It's got cars - and much more

TECHNO-ART A famous French author writes, “… the vehicle starting off, covered in one bound, twenty paces of an excellent horse. Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with it. We express the difficulty we have in getting to a place in a system of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty decreases.”

That’s Proust getting to the technical heart of the difference between cars and horse-drawn carriages. Seventeen pages into Chapter Three of “Cities of the Plain” the fourth book constituting “A la recherche…”

And there’s more. “Coming to the foot of the cliff road, the car climbed effortlessly, with a continuous sound like that of a knife being ground…”

I’ve never urged anyone to read Proust because the objective difficulties – sentences lasting a page and a half, for instance – are formidable. But the subjective benefits arrive page after page. All I ask is that received wisdom is put to one side. Yes, Proust concerns himself with snobby aristocrats but one of his greatest creations is the cook/servant Francoise. Outside the salons he ponders the nature of place names, politics, houses of assignation, railways stations and alcoholic euphoria. He’s interested in everything. Even cars!

My thanks to Plutarch for tracking down the above quotes and for alerting me to the plot summaries that bring to a close the three volumes of the Scott Moncrieff/Kilmartin translation by Penguin. I’d completely forgotten that very useful feature.

Monoglot Rosbifs are twice blessed

If you’re reading this you’re anglophone. So consider yourself lucky.

On a France Inter radio chat-show the head of Microsoft in France had to field repeated whinges about the plethora of manuals, help sources, etc, all in English. In response this pragmatic Frenchman uttered the following Académie Francaise heresy: if you want to understand computers you have to speak English.

And this is why. In protecting their language (with which I sympathise) the French authorities have translated all those terse computeresque terms into pure French. So, don’t send an email, rather envoyer un courrier électronique.

My computer has an OS (operating system) called Windows XP. My friend in Milly-la-Foret also has XP but it's his système d’exploitation. And perhaps the French for word processing (traitement de texte) would be otherwise unexceptional if it weren’t for those Berlingo vans making deliveries from the local traiteur. But then a hard disk may look like a slice of charcuterie.

Whatever one’s feelings about computers they’re not quaint which is the quality these translations confer. Finally here’s a lulu. Where we refer to a Heath Robinson contraption the Americans say Rube Goldberg device. And the French say: un engin bricolé avec les moyens du bord - a thingy put together with what’s to hand.

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