Engine Punk

I've been digging away at my IT problems over the last few weeks. The most significant ones were of video quality, stemming from dropped video frames and invalid arguments. Well, I think I now have the answer. As I thought it means a new PC. Laptop hard drives only work at 5400rpm. Typical desktop speeds are 7200rpm. My little Acer is just not quick enough on the uptake. So to what should I upgrade? I did the sensible thing and asked my webhosts, Flying Flounder. Eric and Helen live not far from me in the Cornish countryside. "Have you ever seen a pig eat?" Eric asked me. I have but not recently. So we put on some boots and visited Babe and Curly in their comfortable sty. We even tried Eric's Farmer's Boy weighing tape on them. You put it around the amiable pig's armpits and the circumference of the said pig then translates into weight. Babe and Curly turned out not to be too fat but "nearly ready." Later we retired to Eric's ...

I attended a very thought provoking talk in Liskeard last week given by Phil Hosken, chairman of the Trevithick Society. The subject was Bio-Fuels and how they might used to provide an environmentally sound power source. Since then, my thoughts are in a state of constant provocation. Phil set the scene for ethanol by explaining how Brazil, with a surplus of sugar beet, has adopted ethanol as a partial substitute for petrol. The US is also developing it for use in internal combustion engines. Henry Ford intended it for use in all his early models Model T Ford, reckoning a farmer like Henry’s dad could produce enough ethanol from an acre of ground to run a Model T for 15,000 miles a year. Hitler relied upon ethanol and the Volkswagen Beetle was designed with this fuel in mind. This may have influenced the Brazilians interest in the fuel as the Beetle was built there until 2003. Ethanol was virtually the only fuel in the early days of motoring until the oil companies set up their su...