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

Losing it under pressure

should be 'set found'

Evening Bx4,

I've had a bad cold so I've not been online as much. Plus I've been rehearsing and practising for a gig soon at a very small jazz festival.

I've never been to Rutland though.

1. I would say it if it were true.

2. One man's 'eccentric' is another man's bonkers.

3. Although he didn't claim an apparition, he did descend into a deranged anti Semitic state.

4. You are just trying to lull me.

Morning psi:

Cold: All better now, I hope. 'Murder' is boring without you. Jank and I holding the fort against the vegan 'moral majority'.

Is consumption of TVP cheating?

gig: hope it goes well.

Rutland: I don't think I said you had. I've been to Clackmannanshire, though.

1. You might say it anyway

2. The reverse is also true.

3. Fischer won in 1992. RE man lost in 1959.

4. I believe the original 'rusty' was down to you

Play may be a bit intermittent. I'm fairly busy of piste at the moment.

I will be toddling round to my religious chess nemesis to night. Caol Ila I believe. I'm not a huge fan so I might win. I plan to hit him with the Kilchoman Defence in 2011.

bis spater

hi Bored,


Drum's glorious failure; yup, we "knew" that we were at the end of the road when the 2nd album Self Made Maniac wasn't selling nearly enough copies. eseentially to break even in those days, allowing for modest touring and promotion budgets, a band needed to sell at least 20.000 copies. and quite quickly.

so as the figures cames back we could see the writing on the wall. but because we had such a great loyal fan base the life side was still pretty impressive to the label. plus the fact that the line-up had changed and hence the label did accept there would be a period of adjustment....

so we managed to secure funding, on a much smaller scale than album 2, and set about spending this money very very carefully. we set up our own pre-production studio (affectionately known as the "TB ward") near Newcastle, and set about deconstructing every song and idea we came up with, and then re-recording them in radically new ways. i could spend much time on explaining every song, but i'll spare you the cagoulery and anecdotes......

so, that is why we knew it would be our last but equally we wanted it to be our very best. the reviews we got for the album were simply awesome, the Melody Maker said that we had likely created the best rock album by a UK band in the year 2000. unfortunately we sold even less copies this time, so, game over.

our last gig was in Copenhagen supporting Suicidal Tendencies.


Nel Nome; will let you know nearer the time for sure.

Skutsje; have you seen one of these monsters start? now you can;

http://www.skutsje.nl/


S Jones; i did briefly hear him on radio 4 last week, but will look further when i have some time. i did like that he said "perhaps in 10.000 years i'll have to rethink." or words to that effect.


groetjes

hi jank

I am pleased that the immolation was a collective decision not one inflicted by you.

del nomo. Do. I may be available who knows. TOf course, the priority for DIIC is to finish.........

Monsters: Thanks for the pic.

I guess since the 'daggerboards are up it must have been fairly quiet day.

I think 'my' Groeniger tjalk is bigger so it must be a skuts.

Though this may not follow

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1229540

Now to me these would have to be 'wee'** skutsjes not skutses

I trust you have now adopted skutsje rather than skutje - less chance of typoism leading to strange places

10^-4: ein ogenblik. He should know better. Proof of pun-eek?

** A skutsejje?

bis spater

howdy Bored

quick couple of points for now......


Skutsje link; not the photo, scroll down for the video clip!

btw, the dagger boards are only ever lowered on the leeward side. in the pic you see just the windward side of the boats so they should all be raised to minimise drag, if they even reach the water that is....


tot zo

Hi jank

Sorry missed the video

For me until you mentioned a skutsje's daggerboards, a daggerboard was simply an unpivoted centreboard.

However it seems that you can get various type of offset daggerboards one of which is called a leeboard.

Skutsjes (in common with sailing Thames sailing barges) have a two-leeboard design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeboard

I am sure I have seen a similar design in pictures of ancient boats

From the video its quite different from the kind of sailing I am used to.

Das Boot carbon fibre masts,etc, modern, comparatively light weight sail materials, and automatic reefers and furlers, bermuda rig and a fixed keel.

From the video none of the above applies so even though we won't be doing competitive sailing (doesn't interest me) it's going to be an novel experience.

Not sure, I'd want to be on board a skutsje in an Atlantic gale though

I was just looking at the 'dinghy' skutses in the link I gave. Although they seem to have the standard tjalk hull design. I can't see any leeboards.

(some of them seem a bit overcrowded)

On the video there seems to be a man with a long white pole near the functional leeboard but I can quite make out what he's doing.

btw, do you know that you have a namesake and fellow countryman who designed an automatic steering gear. Unless you have heretofore unrevealed talents.

bis spater

evening Bored,

Skutsje; these are essentially flat bottomed craft. the water they need to travers is unbelievable shallow in places. the fella with the long pole is initially just pushing off, after that he seems to be doing some daft paddling which is less than useless. no wonder you were a little mystified.

Das Boot; what model is it, it sounds v nice....

competitive sailing; my frisian uncle was obsessed, he was a race official at Sneek Week (huge sailing regatta, lots of umpa bands and beer) and these blokes take it far far too seriously. i prefer sailing where you enjoy the experience for it's own sake, used to be quite a dab hand at windsurfing when it all began around 1980. i keep meaning to get back into it, but with 2 kids, 2 jobs, DIIC, polishing drums, and my lack of steely resolve..........


i think those dinghy tiddler skutsjes are steel hull and have a central daggerboard if memory serves.

namesake; i wish, he's not me though. i did have a legal notice served on me when i was a mere teenager. another namesake who lived a few miles away had done some seriously naugthy things re tax evasion. the Officionistas did eventually concede they had the wrong man when they realised i was just a boy...

G Brown; i once went to #11 where i saw him deliver a very witty, funny and moving speech that was essentially made up on the spot it seemed. why me there? i had contributed a few pages to a book that his missus was launching for her charity "moving on up". i got mighty p*ss*d and tried to convince my SO that we should strip to our Bday suits and loudly protest the Iraq war. she managed to calm me down so we didn't......i also wanted to confront dicky Branson, who had stitched me and my band up back in the early 90's on the Virgin label. he finally settled out of court, so he did lose but still, "butterfly on the wheel" imho........a night of regrets it will remain.

tot spoedig ziens

Morning jank

Skutsjes: Never occurred to me to check wiki. Dutch barges gives this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_barge

which give list of dutch bare types including skutsje and tjalk. There is no further link to 'tjalk' but 'skutsje' gets you to here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skutsje

where skutsje is 'a Frisian sailing boat of the type tjalk' so it looks like my Amsterdamer friend was right a 'skutsje' is either type of tjalk specific to Fryslan or a different local name for the same type of boat.

I had a friend who owned a 'wideboat' on the Leeds Liverpool canal. Very shallow draft. Quite a spectacular trip in it way

I found this on the Thames sailing barges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_sailing_barge

White pole man: Strangely a guy on one of the other boats seems to be mucking about similarly

Tiddler Skutses: A central daggerboard makes sense. Keels were obviously a no-no for 'real' skutsjes and a centreboard wouldn't work either.

Das Boot: A Moody 40 which we inherited from the SO's Daddy (me prole, she not).

There are two different Moody 40s, same name, different designs, different times. Ours is the earlier model looks a bit like this.

http://www.yachtsnet.co.uk/archives/moody-40-primrose/moody-40-primrose.htm

though not nearly so posh - all that spiffy wooden decking and general shininess!

Has quiet a high freeboard so ideal as a 'West Coast' blue water boat.

(love the 'being driven rather harder than most cruising owners would choose' shot. Not *that* hard)

Weather round here can be quite fierce hence to move to carbon fibre masts, etc. We sail two-handed, a lot of the time, hence the automatic furlers and reefers which can be operated from cockpit.

Racing: I'm like you I just like to sail. I don't mind racers though the whole competion thing bores me. It's 'yawtists' that get up my nose. Bet you have them down your way, all yachting caps, blazers and white trousers and hardly ever get outside the marina.

'Das Boot' is so named because it provokes them on so many levels.

Never got into wind surfing or dinghies. I learned to sail when I crewed (for pay) on a dilapidated wooden sloop with canvas sails that was used for line fishing. Got hooked on it


Gordy story: That would have brightened up Today. Pomp and McPiffle would have gone ballistic.

Don't recall him from high school though he would have been in his first year when I was in my last.

Similarly our times at Edinburgh University overlapped due to my extended 'gap year' but I don't recall him either as undergraduate or a postgraduate though he became Rector, apparently.

Much of the spin (not from him) about the e-stream experiment is as I said 'nonsense upon stilts'.

It was a comparatively minor evolution of an existing 'hothouse' system not a revolution. If you were in the 'hothouse' stream the trick was to take German and resist the whole 'high IQ - work until you drop schtick'. I think Brown may have bought into it.

Branson: Not surprised. The 'hippy' image cultivated by Virgin stores always struck me as marketing.


I see my that the 'Murder' thread is now descending into absurdity with Spirit and his New Vegan Religion Manifesto (a new award for largest number of informal logical fallacies maybe needed)

The bits I like are that the Native America Indians were vegans and the country should be returned to its primitive (chickenless)state with no anthropogenic impacts. We will all live as 'morally pure' lives as vegan gatherers

Alleluia

must
bis spater

Hi guys

Pretty much confined to grinding and grubbing today but:

Jank:

It may be advisable to avoid 'furrin' signoffs

On our biker 'cagoule' thread rg and I have been using Scots Gaelic and Welsh signoffs for over 100 posts when suddenly my latest was censored for use of 'furrin'.

Dutch and German should perhaps be best avoided. You know how insecure monoglots are.

psi.

'Murder' is descending into lunacy Not sure that a response to 'innate' is worth it till the children depart.

Move later

Must dash old Cchaps Have a spiffin day! Top Hole! What!

evening Bored


Skut(s)je(s); never knew there was so much to it! all the variants and classification, enough to make yo head spin..... but i do look forward to hearing all about it once you've been. i reckon that you have absolutely no idea just how shallow the water gets, no sustitute "is" there. unless you have one of these poles on board, or several for the bigger ones, it is likely you won't be going anywhere. there are several techniques for "launching" but at the end of the day you'll witness lots of grunting, groaning, swearing just to get underway. then watch the faces of those doing the pole work when the boat gets going, they take on the mystical appearance of Uber Blokes, as if they "knew" the point at which the sticky mud would accept defeat....

just in case this function is offered to you; this mud is the consistancy of custard for the 1st 0.5 m then gradually thickens up to near solid another 1 m or so further down. lot's of "greenhorns" put way too much oomph into the intial "poke-down" and have been known to go overboard... you have been warned


Moody 40; ........let me just say wow....and probably just as well you haven't all that wood care to do every year. though it does look the absolute dog's!


stumped; hope the final tidy re trees went smoothly. was a bit jealous of the whole equipment thing, boys will be boys.... but then i think i managed 1 better today;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bop_It

yup, i am "the voice" in Benelux of this sacred game, recorded earlier today....back of the net*.....


murder she, or real men, wrote; so annoyed your t-shirt link was pulled. i mean, really....there's just no need. as if mods are trying to "out pedant" the pedantry.....wot, no sense of irony??....gimme a break.

but the whole thread seems to have gone the way of nonsense. nevermind...

furrin; in that case i'll just say

TTFN





* if you are anything like Father Dougal that is...

Skutsjes: The final cagoulery: I spoke to my friend the bargeman who it turns out knows someone in the Dutch Barge Owners Association.

The tjalk is a specific barge hull design (there are others). Size can vary and some but not all have sails.

Skutsje are as you said are sailing barges in Fryslan and, apparently , they usually have tjalk hulls.

Shallow. Funnily I did check out the depth of the Ijsselmeer and the Waddensee. My original plan was to sail DB be there until I checked the charts for the area.

Your right though, knowing it intellectually is not the the same as being there. Never occurred to me that 'white pole man' was checking the depth. We rely more on an echo sounder

Gruntin and heavin': After watching your race video I can see it's going to be a very different experience.

Zen knowing: I think it happens a lot when your sailing. I have had similar experiences where you just 'loose the arrow'.

Mud: All useful tips welcome. Going about with leeboards would seem to be a bit tricky, I would imagine.

Wow: The one in the pictures has been fairly heavily customised. If we spend money on DB it's rarely on the decor so it's a bit..... grubby

grubbing and grinding: The SO has hogged the mini-JCB (much zoomin about on tracks tearing up roots) by contrast the root grinder is very dull it just......grinds.

Bop it: . I am indeed green. First 'Peece of mind pekkidge', now this. Tomorrow....... I bet there are Belgians muttering in their beer 'those Frisians coming down here, taking our jobs,......

T-shirt Post allowed in the end. Wiser heads prevailed, noticing, I assume,that it was ironic not advertising.

If you haven't looked at Noah II you may have missed my picture 'proving' that the Ark was a tjalk and, hence, Noah an Hollander.

'furrin' post. Reinstated. I complained. 'Anglophone racism.' Meant imperialism......

Not only am I rusty at chess but I was just presented with this problem and it took me some minutes to solve it.

f(n) = (2n+1)7^n-1

Prove by induction that for all positive integers n, f(n) is divisible by 4.

I'm not bad at Bop It though.

evening

Rusty: Not rubbish anymore?

Mathematical induction:

That you do this for pleasure is not convincing proof of rustiness anything.

Haven't done it for years but I seem to recall that to prove some proposition P, that P(n) is true for all n starting with n = 1, then you should

(a) Prove that P(1) is true.

(b)Assume that P(k) is true for some k. Derive from here that P(k+1) is also true.

Rusty/rubbish-as you say it is relative. if I could get back to the standard I was when I played a lot then I'd be rubbish again.


Yes that's mathematical induction in a nutshell.

Don't know why I took minutes on end to do this one, other than being rusty.

Morning psi

Something definitely was up last night.

I was in the middle of doing a reply to above when something server- wise broke and I got a lot of techno-twaddle.

Bop It. What is truly strange here is that not only have you heard of it you know how to play it

You should talk to Jank. There may be per diems to be had as a Pop It demonstrator in Brussels.

Play your cards right and you could get on Blue Peter
<smiley

psi

relative: Hence I am rubbisher than thou. I agree though that if you have played much or at all then you'll be rusty.

Until recently I hadn't played for over 40 years except for teaching the PMG the basics.

A nutshell: That's all I have.

Minutes: Fun with Mathematical Induction may be a touch unusual as a hobby. I haven't done it since High School.

AFK for most of today after post-a-move. My turn on the JCB

Bop It is a great game, though it can be infuriating.

Induction is not a hobby of mine but I was asked for assistance. Both this and my Bop It proficiency can be explained by the fact that I have children, I suppose.

Getting to drive a JCB is quite a big kid experience in itself eh?

I notice that move hasn't come through yet...

hi psi

Bop It: I conceive that you and jank maybe be coming a touch infantilised. Bop it, Buckaroo, etc., etc.**

mathematical induction: Are the children who play Bop It the same as the ones who do this?

JCB: It was a mini-JCB and my resident 'boxer' mechanic had most of the fun. Today I was backfilling a very dull job.

Watch his video (only the first 31 seconds since all that happens in the rest is mere repetition).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNlStbY_1ak

Now imagine it in reverse. My day.

However I am feeling a wiff of 'boyz toyz' envy here so I found this for you and jank.

http://www.babyexpert.com/Your-life/Fun-driving-a-mini-JCB/v1

Enjoy.

post-a-move: Try as you will I will not be pressurised into a blitz game.


**My function as the grandparent of the teenage PMG and her ilk is, apart from handing out wedges of dosh at regular intervals,as long distance mediator and sympathetic ear.

Btw, I have just carried out a bit of a cull of the many threads I have been sucked it to (installing Jstudio's Discussion Watcher has proved less of a boon than anticipated)

Amongst these was 'Murder' which was becoming too surreal to live with. I have however bookmarked your 'innate' post and I'll post a reply when the Children's Crusade has petered out

I also turned up these two links on quasi realism which you might find interesting, if you haven't come across them before:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/projectivism-quasi-realism.html

http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/ethic@

Vol 1 number 2 has an an interview with Simon Blackburn