Don't just pay the bill - check what it does

Electricity can seem contradictory. A light bulb is a smaller version of an immersion heater but in a different environment. It’s almost incidental that a bulb filament sheds light since its initial function is to resist the flow of electricity. In doing this it becomes hot. So hot that it glows.

A lit bulb is – not unnaturally – said to be working. The bulb’s work capacity and work rate (and that of many other things from humans to cars) are measured in Watts or Watt-hours. As explained earlier (“Why electricity and water don’t mix”, May 13) to understand this better requires some maths. Bad news!

However, despite electricity’s invisibility and its intellectual obscurity its ability to “work” can be physically sensed. A bike dynamo would do but would be clumsy. Rather better is the hand-generator found in school physics labs – probably not these days since such things were lethal in the hands of mischievous schoolboys.

Turn the generator and it rotates quite freely. Attach a resistance (it could be a light bulb) across the output and the handle is now harder to turn. Evidence of electrical work.

The power tool for extroverts

For decades I avoided buying (even investigating) an angle grinder because the name wasn't sufficiently explicit. When would I want to grind angles? I now assume the device was so christened because the cutting disc is mounted at right-angles to the handle.

My brother (DIY perfectionist and talented cook) has no use for one and believes it to be the crudest and least controllable power tool available outside the pneumatic drill, which North Americans refer to as a jackhammer. I agree. But occasionally one is faced with a crude job.

In my case I needed to reduce the capacity of my wine rack to accommodate a new sliding door. (And no, I hadn't taken the pledge. Simultaneously I increased the capacity of the rack under the stairs.) The angle grinder was perfect for cutting off two dozen short strips of flexible metal which would have been tedious work for a saw.

The angle grinder is spectacular. Sparks fly, metal melts and protective glasses are essential. The angle grinder automatically invokes the TV nannyism - "Don't try this at home".

Calling all Proustians

TECHNO-ART Time I did another of these: pointing out allusions to technology in novels, plays, paintings and - more remotely - music. I am also on the verge of re-reading Proust. Now I seem to remember a passage in "A la recherche..." in which the narrator takes a ride in a car but it could take weeks, if not months, to come upon it in a cover-to-cover read-through. Can anyone with a better memory than me (or in possession of a sneaky Proust concordance) narrow it down?

Soon they'll need trainer wheels

MOTORCYCLES. Part two of a long series. Bike racing is more exciting and usually closer than car racing. Especially at the top end – called MotoGP, a foolish contraction which can be confused with moto-cross, the rough terrain sport for two-wheelers.

New tyres and more extreme riding styles mean bikes can be leant over at seemingly impossible angles when cornering. The tyres – which now only last one race - are virtually circular in cross-section offering grip round 100 deg of their periphery. The riders, hanging forwards as well as sideways, achieve a weird vector of forces that support fierce speeds.

TV coverage has recognised that cornering angles provide the thrills and offers a real-time graphic measuring this feature. Some riders lean over at 59 deg from the vertical. Simulate that between the palm of your hand and the surface of a table. Not so much a racing bike, more a frisbee (Note: Inset pic hints at subject but is not a racing bike. It's got rearview mirrors!)

Beauty's hardware

Aesthetics is incidental to this blog but there are those where it is a major (pictorial) factor. In order to get in on the aesthetics act while maintaining my new-found practice of getting others to write Works Well for me, I invited three experts to reveal the technology behind their art. The points de suspension and the parentheses indicate where I have edited (Purely for length!)

MARJA-LEENA http://www.marja-leena-rathje.info/main.php
My favourite camera is our SLR Canon EOS Rebel XT with 18 to 55 mm lens, plus another lens 55 to 200 mm. I'd love to get a macro lens for it! We also have a much smaller, handy Panasonic Lumix. (I also take images with) my scanner, Epson Perfection 4990 Photo.

LUCY http://box-elder.blogspot.com/
My main camera is a Canon Powershot S315, it's a couple of years old…. My Cheapcam which lives in my pocket and pretends to be a phone camera without the phone part (much better) is an Airis Photostar DC60… a complete nobody of a camera, the cheapest I could get a week before Christmas from Amazon France. I'm (prepared to) give a few more impressions of what (the Canon is) like to use in the light of my total technical illiteracy regarding lenses, ISO numbers, depth of field, etc.

PLUTARCH http://bestofnow.blogspot.com/
I have a Sony Cyber-shot, 7.1 megapixels. I use the macro facility for close ups of a few centimetres and it usually works well without a tripod. The camera is about the size of box of cigarettes and I can and do carry it everywhere with me…. If I had something more substantial such as a 12 megapixel SLR Canon I might need a tripod. It so happens that I am looking at this option in order to obtain sharper close-ups. But only research and experience will tell me what I want to know in the end….

The inset is included for pure nostalgia. When BB was a working journalist the Pentax was a trusted (if weighty) aid. These days the exigencies of webs and blogs have reduced him to a 6 megapixel Traveller DC-6900 bought from Aldi for about £60. Batteries last about 20 shots before recharging.

Why wood rosins do the job

I don’t know absolutely everything about technology. Fact! Especially the chemical side with all those references to bonding and valency. I cover up this ignorance by asking questions:

QUESTION: I bought a bottle of Tango on a train and found myself reading the ingredients list on the label. What are emulsifiers, why are they necessary and why - in particular - are the exotically named glycerol esters of wood rosins used? I'd like to include your answer on my blog.

ANSWER: Cloudy, flavoured soft drinks, such as Tango Orange, often contain essential oils as part of the flavouring system. To ensure these oils remain evenly distributed throughout the drink, to give a uniform flavour over the consumption of the drink, it is necessary to use emulsifiers to allow these oils to be evenly dispersed throughout the product.

Glycerol esters of wood rosins, also known as ester gum, aid the emulsification of essential oils in products such as these. (They are) also odourless and tasteless at the levels used in soft drinks.

In Tango Orange using (these) rosins in conjunction with acacia gum (achieves) greater stability. Sharon Johnson, Britvic Consumer Care Advisor

Long-term enemy pays a visit

My credentials as an inadequate gardener are well established on this and other blogs. But here's another justification.

Kneeling to pull out weeds leaves my toes pointing at right-angles to the ground. If I'm careless my big toes bend slightly in the wrong direction (ie, towards, rather than away from, my knees). Recently I was careless and as I stood up I detected the signs of my long-term enemy - gout.

I need say no more about gout, for Gillray has said it all (see inset). I suffered for years until a revered doctor prescribed Allopurinol which inhibits the build-up of uric acid crystals in the joints. Now, provided I'm careful and avoid aggravating vulnerable joints, my physiology remains under control. Allopurinol works and deserves its place in this blog's pantheon.

But you can see why my feelings towards horticulture are, at best, mixed.

Principles of the sheet anchor

Echoes of “The Boyhood of Raleigh” here. Grandson Bonden, aged two, sits at the pool edge while Great White grandfather trundles by, pursuing another record of interest only to septuagenarians. Despite the poignant difference in age, it’s all about mensuration, a contributary aspect of technology.

Grandfather Bonden’s body hates the sun, hence the cotton tee-shirt. Yet the weather varied during the past fortnight in Languedoc and there were days when the tee-shirt could be discarded. This provided a lesson in hydrodynamics. Here’s a quintet of half-kilometre swims in chronological order:

Day one. Hot yet dull. No tee-shirt. 14 min 16 sec.
Day two. Hot and bright. Tee-shirt worn. 14 min 26 sec
Day three. Hot and bright. Tee-shirt worn. 15 min 5 sec (Oh no!)
Day four. Hot and bright. Tee-shirt tucked into cozzie (Genius!) 14 min 38 min
Day five. Coolish and dull. No tee-shirt. 14 min 15 sec

I could permutate endlessly but three points emerge. The drag caused by an unsecured tee-shirt is enormous, tucking the shirt in is worthwhile, there’s an optimum (slowish) time for a 72-year-old swimmer with bared shoulders.

Help for clumsy-fingered Brits

France is wonderful but - as elsewhere in the EU - there are too many different coins. This causes fumbling at the retail counter and a gradual accumulation of the brown ones which are virtually unspendable. Why this needless complexity? I asked one vendeuse. To allow for VAT (confusingly called TVA over there) on comparatively cheap items, she replied impeccably.

There is a technological solution. It's called a coin holder and the Euro version holds the top five denominations in neat spring-loaded cylinders. I had expected to be treated with contempt when mine went into action but most French people regard it with silent - yet undisguised - fascination.

The brown coins I drop into charity boxes which may be what I'm expected to do.

One disadvantage. My holder was bought online from a casino equipment supplier. For some time afterwards I was bombarded with email offers for discounted roulette wheels and poker chips until I de-subscribed.

Plutarch and Hells Angels

MOTORBIKES. Part one, probably of many. Blame Plutarch for tempting me. Even after my first car, motorcycles remained dear. I belong to a generation when poverty meant a bike was the first form of personal transport - nowadays most people start with a secondhand car. Later, working on a magazine called Motorcycling, I learned a painful professional lesson; you don't necessarily develop as a journalist by immersing yourself in an enthusiasm.

But an end to being maudlin, in this blog it's techno that counts. Plutarch records seeing a Harley Davidson and fearfully imagines "driving" it. Bikers talk about "riding" bikes but I can see why a non-biker might prefer an alternative verb. "Riding" sounds passive, "driving" suggests being in control.

Ironically the one make of motorcycle you might "drive" is a Harley Davidson (see pic). This weighty US bike has an enormous engine (1200 cc*, larger than several small cars), you sit low - almost amidst the works - and seemingly reach up to the handlebars. Most characteristic is the exhaust note of the low-revving vee-twin engine: a lazy, lumpy growl that rises to a "blat" as speed increases. Progress is majestic. I can just about accept the sentence: "Taking the Harley out for a drive".

However, when Plutarch dreams of sensuous if terrifying speed, he's imagining something other than a Harley. More on this, when I'm back from France.

* Update June 22, 2008. Seems I'm out of date on the Harley's engine capacity. In France I encountered one with a 1500 cc engine

Hey-ho for a life under the ocean wave

Our Languedoc holiday will begin shortly with a technological moment I never tire of: sitting in the car, eyes closed, trying to detect the exact moment when the Eurotunnel train pulls away from Cheriton.

Because our French house was near the west coast we were tied to the Portsmouth - Caen ferry. It had its good points. Booking an overnight cabin removed some of the stress. And Brittany Ferries played Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto as an elegant wake-up call. But it cost £450 and - because I don't enjoy going to sea as part of a crowd - I felt compelled to return via the Cherbourg - Portsmouth catamaran to halve the travel time.

The great thing about the train is it's so boring! Some ferry crossings were far too memorable. Watching the boat's storm-driven stern bang repeatedly against the pier at Folkestone until the captain gave up and headed for Dover. Chatting to grevistes manning the barriers at Cherbourg, insincerely wishing them good luck with their industrial strife then driving off to a car-park and dozing away the rest of the night. Good to dine out on, hell on earth to experience.

The Chunnel is a marvel. The day it opened should be a bank holiday.

Work designed for idle hands

New technology encourages new vices. When someone keeps me dangling, incommunicate, at the end of a phone-line I use my (newish) technology to play Windows Solitaire. To the point where I often find myself reluctant to respond when a human voice is finally made available.

Solitaire, which we Brits call Patience, adapted for the computer screen has one enormous attraction. Finish a game and the computer re-deals the cards. No shuffling, no problems with jammy fingers. But therein lies the puzzle.

Dealing is the result of random selection. Yet the computer is a machine ("A system that moves/In predestinate grooves/In fact not a bus but a tram.") How does it do randomness?

Anyone able to answer this one is entitled to kick off their comment with a sequence of five stars.

BB tries to defend his shortcomings

Lucy’s comprehensive comment on garlic crushers raised a point about received wisdom. It’s often assumed (Plutarch excepted) women do the cooking and men the DIY. But surely this is a false distinction.

Those who regularly engage in either evolve techniques which improve efficiency, adapt to varying end-products and produce better results. An escalope de veau à la Zagreb (one of my very rare culinary successes) may differ from a well-installed bookshelf but the self-teaching process they both require doesn’t.

There’s a jot of self-interest in this. I feel inadequate in the company of those who are able to use kitchen grammar fluently. So while Lucy and Plutarch were discovering new uses for their Sabatiers I offer in my own defense the decades spent getting the best out of Rawlplugs during which I probably rose to the equivalent of a sous-chef.

All of which became out-of-date when we moved from a 1930s semi (walls predominantly of brick and breeze block) to a modern detached villa where plaster boards complicate attaching things to the walls. My brother (a DIY perfectionist and a cook) recommends locating the wooden mounting frames and screwing into them. But I’ve lacked the requisite confidence. What I do know is: (a) forget the butterfly screws which start sagging under their own weight, (b) in some instances the coarse self-tapper combined with the finer concentric screw (see photo) can work.