Engineering
Unnecessary Engineering
Project 1: Scope Dials Welcome all and please gather round so I can waste a few minutes of your precious time on describing something that didn’t really need doing and no doubt would interest few. [more…]
Hobbies
17th Century
A View From The Greenhouse (A Savile Jibe, Really?)
If you thought strawberry tales was boring, then I guess you’d better hold my coat (as the saying goes). Following several days of not being able to even enter the greenhouse, apart from a cursory [more…]
Arts
Another Caribbean Christmas, Part Four
Day 6 – Wednesday 29th December – St. Maarten Good morning from the beautiful tiny island of St. Maarten. I woke as we approached the port just as the sun was coming up, I think [more…]
Animals
Larry’s Diary, Week One Hundred and Twenty Nine
Monday Morning all, another week stretches in front of me, I wonder what will happen this week. Bozzie was on the phone to that Muslim woman who claims she was told that she was being [more…]
20th Century
Nostalgia Album, Part One
No mystery here, this is Elihu, your modest reviewer of photographs grandfather. His father was also called Elihu and his grandfather was the John who Puffins with instant recall will remember lost half of the [more…]
Hobbies
Going Postal Saturday Puzzles Number 206
SOD-YOU-KO 206 Word Search 206 First correct entry out of ‘the hat’ wins one of these. Email entries to me by 6.00 pm Friday, subject ‘Crossword’. Contact here on email Winner of Crossword 205 and [more…]
19th Century
1850s British and American Rifle-Musket Cartridges Compared
Introduction My main interest in firearms has always been their technology and development, particularly during the 19th century which saw an incredible advance from flintlock, smoothbore muskets to semi and even fully automatic weapons. This [more…]
History
Postcard From Osh
A promise was made to Puffins regarding a dispatch from Kazakhstan to report upon the fighting between Kazakh forces, Russian paratroopers and ‘fuel protestors’. Located at Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, a correspondent was only 12 miles [more…]
Biography
Sailing my life away, part 33
RESPONSES Joe Slater is obviously more familiar than I with written Chinese Characters and I thank him for explaining that Zheng He and Cheng Ho were one and the same person. When visiting the museum [more…]