Possibly Not A Title You Ever Expected To See
If you hail from beyond the shores of This Sceptred Isle (you poor benighted heathen!) then you may not be aware of the cultural importance of the humble Polo mint <a moment's silence for a confection that DIABETIC Conrad cannot have>, which I shall heretofore illustrate. Art!
Your Humble Scribe is unaware of why they are called 'Polo'. Shall I look into this? O go on. Hmmmm they claim that it's thanks to being associated with 'Polar' because it's a cool mint. At this point the opposition must have decided to go one up and invented the Glacier mint -
ANYWAY there was a post over on the Facebook Space Opera page which piqued Conrad's attention and curiosity, because it illustrates with no explanation. Art!
I have no idea what this television series is, so I took a closer look. The architecture looks British, reinforced by a quick check of the number-plates, which have a British format. Looking closer you can see a couple of shrunken corpses lying next to their abandoned cars, and at least three of the people are wearing slings that imply they are carrying firearms. Notice a lack of property-damage; all the windows in the skyscrapers are intact, and the jib cranes haven't been knocked over, so whatever happened here, it wasn't a typical heavy-metal alien invasion. Due to the spread of skyscrapers I posited that it was London, since no other inner-city in Perfidious Albion has so many of them.
So - what are those giant black polos? Art!
Those are not mock-ups of the London Eye, in case you were wondering. This shot confirms that the series is set in London. Note, once again, the lack of riverine traffic.
I have asked what the series is on the posters page, which may earn a response, or not. If not then I may have to hint about it to Degsy, subtly, like.
Motley, would you like this sinister shadowy Polo?
Delicious IF I REMEMBER PROPERLY
Conrad Is Cross. Kind Of
If you followed Your Humble Scribe in July then you will recall that I tackled a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle which, when completed, formed a giant cryptic crossword.
What do you do with a crossword once you've created it? Why you get in there and complete it. Art!
This is making what I call the 'first-pass', where I answer things that are obvious at first glance. So far we have gotten half-way through the first-pass, after which we get down to see if the gaps can be filled in, which is the second-pass. I'm using a whiteboard pen to fill the clues in, since it has a nice fat nib that allows really legible answers. Will it wipe off afterwards? Who knows*!
How Very Cool
If your memory serves well then you ought to recall that Your Humble Scribe posted pictures of cooling towers being demolished, because such things bring out the gleeful schoolboy in me, alongside my enthusiasm for THINGS EXPLODING! Art!
Sadly still intact and functional
These enormous reinforced concrete structures serve a very humble purpose: to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow cool hot water created within the bowels of the power station to which they are attached. I don't know if Art can find a schematic for us. Art!
O there you go
Hot water comes into the tower, is sprayed over a very large volume of interior packing, and then cools thanks to being spread over such a large surface area and the updraught of air thanks to ventilation. Once cooled it falls into a pond or basin beneath the tower for collection. Art!
You can judge how large these structures are and how high the volumes of water involved by checking out that truck. And no, it's not a Tonka toy.
Inaction This Day
A considerable time ago, which is Conrad for 'I may be able to find out yet cannot be bothered', Your Humble Scribe purchased a tome entitled "Action This Day", which, if Art will stop scoffing the lignite -
Dog Buns, is it dull or what! No, there's no 'what' about it, this is a seriously boring book. If you aren't into cryptanalysis as a hobby then it's pointlessly detailed and dull, going on about cribs and other guff and the minutiae of code-breaking, all without illustration or example. Not quite as badly boring as "Transportation On The Western Front" but getting there. I have resolved to finish a couple of chapters that have interesting titles - far too long to quote here - and then it's going to be one of the Outward books as I receive more Inward books.
When Real Life Was A Bit Rubbish
Ah, gentle reader, I have been watching and re-watching the Space Clipper sequences from "2001 A Space Odyssey", which are positive pirouettes of performance, all accompanied by that wretched earworm "The Blue Danube". At one point Conrad picked up on a sequence on Youtube about the SpaceX Dragon docking with the International Space Station. Cool and groovy! I thought.
Yes, well - Art?
This is the view inside the capsule. These chaps are a whole lot more active than the two somnolent space-slugs acting as shuttle crew in 2001. Next!
Interior and exterior views, and of course whoever loaded this video up had the Blue D. playing in the background. Next!
SpaceX Dragon nose-cone elevated, allowing the docking collar to be seen. We are 1 minute 35 seconds along at this point. Let's have another view from a different camera at the shuttle approaches closely enough for the ISS's shadow to fall across it. Art!
Here we are, 2 minutes 20 seconds in. Boy, this thing is really crawling along. Art!
3 minutes and 15 seconds in. Our view of the docking collar is obscured by an abstruse piece of ISS kit. Dog Buns this thing is tediously slow! Art?
The moment of real, actual, recoil-inducing docking, at 6 minutes. I think Thomas Pynchon wrote two novels in the time it took them to dock.
Let's hope that, no matter how bright the future, it moves a little quicker than this, hmmm?
Finally -
Since I am working today, you are getting ONE post, and ONE post only, and this is is. Don't worry, we've nowhere near done with cooling towers. O no Sebastian Coe!
* The dizzying excitement of crossword puzzles!
No comments:
Post a Comment