Prior Warning II

'Twas March 2015 when I published Prior Warning - A little piece on the musings of Autocar journo, Matt Prior.

I've just read his latest piece and it looks like there's a bit missing.  It seems to end a bit abruptly - perhaps you have to buy the mag to get the full story.  Fair enough I suppose.

It feels a bit short because the item is subtitled "We discuss why F1 isn't as exciting as it once was."

Unfortunately, the total actually said on the subject is, "The spectacle probably peaked when cars were at their noisiest and wildest and drivers at their most visible, which is why classic car racing is so popular, regardless of how tech-laden some racing series, contested by companies with cars to flog, have become."

That doesn't sound like much of a discussion.  Although I do like watching classic car racing.

The gist of the article is that sometimes, rather than look to the latest hi-tech solutions, the old ways are more than good enough having proved themselves whilst standing the test of time.

My example of this would be that, in the olden days, British people were encouraged to shoot Nazis rather than to read their crap in the Daily Mail.

What there is of Matt's piece is written well enough and he does manage to both use the word "eschew" and talk about tweed trousers.  Although he does also claim that there is such a thing as a "digital salt dispenser."

Ludicrous eh!?

Dig This Old MG

I saw a repeat of Time Team yesterday on Yesterday.

(For non-viewers of British TV, I can assure you that that sentence does make sense)

Phil Harding was his usual, fun, self.

He is still going strong and still works with Wessex Archaeology.

 

He doesn't get a mention on this BBC story involving Wessex Archaeology though.

 

While excavating an old military site on Salisbury Plain, they dug up an old MG J2:

I'm not sure how they could tell what it was - it looks like a soap-box derby cart to me but this is how it probably looked half-a-century ago:

They can tell by the tyre patterns that it was last used in the 1960s.

 

So it probably wasn't Roman.

 

Still very interesting though - and a change from looking for flint or dinosaurs.  Maybe they should expand their search? - this could be down there somewhere:

nice.cheese.sandwich

Search for "nice cheese sandwich" on Google Images and you get lots of pictures of cheese toasties.

You do get some proper ones too though - like these ones:

So what piece of motoring journalism prompted me to look for cheese butties today?

This piece.

It's an Autoguide story about something that is probably the biggest thing to happen to maps in a very long time - and how Mercedes are getting on board with it.

Basically, someone has gone away and quietly divided the Earth into 3m x 3m squares and allocated every one of them a three word identity.  I have some in my front garden and even more in my back garden.  My property includes the words "boring", "slices" and "upset".

I'd love to know what algorithm they've used to allocate these words - and can they move them around?

For example, good.food.prices is in an industrial area in the town of New Tazewell, Tennessee - I'm sure a few supermarkets would pay good.money to have that in the middle of their canned goods aisle.

Not all words are included of course.  The nearest they have to "Iver Child Bollards" is over.chill.billiards (it's in the bit of Angola that makes it look like a jigsaw piece)

location.location.location is in Russia.

The uses for this are incredible - imagine your ship is sinking at misspellings.appendages.history (for this covers the sea as well as land) - you could summon aid to exactly the right spot before you became a victim of The Bermuda Triangle.

Pirate treasure maps would be a lot simpler too.

This amazing tool is called what3words and can be found at  https://map.what3words.com/daring.lion.race or on the Sat-navs of upcoming Mercedes models.

And my phone.

Incidentally, nice.cheese.sandwich is near the town of Los Mantos in Northern Chile.

Iver Child Bollards

The title of this post ought not to make any sense.

But it does.

That is an Iver Child Bollard.  They don't look much less scary during daylight hours:

They have been placed outside Primary and Junior schools in the Buckinghamshire town of Iver to deter bad driving and people parking on the kerbs.  The Telegraph reported it here and the BBC have a short video about them here.

 

I'll bet a few of the pupils at these schools have nightmares after seeing them.

 

I think it is the soulless expression staring out, judging anyone who dares to drive a car in their vicinity.

Perhaps even more scary is the cost - they seem to be £5,395 plus installation.  Each!

 

Still, I look forward to seeing them feature in a Doctor Who storyline in the next couple of years.

Electric Rod

Not sure what Steve Darnell will make of this story.

Steve Darnell is the one who isn't Richard Rawlings.

Richard Rawlings owns Gas Monkey Garage as featured in Fast'n'Loud while Steve Darnell owns Welder Up as featured in Sin City Motors (or, as it is known in America, Vegas Rat Rods)

And one thing Steve Darnell loves doing is sticking huge Cummins Diesel engines into Rat Rods.

But the story, from Autoguide today, tells of Cummins producing an all-powerful, all electric Semi.  (Note that in this case we are talking about a tractor unit not a suburban house or the start of an erection)

Here it is:

and here is another type of semi - a small one:

Very neatly erected in its own way.

 

But I digress.

 

The Cummins/Aeos truck is challenging Tesla who are working on an electric truck themselves.  Autoguide claim that Cummins have got there first since they put out this tweet yesterday at an unveiling:

Very impressive.

 

Does this mean that Steve will now have sparks rather than plumes of black smoke coming from his creations in the future?

 

It's already been done with a few examples coming up if you Google "Electric Rat Rod" but I reckon he will end up doing one too.

I'd put some money on it if I could just think of somewhere in America where it is legal to gamble.