Building B Locks

NO!  We Are Not Going On About Lego - Yet
Nor Minibrix nor Bayko, and Meccano is too two-dimensional to consider as any form of "Block".  No, this evening I happened to wonder if there was anything out there that had the title of a "B Lock" and, rather to my surprise, there is.  Art?

                                                                    B Locks

     These are, apparently, a type of puzzle where you have to work out how to unlock the padlock, which, at £95 each, Conrad thinks he can easily resist, all the more so as a normal padlock from B & Q costs about £5.  SO, there you have today's title.
     Whilst on about price, I would like to return to the Seabreacher semi-submersible sea demon, which you really need to see perform in a video rather than the stills I've posted here.  Is it possible?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E41kFAL0UUo

     There you go.  As I glibly speculated earlier today, don't be surprised if the Marinenjaegerkommandoen* end up with a couple of these puppies for rapid response in the North Sea.

Shark shark!

     And the price - yes, well, they are not going to be cheap.  £40,000 for the most basic model and styling, going up to £60,000 for a special custom build.  You cannot deny that they look cool as anything and go like absolute stink <pauses to dry his hot sweaty palms>.  How come we've not seen these on some ghastly South Canadian television series about lifeguards on the Californian coast?
     There we go, this evening's Intro.  Motley!  Fetch me a golf club and some walnuts, for I feel snackish.

Okay, Now Lego
You see?  You see what happens if you have a little patience?  Okay.  As you know, we here at BOOJUM! have found a fruitful topic in Lego builds, both the gigantic bespoke ones that require tens of thousands of bricks, weeks of time and endless patience, and the slightly less ambitious kits that are available commercially.  So we come to the Ghostbusters HQ building.  Art?

Thus

     It doesn't look too difficult or tricky from this perspective, which is where they get you, since it has over 4,000 pieces.  I can hear you gasp in surprise from here; what you can't tell from this shot is that there's a whole lot of interior to build.  Art?

Now do you see?

     Realisation dawns, eh?  One thing that seems to be missing is Ecto-1.  I suppose it would be difficult to create it accurately in this scale, though I wonder if anyone else has built it?  <Googles> ah yes, there is a kit, which costs another £60.  We may come back to this.

Navigating The Mental Mindscape
If you are a regular here then you know Conrad suffers from the spontaneous appearance of words and phrases in his mind that appear to come from nowhere, without any real explanation.  Okay, "Thrasybulus" may be due to reading about ancient Greek history, which I do on occasion**; so where on earth did the name "Waunchope" pop up from?  I Googled it and there appears to be an electrical engineering company in the south of the Pond of Eden, whom I have absolutely no connection with.  And that's it.
     I can only suppose it's a character in a novel I've read, who has come back to haunt me like a bad smell, which would be difficult as I've got practically no sense of smell.
     If you, too, are haunted by Waunchope, please let me know in the Comments and we can be strong together.

The Waunchopes, perhaps?

Less Doo-Ron And More DesRon
This touches on an article from the podcast "We Have Ways Of Making You Talk", where Jim Holland was chatting to a South Canadian military historian John McManus, about the latter's recent work on the 1st Division, a.k.a. The Big Red One, on Omaha Beach, during D-Day.  An event you may have heard of.

The Big Red One goes in

     As you may be aware, things ashore were very sticky for a while at Omaha, thanks to the inevitable chaos of war and the South Canadians not having any of the 79th Armoured division's "Funnies" with them.  When things were looking especially bleak, the South Canadian's navy got itself involved, specifically DESRON 18 - "Destoyer Squadron 18".  These were half a dozen destroyers that got very, very close into the beaches, as close as 1,000 yards, which is Practically Point Blank for naval warships, and which proceeded to pound the living daylights out of the Teuton defenders.  Art?

USS Harding

     Each of these destroyers mounted 4 x 5 inch guns, equally as big if not bigger than the Teuton defender's, and capable of firing with both extreme accuracy and rapidity, not to mention anti-aircraft guns and cannon, and the trusty Browning .50 calibre, which is a whole lot of firepower to contend with if you're the enemy.  They tend to get rather overlooked in accounts of D Day, being taken for granted, included by Conrad, who is definitely a landlubber by specialism.  There's a whole book in there somewhere, which <that threat you love to hate> we may come back to.

Finally -
Proof that Conrad is, indeed, not human.  I watched a short film on the BBC's I-player this evening about Films That Scared Their Child Audience, and there are some very appropriate entries there, including "Watership Down", "The Witches" and "Labyrinth".  The producer's intent was to include films where the Target Demographic <hack spit Hollywoodism> aimed at children, and then included scenes utterly unfit for them to see.  Art?

Nothing a wig and some foundation won't solve ...

     Conrad rather feels that they shot themselves in the foot, however, by starting the whole thing off with The Childcatcher from "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang".  Art?

Hmmmmmm.

     He may be a creepy old perv, but - terrifying?  Really?  Conrad saw this film as a much smaller version of his present-day self and - doesn't remember a thing about matey.  Whereas others of his generation wet themselves and go white and shakey if you so much as mention his name.
     Peculiar***!




*  The Norwegian naval Special Forces, of course.
**  Attempt to be Intellectual noted <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!>
***  Yes, but who is peculiar? <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!>

Twisted

That's Me
Yes yes yes, I know what you're thinking: "A constant diet of weird fiction, too many zombie films and an unhealthy interest in nuclear weapons - most definitely twisted!" and in one sense you are correct (though you missed out TANK).
     However, I refer to actually being physically twisted, having to contort myself through 450 in order to type, my trusty laptop being awkwardly positioned to one side.
     The reason for this is - Art?

Madame, in her chosen spot
(laptop out of  shot)

     Now, this experience is one I've whinged about before as I recall, and I don't do it lightly, as it rather devalues my Flinty-Hearted Villain image, that has taken many years to cultivate.  "Trapped By Dog" is the expression I use, and it took the intervention of the postie to get our girl off and away.
     Okay, that's today's very short Intro done with, let us wheel on the big nukes!

A Bigger, Better, Badder Bang
If you have been reading BOOJUM! with any regularity, then you know he is a fan of Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who is always throwing up interesting items over on the SyFy website.  His most recent one covers a significant threat to All Life On Earth <which should be said in an impressive Lord Olivier-style voice with lots of gravitas>: asteroid impact.  The threat of this happening next Wednesday is miniscule, yet still there.

Can we count on Bruce to save us?

     Phil takes a dig at Armageddon without actually naming it, though how can you fail to love a film that has "space madness" as a plot point?  Anyway, PP points out that blowing an asteroid to bits with a nuke or two is bad practice in real life, as you end up with a lot of radioactive debris, some of which will still be on the same trajectory.
     Ooops.
     So, NASA has been running the numbers on how to deflect an asteroid and came to a general conclusion: for those of 300 yards diameter or less, hitting it at high speed with something massy and unyielding is the best option.

Like this, except further away

     Above that limit, a nuclear detonation above the surface of the asteroid is deemed the most efficient way of deflecting it, as the explosion will instantly vapourise the nearby surfaces to several yards deep, which acts as a crude variety of rocket, altering the asteroid's path, without the risk of fracturing it into little bits.  Given 4 years lead time, we can successfully knock a known impactor off course sufficiently that it misses Earth entirely.  Hooray!

"Phew!" said Earth, when asked for a comment

     One comment on the article shows profound levels of ignorance by calling NASA and "The government" incompetent fools and that we can only hope to die quickly.  Ah - sir, you are aware that there are other astronomical organisations besides NASA?  No, you didn't, did you?  Nor that there are many, many governments out there that are not South Canadian?  No to that one, too.  The perils, sir, of typing before thinking and with Brain in neutral.

Watch out!  The Stupid is spreading!

What Have I Stumbled Into? - Iteration Two
No, this is not about Lego, though we may come back to that.  Ah, who am I kidding, we're definitely coming back to it.
     No, instead I refer to a website and sub-culture that has been around for 10 years without me ever coming across it, until I spotted a title on the "5 Scariest -" Youtube channel that mentioned "5 Scariest SCP".

Hmmmm.

     Of course, having viewed an entirely different Youtube video, I couldn't find the other one, which of course - obviously! - meant I had to dig around and find out what "SCP" was.
     The initials refer to "Secure, Contain, Protect" which is the mission brief of a covert global organisation that hunts down things like those pictured above.  They have a website with an unbelievably long list of SCP entities (the best word I can think of), all described in very scientific jargon.  Do we have a link for them?

http://www.scp-wiki.net/

     There you go.  Be warned, there's a lot of content there, and it's probably not suitable for those under 21.
     Only kidding!  Under 18.
     I suspect Darling Daughter would know all about this, as it seems right up her street, yet I'm still not sure how it completely passed me by for 10 years.  

Er - this is a created scene,  right?

     Not recommended for the faint of heart, and probably best read in daylight where there are lots of humans around.  Don't blame me for the heart attack brought on by a door suddenly slamming shut, whilst you are alone in the house, it's after midnight and you've been reading SCP files for the past hour!

A Case Of Life Imitating Art
Your Humble Scribe came across a video advert on the "Popular Mechanics" website for an article called a "Seabreacher", and was mightily impressed with it.  Art?

Very sleek

     These things are miniature two-person submarines that go like stink.  As is immediately obvious, they mimic a dolphin in overall design, although being rather faster in the water - 47 knots, which is nearly 60 miles per hour.  If you are brave (or foolish!) enough then you can hold onto the rear "fin" and waterski on the thing, and we might have a picture of same - Art?

Not quite what I had in mind.  Still -

     Er, yes.  Although that might be truer than you think, as these things are so fast and nippy Conrad can see people like the US Marine Corps buying a couple for trials, as a kind of very fast scout craft.  With, no doubt, a very long line of marines desperately keen to volunteer on testing them.

     And with that, we are done!