Zoned!

Not To Be Confused With 'Zond'

I know, I know, it sounds like one of Superman's Kryptonian opponents, when it was actually a rather cursed range of Sinister space probes.  We may come back to that, it depends how I feel.  Of course, having invoked Kel-Al, I can now put up a picture of him getting into fisticuffs with General Zoid (sp?).  Art!

Supes versus General Zorg (sp?)

     No, this Intro is all about the Red Zone, which sounds rather forbidding, because it is.  You are doubtless sucking your teeth at this point, recalling that BOOJUM! has brought forward various other 'Zones' in the past and wondering which one it's going to be.  Art!

      The idea behind this Cold War military fantasy is that war has broken out in Europe between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, resulting in an attritional stalemate across The Zone, where everything short of battlefield nukes has been employed.  The Warsaw Pact and Sinister Union both had mere years to live when this series started, and it lasted longer than either.  The Zone itself is extremely dangerous terrain, contaminated with fall-out and nerve gas and not the kind of place for an evening stroll.  However, it's not what we're focussing on today.  Art!

     This is the forbiddingly named 'Death Zone' on Gallifrey, the home planet of everyone's favourite Time Lord.  Earlier in their history the Time Lords were a little - shall we say 'but lightly endowed with morals' - and contrived to play the Game Of Rassilon.  This consisted of traversing the DZ and trying to get out, whilst either fleeing from, hiding from or, as a last resort, fighting various alien menaces that the Time Lords had dropped into the Death Zone.  To make things a little more challenging, doncha know.

     Still not the focus of the Intro.  Art!

"Stalker"

     In this film aliens landed and had what the authors described as a 'roadside picnic', leaving various bits of garbage behind.  The thing is, their presence has permanently and radically affected the landscape and even the rules of nature; an armed response to their incursion ended disastrously, to judge by the wrecked military hardware lying around.  There is a Hollywood blockbuster just aching to be made from the source novel, "Roadside Picnic".

     Nay, still not our Red Zone.  Art!

     Here we are!  This map shows the aftermath of the First Unpleasantness in north-west France and Flanders, mainly due to the millions of shell fired.  The ground was not only contaminated with explosive residues but also poison gases (chlorine, arsenic and nitrogen mustard amongst others) and the remains of humans and animals.  One problem is that a certain proportion of shells failed to explode thanks to faulty fuses, and are now lying underground in desperately dangerous states.  The decomposition of high explosive can produce horribly unstable by-products that simply itch to detonate.

  "Slightly Affected Zone"

     The land has been affected by war, not to the extent that it's either uncultivable nor uninhabitable.  By 2023 this land is perfectly fine.

 "Without damage"  

     Able to be re-occupied immediately after hostilities ceased.

 "Significant damage"

     The land had to be left alone for decades to permit reforestation to take place, after being de-mined as thoroughly as possible.  Some villages were rebuilt

 "Completely devastated/Red Zone"

     The cost and risk of de-mining - by which I mean locating and salving the millions of unexploded munitions, including poison-filled shells - was too great and the land has been allowed to lie fallow and reforest.  This will not be forever, just a very long time.  The most optimistic estimate is that it will take another 300 years to remove all the ordnance lying underground in the Red Zone.  In the meantime this land is very much out of bounds.  Art!

     It was once thought that Verdun, one of the most intensely-fought over places in human history, was so poisoned and polluted by ten months of warfare that it would never green again.  Nature, wearing a gardener's smock instead of being all red-tooth and claw-y, has brought the verdure back again.  Hope springs, hmmm?

    I would like to thank Steve, my memory, for bringing this subject to my attention at 07:20 this morning.

     <goes off to heat the oven and unbox a pizza> 

Small Beautiful Things

Are what life is all about, for some people.  I almost feel as if I'd heard that said as a quote.

     ANYWAY Wonder Wifey picked up a jolly good idea from that Martin Lewis chap, you know, the intellectual one from "The Professionals", about how to kill with a flexi-straw and a teaspoon of jam financial bod, about fuel poverty and how to stay warm.  Art!

     These mittens have a heating element built in.  You plug them into a device (my laptop in this instance) and they gently warm your hands, charging up as they do so.  I've already used them three times, once to test that they worked and twice when the old shovels were feeling a trifle icy.  They can expect further gainful employment as autumn wears into winter.

I KEEP WARNING YOU ABOUT THIS!

Not out of altriusm.  Don't get any snivelling notions about the intrinsic value of human life, I just want to take over without having to compete against Skynet.  Art!

     Courtesy of "The Daily Beast".  Conrad was unaware that this market existed at all, and a quick Google reveals a horrifying array of these mechanical upstarts that go for as little as £400.  Art!

     One assumes that the technology is similar to that of a Roomba, except with the addition of rotary cutting blades.  I wonder if you have to empty it, or do the more expensive models do that themselves?

     The thin end of the wedge, I tell 'ee, the thin end of the wedge.  Next thing you know it'll be SKYNET!

"City In The Sky"

Young Alex, used to a life aboard an orbital arcology, is still getting used to things like the ocean and a horizon.

No.  Only the Doctor emerged, looking around and taking lungfuls of sea air, holding Alex’s tool box.

     ‘Thank you for remaining reticent in the Mayor’s office, Alex,’ he murmured.  ‘Time for a little chat before our watcher catches up with us.’  He cast a careful look behind and noticed a man heading directly for their dune.

     Pointing with his umbrella, he directed Alex’s gaze beyond the scrubland and dunes, to where the sea sparkled and glittered lazily in the sunlight.

     ‘A stroll in that direction, I think, to show you the seashore.’

     They set off, sliding down the loose sand in giant footsteps.

     ‘That stuff Don the Mayor spouted about “Death-sats” is all nonsense,’ began Alex.  ‘There simply aren’t any.’

     He got an encouraging nod.

     ‘I mean, there actually was one, a single American one, and it did destroy a Pakistani nuclear missile fired at the Arcipelago.  That was a solo satellite sixty years ago.  Everyone on Arc One knows that much.’

     They followed a well-trodden path worn free of sand, passing between the narrow screen of low trees that hid the beach from view, and Alex saw the seashore for the first time.

         Yes, Alex, but New Eucla is most definitely not Arc One.

Envy Of Some Sort 

I just had to post this photograph, put up on Twitter by one Michael Warwick, who was lamenting the obsolescence of the old big-gun battleships of yore.  Art!

     From port to starboard these are: an armour-piercing 18" shell; a puny human for scale; an 18" high-explosive shell; the cases of propellant needed to fire either shell.  An 18" gun was a monster weapon, probably the zenith of big-gun development, and this short item will inevitably lead to another about battleships.  I recall that there was a whole page of text about firing the guns of a big warship in "The War Illustrated" with all the electromechanical calculations required and a huge array of crew required to serve a multi-gun turret.  Hmmmm I perhaps should have avoided mentioning that, it implies I'm going to go look it up.

Finally -

The rest of The Mansion's complement are off in Barcelona tonight, prefatory to embarking on a cruise tomorrow, so it's Conrad and Edna against the world.  I've been so diligently domestic today - swept the back steps and defrosted the small freezer.  Get me.

The Sound Abounds

Despite What You May Expect

This is not an Intro about post-punk bands, not indeed pop music in general.  Since you are far too young to possibly remember, 'Post-punk' was the musical wave that came after the two-chord thrash-and-shriek merchants of punk, it being composed of bands that could actually play music.  Art!

Artwork courtesy Brian Bolland

     For your information, this is the debut of Judge Death, long-time fan favourite.  I have this sheet here because of the DJ.  Art!

      I'm sure you're please to know that yes, Electric Eyes is one of the first victims of Judge Death, at which incident the sound, most pointedly, stops abounding.  Conrad wonders if one couldn't invite Judge Death into our world to wreak a little - er - 'judgement' upon similar odious persons.

     ANYWAY we did mention post-punk, and sound, so by the laws of inference I have to include a cover from The Sound.  Art!

     A very good band in their day, one has to say.

     ANYWAY, manifestly, none of that is anything to do with the real Intro.  Which is about Lithium Wafer Battery Design a photographic spread featured in "The War Illustrated", entirely separate from that montage I was whanging on about yesteryon.  Art!

     This, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is a depiction of a Sound Ranging unit of the British army in Italy, a technology Your Humble Scribe was unaware of being used in the Second Unpleasantness.  The First Unpleasantness, O yes, very much aware Dan Dare.  The Second? well now .....

     The idea behind sound ranging is quite simple; one listens for the sound made by enemy artillery, records it, plots it and works out where the enemy guns are located, upon which discovery the Royal Artillery unloads fifty tons of shells upon them.  Turning the theory into adequate practice took about a year in the First Unpleasantness, arriving in 1917.  I've already dug up the references to this scientific approach in "Battle Tactics Of The Western Front" and Farndale's "Western Front 1914 - 1918" history of artillery, so the odds are good you'll get a potted recount.  In the meantime - Art!

     An observer in the front lines reports in via radio link when he hears the sound of enemy guns, giving an approximate direction (if you look closely you can see his compass on the berm).  Art!

     Here a couple of uniformed minions are installing a protective cover over a microphone well behind the front lines.  These were positioned by the half-dozen in an arc, picking up the sound of artillery firing and transmitting the data to a central point.  There it would either be recorded on a drum graph, or be measured onto film for collation and interpretation.  Art!

     Here you see a couple of more cerebral minions in uniform working out from the unspooled drum graph where the Teutons are hiding their guns.

     One refinement that the First Unpleasantness lacked was radio transmission between the different units, which hence didn't have to be in the same place.  Art!

     He also provided a useful cross-check for the calculations and a time-stamp, too.  The last shot illustrates how those scribbled lines on a drum are plotted onto a map, locating the enemy guns.  Art!

     Matey is adjusting clips holding a length of string, already having three crossing at the same location, which is where the Teuton gun or battery is hiding.

     There is no indication of how accurate this methodology is in TWI, and I don't have the time or inclination to wade through technical manuals.  Briefly put, in the First Unpleasantness a British sound ranging section could locate an enemy gun to within 30 yards on a good day so Conrad anticipates the chaps above doing as well if not better.  It made the Teutons extremely wary of firing if the wind blew towards Allied lines.

Or up

Lording The Hoarding

I warned you about this, so don't go whining.  Okay, Periscope Films run a business where they rescue, retrieve, restore and record 8mm and 16mm films, permitting we the public to view the end results on Youtube*.  They make money by licencing films as stock footage for other broadcast media.  Nine months ago they got a call to rescue a huge collection of celluloid film reels that had been collected by a person no longer able to care for them.  Art!

     This is only part of the many thousands of reels that were collected, before they became landfill.  Not only did they fill the truck, they filled a trailer as well.    Becoming waste is the sad fate of a lot of old film stock, I'm afraid.  Art!

     Where viable, the film is run on this HD recording deck, transferring it to digital medium, because the celluloid one is ephemeral, sensitive, delicate and vulnerable to extremes of temperature or humidity.  Art!

     You can't tell from a photographic image, so you'll have to take it on trust that this particular reel is giving off a very strong odour of vinegar, better known as acetic acid, which means that it's beginning to decompose.  Nick (co-founder) points out that it's 'hexagoned', meaning it's contracted physically and lost the required flexibility for being run through the sprockets.  Not only that, it's become a single solid block.  Art!

     Another tweak.  The cyan part of older film stocks from the Sixties and Seventies faded over time, leaving a print that played back in red tones.  Esteban uses colour-correction tools to add the blue back in, giving a faithful reproduction of a film fifty or sixty years old.

     Go check 'em out, they're free.

Dotty

No!  Not Yayoi Kusawa, who is dotty in every sense of the word.  Art!

     Conrad found this inside the pages of a military history book he was cataloguing, where it had lain undiscovered and unlamented for years.  DtD is a music festival, held on 3 consecutive days in Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester.  It's still going.  Not that I went to the one above, this is a flier picked from an associated venue.

     The date of the above was - allow me to illustrate.  Art!

     2015, if you can't make it out.  I went over the whole band list and the only one I recognise is Rag'n' Bone Man.  More probably a showcase of local talent than any step to the big time, one surmises.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor is both plotting and transporting, and doubtless getting a great big kick out of doing both on the go.

Plotting on the go meant being creative , mused the Doctor.  Like keeping a multitude of plates spinning on poles whilst cycling round them on a unicycle, blindfolded.  He led them back to the Tardis, nodding and smiling to passers-by, children running errands, fishermen hauling nets, farriers and carpenters.  Alex looked around in muted wonder, seeing, smelling and hearing activities he knew of only at third hand or via a computer monitor.  Terry hared on ahead, desperate to get to the bizarre structure standing atop the dunes, allowing the Timelord to pass Ace a small silver cylinder unseen by any Euclans.

     ‘Pocket radio transciever, Brigadier’s personal issue.  Keep it with you,’ he whispered from the corner of his mouth.  ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.  And don’t give it away!’  He paused again.  ‘In fact, make sure nobody from Arc One ever gets their hands on it.  Bad idea.  Germs.’

     ‘Alex!’ he called, loudly.  ‘I’m going to whiz Upstairs with Ace and Terry, drop them off in Arc One and come straight back here.  I want you to wait for us.’

     By this time they were slogging up the sands of the low ridge to the Tardis.  Alex didn’t bother at being left behind, cocking his head to catch a low, continuous rumbling roar he hadn’t noticed when they arrived, since he’d been so overwhelmed with the perception of a distant horizon.  He sprang backwards when the big blue box vanished with a wheezy howl, only for it to reappear less than a second later, making him wonder if the incredible box of tricks had gone wrong.

     O Alex, never venture that theory to the Doctor.  Never!

One Has To Wonder

Over the past few days there have been several unconfirmed reports that Peter The Average is dead, having had a coronary and <insert umpteen possible scenarios including polonium tea and twelfth-storey windows>.  The Kremlin, somewhat mystified about where these rumours are coming from, has been issuing denials, well aware that if they loudly proclaim Bloaty Gas Tout as alive, an awful lot of people, the Ruffians first, will automatically parse that as meaning that he is very dead indeed.  Art!

     The thing is - if he were dead, his body doubles would be wheeled out to keep up the pretence of him still breathing, and he always has a 'library' of video clips that are used to pretend he's busy working when he's actually off getting a blood transfusion or surgery.  Meanwhile the FSB will be trying to choose a new leader amongst those in power who haven't fled the country on a private jet loaded down with gold bullion.

     If a new leader does arise, expect it to be an utter unknown who's been quietly working away in the background.  Kinda like -

Yeah

Finally -

Just because we can - Art!

*  For FREE!

Robot Army

NO!  You Are Wrong

I can tell because that was a deliberate verbal trap, set because I can and also to illustrate how you can never be too sure about what you read or see.  Let us put up what you were expecting.  Art!

     This is, of course - obviously! - an idiot's imagining of what a robot army would look like.  Notice how nice and white the robots are, making them stand out at a distance, and before you cavil that they might be set to work in an Arctic environment, their weapons are also stand-out black, blowing their snowy camouflage.  Plus they are clustered far too close together, meaning an enemy that ranges one of them ranges their whole rank or column.  They're all looking in one direction, meaning th

     ANYWAY that's not what this Intro is about.  Rather, I wanted to look at robot arms, specifically the limb not a set of weaponry, so perhaps the title ought to have been "Arm-y".  So go sue me.  Art!

     This is matey, the "Winter Soldier' for whatever reason, because "It's snow joke fighting him!" or similar, and he has a tragic backstory where his dog died and there were no chocolate Digestives left in the cupboard, etcetera etcetera.

     He is of note only because he has a robot arm, and wouldn't you know, it's his left arm, possibly a deliberate choice given the Sinister emblem upon his shoulder.  Imagine if he'd been Falcon - then he'd definitely be left-wing  <ahem>.  Art!

     This is Tanner, the anti-hero of "Night Zero" out of 2000AD, which was a pretty good story, thanks for asking.  As you can see, he is graced with a mighty meaty muscular metal arm, courtesy of his service in the army.  He lives and works in Night City, a gigantic domed post-apocalyptic city that needs the dome to keep out all the designer viruses and mutant wildlife.  O and that arm?  Is armed.  Art!

Gosh, he looks cross, doesn't he?

     There was a secondary character from "The Authority" who was blessed with a robot arm, one that looked designed upon realistic principles, except I cannot find a picture of same as she was both rather obscure and didn't last very long.  So instead let's put up another obscure character, who went the distance.  Art!

     Readers, meet Toberman.  He was an unfortunate victim of the Cybermen, as detailed in the dramamentary "Tomb Of The Cybermen" (a Doctor Who serial) who jiggled his brains around to render him obedient to them, and who swapped his right arm for a Cyber version, which you can see above.  Art!

     Also just visible here.  And no, I cam not going to go through the whole DVD just to get half-a-second of screenshot.

     All of this is by way of a preamble, because we have a real, gigantic robot arm to impress you with as of right now.  Art!

     It may not be clear, so let me explicate that the arm here mounts a cutting jet composed of sand and water, which is used to cut up derelict ships not fit for use any more.  This arm is one of four that the firm Leviathan have tasked to chop up a ship into scrap steel, which can then be sold on in compact and movable form for recycling.

     "So what?" I hear you ask.  Well, this way avoids the extensive waste materials and contaminants that infest large ships, such as heavy metals or asbestos.  And also because a great deal of the world's ship-breaking is done on beaches out in India and other Asian shorelines, by scads of low-paid manual workers with nil PPE.  Art!

Forget hard hats, these chaps don't even have shoes

     Of course - obviously! - it's dirt cheap, because the workers get paid a pittance and are routinely injured, killed or poisoned.  With the increasing robotic automation of ship wrecking, this trade may have seen the beginning of it's end.  Art!

For All Humanity

Or at least quite a lot of them.  We've featured the CGI of 'HazegrayArt' a few times in the past, as they - man, woman, committee? - continue to explore alternate historical and contemporary rocketry.  This one is for an un-pressurised Lunar Lander.  Art!

    This is the 'Yankee Clipper' Lunar Lander and Command Module en route to the landing site, travelling over the Moon's surface several hundred miles up.  Art!

Separation

Descent

Landing

     I'm sure a few of the more tech savvy amongst you out there will be wondering what four astronauts are going to be doing once they land, as the Lander is unpressurised - there is no fuselage to retain any atmosphere and the Mission Elapsed Time is expected to be around 7 days.  Look on - 

     HGA has added-in the 'Surface Habitat 0605-LLPS-LaRC 2' at upper starboard, a living environment for the now-landed astronauts.

     Outstanding stuff!  Well done HGA!  (good background music, too)

"The War Illustrated"

For those keeping track, we are very nearly at the end of Volume Seven, meaning only 3 more left to cover the rest of the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     This is one of TWI's montages, where the captions below inform readers about what they're seeing, alas too tiny to read here, so I'll just have to talk you through them one at a time.  Lucky you.  Art

     This first photograph is somewhere in the landscape of ruins around about Monte Cassino, where a New Zealand lieutenant is keeping a beady eye open for any incautious enemy movement.  Unless he is left-handed he's going to expose himself if he takes a pot at any Teutons.  He and his platoon seem to have settled in this location at least temporarily, as he's not carrying any kit at all, implying it's been left at a central location.

     I say!  Patches of blue sky now visible outside, not what Conrad expected this morning looking out on a world of grey.  Better be quiet, don't want to scare it off.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor has been harangued by breathless accounts of the 'Death Sats' in orbit, which have played merry hob with the Australian coastal communities.

     ‘How old are you, Terry?’ asked Lenny, in the habitally sly way he had.

     ‘Uh – twenty last month, Len.  Why - you got a prezzie for me?’

     Don smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.

     ‘And you’re fit as a fiddle, ain’t you?’

     Terry began to suspect he was being set up.  He crossed his arms.

     ‘D – Mayor - I’ve donated blood twice this year already.’  He looked at Lenny.  ‘I’ve done my turn in your highway repair-rota, too.’

     Don scraped his mayoral seal off the desktop and into a drawer.

     ‘Terry, Terry, you’ll hurt my feelings.  Right now I’m just being Uncle Don, looking after your best interests.’  He spread his hands wide and tried to look sincere.  ‘I wondered if you’d like to go on a trip with these nice people.’

     Now the younger man looked at the Doctor and Ace with increased interest.

     ‘Oh, right.  Where along to?’

     Both travellers pointed directly upwards.  No further explanation was needed: Terry gaped, blinked, muttered under his breath and nodded with enthusiasm.

     Handy shorthand, that.

Arga Warga Barga Bar Bar Bar

You know what the ancient Greeks were like; expansionist, fractious and convinced of their own cultural superiority.  It is believed they called non-Hellenes 'Barbarians' because they didn't speak Greek, and instead jabbered along in their own miserable languages à la "Bar bar bar".

     Conrad knows how they felt.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe doesn't recognise any of these names and, because life is short and I have a very large Book Mountain to read, I'm not going to bother looking them up.

Typical

Conrad has mentioned his Subscribing to Periscope Film's Youtube channel, and is going to have to track down a film they posted where they acquired hundreds, if not thousands, of 8mm and 16mm film reels, since it shows what they do with cellulloid film - a perishable and fussy medium that needs to be stored PROPERLY.  Art!

     Nope, it's not a liquorice gateau, this is film stock kept in conditions of high temperature and humidity.  It's now completely useless except as landfill.

     I hope all you hoarders out there with reels of 'Doctor Who' that grandad smuggled home from his studio job at the BBC are looking after them.

Finally -

Being Sober For October hasn't been that much of a strain.  All I have to do now is wait until November 3rd, Friday, when I can guzzle a can or two of Old Speckled Hen.

     Chin Chin!