Well, it seems to be outside my house

View Larger Map

But it is also outside Pete’s house (Pan right, and there it is).

View Larger Map

The two DVD sets (Birmingham Canal Navigations and Caldon Canal) each contain two DVDs, a map, an explanatory booklet and a catalogue leaflet, as shown in the awful quality photograph here.

So what is on the DVDs? Well, one from each set contains an overview of the canal system in question, with highlights of the journeys. The other DVD contains a speeded up journey of the entire system, filmed from the box of the boat. Each is narrated by Paul himself (I assume).

Both are fascinating, and well worth the price (especially my free ones), and should Paul ever produce editions for the Lancaster Canal or Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal I’ll happily fork out the money for them.

The Aeroplane

Nothing remarkable here, you may think. It looks quite a small ‘plane, with a big nose.

All aboard!

The passengers are boarding. My uncle, Mr. Harry Blews, is the chap directly below the “T”, and his wife, Mrs. Mary Blews, stands below the “C”.

So far we see nothing out of the ordinary. But hang on! Harry Blews isn’t the sort of man to waste money on airport parking, even in the days when England was still using the Turnip as currency. Neither would he trust his beloved Humber Hawk to the care of Johnny Southerner whilst on a trip to foreign shores.

So then, where is the car?

Crikey!

Yes, for the holiday maker in a hurry, or indeed Morcambe and Wise in That Riviera Touch, the Bristol 170 could carry three cars and their passengers, and at a price that Textiles Manager from Preston could afford. Fantastic. Its almost like science fiction, but from 50 years ago. Can you imagine Ryan Air doing this today? Hell, they’d charge you extra for carrying  the spare wheel.

Jeremy Clarkson once said that the grounding of Concorde was “a massive leap backwards for mankind”. Thats as maybe, but in the 50s people flew on holiday with their cars, and in the 21st Century they don’t. That is what I call a massive leap backwards.

Here is a little bit more information about that particular aircraft…

G-ANWK, a Bristol 170 Mk32, was first registered on Jan 31st, 1956. It was operated by Silver City Airways, between Lydd to Le Touquet, from June of that year until January 1963 when it was taken over by British United Air Ferries. Withdrawn from service in October, 1969, the ‘plane was finally broken up in August, 1970. Here is another photo.

]]> http://www.tonyblews.co.uk/2010/02/travelling-in-style-50-years-ago/feed/ 0 http://www.tonyblews.co.uk/2010/02/if-this-is-voyaging-id-rather-stay-put/ http://www.tonyblews.co.uk/2010/02/if-this-is-voyaging-id-rather-stay-put/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:37:15 +0000 Tony http://www.tonyblews.co.uk/?p=621 Already this year I’ve travelled more rail miles that in the preceeding ten years. Two Stafford/Preston return trips has reminded me why I avoid the railways like the plague: The Virgin Voyager.

A Voyager at Stafford

Some people might say that they represent a giant leap forward in train technology. These people are probably short, have no sense of smell and enjoy rollercoasters. And are probably clinically insane.

Myself, I’m of above average height, can still smell despite a good few years chain-smoking and hate all fairground rides. I’ll neatly sidestep the sanity issue (I’m typing this on a Datawind Ubisurfer – I must have been bananas to buy it).

My first major moan about the Voyager concerns the piss-awful seats and lack of legroom. Now when I say that I am of above average height I mean that I am abiout six foot four. This doesn’t put me into the realm of basketball players or circus freaks, but it does stop me sitting in most of the seats on a Voyager. Table seats are fine, if you want to share a table with a drunken Scottish squaddie (are they all AWOL and hiding on the trains, or is it always the same one?), and the priority wheelshair users’ seating has sufficient room, but the majority of the seating would require me to undergo a leg-ectomy for me to use them. I suppose I could sit sideways across two seats, but that is uncouth, yobbish behaviour for the sort of folk who play their music loud in public.

Yobbish behaviour

When Charles Darwin designed the human olfactory organs he must have had quite a chuckle to himself when he put in the bits that enable you to smell the unique aroma of a Virgin Voyager. Is a whiff of flatulence combined with a hint of smoke? A solid leavening of used toilet with a dash of electrical burning? Or is it,as I suspect, a full blown massive turd secreted directly on to an electric heater full of cat hair? The reason for this is apparently that the toilet effluent tanks vent into the bodywork, and that the wiring is prone to going shonky. Not even the APT had these features!

An APT, not on fire.

But these are just minor nit-picking flaws, I can almost hear you say. Surely the superior ride quality makes up for them? Well, yes, of course, assuming your  idea of a nice journey involves lurching from side to side, up and down, and occassionally backwards and forwards. During the course of typing this, by netbook as been dislodged from the little wanky tray-table no less than three times. I’d have a smoother ride in a Land Rover. Across a bomb site. Under shelling.

The Next Generation Voyager will have more comforts.

And let us not forget, the government spent millions between 1959 and 1974 to electrify the West Coast Main Line, and now Captain Beardy is pissing all over this by running diesel trains on it. Money well spent! Its like buying the entire run of Star Trek Voyager on DVD, and copying them on to ropey old VHS tapes, then scrubbing the tapes with magnets before watching them.

But never mind. Just watch a video of better times.

So, what is the UbiSurfer? In short, its a cheap netbook running an implementation of Linux. Oh, with a years free internet access thrown in.

More about that later, but first the specs:

• 7 inch 800×400 TFT screen
• 128MB RAM, 1GB Solid State disk
• Full QWERTY keyboard and Touchpad mouse
• Push-Push SD card socket and 2 USB ports (the box says 3, but I have 2 and a connector I’ve never seen before)
• Measures 222×165x29.5mm, weighs 700g
• Battery life provides 4 hours active use and 4 hours

Note the lack of a spec concerning the processor. Apparently it is some form of ARM 500Mhz job.

Applications wise you get the usual word processing and spreadsheet offerings, and a collections of email clients, PDF readers and the like, all GPLed programs.

For web browsing you have Mozilla IceWeasel (Firefox), which only works when connected via a Wifi hotspot, and the UbiSurfer browser itself.
And now we get to the main (only) reason that I bought this thing: free internet access. Included in the price of the device is 30 hours access per month (for a year) to Vodaphone’s GPRS network, via an onboard modem. As we all know, GPRS isn’t exactly lightening fast, but Datawind claim that any web page can be loaded in 7 seconds.

This is supposed to be achieved by Datawind pre-rendering the web pages on their servers (in Canada) and sending them on in a compressed form to the UbiSurfer browser, which then decodes and displays them.
Ok, that sounds fine in theory, but in practice its not so good.
Datawind’s own site (www.datawind.com) takes about fifteen seconds to load, and more complex site such a Google Mail can take up to a minute to fully render.
This pre-rendering process also throws up problems when entering data onto a web page. Tabbing between fields can take up to ten seconds.
Obviously these problems don’t occur when using IceWeasel and connecting via a Wifi hotspot.

But, oddly, my biggest complaint about the UbiSurfer browser is about the hideous splash screen which also comes up when you disconnect, thus preventing you from viewing pages offline. Here it is in all its glory.

Just look at the smug pissweasel. Those grass stains are going to raise questions in the office after lunch. Luckily you can overwrite the this image with something less irritating.

I shall continue to persevere with this thing, in the hope that I can find a use for it.

(click on the thumbnail to get the full size crossword file)

Across

4. King of the Zulu nation 1872-79
5. Kiddies 1/32 scale slot car racing system
6. Popular variety of food poisoning
9. North Wales town where people go to die
10. River in Norfolk
12. One of those clunky metal horrors that you secure to your steering wheel to deter casual car theft
16. The Blue Island
17. Goth band from Northampton
18. A religious/spiritual retreat
21. Chief fireman of Trumptonshire
22. Nasty golfing problem
24. Town in the Netherlands
27. Former “Brain of Britain” (3,5)
28. Originally the term for a novice seaman
29. An excuse for people to wave their arms about in the name of art/music
30. Soap made by Lever Bros in Port Sunlight
31. Firestation forecourt feeling felt
35. Organisers of the UK National Lottery
36. Jamaican bay
37. Shropshire hill
38. Barbican roof singer
41. Horse racing track in Staffordshire
43. Plastic tunnel sold in garden centres
44. Mag for teeny girlies
45. Shoe polish brand
48. Scouse term for either trousers or underpants or both
49. Well known for having an appallingly large ringlet-type hairstyle (5,3)

Down

1. Spanish keeper in the 80’s and 90’s
2. A god squad rock band
3. 750cc Triumph motorbike
7. Venue in Japan, popular for recording live albums
8. Gene Simmons and his motley crew of rockers with the over-the-top make-up
11. Greyhound track near Wolverhampton
13. A Lake District mountain
14. Sheffield theatre
15. Italian bicycle components
19. Decongestant medicine for catarrh and sinus congestion
20. Expensive and once trendy brand of Italian clothing
23. Unilever’s idea of a replacement for butter and margarine
25. Fish oil and orange vitamin pills
26. Irish folksie singer, used to be with Clannad
32. Christmas day lake swimming in Hyde Park
33. Ostentatious fish (3,4)
34. Fabric conditioner
39. High security mental hospital
40. Hills in Somerset, not too far from Bridgwater
42. Tricycle taxi in India
45. Wealth regarded as a God or an evil influence
46. State benefit cheque
47. A high profile stair lift

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

Recognise it? It was used as the closing monologue of the Heroes episode “The Second Coming”.

L I C V V V S V W G E T S S X S G G F F B O B T O D D W Q S
X Z Z S Z S C S E O O C W U T T E O S X I V B L H N O I K J
O T F E W E H O O N F E U A U T R P R X D L M Y H P K L Z P
L W W P X J R Z Y R S G N K W I B Q P D W H H T P A Q L I D
W C G O B G G B W T D L Q G T U Y M U D O D A V I D V I N E
S G M N E S A S Y U E N E R H M J Z R F N N A T O K P E L O
R J U F A S T W N Y H X A X Y T V I K U H A J R S N Q R A K
N Q A K T O P A M L R O P V X I H Z M W O Z I A O V S U Z E
L R K A T N U O M Y G G E P R A E Z K X U V I X C Q G S X A
M V B T Q A R S I T I A L U R E G S A T I V L V D K Q H O R
T L Y P V T L R W Y W W Z O Y A H B T T J D U K J Z S T Y T
E G J P E H O P K L O J H R H V I T A B L M A Y V O R O F H
Z X C N O G H N E K Q T I S V S J W U S Y I P D M E Y N N A
I B S K D M R R N E E L R U H T R A L L Q C N C H O L Z W K
K E J I C E A P N S A L V A D O R D A L I K H T L T O Q D I
N C C E H O W S E W W N F E O Z S H N M E Y O J H J P D Y T
O K I Y F M Y J T S A K S U P C N E R E F M J G U K O E G T
T G B D V T D Z H A E E C H R P R P B Z N O E K V F N E A R
O J N W D C N B W Z N X R T E L C S H E E S P H E L O U L P
N M S O D O A C O L R L V O L R A R E Y S T O D E T M N J U
E U R A B J R U L B W D E U O L N U X V L W P V J L Y O D J
O M J C J I B A S R G B H Y A M Q I Z C L B Y H T U N I F P
O V I A L Y L R T V Q D Z V R E N F E R D A O M A O O S G J
S W J O W F V A E I O R A D H O B A S B S G Y D L M T N D U
T U A J R O J N N R N S T T T V U K I H A P A Q K D S Q J T
I H G W V I L J H H Y A I S B A Q S I R G L I Y K E Z N L S
C E F D L V Q H O L H X U X I F V N Y Y B J L R A T K J Q H
D V O T G E V N L M A X O D G Z J O Q D J P K E F N S K H Z
G F W M K A Z E M P R I N C E S S D I A N A W L M Y D E Y B
P M D K E N T E E Y V Y S Z S K L X Y G T V A R Q X N W B U

The solution is below…..

+ + + + + + S + + G + T + + + S G + + + B O B T O D D W + +
+ + + + + + + S E + O + + + T + + O + + + + + + + + + I + +
+ + + + + + + O O N + + + A + + + + R + + + + + + + + L + +
+ + + + + + R + Y R + + N + + + + + + D + + + + + + + L + +
+ + + + + G + B + + D L + + + + + + + D O D A V I D V I N E
+ + + + E + A + + + E N + + + + + + R + + N + + + + + E + +
+ + + F + S + + + Y + + A + + + + I + + + + J + + + + R + +
+ + A + T + + + M + + + + V + + H + + + + + I A + + + U + E
+ R + A T N U O M Y G G E P R A + + + + + + I + C + + S + A
M + B + + + R S I T I A L U R E G S A T I V L + + K + H + R
+ L + + + T L + + + + + + O + + H + + + + + U + + + S T + T
E + + + E + O + K + + + H + + + + T + + + M A + + + R O + H
+ + + N + + H + E + + T + + + + + + U + + I P + + E Y N N A
+ + S + + + R + N E E L R U H T R A + L + C N + H + L + + K
K E + + + + A + N S A L V A D O R D A L I K H T + + O + + I
N C + + + + W S E + + + + + + + + + + + + Y O + + + P + + T
O + I + + + Y + T S A K S U P C N E R E F M J + + + O + + T
+ G + D + + D + H A + E + + + + + + + + N O E + + + N + + +
+ + N + D + N + W + N + R + E L + S + E + S P + + L O + + +
+ + + O + O A + O + + L + O L R A + E + + T O + E T M + + +
+ + + + B + R + L + + + E U O L N U + + + + P V + L Y + + +
+ + + + + I + A S + + + H Y A M Q I + + + + Y + + U N + + +
+ + + + + + L + T + + D + V R E N + E + + A + + + O O + + +
+ + + + + + + A E I O + A + H O + A + B S + + + + M T + + +
+ + + + + + + + N R N S + T + + U + I H A + + + + D + + + +
+ + + + + + + + H + Y A + + + + + S I R + L + + + E + + + +
+ + + + + + + + O L + + + + + + + N + + B + L + + T + + + +
+ + + + + + + + L + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + E M P R I N C E S S D I A N A + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + T + E + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

(Over,Down,Direction)
ALIBONGO(8,24,NW)
ANDYWARHOL(7,20,N)
ANITARODDICK(12,26,NW)
ARTHURLEE(18,14,W)
BOBTODD(21,1,E)
BRIANMOORE(21,27,NW)
DAVIDVINE(22,5,E)
EARTHAKITT(30,8,S)
ERNIEBALL(15,19,SE)
FERENCPUSKAS(21,17,W)
GEORGEFARM(10,1,SW)
GORDONJACKSON(17,1,SE)
KENNETHWOLSTENHOLME(9,12,S)
LEVYASHIN(26,19,SW)
LUTHERVANDROSS(20,14,NW)
MICKYMOST(22,12,S)
PEGGYMOUNT(14,9,W)
POPEJOHNPAULII(23,21,N)
PRINCESSDIANA(10,29,E)
RODHULL(10,25,NE)
SALVADORDALI(10,15,E)
STANLEYMORTENSEN(16,1,SW)
STANLEYROUS(8,16,SE)
TEDMOULT(26,27,N)
TELLYSAVALAS(7,30,NE)
THEQUEENMOTHER(14,25,NE)
THORAHIRD(12,13,NE)
TONYBASTABLE(12,1,SW)
TONYMONOPOLY(27,24,N)
VITASGERULAITIS(22,10,W)
WILLIERUSHTON(28,1,S)

Subject: Book A Test Drive Now!

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As I would rather push a Ford than drive a Citroën, I shall be declining your offer.

roëne

Just look at the bonuses:

• Take a week off work (paid if you’re lucky)
• Have nothing to do but lie around and watch the Sharpe series so many times you can memorise every bloody episode
• Save money – live on nothing but anti-viral drugs, Beecham’s Powders and Lockets
• Have some really groovy hallucinations

All you need to do is combine Pandemic H1N1 with a common chest infection and all this can be yours.

(Caution, may also cause extensive hair loss!)