20th Century
The Only One in The World?
I’m a great believer that surges of adrenaline reshape the connections in the brain in the way a deluge of flood water might reshape a river valley. You are not the same person after an [more…]
Technology
Authoritarianism
Do You Still Believe Anything You Read?
Apologies in advance to Larry and his scribe WorthingGooner for pre-empting part of this coming Sunday’s ever popular and always entertaining Larry’s Diary, but something has cropped up and I think all G-P authors, commenters [more…]
19th Century
Sir Joseph Whitworth and the Confederate Sniper
Introduction In March 2024 I purchased a first generation, Birmingham-made Parker-Hale replica of a Whitworth military pattern muzzle-loading rifle of the late 1850s. These iconic rifles gained legendary status following their use in the American [more…]
Computing
Digitising Old Audio Tapes
There were three tasks involved in modernising and preserving the family archive, the second of which was to digitise the audio recordings. Digitising the old photographs was covered in a previous article, while digitising the [more…]
Economics
The Case For SMR Hesitancy
As Energy Secretary Ed Milliband’s Net Zero cultural revolution gathers pace, this week he announced a nuclear renaissance. A new £14bn reactor is planned for Sizewell. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are being championed through a [more…]
Computing
Digitising Old Photographs
The first in a short series of articles, which are partly technical (going into a little bit of detail about how the family archive of photos, 8mm home movies, and audio tapes was digitised), and [more…]
Engineering
Home Backup Systems, Part Three
Four months on So far I am very pleased with it. No alarms, no problems and good customer service from both sales and technical support. I’m not saying other vendors aren’t as good but Pecron [more…]
Engineering
Home Backup Systems, Part Two
What You’ll Need A Home Backup System, in my case (AC300 + B300K) Solar panels 405w £50 each Solar cable, from Bluetti with connectors and 50m cable only from Electrical World Solar cable crimper Staubli [more…]
Engineering
Home Backup Systems, Part One
When I bought my first custom PC back in 1999, a Gateway machine with dual Pentiums (Only PC I ever had which actually did two things at once), one of the things missing living in [more…]