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About
Stu Savory ;-) School report for Stu Savory
Eunoia, who is a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Porsche-driver, textbook-writer and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains. Not too shy to reveal his true name or even whereabouts, he blogs his opinions, and humour and rants irregularly. Stubbornly he clings to his beliefs, e.g. that Faith does not give answers, it only prevents you doing any goddamn questioning. You are as atheist as he is. When you understand why you don't believe in all the other gods, you will know why he does not believe in yours.

Oh, and after the death of his old dog, Kosmo, he also has a new bulldog puppy, Clara, since September 2018 :-)


Some of my bikes


My Crypto Pages




Monday, August 22, 2022

Day of the Triffids

Now I know where John Wyndham got his idea from back in 1951 :-)

Comments (2)
Billions of Versions... wrote " I don’t remember Triffids at all. They must have been a British thing. But didn’t Captain Kirk have “Trouble with Triffids”? NO WAIT! Never mind…" Wyndham was a popular fifties UK scifi writer.
Jenny (Ibiza) wrote "I preferred his 1957 book "The Midwich Cuckoos". " That was good too, as I remember. I read both aged 13.

Copyright © Ole Phat Stu on August 22, 2022 permalink Comments Email


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Rhymes with purple . . .

Yesterday I saw yet another UK blog which falsely claimed "Nothing rhymes with Purple". My protest just lead to her doubling down on her claim and insulting me. But as usual with such claimants, they just have a small vocabulary. Here is my counterexample. Eight years ago I was visiting friends and sat in a garden deckchair which collapsed under my weight, bruising me and causing me to walk away with a limp. Here is the photo of the cause of my purple curple hirple.

The meaning of HIRPLE is to walk with a limp : to hobble. CURPLE means buttocks (or also the strap under a horse`s hindquarters to stop the saddle sliding forwards), here I was using the first meaning.

People react in two ways when I use words they don`t know. Either curse me out as a know-it-all, as she did; or learn a new word themselves as Billions of Versions...does, writing "There you go again Stu, making me look up words. Moggie is one I've never heard of before." Moggie is UK slang for CAT, btw.

Now I shall wait until that lady also claims "Nothing rhymes with Orange" whereupon I shall inform her that sporange, the botanical structure that creates spores, is an existing word that forms a near-perfect rhyme with orange. And that The Blorenge is a prominent hill overlooking the valley of the River Usk near Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, southeast Wales. Maybe there are other counterexamples but those are the two I learned by paying attention in school in Botany and in Geography.

Copyright © Ole Phat Stu on August 16, 2022 permalink Comments Email


Saturday, August 13, 2022

The Day the Wall was built

Back in 1961 on this very date, August 13, the communist East German government started building the Berlin Wall, physically making Germany into a divided nation. This despite the fact that their leader, Walter Ulbricht, had declared on 15th june 61 that "Noone has any intention of building a wall!"

So today we had a memorial service in Berlin. The mayoress of Berlin laid a wreath for one of the over 140 people killed by East German border guards while trying to flee to West Germany. Not all were as successful as this border guard who fled over the barbed wire near Checkpoint Charlie on that day.

140+ dead, trying to cross the wall. Makes you wonder what Trump`s wall would have been like :-(

Comments (1)
Billions of Versions... wrote " The internet is full of pictures of people defeating what little of tRUMPs wall did get built. I should start collecting them for a post." He seems to fail at every thing.

Copyright © Ole Phat Stu on August 13, 2022 permalink Comments Email


Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Bockscar's Pumpkins

Back in 1945 on this very date, just 3 days after the USA dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, they dropped a second one on Nagasaki. The first bomb, dropped by Enola Gay was of the gun design, a cylinder of 2 feet diameter, whose cylindrical aerodynamics were well understood. Now the critical masses of atomic bombs have to be assembled very quickly so there are two basic ways of doing this, shoot one half into a second half (the gun design) as used in the Hiroshima bomb (called Little Boy), or implode from a shell shape (called Fat Man).

The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the Nagasaki bomb because it had a wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. Implosion was the best design for a fission weapon. Its only drawback was its diameter. Fat Man was 1.5 metres (5 ft) wide vs 61 centimetres (2 ft) for Little Boy. The aerodynamics of such fat bombs were NOT well understood.

So the folks on the Manhatten project also built several conventional HE (high explosive) bombs (called pumpkins) with the same ballistic and handling characteristics as a Fat Man, so the crew of Bockscar could practice with its different aerodynamics. Bockscar is the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped a Fat Man nuclear weapon over the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II. Bockscar was used in 13 training and practice missions from Tinian Island and three combat missions in which it dropped pumpkin bombs on industrial targets in Japan.

Almost 500 pumpkins were built. The inert versions were filled with concrete and sand to the same weight and C of G as Fat Man. The active pumpkins had HE and fuses in them. The initial tests demonstrated that the Fat Man assembly was unstable in flight, and that its fuzes did not work properly.

After training, 49 active pumpkin bombs were dropped in combat onto 14 targets in Japan. Bockscar dropped three and Enola Gay two. With the aerodynamics better understood, Bockscar then dropped Fat Man onto Nagasaki; 21 kilotons yield, 6 more than Little Boy had had. About 20% of the plutonium was consumed in the fission, the rest distributed as fallout.

This is what a Bockscar's Pumpkin looks like (photo taken at Trinity Site).

Comments (2)
Billions of Versions... wrote " I had no idea about all the testing and bombing that went on with the pumpkin bomb." They needed to make sure Fat Man worked; afaik there were no reserves.
Schorsch asks "So if Fat Man assembly was unstable in flight, how was that fixed?" By adding the square tail fins.

Copyright © Ole Phat Stu on August 9, 2022 permalink Comments Email


Friday, August 5, 2022

My last motorcycle

There I was, aged 14, when I first rode a motorcycle. Well actually it was a french VeloSolex, just 38cc, a 1 hp motorised bicycle. The first real motorcycle, bought for student me by my father when I was 18, was a 125cc BSA Bantam, about 6hp I guess. First one I bought myself was an Ariel NH350, about 18 hp maybe. I have no photos of any of those.

Six decades and a number of different motorcycles passed. Now I am 78 and have an arthritic left knee and a right shoulder which got smashed up and is weak. So, sadly, I decided to give up motorcycling, for fear of falling off e.g. at the stoplights. This was thus my last motorcycle.

It is a Triumph Street Triple, 675 cc, 108 hp, now 13 years old and about 90,000 km on the clock. Added the side cases, Top case, Tankpack, making it suitable for long distances. It took me to Ukraine, to Spain, Italy, Norway, Hungary, Poland, Austria, France, Ireland etc etc. Mostly reliable.

It has been bought by friend Wolfgang who will be riding it to the Pyrenees this month. So it will staying in our MC club, the SNIce Riders :-)

Goodbye, White Lady, you served me well.

Comments (2)
Billions of Versions... wrote " It’s been a long time since my last bike. It was a 650 BSA Thunderbolt. I think my bones are still shaking a bit from riding that thing." I once test rode a BSA DBD34 with the RR2 gearbox. Real pig to kickstart and ride slowly. So I bought a Velocette Venom Clubman instead. Even brought it to the Elefantentreffen, which at the time I thought was long distance, Hah!
Doug (Canada) wrote " It’s been nearly 4 decades since my last bike – a 1981 Seca 750 bored out to 801, Yoshimira piston kit a d 4to1 exhaust, better shocks and fork brace etc. great bike – rose it from Vancouver BC to Toronto once and also down to Laguna Seca for the superbike races several times. Loved that bike and my first wife insisted I sell it – should have seen the disaster awaiting me with that." Main thing is the fun :-)

Copyright © Ole Phat Stu on August 5, 2022 permalink Comments Email


Link to the previous month's blog.
Recent Writings
Day of the Triffids
Rhymes with purple
Day the Wall was built
Bockscar's Pumpkins
My last motorcycle
Mine is bigger !
Goodbye Darkness. . .
Health Update
New HW
Aeronauticum
Biplane
Top Non-Fiction Books
Historic Mills Day
Bremerhaven Polar Zoo
70th Jubilee

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Ain Bulldog Blog
All hat no cattle
Balloon Juice
Billions of Versions...
Cop Car
Digby's Hullabaloo
Earth-Bound Misfit
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Finding life hard?
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Infidel753
Mockpaperscissors
Not Always Right
Observing Hermann
Pergelator
Rants ... Rookery
Sabine Hossenfelder
Silicon Graybeard
Starts with a Bang
Yellow Dog Grannie

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DEUTSCH : Für alle Seiten, die auf dieser Website verlinkt sind, möchte ich betonen, dass ich keinerlei Einfluss auf deren Gestaltung und Inhalte habe. Deshalb distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten und mache mir ihren Inhalt nicht zu eigen.

This Blog's Status is
Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153
FWIW, 153 is a triangular number, meaning that you can arrange 153 items into an equilateral triangle (with 17 items on a side). It is also one of the six known truncated triangular numbers, because 1 and 15 are triangular numbers as well. It is a hexagonal number, meaning that you can distribute 153 points evenly at the corners and along the sides of a hexagon. It is the smallest 3-narcissistic number. This means it?s the sum of the cubes of its digits. It is the sum of the first five positive factorials. Yup, this is a 153-type blog. QED ;-)
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