Oddities

  • Greenwash Capital moves to non-existent website

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Tech

    In a new move Bristol City Council has started advertising websites for non-existent domains as part of its tenure as European Green Capital 2015.

    I’m indebted to Redvee for the photograph below.

    sign for a non-existent solar park and website

    Not only does the solar park itself not exist, neither does the domain shown on the sign, as a simple whois search reveals.

    whois search for lawrencewestonroadsolarpark.co.uk

    I wonder how much money has been wasted on the publicity for a non-existent solar park and its accompanying (and equally non-existent) website.

    Would anyone from Bristol City Council care to comment?

    Update 02/02/2015: a subsequent whois search today revealed that the domain in question was registered by a PR person working for Bristol City Council this morning and that the registrant contact details are currently awaiting validation.

  • Introducing the biometric wireless keyboard powered by keystrokes

    Steve WoodsOddities, Tech

    Georgia Tech's wireless keyboardResearchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA are behind a project to develop a wireless keyboard powered by keystrokes, Le Monde Informatique reports. The force generated by the fingers can produce enough electrical current for a wireless connection. To convert mechanical energy into electricity, the researchers applied a coating which acts as an electrode on keystrokes. The small electrical charged produced is stored in a lithium-ion battery which powers the interface wirelessly.

    However, during their work, the researchers have thought of another use which could have a much wider impact. Over 100 volunteer testers typed the word “touch” on the keyboard and a software package collected data on the pressure exerted on the keys and measured the time interval between each stroke. It proved to be that these measurements are particular to each individual. By using signals analysis techniques, they identified touch patterns unique to individuals with a low error rate to achieve a kind of biometric authentication.

    A marketable product in 2 years

    In a telephone call, Professkr Zhong Li Wang of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech, stated that these patterns enable a “unique personal measurement” to be defined.

    This keyboard, which uses standard materials, would be cheap to develop, Professor Wang stressed. The keys are not mechanical, but made up of transparent films stacked vertically to produce electricity. His team is still working on making the keyboard more reliable, but he believes this product could be marketed in just under two years. What happens if a person breaks a finger or changes his typing rhythm? Professor Wang states that a second authentication mechanism is a definite requirement.

  • No sexual partners in Wigan?

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities

    So far my experience of Wigan has been as the home of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and the birthplace of George Formby, as well as a stop on the railway journey up to my sister’s home in Darwen.

    It now seems that Wigan has another claim to fame: no sexual partners are available there if there’s any credence behind the front page from the Wigan Evening Post shown below. 😉

    newspaper front page with headline Man tries to have sex with postbox

    The details of this attempted coupling can also be read on Wigan Today.

    Hat tip: Morna Simpson

  • Temple Meads prepares for track electrification

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Never having had the desire to learn to drive, I’m reliant on the railways for long distance travel and follow all developments on the iron road with great interest.

    At present the Great Western line from Paddington to Bristol and South Wales is to be electrified in coming years and preparatory works are already well underway all along the route.

    To be able to accommodate the power lines serving the tracks, the redundant Royal Mail conveyor at the west end of Bristol Temple Meads has been removed in recent weeks.

    Network Rail has just released the video below which documents these works at Temple Meads.

  • Bristol – European fly-tipping capital?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

    In the world of the city’s great and good, Bristol is off to a flying start celebrating its year as European Green Capital.

    Plans are already well advanced to spend thousands on spurious ‘green‘ arts projects, such as dumping a load of old boats in picturesque Leigh Woods.

    According to the blurb on the European Green Capital website, the “European Green Capital Award (EGCA) has been conceived to recognise and reward local efforts to improve the environment, the economy and the quality of life in cities.”

    However, it would appear that there’s been little local effort – apart from protests by local residents and councillors – to improve the environment and quality of life in inner city areas such as Easton, Lawrence Hill and St Pauls, judging by the amount of fly-tipping that still goes on daily on our streets with no sign of a slackening or any meaningful enforcement efforts or action by Bristol’s seemingly impotent or uninterested city council.

    The photographs below were taken this morning by local resident Hannah Crudgington and are typical of the grottiness we inner city residents have to endure every day. All the photographs were taken within a couple of hundred metres of each other in the BS5 postcode area.

    fly-tipping at Twinnell House

    fly-tipping on Stapleton Road

    fly-tipped mattress on Goodhind Street

    Was Bristol awarded the European Green Capital award on false premises? Some in the city believe that to be the case. Judging the evidence of my own eyes, awarding Bristol with the European Green Capital award would have been more appropriate.

    Do you agree? Please feel free to comment.

  • Dinner for One – a German New Year’s Eve institution

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Dinner for One, starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is an institution on German television on New Year’s Eve, as well as in Austria and Switzerland.

    Dinner for One was originally written as a two-hander comedy sketch for the theatre in the 1920s. Its author was Lauri Wylie.

    In 1963 German television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) recorded a performance of the piece in the original English with a short introduction in German.

    The sketch presents the 90th birthday of elderly upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a celebration dinner every year for her friends Mr Pommeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby and Admiral von Schneider. However, due to her great age, Miss Sophie has outlived all her friends…

  • Crowdfunding for Bristolians only

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Tech

    What could have been a fine report on a local space technology story has been ruined by poor writing in the Bristol Post.

    Yesterday’s Post carried a story on Bristol SpacePlanes and its efforts to develop a reusable orbital vehicle.

    CGI impression of Bristol SpacePlanes Ascender craft
    A CGI impression of the Bristol SpacePlanes Ascender craft

    The Post’s journalist gets off to a bad start in the first sentence:

    Bristolians are being invited to help launch planes into space in a new crowd-funding [sic] campaign.

    Just Bristolians, Bristol Post?

    I thought the idea of crowdfunding (minus the hyphen. Ed.), was that anyone can be part of the crowd that provides the funds, irrespective of geography.

    This suspicion is borne out by 30 seconds research. The first item on crowdfunding I found, from Wikipedia, states: “Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet.”

    Nowhere in the Wikipedia entry is there is indication at all that crowdfunding is to be restricted solely to Bristolians.

    Or am I just misreading to local media’s propensity to find a local angle to a story? Here’s a hint: it already has one, featuring a local high technology company and doesn’t need a second one! 🙂

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