Bedford Autodrome

 You and I are not the same.

I went on a track day with my boss. It's a long, hot and tiring day and by the end of it we were both tired and sweaty and our hair was moulded to our crash helmets. He magically produced a clean freshly ironed shirt. I did not. He untousled his hair. I did not. He put on good quality sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes. I put on a frayed and faded baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.Ninety minutes later we arrived at our motel and sadly there was a mirror in reception. During the drive he had seemingly been further restored while I had continued to wilt.

When we checked in he looked like a stylish and successful gent. I looked like an elderly and frail vagrant who would need to be disinfected and washed before he was allowed into the restaurant.

Richard "quick shower" B

Film Review

At the weekend I saw The Odyssey in the cinema and (like book Odysseus) I have the hubris to assume you might be interested to hear what I thought of it.

Not much. It's not terrible. The best I can say is that it's three hours long and I wasn't bored. William Shakespeare seems to have been able to review the film more than four hundred years before it was made. "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

It's a Chrisopher Nolan film so the sound should be bad, but in this case it's abhorrent. He also seems to have misunderstood who Odysseus was, but I think I know why. I very much like the idea that at some point some papers got muddled up between a beverage company planning a restaurant guide and a tyre company getting in to racing. We now have the Red Bull racing team and the Michelin restaurant guide (joke courtesy of https://xkcd.com/3269/)

A few years ago Nolan worked on Barbie Oppenheimer about the father of the atomic bomb. I suspect that some of his research notes from Oppenheimer got muddled in with the Odyssey because in the film Odysseus is riddled with guilt and regret, whereas he should have been boasting about being the craftiest general ever. It's his hubris and boasting that gets him cursed by Poseidon and makes the whole journey back to Ithaca rather arduous.

The gods, the sex, the beauty and the colour are missing from the film, so it seems like a very boring world for a fantastical story.

Richard "Scouring of the Shire Suitors" B

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

I recently said that I was disappointed with the effectiveness of my popcorn cannon. One of my friends suggested that the problem might be the moisture content of the kernels, and I think she might be right.

I've now got yet another project I never wanted. This time running a series of experiments with a popcorn cannon using kernels at different levels of moisture content. I do have a humidor that doesn't get much use, but the hygrometer is broken and the louvred box of damp sponge is missing. I plan to "age" the kernels at different moisture levels in the humidor then try popping them, and keeping records.

Richard "This popcorn tastes like a Romeo y Juilieta Number 3" B

Holiday Plans

I need to stop finding out that new interesting things are possible. I found out recently that a skilled blacksmith can hammer enough energy into a cold piece of mild steel that it will start a fire. As well as all the other things I want to achieve in my lifetime I now want to hammer a piece of steel hard enough and long enough to start a fire. My noodle arms and terrible fitness mean that this will be pretty much impossible.

This weekend I found out that in the 1800s there was a lead mining boom in South Dakota and a lot of Cornish were recruited for their mining experience. The important bit is that you can still buy a Cornish Pasty in South Dakota. Now I'm going to have to find the holiday allowance, money and accommodation to fly to the Dakotas just to buy a pasty.

Richard "to do list" B

My Lobster is too Buttery

 I'd like to say these are "nice problems to have" or "very middle class problems" but I fear the truth is that the problems which beset me are quite unusual. It's my birthday and there have been two disappointments.

I bought myself a popcorn cannon, and while it will support 8 bar and survive an explosive decompression, it takes forever to build pressure and it doesn't actually pop many of the kernels.

On top of that my chiffonier has a silk lined cutlery drawer, which now has a moth infestation.

Richard "I know just how you feel" B

Plagueis

 The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some would consider unnatural. I'm going to argue that one of the abilities conferred by the light side of the force is to make flight school exams easier.

If I were a fighter pilot I'd have probably learned to fly motor gliders, then a Chipmonk, then a turboprop trainer like a Tucano. Then a fast jet trainer like a Hawk, and then finally transferred to whatever type I fly, like a Typhoon.

Luke Skywalker probably learned to fly the hover car as a child and we know that he was competent in the T-16. Shortly after he arrives at the secret rebel base on Yavin IV he is flying an X-Wing by himself on a combat mission. This will be the first time he's operated outside of atmosphere, and the first time he's used an astromech droid.It will have been cut to maintain the runtime of the film, but I expect there was a training montage where Luke Skywalker completed the type conversion course from T-16 to X-Wing. I imagine scenes of him with a folder full of papers and notes and a stack of flight manuals. Him in a classroom with an instructor at a blackboard. Him sitting in the back seat of the rare training variant of the X-Wing with a large sign that says "Solo from front seat only". Him taking an exam. Him demonstrating some maneuver with a model X-Wing. Him sitting on the front of the X-Wing trainer.

All this must have been done in the time it took the rebels to decode the stolen plans and plan their assault. He clearly did very well in flight school.

Richard "always fade out of a montage" B