Look before you ....

I have been musing a little recently on the subject of time travel. The reason for this musing I think I'll keep for another post. However, as a by-product of all this I have started to develop some ideas about the problems associated with time travel. I'm not talking about the mind stretching stuff much favoured by sci-fi writers who will tell you must never to travel back to meet anyone from your past who will one day have something to do with the fact that you turned up to meet them in the first place. No, nothing like that. What I've been thinking about is something far more fundamental...

Imagine, if you will, that you have just put the finishing touches to your brand new time machine. You have done all the maths, the quantum mechanics and the relativity stuff. You've understood all the concepts of the space time continuum, and are very conversant with the works of the likes of Oppenheimer, Hamilton, Gauss, Schroedinger, Einstein, and not of course not forgetting Bose as every good time machine needs a semi decent speaker system.

Anyway, there stands our Will and he has before him a fully functioning time machine. He steps in, closes the door and sets the controls for... "Hmm let's see says Will, yes, ..25 years in the past, why not". He clicks his mouse on the window, types in 25 and hits the appropriate key*.

Accompanied by many weird and wonderful noises his fully functioning time machine disappears and simultaneously appears 25 years in the past. Unfortunately for him though the room in which he built his wondrous machine was on the fifth floor of the University science building which 25 years in the past was not even a sketch on an architects drawing board. Thus the fully functioning time machine now finds itself unsupported in its new location and under the influence of good old fashioned physics moves in a downward direction in a straight line until compelled to change that state by an externally applied force, i.e. the ground and whereby said machine and owner are no longer able to jointly hold the title of fully functioning.

This one simple potential problem therefore opens up a huge can of worms for any prospective time traveller. One can imagine a whole host of situations where a time machine will materialise into certain doom if one assumes that its movement through time does not involve a change of location. This implies therefore that a successful time machine needs to be a pretty good flying machine as well, to avoid all the problems associated with stuff changing at and around ground level. Saying that though, there is still a chance that it may materialise in the path of another flying object and still meet an untimely** end.

Potential tinkerers in time and space - you have been warned.


*Which begs the question - "Does a time machine's keyboard have a "Return" key?
**There are so many puns in this lot it's unreal.

Time flies like knives...

...but fruit flies like a banana.

I cannot believe it's more than a week since the last post!

Lots of odds and ends to come as a result of me being here, there and everywhere during this period of inexcusable neglect. Starting with:

"Can we throw away the instructions for the new bird table" announced Mrs B, clutching a piece of paper whilst tidying the shed.

"Yes, I think so" I replied. "They fly in, eat and fly away again, so I think they've got the hang of it".

This is the sort of blog post normally seen over at Zoe's, especially as sheds were involved.

Talking of sheds, here's an interesting blog

Brom's guide to Mexican cuisine.

One thing that came out of my trip to New Mexico last week was the realisation that the gastronomic phenomenon known as "Mexican" is subject to strict rules which are universally applied to all main course menu items.

These be the rules:

Rule 1: The meal will always consist of 12 main ingredients.

Rule 2: Ingredients 1 to 10 are mandatory in every meal. They may vary in proportionality, but must appear on the plate somewhere.
The ingredients are: Beans, rice, tomato, onions, chilli, olives, cheese*, peppers, lettuce, avocado. The importance of rule two must be stressed and is the very core of all Mexican cuisine.

Rule 3: Unless already pre-sized by nature, ingredients 1 to 10 (and 11 - see later) must be chopped, minced, pureed or melted so that biting or chewing is deemed unnecessary.

Rule 4: Ingredient 11 can be one of the following - beef, pork, chicken or fish - however rule 3 must be applied.

Now, here comes the clever bit - Ingredient 12.

Rule 5: Ingredient 12, a circle of thin flour bread like material, is used to envelope one, some or all of the ingredients 1 to 11.

The beauty of rule 5 is that hiding some of the ingredients within the confines of a void formed by folding item 12 creates the illusion of a different dish whilst still obeying the all important rule number 2. (and of course allows you to call it something totally different each time)

There are some minor exceptions. In Fajitas for example, rule 3 is not applied to ingredient 11. Thus beef or chicken can be supplied in relatively large (i.e. relative to other Mexican meals - but not too large) pieces, however, as a penalty for this rule infringement, the final assembly of the dish within ingredient 12 is left to the consumer, thus preserving the legality of the kitchen employees.

So there you have it, a logical approach to cookery which will result in food as shown in the following examples consumed last week. These all look totally different, but all taste somewhat surprisingly similar.






* Often "Cheddar Cheese" - I'm still trying to work out the link between Mexican and just South West of Bristol

Various degrees

I'm back from my little sojourn to the desert. Spring is definitely the best time to visit. The warmest part of the day sees the temperatures just touching the eighties while the evenings are pleasantly cool, dipping down towards freezing during the night. Thinking about this made me realise something that us Brits are quite good at doing - and that is being able to switch between temperature scales without thinking about it. The Yanks are definitely creatures of Fahrenheit whereas our European colleagues are very Celsius. The British however, will quote a hot day as being "In the upper eighties or nineties" while cold days are "just hovering above zero". Shows how versatile we can be.

Now as promised a pic or two from my trip, starting with....

Proper crop circles! This is this phenomenon of desert farming, where water is pumped up from a well and is used to irrigate a growing crop via a rotating frame which continuously trundles around on wheels. What got me was the size of this operation.

If you click on the pic and scrutinise it you will see a large town with an airfield in the top left corner. The runway can just be seen. Runways are on average about a mile long, making the larger crop circles about the same diameter. Amazing!

A Change of Seasons

It's been a grim old weekend - weatherwise that is.

The Cold Easterlies have blown over all the muck and low cloud from the continent enveloping Bromland in a depressing gloom of dampness and smelliness.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Brom is off to somewhere much brighter. Sunshine is as guaranteed as much as the rain is not.

I'll send you a postcard!

Status

Here - but not here, (and definitely not all there)

Normal service will be resumed (ASAP)

You know how it is? (It's life innit)

How are you?

What a load of bo!!ocks

A few weeks ago I was waxing lyrical about the fact that on every modern car you can determine which the side of the car the fuel cap is on by looking at the symbol on the dashboard. I stated that the cap was to be found on the same side as the little fuel pipe on the silhouette of the pump. You can read all about it here if you really want to.

Anyway last week Brom got a hire car (in the UK for a change). Before returning it I popped into a petrol station to top it up. Glancing at the little symbol, I pulled up at a pump and made my way to the rear of the car to find that the filler wasn't there as expected. It was on the other side!!

So come on, guess which make of car broke the rules!

Freeview?? - you bet!!!!

Being a geeky, techiie sort of person has its advantages. For example, being able to watch all and any cable or satellite channel I want to, without forking out for the additional costs associated with the premium stuff. All I need is a cheap old second hand receiver and a little know how and I can spend long evenings enjoying all those films, sporting events and … erm yes… ok, even S4C.

How does he do it you are probably wondering? Well, OK, as my readership is not exactly wide enough to get me into trouble, I’ll share my secret with you loverly people who drop by here every once in a while.

It’s all quite easy really, the secret is the remote control.

Remember a while ago when car radios had security codes programmed into them, and then people found out that these codes could be reset by placing the car radio in a freezer? You see the electronic circuits in commercial equipment are not usually rated to work at low temperatures. Thus cooling a chip or integrated circuit below its recommended storage temperature has the effect of resetting all the stored bits inside it. Then, as with the car radio, the security code is reset to a baseline level, as if no code existed.

The same is true for any domestic electronics, so until they start manufacturing Sky boxes or similar with expensive military grade components, the above resetting method will work at temperatures just below freezing.

The best bit though is that you don’t have to freeze everything to reset the security stuff in your TV box. All remote controls have all the required information stored up inside them. They must have, how else would these “4 for 1” universal controllers work?

So, to access absolutely everything that your digi-box is receiving, but won’t let you see it, all you have to do is pop your remote in the freezer to cool it down!

Once you have the remote cooled down you simply use it as normal only this time as you scan through your channels, you will find that there will be a LOT more of them than the last time you tried!

The time needed to get it cold enough to work varies, especially with the ambient temperature. About an hour is definitely good enough in a domestic freezer, though on a cold day 30 mins will probably do.

Once you have a channel selected, say SKY movies, it will remain set, as long as you don’t change channel, thus you don’t have to worry about the remote warming up again, as once it is back above freezing when you use it you will be back to your old settings I’m afraid – until you cool it down again.

I get over this problem by keeping two remotes in the freezer permanently. They are then always ready for action and I have a spare if I forget to put one back. Another good idea is to keep a small coolbag or icebucket near the TV so that you can keep the control going for an extended TV session. Oh, and a glove is advised, those fingers can get a bit cold, especially if like me, you do a lot of channel hopping as can’t get enough of all those lovely new programmes to watch!

So there you go, easy, and a LOT cheaper than a SKY or Virgin subscrition!

Cue Davina

Bloomin Henry!

I though things were going to slacken off a bit... I was wrong

I thought that I was going to lose loads and loads of pounds by now - I was wrong

I thought that Easter would be a great time to relax and take lots of piccies in the sunshine - Got that one wrong too

(The Americans had the best idea and put the clocks forward before Easter, not that it would have helped much here thanks to the good old British weather)
(Still can't work out that if Chrismas is fixed how come Easter doesn't stand still - I knew I should have paid more attention in RE or RI as it was called in those days)

Deep breath...

Now...

This weekend I'm partaking in something altogether new, as they said about Hotel California. "This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell", personally I'm looking at it as my own version of Big Brother. I'll let you know how I got on next week.

Memories are made of - Receipts!!!??

Time to put my feet up for a couple of days. The report is finished. 50 odd pages signed, backed up and delivered. Some of it was fairly easy going, and some of it a chore, especially as it spanned a few years work. I’m not the best person in the world for documenting things, I am always envious of colleagues who keep immaculate notes, somehow I muddle through but this week I was definitely struggling to remember things that happened in the past.

Then I saw it!!

Something that I am good at, very good at, a directory full of data, accurate* and detailed data. Dated, organised and in chronological order spanning the whole period of the work in question and held in a folder called “Expenses”

As I scanned the various entries in each spreadsheet it all started coming back to me. Especially the meals. Where we were, what we ate and who was sitting round the table. Now the whole thing was a doddle.

If Tom was present at the meal we would have been doing “X”, if Dick was there we must have been doing a bit of “Y” and if Harry was there we would definitely have been sampling the local brews until very late, making the getting up at ‘oh dark thirty’ later the same morning seem hardly worth going to bed for. Thank God for 24hour Starbucks! The presence of Harry on a trip would also later prompt comments from the family such as “This jetlag of yours is a lot worse than your usual”

So there it was, lots and lots of hints as to what happened and when thanks to past culinary experiences. The memories came flooding back (and a couple I wish that had'nt - Harry and Tequila don’t mix)

It’s amazing to think about all that information you have stored up inside yourself but accessing it requires the correct trigger, either from the mind or in my case the stomach!


*Accurate – yes, contrary to popular belief about expenses, mine are always honest. I look at all the places I get to visit as a perk and a privilege (yes even Kansas) and never take that for granted and try and make something out of it.

The (lack of) Brom report

It’s been a few days since my last post.

This is because it is report writing season. Mr. Murphy explained that work expands to fill all available space, which is, of course, very true. In the case of poor Brom, his work has expanded to squeeze out all the little bits that were reserved for report writing. These little bits have now all organised themselves and have congregated in front of what is called the due date which of course (unless you are lucky and get an extension) is a stationary object. It is noticeable, however that as the observer (read that as report writer) approaches the due date he will experience the equivalent of a parachutist’s ground rush as that once far away, no need to worry about that, due date, starts to approach at a continuously and increasing velocity.

Unfortunately the physical procedures required to write a report, i.e. stuck in front of a computer screen and woodpeckering away at a load of plastic keys, is very similar to that of the much more pleasurable activity of blogging.

Thus when the time comes to unload your latest (assumed) witty or informative missive to your very welcome visitors. The desire to continue with the common procedure is, for some reason, not that attractive.

The good news is that it’s almost done!

PS In response to Mr Farty’s query. The diet is sort of on hold. Report writing season brings on its own feeling of tedium and lack of positive distraction, coupled with long periods of residence in a seat which is just a bit too close to the canteen.

Rainbow economy

Have you ever thought about a rainbow? The fact that it always looks the same? OK, the size, as in height or span can change, as in the case of the sometimes seen multiple rainbows. However, the shape of a rainbow always looks the same. This means that you never see the side or the edge of a rainbow, you can’t walk around it to see what it looks like from the back. In the same way if you are looking at a rainbow in the distance from one end of the town and you call your mate Dave who lives on the other side and ask him to look at the rainbow and describe it, he will tell you that it looks just like what you are seeing, a rainbow centred about his point of observation even though, compared to what you are seeing his should be a bit offset or skewed compared yours, but he doesn't.

This means that the rainbow Dave is looking at is not the same rainbow as you are seeing. Every rainbow is unique to its observer! It’s yours exclusively. How cool is that?

Even someone standing right next to you will be marginally closer to one side of your rainbow and thus should begin to see an offset of its shape, but in the same way as Dave always sees a rainbow perfectly balanced in the centre of his vision, so will the person next to you, because it’s their rainbow, not yours.

All this of course can be explained by the physics of refraction of sunlight through water droplets and the cover of a classic album by Pink Floyd, but that’s just too heavy for a Thursday lunchtime. (The physics, not the music)

Things now can get quite complicated. Remember how there is supposed to be a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow? My understanding above sort of throws a spanner in the works. You see if everyone has their own unique rainbow there must be a crock of gold for every person looking at that rainbow, times two of course. (one for each end). So for rainbows residing close to large areas of habitation the whole thing could work out to be prohibitively expensive! So maybe this could explain why folks in the country see more rainbows than those people in the city. As with most things in life, it’s all down to the money!

At the cutting edge of puddings.

On Sunday evening I responded to a call of help from the kitchen. There stood Mrs. B, thumb held aloft with a reddening piece of kitchen towel clamped over it.

The cut was deep. Deep and extensive enough to consider a visit to the local hospital. However, the bleeding seemed to be under control after a few steri strips were located and employed.

The post match analysis started.

"You did it on WHAT?"

"No - There must be a shard of metal here somewhere on the bowl", said he searching for the said item that did not, and never did exist.

The only thing residing on the rim of the bowl was a small and very hard residue of crystallised and caramelised golden syrup.

It would have looked really good if we had gone to casualty.

Cause of accident : 'Cut finger on Treacle Sponge'.

So be warned, next time you make "Death by Chocolate" – please, please be very careful!

Weight to go Brom

Right this is it! Another expenses fuelled business trip has been concluded by much pointing and poking by bemused others in the general region just above my belt. A belt I should add that is now straining at its last notch!

The fact of the matter is that Brom needs to lose about a stone.

OK, my return to circuit training will help, but I'm going to have to get down to some good old fashioned curbing of the calories, especially the fatty ones. A brisk stroll at lunchtime will definitely help, but then how will I find time to pop in and see you lovely people who pop by and visit me here at Bromland? Don't worry I'm sure I'll find a way.

At the same time I'm going to consider maybe blogging the hopefully downward trend of my all up weight. I'll have a think about that.

Trouble is I'm already feeling a little peckish.