Deltic

I’d always thought the ‘Deltic’ was a type of British Rail diesel locomotive from the 60s and 70s, but tabbing around Wikipedia today I find the loco took its name from an engine, made by engineering firm Napier & Son. I’ve long had a bit of a soft spot for Napier, partly because in the popular imagination they and their magnificent Sabre played second-fiddle to Rolls-Royce with their flashy Merlin and Griffin – pity Bristol and the workmanlike radial Centaurus – and partly because, in my book, engineering firms should be called things like ‘Napier & Son.’ ‘Bristol-Siddeley’ was pretty good; ‘Armstrong-Whitworth’ one of the best company names of all time. Who wouldn’t rather have an Armstrong-Whitworth toaster than, say, a Tefal? But I digress…

Turns out, the Deltic wasn’t just another big diesel engine, it had an entirely radical piston arrangement. Pistons were arranged in pairs, opposed in a shared cylinder, then three such piston pairs were coupled in a triangular arrangement via three shared crankshafts. Timing issues were resolved by having one crankshaft contra-rotate, geared into the common output shaft.

The design allows each valve to be unidirectional. It’s not entirely unlike a Wankel Rotary, but retaining pistons rather going the whole hog and adopting a rotor. There’s a nifty little animation on the Wikipedia page, but what I really want to know is – what would a small one of these sound like?

(other Wikipedia finds of the day: a list of Rainbow Codes for British military projects – my favourite remains ‘Blue Circle,’ but that’s a bit of a cheat – and details on Miss Shilling’s Orifice. Which, perhaps surprisingly, is entirely safe for work. Why we never covered the eponymous inventor for Local Heroes is beyond me. Also: I never knew it was possible to fly to Ascension Island and the Falklands via RAF Brize Norton, though it’s still unclear quite how one goes about booking travel; mentions from RAF Mount Pleasant entry, Ascension Island entry. Oh, and this part of the entry on the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter:

On 10 May 1972, Randy “Duke” Cunningham and William P. Driscoll flying an F-4J with the radio call sign “Showtime 100” shot down three MiG-17s to become the first flying aces of the war. Their fifth victory was believed at the time to be over a mysterious North Vietnamese ace Colonel Toon, now considered mythical. On the return flight, the Phantom was damaged by an enemy surface-to-air missile. To avoid being captured, Cunningham and Driscoll flew upside-down (the damage made the aircraft uncontrollable in a conventional attitude) and on fire until they could eject over water.

Emphasis added.)

Neighbourhood Fix-It

The MySociety gang have been at it again; their latest elegant contrivance is a neat little mashup called ‘Neighbourhood Fix-It‘. Whack in a postcode, drag the map around, and click to add a report of something amiss in your local area – graffiti, broken paving slabs, dead streetlights, that sort of thing. The site then scurries off and messages the appropriate bit of local government for you. And, of course, allows you to look at other local issues flagged by other users, with per-problem RSS feeds and so on. I’m hoping there’s a back-end for councils to track problems in their areas, but even if there isn’t they could presumably build that relatively straightforwardly.

In my few minutes’ playing, the only thing I dislike is the apparent inability to zoom the map. Otherwise, this is a classic MySociety project – deceptively simple, approachable, and positively reeking of ‘how things should be done.’ I think I’m most impressed that they continue to dream this stuff up. While the site is apparently ‘obvious,’ there’s nothing obvious about imagining it.

Kettle, RIP

The devoted reader of this blog will recall the magnificent photograph posted last September, of my father standing proudly with the new familial kettle. Tragically, he today reports:

“Yes, another kettle has chilled out. The pretty blue lights still worked but the water stayed cold.

So we went back to the Russell-Hobbs “traditional” style kettle, remember it’s the one that parboils your knuckles every other Thursday.”

He continues to relate that, in addition, he & mum bought a new lavatory seat, “just in case.”

SciCast article at Futurelab’s website

Futurelab – which used to be ‘NESTA Futurelab,’ so this is all a bit incestuous still – have a nice article up about my next project, SciCast. It’s a decent summary of where we’ve got to, and also of what’s still left to do, since there remain some pretty glaring holes in the plan. All of which can be overcome, of course, but we’re not quite there yet.

In particular, right now I can’t see us making our (self-imposed) ‘mid-March’ launch date. Even if we hear about additional funding this coming week, as we’re hoping, I think it’s too late to nail down all the remaining details. We’ll see.

Also: I really must get them to mention something other than Mechannibals when describing me. BAFTA-nominated or not, it was hardly my proudest moment. They could at least spell it right, anyway. Grumble grumble.

Dominie Courtauld’s story

Charlie Courtauld is a charmingly eccentric producer of heavyweight political television. He’s also filmed his kids reading a story written by their grandmother, for her birthday tomorrow.

You can watch the story, in four parts, on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4. Charlie’s keen for as many people flung as far as possible should see the piece, and – if so moved – return a message to his mother on her birthday.

Leave a comment here and I’ll make sure it gets to Charlie.

Banzai!

Today: two edit suites running, two shoots underway, one presenter, four actors, three directors. Graphics suite running. Digitise decks running. Call sheets flying around for a UK shoot departing tomorrow, returning Friday; we’re shooting between two and five items next week, too.

Back at Scope mission control, we’ve been discussing the possibility of acquiring a production rock; something large and light and cuddly, that could sit in a corner of the production office. We could take turns crawling under it to hide for a while. Why don’t Firebox sell something like this?

Parts of @Bristol closing

The Wildwalk and IMAX bits of @Bristol are closing, as soon as April this year. Apparently their initial millennium funding package is finished, and they don’t have alternative sources of income. So they have to make do with ticket sales on the door. Yow.

The science centre movement in the UK is on rather odd footing; there’s no ongoing central funding (cf. arts centres), with the result that despite many centres trying their darndest, it’s all still a bit amateur/people doing ‘their bit’/volunteers, etc. Full-time staff – often with serious amounts of experience and expertise – are too often paid a pittance, with the obvious knock-on effect that things like touring shows and the like are seriously underpriced. For the stuff I’m doing this year I’m going to try charging a low-end consultancy fee, but I don’t think I’ll get any bookings even at that price – and that’s with all the equipment and some of my time being subsidised by other sources.

So far as I can tell, most people who ‘make a living’ in this game actually do it for the love of it, and it’s their partners who are the real breadwinners. This is the dirty secret of the science communication industry, frankly. You’d think people would be on similar pay scales to teachers, but… no.

Without a culture of sponsorship in the name of corporate responsibility, it’s not clear to me what drives the industry. Goodwill, I think. Yikes.