20.5.12 Probably Best to Stay at Home

I must admit that for all of my attempts to really enjoy well made, clever, artsy films, deep down I love a good action film. There’s something about sitting down for a couple of hours and watching something very reassuringly formulaic unfold before your eyes. We all know that things will explode, the bad guy will get away a few time and eventually the hero will capture/kill the bad guy and rescue/sleep with the girl. But there’s something encouraging and uplifting about seeing this script unfold in front of a backdrop of explosions.

So it was that my Sunday evening happened to be spent watching an action film in bed (X-Men 2 since you asked). During one of the plane chases I found myself asking, sure homing missiles are great, but how on earth do they work. Which was fortunate as to that point I was worried that I may not have learnt anything on a particularly mindless Sunday.

As you may well expect, missile systems are a relatively complex thing. First the system provides the launcher with short and long range navigation. The system the identifies whether the target is a friend or a foe by picking up their transponder code which is assigned to all military airplanes and personnel. Then the pilot picks missile type and the system checks numerous functions to ensure that they are in full working order.

When the missile launches it enables it’s on board battery to power it’s electric systems. The launcher’s tracking radar monitors the missile’s progress and computers continually judge them targets locations, course, speed etc. This information is used to continually adjust the missiles flight to ensure that it can intercept its target. When the missile reaches a certain proximity, it initiates it’s own radar to search for the target. The missile has a component to allow it to judge when it is the perfect distance away to cause maximum damage and then, finally, it explodes.

Turns out a lot goes in to making one missile find its destination. It makes you realise that military technology has come a long way since World War 2 and it’s a wonder that more aren’t killed in the line of duty.

DC

19.5.12 Oriole Lot of Birds

Storied is the history of American sports teams naming themselves after animals. Usually the animal is a violent predator or bird of prey. They range from Tigers to Panthers, and from Eagles to Bears. Very occasionally a name makes me think, “what the hell is that?” but given that it’s a just a sporting name I tend to ignore it, particularly if it is a sport for which I have no interest.

However, this blog has led me to be inquisitive where before I was apathetic and that has lead to me asking what exactly is an Oriole when it’s at home? Yes that’s right, the Baltimore Orioles of baseball fame. I’m not a big baseball fan, as we discussed when talking about old guys losing their skills, but an oriole doesn’t exactly sound scary.

It turns out an oriole is a small delicate bird indigenous to many areas across Europe, Asia, America and Africa. They are only 20-30cms in length and most are brightly coloured making their reference much more suitable to the R&B act, The Orioles than baseball. The name apparently comes from when the team moved to Baltimore and they changed their name to the orioles as it is the official state bird of Maryland!

I now know what exactly an Oriole is and no, it’s not particularly scary. I’ve also learnt that American states have official birds, which is charmingly quaint.

DC

18.5.12 Let me Recount-y some Facts

I must admit that my knowledge of British geography is pretty much awful. I constantly get invited to things or have to attend work meetings where I think where’s that then? I’ve just never been that interested in the map of the UK. I would even venture to say that I know more about the US than I do my own country. Never is this ignorance more apparent than my knowledge of counties, I don’t even know how many there are. So today I’ve endeavoured to learn a little more about the counties of the England.

There are 48 counties in the England, the Northern most is Northumberland (imagine that) ranging down to Cornwall in the south (still a dump). However, for administrative purposes there are 83 counties. The largest county by geographic size is North Yorkshire and the smallest is surprisingly the City of London. Apart from size there are some other interesting facts about our counties:

– The lowest point in England rests in Cambridgeshire. Holme Fen is 2.75 metres below sea level.

– Cornwall (where else?) is the only county with a different dialect, although it is no longer widely used.

– Cumbria is the only county with land above 3000ft.

– Kent actually shares a ‘land’ connection with France (the channel tunnel) something that is incredibly easy to forget.

– County Durham is the only county with county at the beginning of the name.

– The Isle of White is now technically part of Hampshire, previously it was its own island county.

Finally I know a little more about the English counties, I could still really do with knowing a little more but there you go. A few more hours studying a map it is.

DC

17.5.12 A Certain Ring to It

My attendance at the glorious wedding of Nick and Anna appears to have been merely the start of numerous wedding based learnings. Not content with learning about the hats ladies wear during ceremonies joining couples in holy matrimony, I now find myself thoroughly confused as to ring finger conventions.

It arose in discussion and it quickly dawned on me that, although I know that rings are worn on different hands according to engagement, marriage and divorce, I have no idea the differentiation. Although I don’t have any pressing concern to be aware of this convention, now is as good a time as any to plug holes in my ever leaking knowledge. It appears the breakdown is thus:

Engagement Ring – it is worn on the left hand, third finger (one in from the pinky – the thumb doesn’t count as a finger surely)

Wedding Ring – it is again traditionally worn on the third finger of the left hand, however, the tradition is that it should be worn on the finger it has been placed on during the wedding ceremony.

Upon Divorce – obviously most people remove the ring, but there has become a growing trend to have the material from the original ring remoulded into something else and then wear it on your middle finger. Those within the jewellery trade know this as a “f–you ring”

Strangely today’s learning is amongst my favourite types. I went into it expecting that there would be one finger for engagement and a the other hand for married etc, however, that didn’t probe to be the case and was rather boring. Learning that people are wearing rings on their middle fingers after divorce is incredibly interesting.

DC

16.5.12 Monster Addiction

I constantly find it amazing the crazes and fads that children go through – now I don’t think that adults are much different but children have less funds but still get worked up into a frenzy collecting things that drain their pocket money. A recent work conference gave me flashbacks to collecting things like Pokemon and pogs when I was younger. Sinking all of those pennies into things that would be uncool within a few months. My personal favourite was Panini football stickers but I digress.

Our VP of Sales is a particular fan of discussing the rapid evolution of technologies through stories of conversations with his children, and this year was not different. This years anecdote conjured up not just these memories but also taught me of the most recent children’s collectible – Moshi Monsters.

Moshi Monsters are an online game where users choose one of 6 types of monsters and then look after them as pets – as revolutionary as the game developers Mind Candy attest that this idea is, it doesn’t sound overly different from the Tamagochis that were popular when I was a kid. Strangely the owner and CEO of Mind Candy was also the creator of ‘Shot Glass Chess’, quite the product portfolio. Of course this would be no modern game without an element to make money out of the enchanted children and this game uses Rox as a currency that can be bought and traded.

The game also makes use of social media elements to create a community to ensure that the trend increases. By leveraging blogs, friend lists and pin boards, they ensure that kids encourage friends and use it as a tool to communicate.

The game now has 34million users in 150 countries and it’s subscription model has Mind Candy expecting to make £62m this year alone. This huge user number is turning it into the first social network for under-10s, like an underrated Facebook.

So the truth is that today I’ve learnt that not much has changed in corporations exploiting children with expensive fads – I mean those Panini stickers were 30p a pack! But the proliferation of social media means that the spread of these trends happens much quicker and with a much wider, organic reach.

DC

15.5.12 Thinking Inside the Box

I’m not even a huge fan, but even I must bow with awe and respect for the development of the takeaway pizza. If I’m going to have takeaway food, I must admit that I would rather have Indian food than the Italian treat as it’s largely just carbs and fat with minimal meat and not something I overly enjoy. However, companies like Dominos do outrageous business and what’s more, chicks LOVE pizza. They go crazy for the stuff, though I’m yet to really workout why.

But no one reads this blog to learn about things as uninteresting as takeaway pizza – and indeed, that sentence works if it’s just the first six words too! Instead though, what I’m really interested in, falls inside the box. I’m talking about that little, white widget that sits in the middle of the box and stops the lid sticking to the cheesy topic. This is truly man’s finest invention, no? A tribute to our decadent gluttony. But how did this novel piece of plastic come about?

It was invented by Carmela Vitale from Dix Hills in New York who originally filed a patent in February 1985. She filed the patent as she identified that both pizzas and more importantly cakes were damaged by sagging box lids during storage and delivery. So she developed and patented an inexpensive, 3- pronged piece of plastic that looked like a mini table, as outlined below:

The present invention relates to a package saver or device for improving the packaging of soft products which may be damaged in boxes or cartons with relatively large sagging covers.

More particularly, the invention relates to such a package saver which is molded from plastic to have minimal size, weight, and cost and which is suitable for supporting large carton covers such as those used for pizza pies. The molded plastic saver is positioned centrally of the completed pie or other product to support the cover during storage and delivery

And so the pizza saving device was invented. It may be simple, but today i learnt that sometimes simple things are incredibly useful. Maybe, just maybe, it’s important to think inside the box.

DC

14.5.12 In Spite of this Post

Spite n.

1. Malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate
2. An instance of malicious feeling

Spite is an ugly but surprisingly uncommon thing. I like to think that it is where I would always draw the line. Sometimes I can be rude or short with people, I can be sarcastic, I can even shout with the best of them, but I like to think that I draw the line at spite. The main reason being that I think that there is very little to be gained from being malicious and indeed I would never want to actually hurt any of my friends or family, no matter how ticked off I was.

But spite happens all the time, and you can see it all around you in some unscrupulous individuals as well as some wider corporate posturing. After all, it’s no surprise when a company only insults it’s opposition or obviously points out some of their short comings in the media. It’s no surprise when sports players or managers insult opposition teams following a win or loss.

Well today I learnt that something’s never change, if anything times have made it better as it is now less acceptable to be openly spiteful. The incident that prompted this is the tale of a Roman general conquering the city of Carthage during the Third Punic War. After tearing the city apart and forcing the survivors to become his slaves, the general showed one last utterance of spite, he sowed the whole town with salt so that no crops could grow in the soil anymore. This practice was symbolic that the town should no longer be inhabitable.

Apparently this practice has been repeated a few times throughout history and in Spain it was a common practice of the Spanish Empire. When they had a convicted traitor, they would execute him and pour salt over his former land as a sign.

I was completely unaware of this practice and it seems like the ultimate in spite, we disagree with you, we have taken all that you have, and even what remains is unusable. Let’s just hope no one else learns this after an argument with their parents and takes the table salt out to the veg patch.

DC

13.5.12 Getting the Horn

Finally, it’s taken me the best part of 5 months but I think I’ve finally got the hang of WordPress’ suggestion to have gripping titles for your blog that hook in people’s attention. If vague sexual innuendo with minimal sexual content doesn’t reel in the readers, nothing will. In all likelihood nothing will but let’s see shall we.

In a more accurate preview of this article, my housemate Dave makes a welcome return to be my muse as does his love of awful Channel 5 television shows. This time I was subject to deadliest animal attacks, which was basically ‘When Human’s using Animals for their own Amusement goes Wrong’. The show counted down some weird occasions where animals had acted like, well, wild animals (imagine that)! For those wondering, number one was a bottle nosed whale ripping into a swimmer.

The incident that caused me to prick my ears in unsuspecting interest, however, was a bull rampaging loose in a Spanish bull ring. As people talked about the potentially dangerous bull, they seemed to forget that they had previously been doing flips and other stunts over a dangerous animal. The really interesting thing was that the bulls rampage was spurred by it breaking it’s horn on one of the hoardings at the side of the ring. The talking head expert, a bull fighter and author, commented that a bulls horn is made up of living tissue and nerves so the bull would be in extreme pain. In my mind, animal horns had always been made up of dead skin or whatever, similar to human nails. How wrong I appear to be….. A horn is apparently made up of living bone surrounded by a covering of keratin and some other proteins.

There’s not a lot more to today’s learning than that but in future, when someone asks you to ‘grab the bull by the horns’ bear in mind that they are a living part of their body, so don’t be surprised if it p**ses them off!

DC

12.5.12 A Bird in the Hand

Sometimes it is worth starting with the thing that you learnt out front and centre. Sure I’ll needless pad this entry with some other additional pieces of information I learnt, but really, much like ‘Plancha Answer’ this is very much a headline fact. Turkeys originated from the Americas and were originally identified as guinea fowl but, following being imported into Europe through Turkey, they eventually adopted that as a name.

But the wonderment with everyone’s favourite Christmas meat doesn’t end there. It is possible to tell male from female, as the male is typically larger and much more colourful than its female counterpart. The dangly bit on their necks is called a snood – who’s laughing now Carlos Tevez?
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This incredibly lean protein became traditional to eat at family occasions like Christmas and Easter after we discovered America in 1770. Their huge population in North America and ability to feed large numbers meant that they were exported to the UK in their thousands. Although only 6% of UK households regularly eat turkey in 2009 7,734,000 turkeys were consumed on Christmas day. That’s one hell of a lot of meat!

As I say, today’s learning was really a short one but I think, very interesting. I never knew that there was actually a link between the bird and the country, and now I do!

DC<

11.5.12 Race against Nature

The Olympics of 2012 are right around the corner which means soon we will be subject to discussion of who is the quickest, strongest, most athletic etc. Attention will turn to who can run the 100m the fastest (I still don’t think anyone will outpace Bolt from 2008) and other ultimates or records. This was the thought that came to mind when someone brought up both the land speed record in an automobile and mentioned it in relation to the speed of sound/light.

Upon this food for thought I realised that I was, in fact, famished. Without any idea of either of them. So lets see if we can clarify just how fast man has gone, and whether it’s quicker that sound or light. So without further ado, in the red corner….

Speed of Light
Light travels at 671m miles/hour

Speed of Sound
Sound travels at 768 miles/hour

and in the blue corner….

Land Speed Record
The world land speed record is held by the ThrustSSC which on October 17th 1997 set a world land speed record of 763mph whose engines were taken from a jet fighter. The record was set in the Nevada desert. This was the first and only subsonic time recorded – although it appears to be slower than the above figure for the speed of sound, that number is for sound through an elastic environment. When the speed of sound is measured through air, a complicated algorithm factors in things such as temperature etc.

Many has indeed traveled faster than sound as I learnt today, but it is almost certain that they will never travel quicker than light (unless they have a Millennium Falcon).

DC