Friday, February 26, 2010
Engineering affairs
Started hearing unpleasant noises from the back brakes yesterday. Visual inspection from outside failed to reveal the problem but I decided that I did not want to add to ice-bound folly with brake-free folly and decided to call in at our local bike shop at Pound Lane (the place which was shut when I last wanted it) to see what they could do. Open, so that was a start. Thinking that I had bought brake blocks reasonably recently, decided to go for Shimano rather than bog-standard, a decision which moved the price from £4.99 to £9.50. Only time will tell whether it was worth it. Then followed a discussion about which way up they went - having avoided the discussion about which way around the asymmetrical bog-standard ones go (and learning as I find out how to spell asymmetrical that the most important use of the word is to describe a certain sort of ladies' hair cut). Decided that they should be curved edge up, to match the curve of the wheel. Got home, removed the old ones, to discover that they were indeed worn down to the metal skeleton inside the rubber body. Hence the funny noise. Not grit in the blocks at all. Now fully braked up and rolling along with much improved confidence.
Which prompted ponderings about graffiti which I had picked up from a strange, but rather pleasing, book called 'Among the Trees', privately printed in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by the 'Men of Trees' back in 1935. I think these people are much closer to my line on trees than the chain saw bandits of Epsom Common (see above, search still working!). Anyway, the story was that beech trees with their smooth bark have always been the favoured tree of youths who want to inscribe their love in some permanent and visible way, this before the age of the spray can. The point of interest being the allegation that the trees grow over the resultant graffiti over time, leaving a permanent record inside the tree. So the record of your love is locked up inside the tree, more or less for ever. Now if one was simply to carve the graffiti in the bark, I do not think this would work, as I think that the growing layer of a tree is the damp sap wood which lies immediately underneath the bark. But if one takes one's carving into the sap wood, which I guess one probably would as this would increase visibility, there might well be a scar in the course of time. Bit expensive in time and trees to be absolutely sure about this, so I guess I had better let the matter drop.
But I was moved to find out whether this gang still exist and find that they have been rebranded as the International Tree Foundation with a rather glossy web site at http://internationaltreefoundation.org/ sporting the vision of a world where trees and forests flourish and where their vital role in supporting life on earth is fully realised and valued. From which I also learn that they have left their rather prestigious address at 10 Victoria Street, SW1, for the leafy suburb of Sandy Lane in Crawley Down.
Printing off a map to facilitate such inspection came across a neat feature of embedded Google maps, that is to say maps made by Google but incorporated into someone else's web site. When you go to print the thing you get the option to type a bit of text into a box, which gets printed with the map and which, being legible, will remind you why you printed the thing off. Very neat.
PS what is not so neat is that having disturbed the font or spacing or something of the last sentence of what was the penultimate paragraph, I find I cannot back to the original. It might be legible but also very irritating for a wannabee geek.
PPS someone up there must be listening. Seem to be OK now.
# posted by Jim @ 3:10 AM 
