Start to 2025 was snow joke!

 Hi J, How are you keeping? Drop me a note (even if it's only a NAK) to reassure me that you are still functioning OK, because... I've had an interesting year so far. That would be "interesting" in the ancient Chinese sense, but not as interesting as the modern Californian sense. We're all fine and completely unharmed.

Christmas and the New Year themselves were the normal overeating and a little bit of drinking by me.

The problems were all caused by the New Year freeze. The first issue was that we had getting on for 6 inches of snow (btw I found a website called topographic-map.com from which I can say with a fair degree of confidence that my altitude is 97m and Halt Close is 217m). You probably had snow as well.

S was down in Cork and the rest of us were in K. S didn't fancy getting the bus back and neither N nor I fancied driving down to Cork in the snow, so everyone stayed where they were in the warm. Then we had a power cut which lasted 24 hours (not so unusual for me. Lots of overhead wires). We have an open fire so we could keep one room warm and we had plenty of bread etc for sarnies. We just reverted to the Dark Ages and went to bed early. The only thing I really missed was a hot drink. And after the power was restored the weather got colder and our water supply froze up. Not a burst pipe, but the supply branch from the main to the house is too shallow and it freezes sometimes (I don't know how deep it actually is, just "not deep enough"). The last time for me was 2010. Of course, while all this was happening, the roads weren't really driveable. First problem was me driveway. I cleared that and got both N's and my cars towards the front of the house. I only dug S's out yesterday (Saturday). She's still down in Cork. I walked to town on a couple of days to top up with essential-essentials: bread, marge, milk. It wasn't too bad a trip. I have proper equipment and a rucksack. One day I got a lift there and back!

Still the thaw is with us and we're getting back to normal.

How was it all for you?

And for your amusement, It seems that my idea of "The Vital Spark"/"The Electric Coaster" is not so mad after all. Behold the electric cruise ship:     

https://www.hurtigruten.com/en/about-us/sustainability/worlds-most-energy-efficient-cruise-ship

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/eco-conscious-cruise-ship-future/

I seem to be running one or two years ahead of the herd!

Christmas Wishes 2024

This is me winding down for Christmas. I hope the note reaches you before the big day, in which case I hope you have a good Christmas, but if you don't pick it up, then I hope you had a good Christmas. 

We've just had a couple of little bits of excitement which we could have done without. Nothing too bad for us, but unsettling. 

On Sunday (22nd) I collected Siobhan from Mallow (the neighbouring town). She had been staying down in Cork for the weekend. The bus service to Kanturk is not great on Sundays (and it's the last weekend before Christmas), so she caught the "intercity" bus which plies the route between Cork and Galway (via Limerick) and stops in Mallow. On the way home, shortly after we turned off the main road to the feeder to Kanturk, we were stopped in the road by the fire brigade. There was a young woman firefighter directing traffic onto a minor road. The sign said "incident" and it comes to something when I recognise the local firefighters (and I know the station fire officer, I even drink with him sometimes). The road we were diverted onto was very definitely "minor", literally "grass up the middle". I'm not sure I've explored that particular bohereen (bore-een, small road, track) before. We got home without incident, but I fear that someone's Christmas has been spoiled by either a road-traffic accident or a chimney fire.

And then on Monday (23rd, yesterday) we had a power cut after Sunday lunch. No power from 13:30 to 15:30. Again, no ill effects but a little unsettling. I was wondering about the possibilities of preparing food over an open fire and a camping gas ring!

Regarding "the vital spark", I had been thinking about the practicality of battery powered railway locomotives. Somebody got there first! Hitachi make them. Hitachi's idea, and mine is to use them for low-traffic lines filling the same ecological niche as diesel multiple units. I think they would work rather well, converting the infrastructure (or re-laying the tracks) would be much cheaper, safer and more resistant to bad weather than either electrified tracks or overhead cables. You could choose battery capacity on the trains and have charging points at the terminal stops and selected intermediate stations (or halts) to suit your needs. If you were really ambitious, you could also have integrated buffer storage built into the system. That would involve the novel idea of "thinking ahead" to give flexibility. Thing is, that wouldn't have to particularly expensive in the big scale of things. I think that battery-powered multiple units or railcars would be well-suited to the kind of lines which got axed under Beeching, for instance up and down the Welsh valleys. Single track working would be acceptable, and in some cases you might literally have a single train shuttling to and fro all the time. Obviously, you should have signaling, tokens etc, but colliding with yourself is something which would take some ingenuity! The track-beds or at least the routes are probably still there in many cases. I imagine that the cost of creating such routes would be a tiny fraction of the likes of HS2, could be done piecemeal and could be started and finished before a public enquiry got going.   

And to entertain you:

Here is Big Clive comparing 5 desiccants. He uses desiccants to keep his printing filament dry and had an air-frier dedicated to the task. I'm not sure you will bother with that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rufg-Wa4Zr4

And here is a short documentary about the development of blue and then white leds. More your area than mine but still interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M

And here is on of several videos of The Dragon of Shandon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv9_WQBUxBg

[Constructed from some personal notes 24th December 2024]