Strava KOM’s for chopping up onions…

@pictonroad, the A27 is currently shut from Lancing (manor leisure centre) towards the Shoreham flyover and looks rammed from Lyons Farm onwards. A259 Worthing to Shoreham looks rammed too. Google maps is showing a lot of crashes on the surrounding roads.

Take care out there everyone.

Im WFH today and am looking at clear skies and frozen ground so the car is staying put and a cheeky bike ride this afternoon beckons…

A great deal of this is about vulnerabilities in the corporate networks rather than the vehicle itself. Its possible to hack into an actual vehicle to take over some of the systems via malicious code but its more likely that someone would want to try and steal the unlock code so they can then steal the car which is actually worth something, as opposed to data which probably isn’t (unless you want to try and hold a company to ransom)

Hack vulnerabilities for safety systems would be interesting, eg, turn off the brakes, but actually very difficult to do (the systems are silo’d from the outside) and frankly, why would anyone bother unless they’re trying to do some large scale corporate or state level blackmail or want to go after someone specific.

TBH, keyless entry (ie. not using a plipper but where the car detects that you are nearby and unlocks itself automatically) is the biggest issue at the moment as cars can be stolen using scanner systems to remote access and activate the keys if they are kept close enough to the car, but this is far more likely if you have something like a Range Rover or Merc than a Kia Ceed…

TL:DR, unless you have a nice expensive car with keyless entry, in which case, keep your keys in a RFID faraday bag 🙂 and for everyone else, FFS don’t leave your carkeys in a bowl on a table next to the front door that can be seen from the letterbox…

Does seem a bit ridiculous

Until you realise how much the satellite launch market is currently worth (and rapidly growing) and that we are the only country in the world to develop and then completely abandon a domestic space launch capability.

Obviously its all useless. No point at all.

BTW, do you have a nice Garmin/Wahoo/GPS unit etc on your bike? Or use google/bing/apple maps? Or perhaps you might have tried out that new thing called the internet? Or are looking for an accurate weather forecast? Or like doing online banking? That all works entirely by magic.

I viewed my Solar PEV system and battery install as a sunk cost so didn’t worry about how long it would take to pay back the “investment” or consider it in any way as requiring a business case to do it. The real question was “could I afford it and was it worth doing?”

Its a saving and has a major environmental benefit which has no actual monetary value (well, it does actually) but a major societal one as well as some large scale eco-smugness to boot 🙂

To be honest I justified the cost by taking into account the fact that, due to covid lockdowns and home working I had avoided commuting into London for over 15 months so took the saving on train fares (damn you Southern trains!) and “spent” this on the solar panels, it didn’t cover everything through as I bought a battery as well.

On day one of operation we reduced our electricity import from the grid by two thirds. Our current average total import power from grid is 40% of total usage. Spring and summer should reduce that even further.

4 months from the system being commissioned and it looks like the years savings on my electric bill will be £800 to £900 (at current prices) and whatever I get from the SEG grant (which looks like about £90-100-ish for the year or a bit more if the spring/summer is sunny but we’ll see ).

With the some back of fagpacket calculations I have a payback period of far, far less than 10 years on my system. oh and the aforementioned environmental benefit

What having a solar PV system does is it insulates you a bit from the fluctuations in the prices which is going to continue over the next few years at very least. And then there’s that minor issue of the environment.

Provided you can afford the initial outlay for a solar PV system and provided that it is suitable for your house/home, whatever business case there is, is so clear its basically a no-brainer

Alongside Choppers (looked cool but were horrible to ride) , Bond Bugs, Scimitar GTE’s, the Leyland Roadtrain etc, Many great things came out of Ogle (the design company he ran) when he was there

They built a lot of the props for the original Star Wars (a new hope) movie including Luke’s Speeder , the Y-wing and then the, if I remember correctly, the Snowspeeders from Empire strikes back.

Oh, and Ogle also did a load of work on the original Ford Sierra…

A few years back he was due to come into the Art College where I work to do a design lecture, regrettably he’d been double booked with something else so couldn’t make it so we showed a review of his work, naturally none of the design students had ever heard of him or knew about any of the the things he had done, including, I’m slightly horrified to say, the Star Wars stuff. I dunno, kids today etc.

RIP one great old school Designer

We’ve been playing Akropolis this Christmas which is pretty good fun.
Splendor, as other have mentioned is good, we’ve moved to Splendor Duel which is a bit of a twist on the original game.
Carcassone is very good indeed, just beware that there are a lot of add-on modules for the game which can take it from a fun, simple 45-60mins of play to an epic 2-3hrs of “we’re gonna need a bigger table…” especially if you use the towers which allows much more aggressive, tactical attacking and defensive play.
For anyone thats played the basic version of Azul, try Queens Garden which is significantly better with a much deeper gameplay.

If anyone likes card-based games I can heartily recommend Gubs which is both very tactical but with some clever random elements that can quickly turn the game on its head.

For Russel did drink from the holy grail and Lo, both his body and squash game was revived.

He trimmed his beard too…

🙂

” he is not exactly Snow White.”

Go and find someone who is. Might take a while…

Just as an FYI in case no-one has seen it:

Zelensky Pandora papers:https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy

TLDR:
This looks like its principally related to Kvartal95, the tv and film studio that Zelenzky and his friends set up in Ukraine back in about 2003 (point here is that was a very different time in Ukraine as it would have been during full-on state corruption). A lot of the team that set up and ran Kvartal 95 are now Zelenzky’s advisors or are in some senior positions in the government. Not that surprising TBH as they were seeking to set up a completely new government and wanted to start from a a clean slate (Very interesting info on wikipedia about how they were running this, some of which looks quite smart/transparent for a new political party that is pushing an anti-corruption ticket TBH).

Interestingly as the Servant of the People party started to fully develop and moved toward gaining the govt and presidency, the assets were switched (not sure if divested) to friends and business associates plus one studio that still pays a dividend to Zelensky while he no longer owns shares in it. No info on how much though.

Probably the most important thing here is to remember that, while he was evidently a smart and successful businessman before becoming president (so the whole “he’s just a comedian” jibe is not true) Zelensky opted to stay in the country when Russia invaded, rather than run and live a comfortable life in exile…

(note, thats a a life not at billionaire oligarch level: Kvartal 95’s principle market outside of Ukraine looks to have been Russia and Belarus so its most likely taken a very big financial hit due to the war)

That tells you far more about the man, and the people around him, than what looks like a a bit of muck that is possibly being dragged up by some who what him out, now who could want that? Hmm….

Meanwhile, someone else spends 20+ years years skimming from the country he leads, engages in full-on corruption to breathtaking level and builds a secret $1Bn mansion…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KVu_p7Xfl0

When asked for proof of ID, I fix the personage with a hard stare and yell “DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO I AM?????”

And if that doesn’t work I see to the miscreant with my cane in order to remove the responsibility from their manager for giving them a damn good thrashing, and then flounce off, top hat at jaunty angle and my smoking jacket tails flowing raffishly behind me.

Or I show them my photocard driving license.

Full moon and clear skies yesterday evening and I found myself strangely delighted to see my system was generating 1W, yes, that right, 1 whole watt of clean green electricity, at midnight…

🙂

Always fun to see how the RMT is interpreting the new work offer.

Your job is secure for the next 2 years with back-dated pay rise and an additonal one-off payment, during which there will be an ongoing cost of living crisis and recession = ” mass job severance programme”

Contracts allowing pro-rata part time = ” Flexible working contracts, working and rosters” ” Mandatory Sunday Working”

For the RMT, Flexible working and/or defined days working contracts (you know, like the rest of us have) is basically like Kryptonite to Superman/ Sunlight and Garlic to a Vampire because how are you then supposed to make extra money and still hold your employer to ransom?

And of course the whole ” Privatisation is evil” ” oh we’re so poor and so hard done by” doesn’t quite wash when you have train drivers in higher rate tax band. Yes, pre-privatisation the pay was shockingly low, it really isn’t now and oh yes, thats been paid for by the taxpayer…

With all of his talk of “the workers support us” I do wonder if Mick Lynch is living in an Echo chamber.

BTW Im a long time rail commuter and have also worked in the rail supply industry (that was an eye-opener) which may influence my views a bit 😉

Oh, and here’s a question. WCA, do you own a current generation iPad or iPhone? You might be able to scan the front of the 997, might be very useful if you are doing any CAD modelling…

Its a complex blended 3D shape so a decent polygon modeller might be ok as it will fudge everything together. However, if you really want to do it properly you would use 3D polygon modelling or SubD modelling software to start then refine to class A level using 3D Nurbs modelling software, then transfer to DS Catia for final A class refine plus B-Surface with gap closing and release to tooling…simple becomes complex, very quickly.

OK, back to the question, Fusion 360 is not the way to go.
Blender is good (its also free which is always a bonus) but you’ve go to set up the initial shapes and make sure you can keep overall accuracy to fit in your bodyshell correctly. You can do the whole thing by hand but the big advantage of using CAD is that you can quickly do mirrored shapes so once you have the left hand lamp done, the right hand lamp is easy.

The only real issue with Blender is that as I’ve used Autodesk Alias (the auto industry standard 3D CAD-CAS software) for about 26 years, I view Blender as something akin to witchcraft. Also pretty much all the Blender tutorials are on YouTube and mostly involve some idiot spending 15 minutes of a 18 minute tutorial asking you to subscribe and make sure you “like” their video. For some reason I want to punch those people.

Oh and BTW World Class Accident, just a piece of gentle professional advice, grafting a DS nose onto a 997 risks you getting burned at the stake, but for some reason I’m intrigued to see the result… 😉

OP, Yup, thats the Reliant Regal that is halfway down the Unicorn trail near Whiteways

It’s been there for years, the only reason it’s not completely rotted away is the fact that its a Reliant and made out of GRP so future generations can marvel at their shonky horribleness .

Personally I’m more interested to know how it got up into the forest in the first place, I’ve always assumed it was a car theft and joyride by someone with little ambition and very low self esteem…

However, the praise is given to the language used by the Indonesia President calling for peace on both sides. SE Asia could be the “king maker” in future.

Highly doubtful (to put it mildly) as they have little or no political, economic or geographical influence and leverage with either party.

If you look at president Erdogan of Turkey however…

After initially trying a few other options I have ended up with using a cut down crud catcher on the front (my gravel bike has bottle bosses on the underside of the down tube for this) and a Zefal Swan mudguard on the rear. All seems to work pretty well.

Great idea OP.
I’m happy to join as the co-executive chair of the advanced political research team. I’m highly qualified for such a role as:
I went to Cambridge between 1994 and 2005*.
I have a high level of expertise in propaganda during the latter years of the Cold War and its historical effect on popular culture**.
I have an advanced knowledge of Anglo-British politics from the mid 1970’s to the early 21st century ***

*for my mates stag night and then a few years later for my cousins wedding.
** The German band from the early 1980’s
***Having seen every episode of the Yes Prime Minister and West Wing

Much more palatable for the Ru govt to push the narrative that the drone boat attack was done by the devious nasty Royal Navy than have to the accept the idea that it was carried out by a country with no functioning Navy that had also managed to develop and deploy a brand new weapon system in just 8 months…

Ive been trying to avoid watching the Peripheral because I loved the book (and the sort-of sequel, Agency) and don’t want to get angry/disappointed at a potentially duff translation onto TV but might give it a go this week.

I actual rather enjoyed the Midnight Club on Netflix, nowhere near as good as the Haunting of Hill House but still entertaining. Guillermo Del Torro’s Cabinet of Curiosities looks fun so thats the Halloween viewing (hopefully) sorted.

All languages have synonyms

Yes but I think English has an unusually large number.

hmm, really? Try Finnish:

The spruce is on fire. = Kuusi palaa.
The spruce retums. = Kuusi palaa.
The number six is on fire. = Kuusi palaa.
The number six returns. = Kuusi palaa.
Six of them are on fire. = Kuusi palaa.
Six of them return. = Kuusi palaa.
Your moon is on fire. = Kuusi palaa.
Your moon returns. = Kuusi palaa.
Six pieces. = Kuusi palaa.

But I can’t remember the all important phrase for “60 quid for four beers? Are you taking the pi$$????”

Get a Land Rover/Range Rover if you want to go to remote places and break down there. Or possibly on the way there. Or possibly before you start.

Get an Evoque if you want to do all of the above but dont like to be able to see out of the car or put anything in it.

My twopenneth: Second-hand Honda CRV SE in 4wd flavour. Big, comfy, well built, well spec’d and capable. CRV’s are not hugely exciting but provided its been serviced and the brakes and clutch are ok, it should be a decent car for what the OP is looking for.

Slight issue that gets conveniently ignored is the fact that in the UK there have been no reservoirs built since Carsington about 30 years ago. Yup, 30 years ago…Thats its, thats the last one. All thats been done since are small service reservoirs, not the much larger and necessary strategic supply reservoirs.

Its much easier to just complain about fixing leaks in the pipes (yes, this is important but not a silver bullet) while ignoring the fact that the population has actually grown (10m higher since Carsington was built) and we just perhaps might need larger supply of water but hey ho, Nimbys gotta Nimb.

And yes, I know I’m making a bit of a general over-simplification here.

I take it all back. Ben Wallace has just counted himself out of the leadership election and is “leaning towards backing Boris Johnson”… 8-0

Well, there you go. We all know whats going to happen next week. Arrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The thing that won’t happen:

A bunch of senior tories sit down in a room with Ben Wallace for a few hours and insist he becomes Prime Minister by appealing to his sense of duty and that it is “the right thing to do”.

Wisely he doesn’t want the job. Thats why he probably the right/only person. He would still lose the next election (those polling figures are terminal and the next couple of years will be worse) but if you want a PM to lead and do the right thing, get a good team around him that he will listen to, be capable of making some hard decisions, not be an idiot and try to calm things down and be respected both at home and abroad (at least a bit) I think he’s the only one.

Nope, that will never happen. So we can look forward to some other nutter as PM and a bunch of clowns in the cabinaet, screaming about getting Brexit done better, free markets, crushing the unions, the woke. leftie, labour/snp/liberal/green, pro-NHS, chattering-classes, vegan, guardianista, all those bloody foreigners/slackers/wasters, send em all to Rwanda, channel 4 news-watching, etc. conspiracy. And the Conservative party will still implode/split a variety of exciting ways over the next couple of years, the problem right now is that they are taking the rest of the country with them.

I still want a General Election right now though so we can consign the whole sorry ****show to history and get on with all of the important things.

Quick! Jacob Rees Mogg! Now’s your chance… 8-0

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, then into the passing flow of lava…

I’d make a joke about Big Tofu but tbh I think it’d be tasteless

Oh, very well played sir. 🙂

I’m just wondering what Russia would (or could) do if, say, hypothetically there was a middle of the night cruise missile strike against some Drone and Missile factories that are in another country?

Cuts one of Putins few external weapons supplies in such a way that they can’t directly retaliate for. Buys Ukraine some time. Quite a few countries in the Gul…er, region, would be publicly (or privately) delighted. Big question would be whether the Ira…er the target countries regime would be further weakened or strengthened/emboldened by such an event.

Id say the two types of Conservative minister are now:

Incompetent and malevolent

Just plain incompetent.

I think that the only kinds of scissors available in 10 and 11 Downing Street are those special blunt bright plastic ones you get in Kindergarden.

Oh and thanks to whoever suggested that JRM could become PM. The idea of that, followed by the inevitable large scale popular uprising where the rest of the country marches on London, storms parliament and then proceeds to burn him in a giant wicker Lord Snooty in the middle of Trafalgar Square has really brightened my day.

I like the fact that, in the sake of continuity, those ancient T62’s appear to be being worked on in a factory that is of a similar vintage by a workforce that appears to be, to put mildly, ambivalent to the whole affair. Every tank is a Friday afternoon tank.

I dread to think what the staff canteen looks like…

At the start of the war allegedly there were 10000 Russian troops in Transnistria but I would seriously doubt that. A bit of internet searching points to around 1500 with helicopter and motor rifle detachments

Slight problem is they can’t be resupplied or reinforced as Moldova is both landlocked and has closed its airspace to Russian aircraft.

Very much outnumbered and outgunned

The other slight problem is the constant stream of Nato Awacs, JStars and Elint jets flying along the border of Romania make it very difficult for troops in Transnistria to plot, prepare or perform a surprise attack without being noticed and Ukraine given an early warning.

Russian “precision” strike on a highly strategic, er, footbridge????????? in Kiev this morning..https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1579367987618148354?s=20&t=CGrrh8Y2BagxKh2f06zi1A

looks like the artic lorry had a few tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser (so a home made truck bomb) on it. Explosion was too big for a 500lb ATACMS round. Interesting as it also explains the sparks/glowing debris raining down just after the explosion…Also

In regards to the ATACMS theory. The main point against it is that this is not the explosion resulting from the detonation of a single 500lb warhead. pic.twitter.com/QNlx7o0xzi

— Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) October 9, 2022

Update, just looking at some of the stuff on twitter with one particular video from the security cameras, that was a truck bomb (in a moving Artic by the looks things)…blimey.

Hmm, more info suggest it was possibly an ATACMS… 8-0

Hope this isn’t a false flag op

Doubtful, but hey, if it is do you think they could do the decent thing and blow a few more things up as well? You know, perhaps a couple of airbases, ammo dumps and a few command centres…

I’m just wondering how much explosives were required to knock out two bridge spans that weigh several hundred tons apiece. Some Russian sources are saying it was a truck bomb but to do that job, surely the explosives were placed under the road deck…regardless, thats impressive. I’m also wondering how much heat damage the railway bridge and line will have once the Russians finally put out that fuel fire (distinct lack of emergency services there,,. I wonder if they built a fire hydrant system into the bridge or did they just pay for it and the money got syphoned off into some contractors pocket?) .

Always interesting reading Tass, especially when you consider that its for western consumption.

That article looks actually quite reasonable/sober right up to the bit about Zaphorizia nuclear power plant and moves to a subtext of “but if it wasn’t for those horrible Ukranians everything would be alright and its the West that is threatening us with Nuclear armageddon not us because we’re nice and just telling it like it is and because they can’t keep their nose out of our private business because that’s what they do and, and , and, and nobody likes us, ooh its just sooooo unfair…”

I might have overstretched that a bit but you get the general idea.

Just for some background, particularly with the the talk of nuclear weapons, this is The Chief of Defence Staff speaking back in March about Ukraine and the chance of this leading to nuclear weapons being used (Putin threatened this very early on). Calm, strong words…

Russia is a lesser power this week

The Russian army isn’t going to overthrow him

Well, there are reports coming out today that parts of the Army (newly mobilised and those on contract) have not been paid, makes me wonder if the all those Wagner mercs have been checking their bank accounts too?

The Russian military high command is being forced to take the blame for the current losses with generals being scapegoated/sacked/captured/shot in the buttocks (if ever there was a photo that summed up the last 8 months…) etc..I do wonder how long it will be until some junior officers decide to take matters into their own hands, commandeer some (of the few remaining) tanks and head for Moscow for a full and frank exchange of views with the Government and FSB?

The revolution will not be televised, but it might be shown on TicToc..

potential destruction of either priceless artefacts, or unimaginable knowledge about the earliest history of Britain

Destruction? As Crossrail and now HS2 have included large scale archeological digs (eg: uncovering layers of london history which wierdly enough, Swampy and co didnt bother to do when they were digging all of their home made tunnels around Euston…)as part of the construction process, I simply cant believe that the A303 tunnel project wont also include this.

Ooh, look! They’re already doing this: Archaeologists unearth bronze age graves at Stonehenge tunnel site

Id reckon it will be the biggest ever archeological dig on Salisbury plain.