If I Were To Say "River In The Sky"

You Might Be Forgiven For Thinking That I Was Quoting A Song Lyric
After all, there is that folk-rock band The Weepies, an appropriately soggy name for people going on about extreme precipitation in song form.

Quickly!  A hankie for the lady!

     Then again, I might be musing about the weather here in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell (only "on" and not "in" since we have had a spell of unseasonably bright and sunny weather of late), because as you know the green and mossy-backed denizens of this metropolis have to regularly endure the Atlantic falling in sheets from the sky.  Art?

Hard to tell what's the canal and what's not

     In fact I refer to another ship lift, and you'll see what I mean about a river, and the sky, in a moment.  Art?

Behold the boat lift!

     This 200,000 ton monster is at Strepy-Thieu in Belgium, and connects the River Scheldt to the River Meuse.  There are two locks within, which operate independently.  Here's a view from the upstream side.  Art?

     Clearly inspired by the designs of futurologist Gerry Anderson.  The overall idea is very simple; boats or barges float into the lock at one level, the locks seals and then either descends or ascends, the barriers are raised and the riverine traffic goes on about it's business.  I'm not going to bombard you with a whole slew of figures, only that the difference in water levels is over 70 yards, and that each lock masses a minimum of 7,000 tons when carrying a boatload.  Art?

The downstream lock barrier descends

     This is from inside the lock having just taken aboard a downstream vessel.  The barrier is being lowered to seal the water and boats inside.   Next!

     The ascent begins.  The videos you can see on Youtube film this in either timelapse or speed up several times, as the whole upwards or downwards journey takes seven minutes, or ten yards a minute, or about a third of a mile per hour.  Speedy they are not!  Art?

Counterweights

     Yes, those big rectangular things are indeed counterweights, these ones going down as the lock goes up, and they will rest at ground level when the lock has reached the upstream position.  Art?

Approaching upstream

     As is apparent here, the ascending lock is about to reach the final position where it mates with the upstream release.  Apologies for the lack of clarity in this video, it wasn't that clear to begin with and putting it into full-screen mode hasn't helped make it any less muddy.  Art?

Free!  Free at last!

     The upstream barrier has been raised, allowing the boat to move out and onto the river.  You can see the water falling from the raised barrier, which is why the folks out in the open on the boat kept their hoods up.
     You can have a few more figures.  The volume of traffic on the two rivers has increased nine-fold since the ship lift opened in 2002, and well over two million tons of shipping pass through it annually.
     There you go, the fascinating world of ship lifts.  Go on, admit it, you're impressed, aren't you?

Sorry I couldn't find any puny humans for scale

     Motley, let's recreate this with <thinks> duct tape, cardboard and gallons of water*!

"Gamut"
It was a Cryptic crossword answer, before you ask.  I've heard and seen it in use, because I've read so much, yet never until today had I wondered where it came from.
     "The full range, as of emotions," defined my Collins Concise.  It went further.  "14C.  From medieval Latin, "Gamma", the lowest note of the hexachord as determined by Guido D'Arezzo."  Oh, him.  Art?

Peculiarly appropriate.  Also, Coincidence Hydra time <winces>

     You added Gamma and the first note of said scale, which used to be Ut.  The sequence went Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si - so with the whole thing you had a gamut.  "Ut" was changed to "Doh", and there you have the Hawkwind album title above.  Which was a large part of the "Space Ritual" album I was going on about a couple of moons ago.
     This is proof, if more were needed, that the Universe is conspiring against me.

The Coincidence Hydra.  Staple diet: Conrad's tender hind-quarters.

The Youth Of Yesteryear
Ah, me, what a fruitful source of entertainment r/AskReddit is.  I have a NuclearRevenge story that I shall have to blue-pencil a bit before posting, as it involves salaciousness; in the meantime I was reading what South Canadian students got up to in high school, where "got up to" means up to and including "malicious property damage and actual bodily harm".  These sort of things used to happen at the end of the senior's last term, as a kind of Rude Salute to their educational establishment.  Art?

This kinda place

     There was one which seems to have all the hallmarks of an urban legend: the seniors would release three (or four) pigs into the school, and paint numbers on their backs, viz: 1,2 and 4 (or 1,2,3 and 5).  The school janitors, custodians and teachers would thus spend days if not weeks searching for that missing pig, because they are so stupid and had never heard of such a prank ever in the history of South Canadian high schools.  Or something.

It's already a meme, for heaven's sake!

     Conrad wonders if this event ever actually happened.  Because he is a grumpy old empiricist.

Finally - 
I only need a short article to hit the Compositional Ton, so I shall only add in the bare bones of an article I intend to do more justice to at length and a later date.  Okay, there is a company in South Canada called the "Black Rifle Coffee Company", who make -
     - videos of current and ex-military South Canadians commenting on war films and how unrealistic they are.  And coffee, as well.  Art?

A big fan of that British radio program -

     Here is Matt, the owner, who decided he was going to do Rambo's exploding arrows in real life.  This is a much bigger challenge than it might seem at first, for all sorts of technical reasons, the principal one being Not Getting Killed, which we will definitely be going into in more detail.  Because what's not to like about Exploding Arrows?

     And with that we are most definitely done!

*  Tomorrow I'll see if anyone has done the same in Lego

Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher

No!  I Am Not Referring To That Soppy Love Song 
By some darts player, if I remember correctly.  I'm a bit hazy on the details, not being particularly attentive when bland songs from the Sixties get excessive airtime in this, the Twenty-First Century.  Honestly, we can put a man on Mars, but we cannot come up with better radio playlists?  

Remarkable!  A pop music career and a professional athlete.  Where did he find the time?

     And that's not all I've got to yark on about today when it comes to sports.  I am currently nibbling away at a very difficult Cryptic Crossword in my Reader's Digest compendium.  Let me show you the - sorry, what's that?  No, we haven't put a -
     OKAY FORGET I EVER SAID THAT OR WROTE IT <damn chronometric confusion> er - what I meant was "We will put man on Mars" sometime in 2034 - er - perhaps 2034 -

What it will may look like.

     Back to the crossword - the clue was "Vain court star in America (7)".  Of course I deduced that the "America" bit was "US" so we had U _ _ _ _ _ S, and I went all about the houses until deciding that what they meant as "Vain" should have been "IN vain", or, in other words, USELESS.  
     So, then, what the blue blinking brainstorm was SELES?  I Googled it, just to see if there was anything to find and Hay Pesto! - Monica Seles, Yugoslavian tennis star of the Nineties.

     HOW THE FNORPING BUMBLETUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS!!

     It's a measure of how cross I was that you get two exclamation marks there.

Monica.  And no, you do not get to see her immodestly short skirt.

     Where were we?
     O yes, the Krasnoyarsk Dam.  Art?

Sic

     As you can see, it blocks the river completely, so shipping cannot get through it, or else it would be a bridge.
     However, those Ruffians can be pretty smart cookies when untrammelled by idiot politicians breathing down their necks.  They realised that they could build a ship lift that would physically transport vessels in a moving dock, up over the dam and down the other side, allowing riverine transport, hooray!
     Whilst quite elegant in theory, the practice was quite daunting.  But they did it.  And now we come to today's title, except for "Love" please substitute "Ship Lift".  Art?

     Here we see a barge loaded with Big Heavy Industrial-Looking Things, being floated into the mobile dock, with the dock in it's submerged position on the downriver side of the dam.  Art?

     The mobile dock now moves backwards up the railway.  Art?

     Looking up the ship lift railway from the downstream side as the dock sloooooowly moves upwards.  Note the trees to the side; it appears to be autumn.  Art?

     
     This is the faintly terrifying prospect from the road beneath the dock as it moves slooooowly forward.  I don't know about you, but the sight of something that massive at least fifty feet overhead gives me the billy crins.  In fact I think my billy crins have billy crins.  Art?

      Another moment of existential terror.  Here the whole enormous dock is rotated through 1800, so that when it descends the upstream side of the dam, the barge will be able to float out without any kind of tricky manoeuvring required.  Art?

     Here the dock is on the upstream side of the dam, as you can see from the view to port.  I have a close-up for you -

     See that small box-like structure slightly north of centre?  And the indistinct vertical blob next to it?  That's a puny human, for scale.  Just so you know how freaking enormous this thing really is.  Finally -

     Fully immersed, the dock is now able to let the barge float free, with the assistance of a couple of tugs.
     Now, you can't have followed any of that and not been impressed, can you?  I think we might come back to ship lifts, they're impressively big engineering thingies.  I wonder how many others there are across the globe?
     Motley, let's re-enact this using the stairlift and a barrel of water*!

Excuse me, I just have to add this in here in order for it to make sense on Facebook.  Art?

I really don't have to tell you who this is, do I?

     If you're unsure, just think of someone who hates Japan so much that they regularly stamp it flat.  Turning it into an - er - Japancake.

If I Were To Say "Pole Barn" -
You would, given that this is BOOJUM! expect some cheesy pun or picture along the lines of that below - Art?

Behold the barn

     Actually - NO.  I came across the term in an r/AskReddit post about Prorevenge (which is a quantum level below Nuclearrevenge), where a builder had skipped out on completing a pole barn for the poster, who was a farmer.
     A pole barn, it seems, is (usually) a wooden structure that doesn't need a foundation; it is based on posts that are individually set in concrete, meaning it can be erected on all kinds of land unsuitable, or just really expensive, for a full concrete foundation. The rest is made of wood panelling.  Art?

Pole barn carport.

     And now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.
     Oh, that revenge poster?  Through remarkably persistent detective work, they tracked down the errant builder and offered them a choice: finish the barn or face prosecution.  They completed the barn!

And Now - An Internet Cliche
I shan't apologise; in these dark times even a smidgeon of amusement is welcomed.  So, for many years a set of small cookbooks have stood upon our worktop, being more a decoration than a resource.
     Until last night, when I took out the "Potato" one and looked through for recipes I could work with.  Hay Pesto - Spanish Tortilla!  Art?

Those are the recipe books in the background.  Note gap because "Potato" is out being used.

     And you know what, it was pretty tasty.  Also veggie, for those out there who like that sort of thing.
     Also, whilst on the subject of food, and in exactly the same spot, the literal fruits of my shopping endeavours this morning.  Art?

     So we now have SEVEN onions and SEVEN tomatoes!  Truly, my cup runneth over.  Or - well, my cupboard, anyway.

This will all make sense on Facebook, honest.
       





*  What can possibly go wrong?