h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found the electric showers good - once I knew that electricity needed to be turned on. But I still question just how much electricity must be needed to heat the water as it passes through the device. Must be one heckuva heating element.

I've changed my mind about the date format being the source of the current Pliny problems, but it's worth investigating.

I think they use a 7kW element, Nick. It's a lot of current but only for a very short time.

7 kW at 220 V - yup, a lot of go juice. Not very economical here, with our pricing on agitated electrons.

Yes, but it's only for 10 minutes. Here in Ireland that would cost about 20 cents.

I've always dismissed the argument from the meter whizzing around while someone showers, on the grounds that otherwise the meter ambles around all day to heat an immersion tank. Am I right?

'Electric showers' may sound uncomfortable, but not as bad as baby showers

Our hot water tank is fired by the same fuel oil as our central heating furnace. Convenient for us, and much less expensive than the 2-dual element electric tanks.

Pliny the Elder probably didn't have access to hot showers, but is known to have dictated portions of his natural history encyclopedia while taking a bath. Chances are, the water was heated over a fire.

If you're heating water by electricity it makes more sense to heat it all in one go, as you'll lose less energy through radiated heat.

But you can use an immersion to heat water at a cheap night rate (which I do). It's about half the price.

[Waits for word that the problem has been fixed]

I've run out of ideas on the Pliny problem, so I am also waiting for someone else to solve the problem.

I volunteered to see could I find the source of the problem - I've worked for 38 years on tracking down obscure bugs in code so I'm reasonably well qualified.

My suggestion was received enthusiastically, then ignored.

Life got in the way and I entirely lost track of "code" maybe in 1991.

To be enthusiastically ignored is to experience something few of us can hope for.

I'm experimenting with a program for making a copy of the entire Edited Guide, so that I'll at least have the text stored when the whole thing comes crashing down.

Don't think I could make a copy of the unedited guide, though. There is too much of it.

You'll do well to just do what you've outlined.

It’s the conversation histories I’ll miss the most when it’s gone. I’d love to be able to archive some of those somewhere.

I've written the program to backup the Edited Guide - it's only about 30 lines of PowerShell. But I'm not happy with it as it doesn't record the author list. I'll have to do a little tweaking before I let it loose.

Backing up all the conversations would be a much bigger task. 20 years of ramblings.

The latest word is that Pliny is working again.