Neil Hopcroft

There was little choice but to buy the 1938 edition of the collected poems of Rupert Brooke I found today. I was looking for some ugly wood art but such seems to be in short supply around the antique market of Ely. Maybe I have to make some instead.

Then I figured I’d go exploring on the way home and followed signs to Prickwillow….where I discovered the drainage museum has a cafe, it seemed rude to drive past without popping in and seeing what it was all about. The museum is housed in an old pumpstation, one which originally housed an old steam engine. That was scrapped some years before the museum was created to preserve these things. They took over when the diesel engine that replaced it was retired, preserving the old engine in situ while the new pump is now housed in a new, considerably smaller, building just next door.

They have since collected some other engines from around the fenland area when they’ve been retired, to prevent their being scrapped too. Some of the engines are incredible machines, with cylinder displacement up to several hundred litres, developing a power equivalent to a modern moderately powerful road car. But doing so at only 250 rpm. Walking around the museum you can see the development of the diesel engine through time, with various superchargers (high pressure fuel/air mixture injection) and blast starters (rather than using a motor to start they inject compressed air to push the piston down, like the exploding fuel mixture, until the engine is moving enough to be turning over). They’re mostly two-stroke rather than four, so all of these engines have massive flywheels, around 6 tons of steel to keep them turning during their non-propelled phase.

The engines themselves mostly date from the 20s, when they were replacing the steam with more modern, and less cumbersome, oil burning engines.

For what must be one of their busiest days of the year it was a little worrying that I was something around the tenth visitor that day, arriving, as I did, around 3:30. Either theres not much interest in drainage engines or they need some more work on their publicity.

Conclusion: a top afternoon out for the serious diesel heads out there, recommended. They’re having a ‘run day’ on 2nd October, if anyone is interested in heading along for that?

Not even your Homeland Security Blanket can save you from Dance Dance Immolation

The dutch are trying their hand at fame with an entry for Cycle facility of the month

In other news, there is no other news. I’m still here, plotting my escape. More later.

‘Sacamajojo! I shall shrink your simian skull to a size such as this!’

An overanalysis of the international unit of rainforest destruction

Last supper, collect all 310 souvenir trays

“A timeless love story for our age: Boy meets Girl. Boy designs really big SUV for girl. Girl gets in a car accident and leaves Boy. Girl falls in love with an environmental activist. Boy gets sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.”

Yesterday I went to a Foundation 4 Success meeting. Normally this isn’t the kind of thing I’d go to but I’d been invited along by a friend and was intrigued about what was there.

This was a meeting at the NEC in Birmingham, the first thing to notice was the car park, always something thats worth thinking about when you’re attending these kinds of events. My car was typical of those in the car park, not a carpark full of aspirational brands.

The event itself was held in a room just along from the Memorabilia show, which made for a somewhat mixed crowd, with people walking past occasionally with arm-fulls of 1/12th scale model daleks and genuine lightsabres.

The day itself was structured around four main speakers, with a few odd bits of fill-in talk from others. The main thrust of the day was talking about property investment, with presentations being given by people who have done very well in that game. All of the main speakers were charismatic, natural speakers, with a disarming humour to them.

During the day there were a number of attempts to make all of us 700 attentdees introduce ourselves to new people, this involved moving around and meeting people we’d not met before, introducing ourselves and talking a bit about what we were up to.

There was quite a lot of good information in the talks from the main speakers – they were talking about how the market works, what it looks like, how to go about making money out of the market. Most of the day was spent talking about residential property, but one of the speakers (who struck me more as a TV detective rather than a chartered surveyer) was talking about commercial property.

Some observations:

– The organisers have an agenda, they want to sell their courses on property investment
– Everything the speakers described is true, they have all been very successful doing what they have been doing
– The audience is made up of people driven more by money than by anything else
– A good chunk of the audience don’t understand the market they’re dealing with, or why their plan works [0]
– It is in the interests of the speakers to generate interest in investment property to hold up the values of their own investments [1]
– The housing market in general, and the buy-to-let market in particular, is slowing at the moment
– There are something like 750000 private landlords trying to let out their properties
– If the housing market is going to go up that will likely be driven as much by current tenants buying their first property as by landlords buying more investments, reducing the value of the rental market
– There are a finite number of households that need accomodation
– Comparing stock market investment with property investment demonstrated a limited understanding of the business investment possibilities
– Using national average pricing statistics to hide the crash of the early nineties doesn’t take away the pain of a crash should one happen again now
– I don’t have much in common with the majority of the attendees
– From next year we have the ability to include residential property in SIPPs

Theres a lot more I could say about the day, if you would like to hear more about it, or if you’ve got any comments on my observations, please let me know. Some useful information in the day and, if you’re interested in what they’re about I’d suggest its worth going sometime – they run events every few months….but, for the moment at least, I don’t feel a strong desire to learn more their courses or system.

[0] I had an argument with one of the people I met about why it wasn’t a good idea to buy at the top of the market, his point being that it didn’t matter, mine being that I was holding off to see if the market softened any more, why pay more than you need to?
[1] I’m not sure they’re big enough to be able to create that much impact

My search for “Redditch roundabout of the month” earlier turned up the fabulous Dull Mens Club, where you can find, among recent updates:

“Four more airports reporting in . . . the total number of airports covered in our worldwide report on airport luggage carousels increases to 366 . . . carousels rotating counterclockwise remains far in the lead . . . 44.5% . . . the new airports are Dinard and Strasbourg in France and Dar es Salaam and Mwanze in Tanzania . . .”

“History of . . . check out our new page where we are starting to list the amazing number of web sites with amazingly interesting information (at least for dull men) about ordinary things . . . new entries are the History of Gift Wrapping and the History of Floating Soap . . .”

More exploration later, but for the moment you probably can’t beat Extreme accounting.

“Construction of the tank had been overseen, or more accurately gazed stupidly at, by Arthur Jell, a bean counter with no technical background who was unable even to read blueprints. Anxious to complete the tank in time for the arrival of the first molasses shipment, Jell forwent the elementary precaution of filling it first with water to test for leaks. Once molasses was pumped in, the tank leaked so copiously at the seams that neighborhood kids collected the drippings in cans. When an alarmed employee complained, Jell’s response was to have the tank painted brown so the leaks wouldn’t be so noticeable.

With the war ending and demand for industrial alcohol plummeting, USIA decided to distill molasses into grain alcohol for liquor before Prohibition killed the market for good. On January 12 and 13, 1919, a tanker filled the huge vessel almost to the brim. Two days later, at about half past noon, the tank gave way with a roar, sending a wave of molasses variously estimated at 8 to 15 feet high in all directions”

– The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

(I can’t work out another “count the rings and scars” pun so you’ll have to make do with…)

This isn’t the most efficient way to visualise share price movements.

…indeed theres a bunch of nice projects going on in the swamp…

East-17 singer punctures lung in freak potato accident