order to send in legions of baton-wielding policemen to beat the shit out of them. She will however be resting peacefully in her grave knowing London Corporation's buses are run by Arriva with focus on shareholder and management remuneration.

But as much as anyone to blame is Thomas Heatherwick's pretty-pretty re-working of the classic Routemaster. Designs are epic when they introduce something new, whereas nowadays as often as not we're happy with re-hashed Minis and Beetles not because we're post-modern so much as the fact we revel in our cultural decline.

Seen side-by-side in this image borrowed from Wikipedia, the older bus was open at the back end, meaning you could get on and off at will. Arriving near school I'd leap from this platform every day wondering how high a speed I could withstand on re-entry. In reverse order, fellow passengers would hold London trains' doors open in an effort to accommodate races between departing trains and tardy commuters.

All that has gone, and Thomas' efforts have concentrated upon three main things:

(a)    The elimination of all means of ventilation

(b)    A maximum of greenhouse-effect in order to raise temperatures

(c)    Windows that can't be opened by anyone anymore

At a stroke, therefore, he's provided any number of bus-drivers with one.

Nonetheless as you see, as with our own efforts foam and plywood are involved in developing even the largest forms of transport. 

Ed. Colin is bitter as he wrote Thomas Heatherwick years ago and never got a reply.

Kit Cat #1

Meantimes boats don't build themselves, do they Gromit? I've decided to build this as a pair of identical pontoons to be connected by the intervening seat or seats and here I've laid out the pair of decks ~ or wings ~ as they'll appear on the watercraft.

We're looking at the underside here and they comprise a picture-frame, based on a quarter-inch laminated backer-board beneath and insulation foam above. The foam will be on the underside and so it does not require a second skin.

This in turn allows for different thicknesses of foam to be applied: here the spars are three-quarter inch (18mm) square, whereas the foam is inch-thick or 25mm. I ran a bead of adhesive around the excess foam except on inside edges, as these will abut the uprights.

There might have been a time I'd have worked on during summer evenings but with advancing age comes retreating ambition. Cambridge philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote how our lives are like a river: a babbling brook at birth, a torrent in youth and middle age, serene expanse like the Mississippi approaching the sea and its demise.

Whatever book I read I can only generally recall one fact, as here. Of Solzhenystin's voluminous tome about the Gulag I can only remember the bit where he goes for a crap. This suggests that reading, as Faust said, is a waste of time.

Ed. He did like blogs though.

Donald Sheppard R.I.P.

A few days back we found ourselves complaining, didn't we, about tailbacks on the M6 when the chances were the motorist or one of three truck drivers fell asleep; it being around 04:00 a.m. But the motorist in question sadly passed away and so we mount a tribute among these pages.

Not three days later the same motorway was closed in both directions for a single lorry (truck arch.) fire that was confined anyway to the hard shoulder. The thinking must be that motorists on either side of the central reservation will be stopping for a gawp and will run into the back of each other, producing a cascade of crashes that would keep us there until at least Christmas.

The answer would ideally be for a select few of us to establish a civilisation on Mars, but absent that then in the interim driving and all else should be done by robots... and as I write, once such just broke the world's 100m sprint record.

But you may wish to bury your loved one among these posts, which will last for all time... or at least 'til Sergey Brin needs one. Available on our merch pages, you can book both an attractive headstone and a funeral oration drafted by AI.

Visiting the deceased is more easily done by laptop and you may refresh your floral tributes for a small subscription that we promise will cost no more than Netflix.

Below is our offering aimed at petrolheads, featuring a lasting 'lamboleum' for the whole family!

Ed. ChatGPT drew it, Miss.

Dimestoppers

Is this your vehicle? Were you proceeding south at the traffic-lights at the entrance to Old Hall Street on Friday 21st August around 11:00 a.m. and were you showered with money?

I pull up at the lights on the inside lane and on the central reservation is a homeless man with a sign that reads something like 'I've no money so give me yours instead'.

Your honour, I stare fixedly ahead pretending to have spotted interesting clouds in the sky, but realising it would be me in a year or two, I reach for a new pound coin ~ the one with with a harder rim than previous ~ and toss it toward the man with a cry of 'Here's a quid mate'.

At this point the vehicle pictured in the CCTV drove up the outside lane and the coin bounced audibly and visibly off the bonnet, ricocheted off the windscreen and given the length provided by an estate, careened off the roof as a parting shot.

I wound the window up, appearing to have spotted an interesting cloud. The coin in question came to rest in the hatched area between the signals, given the impetus provided by the estate.

My feeling is the homeless man, my cries drowned out by traffic, had the impression I had been shouting abuse at him whilst throwing whatever came to hand.

On reflection I view the whole incident as something of a shit-show, but it did keep me amused for the rest of the day and therefore I consider it a pound well spent.

It would though form the basis of an ideal primer for the Oxbridge entrance exam if you would forward this extract during proceedings?

A trucker stopped at the lights spots a homeless man to whom he throws a pound coin. The coin chips a passing vehicle in multiple places and the vagrant feels he was subject to verbal abuse. Liverpool City Council disposes of the belongings of its homeless on a daily basis, in an effort to ethnically-cleanse its city-centre.

Who is to blame: the trucker, the vagrant, the council, the motorist or the trucker's parents? How would Seneca feel if his chariot were struck by a flying denari?

50 marks

Smiley Myrus

My doctor warned me not to watch videos of this kind before bed-time, but I wonder if you like me are trying to figure out whether a wind-machine might have been used in the making?

I'm thinking that yes, on that day in Malibu ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it had to be used in the absence of Nature coming up with the goods.

Exhibit A: flowers waving around in the foreground with no back-up from the rear

Exhibit B: spliced footage from the same shoot, the wind dropped to a dead calm

Exhibit C: a dog who's ears aren't flapping in the wind... for it's been turned off

I have contacted Miley to check, and to offer a chance to meet me over a pint of ale and bag of pork scratchings at a pub of her choosing next time she's in Manchester. Or at least a badge.