some people like to display signs of their faith on the back of their cars
....
Me?



I want everyone to know I like fish'n'chips
(Thu 3rd Apr 2008, 21:52, More)

check contents of box before handing over suspiciously little cash for shiny consumer goods


bless me b3ta for I have sinned, it has been many weeks since my last picture post...
(Sun 30th Dec 2007, 14:07, More)

I hear Hull is quite warm at this time of year
Don't ask HIM!


(Sun 12th Feb 2006, 19:24, More)

Trick or Treat is going to be quite competitive this year


I can't for a minute imagine saying 'Oh go on then...Trick!' (covers head with hands)
(Sun 23rd Oct 2005, 20:34, More)

b3ta is the one place I don't mind going 'shopping

(Thu 30th Jun 2005, 0:00, More)

In the 21st century
paper is becoming obsolete.

Even telegrams.



just wanted to see my new donate-i-con so I sort of rushed it...sorry!
(Thu 9th Jun 2005, 23:28, More)

» Heckles

Not mine. A friend of mine went to a Comedy club in Birmingham somewhere.
A drunk bloke at the front kept interrupting the stand-up turn who was apparently rather good, but the constant stream of interruption was obviously riling the comic. Eventually he stops in the middle of a joke and makes a big announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the average penis is 6 inches long. The average vagina can take up to 7.5 inches. So, for every woman in the world, there is 1.5 extra inches of capacity. Now, let's say that half of the world's population is women. Combined, that means that there is spare cunt of over one and a half million miles."

Pointing to the heckler, he finishes "and there's 5 foot 2 of it sitting over there".

There is a modest laugh, and then the heckler comes back with his riposte -"I'm 5 foot 8 actually".

To which the comic delivers the coup de grace - "Well, you're an even bigger cunt than I thought then".
(Thu 6th Apr 2006, 13:27, More)

» Karma

I think I have finally come around
I got married early and had a reasonable job (working with Doctor When) with reasonable money, our own place (rented) and a rock club at the end of the road (XLs in Edgbaston). Every few months we'd get a performance related bonus of a few hundred quid (back mid-90s it was good money) every four months and life was sweet.

Then my ex fell out with her boss and the income dropped. She couldn't find another job and as we were just above the benefit line, we got no help. I changed jobs for a percieved improvement in pay but lost the job as it was a contract and they didn't need to give me any notice.

The only job I could find was at my dad's engineering firm so ended up working 12-hour shifts from 6pm till 6am, back breaking work although it did improve my upper body strength...

Then her mum became ill with Motor Neurone disease (like what Stephen Hawking has) and we moved down to Cornwall to look after her. She died very quickly and as it was where she grew up, my wife of the time didn't want to move back up to Birmingham.

I couldn't get a job anywhere- all the electronics industry was miles away and I had no car to get there. To get a job in the deep SW at the time you needed to be in the tourism industry or self-employed tradesman. We were stuck both living with her parents. Eventually the only place I could get a job was at Flambards' theme park for the summer season, and for a pittance.

The people were mainly pleasant but I was cooking in the SW sun all day and my eyes felt like they were hot gritty marbles because we weren't allowed to wear sunglasses. Eventually a company relocated to the town and I got a job in electronics again, assembling equipment. Not great, but I learned stuff and the people there were generally nice, including my best mate down in Cornwall who I still keep in contact with 11 years later.

However we were under threat of eviction from my wife's dad who, at the time, turned nasty after his wife had died and was making a grab for all the money she saved while he spent all of his. My daughter was born at this time and he was persuaded by the wife's older brother to let us stay while paying rent but he got us out eventually, sold her childhood home and pocketed the cash after burning his wife's will which left the house to my wife.

We rented a place in town but the wife was sufferring from all the stress and developed two auto-immune diseases triggered by the hassle. She was in hospital and almost died.

Eventually we managed to get a place of our own on an affordable mortgage for part-own through a housing association and wrote her dad out of our lives. But all the stress and pain caused my ex to lash out on the only person she felt would put up with it- me. I for my part had become sullen and withdrawn and unresponsive which made her madder. I played my part in the downward spiral of destruction. Hands up.

By the time my daughter was four I'd been through years of hostility, anger and frustration and our relationship was torpedoed. I moved out and lived in a pitiful bedsit earning toss-all money and having to live on beans and sausages on toast- 1 meal cost about 30p - to pay for rent and the mortgage on my daughters' place.

I had to get a better job to be able to afford my divorce and the only option was contracting up in Cheshire- but it was 350 miles away from my daughter. For three weeks out of four I'd try to come down to Cornwall with a car given to me by my dad (a huge Volvo estate) and do the 700-mile round trip to see her. I was exhausted permanently but gaining experience and had some peace during the week. Me and my wife got divorced amid the usual acrimony but because I was coming to see my daughter every fortnight she let me (and still does) crash on the sofabed so we learned to mainly get on, if very uncomfortably, with the occasional fall-out.

Then that contract came to an end and I was out of work for three months, during which timke the lease terms on my new car meant I owed £1000 and they reposessed it, screwing over my credit record for years to come.

I had to move back in with my folks, and anyone who has moved abck in with their parents will know it's hardly ideal and causes friction. I was driving 90 miles a day, 5 days a week to get to work and celebrated my 30th birthday with no money at all. Miserable.

The new job was closer than Cheshire so my trips to see my daughter became bi-weekly plus holiday time in the summer, easter and christmas. I was on a lower wage but respectable- I cruised for a few years doing this while the company that employed me contracted me out to a car maker in the West Midlands for more and more each year based on my growing exp[erience and skills but passed on very little of their increase. I started getting depressed and took days off for being ill- this came and went on-and-off for years.

The turning point came when I moved in with friends from work- we had a shared house and the social suport of having friends to come home to after work instead of a silent house and the cheap cider. I cheered right up, even with the occasional relapse.

I then tried to leave my company and go to work for the bigger client direct but I was backstabbed and prevented and found myself in a hellhole role which plunged me back into despair.

After a year I started looking in earnest for another job and found one working out in Peterborough- a 140 mile round trip but in a calm, clean, decent position, but boring- I had been so hyped up for difficult work I found this well-paid sedentary work difficult to adapt to- then I got a call from a manager I used to work for briefly a few years before- he had a role to fill and would I like to come and talk to him about it?

I went to see that fellow and came away determined to go there. After giving a months' notice I went. I had to drop a couple of pounds an hour pay but the job was the best....

Now my ex is calmer, happier and my daughter is 11 and relatively well adjusted, all things considered. I still come down every fortnight but now I often get to borrow a car from the work development fleet of prototypes (for which they pay for the fuel) and I'm getting paid enough to be able to treat my daughter and even my ex occasionally. I'm happy in my job and am privelidged to be able to drive the cars. Karma has paid me back in spades.

(Oh, I now work at Aston Martin BTW... nothing cheers up a bod than a weekend with a DB9 or a Vantage, unlimited petrol and 700 miles of driving a posh car)

/apologies for length
(Thu 21st Feb 2008, 19:31, More)

» Too much information

What's the sun made of, dad? It feels hot.
A seemingly simple quesion from my four year old daughter.

Now, I'm an engineer and I'm used to speaking to people all day in a highly concentrated acronym-laden convoluted mess of words and technobabble. So my first thought was to answer -

ah, subatomic fusion of hydrogen nuclei to form helium in a 14 million degree plasma.

Oh. 4 year old. Have to explain fusion.
To explain fusion, have to explain chemical elements.
To explain chemical elements, have to go into subatomic physics.
To explain subatomic physics, have to go into mass/energy equations.
To explain mass/energy conversion, have to engage in laws of physics revolving about mass, pressure,nucleus repulsion and the speed of light.

THEN-To explain how we know all of this, have to refer to the thermonuclear weapons program.
To explain that, have to go into mechanics of isotope separation and enrichment within a centrifuge / neutron cannon environment.
To explain that, have to explain global geopolitical history of the early 20th century.
To explain all of that, have to go into politics, fascism and communisim.
To explain how that could be executed, have to go into tactical military planning, bomber fleets, ICBMs, terrorism and the struggle against the axis evil powers.

And then we have to take into acount why the sun is a (mainly) uniform sphere 93,000,000 miles away. So have to explain gravity, simple harmonic motion, gas density etc.

To explain why it feels hot , have to explain radiation. To explain that, have to explain the theory of electromagnetic wavelengths. To explain that, have to involve use of mathematics to determine frequency versus EM band. And also briging the speed of light, vacuum permeability and electromagnetic wave propagation, wave-versus-particle photon theory as disseminated by quantum mechanics versus Einsteins' general relativity. And then it feels hot because of absorbtion, nerve receptors, chemical nerve conduction, axon interlinkage, cogniscence and resoning.


So either I can say "you'll find out when your older" (like, 14 years later in total) or I can avoid the TMI and say..

'Fire'

at which point she replied, in a disgusted tone of voice "Fire? FIRE!!?? DOH!"

To this day I don't know why the answer gave so much dissatisfaction... maybe she'd bet on the outcome with a schoolmate and realised she had wrongly said 'Fusion plasma brought about by the subatomic combination of hydrogen nuclei into helium and mass-to-energy conversion".
(Thu 6th Sep 2007, 16:55, More)

» Your first cigarette

Parents thought I was chasing the dragon...
When I was 14 my folks found small sheets of tinfoil and matches in my bedroom and instantly leapt to the conclusion that I'd taken up smoking skag like Zammo- they sat me down in grave silence and asked if there was anything I wanted to tell them- well, being a naughty kind of child I could think of ten things to which they would be referring but played mute innocence- until they said "We know you've been using matches and foil. Care to tell us what for?".

Oh shit.

The truth was, I found that if you scraped the heads off the matches into a little pile (about 5-10 was best) and then wrapped them up in tinfoil, then hit the pile with a hammer you actually got a pretty decent sounding bang.

I explained this, ashamed, as their eyes got wider and relief cut in that I wasn't on class A drugs after all. A lengthy silence ensued and then the biggest anti-climax of all time.

"Well- stop it".
(Mon 24th Mar 2008, 15:31, More)

» This book changed my life

one book nearly changed my life in a bad way
Dyes, Explosives and Foodstuffs.

A school textbook- yes, really. Myself and a couple of school friends thought we might be able to use our chemistry knowledge for the nefarious purposes of making flash-bang pyrotechnics and latterly, rockets. All worked well for a little while- film canisters made excellent pots for holding quantities of powder, mixed up from chemicals that we bought from various sources- magnesium and zinc powder and sodium nitrate from an academic laboratory supplier (posing as 'office junior' for a special effects company with the aid of a faked ID card (letraset back in those days!) and of course you can buy sulphur over the counter at boots (for some reason!). That just left the carbon- one bag of barbecue briquettes and a burned out coffee grinder later we had carbon powder a plenty.

Some of the 'flares' looked pretty impressive, even in daytime but they had a habit of going 'out' rather than 'up' so I later adapted a short length of towel rail (sturdy metal pipe with chrome plating) so that the burn could be longer and more directed. Hammer down one end in a sort of crimp and the result was great.

At that point one of my friends thought that we could make our own rockets by- well, just turning the thing the other way up before igniting the propellant. His plan was to use a length of aluminium tent pole and mix the basic black powder with zinc, and by heck his rockets would fly well.

I used magnesium powder instead (liked the bright sparks it created) but tried to go 'lightweight composite' and sawed a length of giant bamboo to make the body of my rocket. Unfortunately the propellant was too vigorous for this plant-derived casing and it promptly exploded.

Aw shit. But, hey, that was kinda cool.

I went back to the metal pipe idea and wondered if the 'fuel' would shoot a projectile out of the end? I had some aluminium capacitors at home that fitted the 'barrel' more or less so fixed the tube to a wooden handle to aim with, and drilled a small hole in the crimped end so I could ignite the mix with match heads.

First test firing worked well, a sooty 'phoom' and the capacitor flew good and true. I took it home, pleased, and reloaded. the next one went better than expected, in that instead of a sooty 'phoom' there was a very loud bang and a bright flash that temporarily dazzled me, so much so that it was difficult to run away shitting my pants in fright. But as soon as I realised I was OK the next stage of the plan came on.

I wasn't a fan of blowing myself up so back to the rockets idea. In an effort to increase the flame velocity I crimped down both ends and just left the small hole drilled in the end for ignition AND exhaust.

Let's just say I was glad not to be standing closeby when 'launch time' came along. Ignition? Set. Countdown (running away) 5-4-3- BLAM!!!!!

Me and my friends legged it as it was obvious the sound would be audible for 1/2 a mile away... unfortunately (perhaps fortunately?) someone called the police with a description of a gaggle of 16-year olds WITH A DOG (the clincher) had been seen running away from the explosion. We were rumbled, I had to 'fess up and was marched back to the scene by my dad to pick up the remains of the tube which had been blown apart like a comedy peeled banana.

The funny thing was, the police let me off with a caution because I admitted that I'd made the device from chemicals and engineering tools rather than just chucking fireworks about and they didn't want to put a blotch on my young life with a criminal record.

So stay in school kids, but don't blow things up.
(Mon 19th May 2008, 19:05, More)