The Welsh Highland Railway

A few days ago a friend and I spent a few days in Wales exploring steam railways, and eating delicious meals at the Trefeddian Hotel. At breakfast time, in addition to the usual fare, one could help oneself from a huge bowl of strawberries, and a five course dinner was included in the room charge.

The Welsh Highland Railway runs from Caernafon to just short of Porthmadoc, which it is scheduled to reach by next Easter.

I've put some photographs on my website.

Incidentally, I recently redesigned that site; the material is much the same as before but it hangs together differently and should be easier to maintain.

Virgin Broadband, Again

I've noticed that my remarks about my broadband connection are the most popular postings on this site, so I decided to relate the latest installment of my tribulations.

A few weeks ago there were intermittent failures in my connection which were attributed to a faulty cable, which was replaced However there are still intermittent failures, now less frequent and always at night; the connection often fails around10 pm, returning by 8 or 9 the following morning.

The engineer sent to investigate this morning (I was favorably impressed by his visiting on a bank holiday) found nothing wrong in the house, and thought there might be a fault with the amplifier in the green box at the end of the street, so that is to be monitored.

He was quite pleased that I had noted the times when the connection was lost and when it was restored, so fellow sufferers would be wise to chronicle their misfortunes.

It was some consolation that when I rang to report the fault, I was awarded a ten pound credit as compensation - it will at least pay for a few hours of dial up Internet access.

Hope springs eternal...

This afternoon I spotted a bundle of little notes pinned to a tree at the side of the road where it passes a row of shops. The note said:

"NUDE CLEANING

Yes ladies, Dave does your cleaning totally naked.

No Fees

So if you like a bit of fun TXT me anytime

07732 501191"

What an optimist Dave must be :-)

The Severn Valley Railway

Yesterday, in the company of two friends from my schooldays, I made my first visit to the Severn Valley Railway, in an excursion that introduced me to a part of England I'd never visited before.

The SVR runs steam trains over a 16 mile route from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth.

We joined the train at Bewdley, the first stop after Kidderminster, and travelled to Bridgnorth, where we spent about two hours before returning. Our return tickets cost us 12 pounds each, and would have allowed us unlimited travel for the day.

Much of the Severn Valley is densely wooded, so the view from the train was often confined to the woods, but when visible the scenery was attractive, with wooded hillsides descending to the river.

The stations on the line were bright with flowers growing in little gardens and in various tubs and containers.

Bewdley and Bridgnorth are both very attractive towns.

We spent only a few minutes at Bewdley, but had time briefly to admire the riverside promenade.

Bridgnorth we explored at greater length. The town is on two levels, with the Lower Town in the river valley, and the Upper Town, which includes the town centre, sitting on the top of red sandstone cliffs. We ascended on foot, but after lunching our exploration led us to the Cliff Railway, a short funicular railway that takes people up and down the hill, for 1 pound return,. There were no single fares so we regretted not having found the Cliff Railway in time for our earlier ascent.

There is quite a lot to be seen at some of the stations between Bewdley and Bridgnorth, so one could easily occupy a whole day on the SVR.

Sugar Cane

I record another gastonomic first - this time I sampled sugar cane.

I spotted it in the Market while buying some garlic from a stall specialising in exotica. The obliging stallholder chopped off what he deemed to be enough for a beginner to sample and warned me to do no more than suck it. To chew and swallow any solid matter could appearently be a terminal mistake.

What I got was a sort of chair leg with a moist inside.

For photographs see here, and here

When I decided to cut a piece off, because it seemed vulgar to stick the entire leg in my mouth, my kitchen knife made no impression so I had to use a saw.

There wasn't much juice inside, and what there was tasted just mildly sweet, like a much diluted syrup. I expect it was better than an ordinary chair leg, but not much better.

My first batch of oxtail soup.

Once I got round to it was quite easy to make; how odd I should never have tried before.

I suppose I was brought up to think of oxtail soup as something that comes out of tins.

A few days ago I made my first dumplings, and it's barely a year since my first homemade scones.

What shall I do next ?

Second Derivatives in The News

d²S/dt² >0, S = number of swine flue cases, t = time.

The news broadcast didn't say that in so many words, but their circumlocution amounted to that.

I don't recall ever hearing a third or higher derivative in the news; we must listen carefully!

When I edited the html source to get the superscript 2's I noticed that Google seems unaware of the paragraph tags, using div and /div instead. I wonder why ?

Looking on the Bright Side.

"Everything in the world is perfect, so there must be a God" said a visiting Mormon.

Had I been unkind I might have replied "Even your acne?", but I was feeling benevolent so I just told him to enjoy the sunshine.

My first form

I've now got a little further with CGI programming, and have got data entered into a form emailed back to me. This time I had to make a few changes to the code I copied from the website.

However, receiving emails containing my own statistics is gradually losing its excitment, so I should be grateful if some of my readers would go to the new visitors' page of my website and fill in the form.

My first CGI program

It was remarkably easy. Admittedly I copied the program from a book, or rather cut and pasted it from the website accompanying the book, but still, it did work first time.

Any readers who have forgotten what computer, browser or operating system they are using should go here to be reminded.

They will also be reminded how much information may be divulged to any web site to which they connect.

Birmingham Science Museum

A fortight ago I led a visit to Birmingham Science Museum by members of the Leicester U3A Science and Technology Group. It has taken me a long time to write an account because I've been very busy gathering fruit, making jams and jellies, and struggling to control frames with javascript.

There were ten of us in the party; we met on the platform at Leicester Station and travelled together, obtaining a 30% discount for travelling by public transport.

Ever since my early childhood I’d often changed trains in Birmingham, and had sometimes wandered around the Pallisades shopping centre that engulfs New Street Station while waiting for a connection, but the first time I visited Birmingham to look round rather than to pass through was in 1994. Much of the centre had clearly been rebuilt in the course of the previous 30 years or so. On subsequent visits, made at intervals of three or four years, I’ve noticed the re-rebuilding of Birmingham as the 1960’s buildings have been demolished in their turn, and at each visit I come across bits that I suspect were not there last time. My Birmingham street map, published in 1993, now seems badly out of date.

One thing that seems to increase remorselessly is the cost of using the lavatory at New Street Station. Forewarned by one of our group, we all managed our eliminative functions well enough to avoid that expense.

On this visit, we walked through the Palisades shopping centre and out along a sort of plastic pedestrian tube that I’d never seen before.

I don’t recall ever being in the part of Birmingham where the museum is situated, though there are large areas where previous buildings have been demolished, so old landmarks will have disappeared. There seems to be no haste to rebuild. Sites have been cleared but are not fenced off; they are just grassed over. I was puzzled by the state of the grass. It was not long and unkempt, yet neither was there any sign that it had recently been mown. It looked well grazed, and I imagined the Birmingham City Council Shepherd watching his flocks by night.

The Museum shares a large building with Aston University and Matthew Boulton College. That made the topology complicated. To get from the Museum to the only open coffee bar, that was outside the museum but inside the main building and on the first floor, one had to get to either the second floor or the ground floor of the museum, go out, and then use stairs or lift to get the first floor. That was particularly irritating when two of us were on the first floor of the museum, could see the coffee bar through a window, but could reach it only by one the tortuous routes described.

The Museum is on five floors. The ground floor houses a large collection of machinery, and goods manufactured in Birmingham using such machinery. In the 18th Century the Lunar Society flourished in the Black Country. One of its members was Matthew Boulton who manufactured a wide variety of consumer goods, samples of which were on display.

The first floor was a viewing platform overlooking the larger of the exhibits on the ground floor.

Floors 2 and 3 displayed various exhibits primarily directed at children, but still not without interest to the elderly visitor. There were various devices that responded to visitor input, including simulated recycling machinery, and there were displays showing what happens to our food during its passage through the digestive tract right up to the final extrusion of the faecal bolus, though this was unfortunately not animated. Another static display illustrated the development of a foetus. Animation of the various stages would have been particularly illuminating in that case.

The fourth floor was devoted to transient exhibitions which on our visit were a small display about robotics, and a much larger one of models of dinosaurs, the highlight of which was a video of animations of dinosaurs, arranged so that if one stood in a particular region of the room ones image was imposed on the video.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera. My new mobile phone takes photographs, but I haven't yet found out how to get them out of the phone into my computer. Both phone and computer have several means of communication, but they don't seem to have any in common.

I find I enjoy looking at things much more enjoyable when accompanied by people with whom I can discuss them. Had I visited the museum on my own, I'd have been through it in an hour; at it was I spent nearly 4 hour there - including two long chatty breaks in the coffee bar. I seem to enjoy the trains of thought and conversations stimulated by looking at things much more than I enjoy the looking.

A misplaced Quantifier

I winced this afternoon when I heard someone interviewed on Radio 4 say:

"There's something we can learn from every event"