Some times you spend a lot of time dreading when something will happen, you know it is just a matter of time, like seeing old school bullies or ex girlfriends after several decades. You imagine all sorts of things occurring, the scenes, the threats of violence, the anger, the pain.
Then it happens and they don't recognise you and walk straight by.
1. Tesco Xero Cola (50p) has an extra taste I couldn't put my finger on. Reminiscent of Cola flavour sweets. Not at all unpleasant
2. Sainsbury's Cola Zero(47p). Not at all unpleasant.
3. Aldi Vive zX Cola(47p)
4. ASDA Diet Cola (60p)
5. Morrisons (79p) for the Low Sugar variety are the most expensive and definitely not the best, but far closer to the best than it is to the worst.
6. Lidl Freeway Cola.(47p) Tasteless. If you drink it with your eyes closed, it tastes like fizzy water. It is only disappointing if you drink it with your eyes open because the mind expects flavour but this is lacking.
The Garrett ATF3 is one of the most unusual triple spool jet engines there is. In most triple spool engines all 3 shafts are concentric. That is, the high-pressure shaft is inside a hollow intermediate shaft which is inside the low-pressure shaft. In the ATF3 the intermediate is still inside the low, but the high-pressure shaft, while colinear with the other 2 it is behind them.
As you can see from the ATF3 below, the front section outlined in green is very similar to the twin-spool engine but where the combustion chamber is the hot gas is piped off to the rear of the engine, turned through 90 degrees and through a centrifugal compressor. Only then does it hit the combustion chambers. From there it flows through the high-pressure turbine before flowing backwards through various turbines, turning 180 degrees and exiting, mixed with the bypass stream.
It is slightly unorthodox here as the turbine driving the low-pressure compressor is actually at a higher pressure than the one driving the high pressure.
The back-to-forward flow helps keep the engine length down and minimises losses from the hot gas. The centrifugal compressor and reverse flow combustion also help keep the length down but make the entire thing rather wide.
The original Whittle engine had a very similar arrangement for very similar reasons, and on small engines, centrifugal compressors are not unheard of.
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| ATF3 |
Base drawing from here
To make a quad spool all you would need to do is replace the front twin spool with a triple spool or convert the aft section to double. In theory you could get pent or oct spool engines before hitting the 3 concentric spool limit.
I can only assume the benefit still isn't worth the extra weight and complexity.
Liverpool is a city built on 4 solid walls, to be precise 4 solid walls of silence. The one you will hear about most of is the general one where people don't help the police doesn't matter how shit the crooks make your life, don't help the police, Brian Ashton is a strong exponent of this.
The second one is in the police, never grass up your colleagues no matter what they have done, by all means, give them nicknames like "The Rapist" and when they get caught pretend they were never really police anyway.
In LCC you also never grass up your colleagu, no matter how badly they treat the public and no matter how much they lie, you can also rely on large numbers of cops to help with this one as you are all in public service. Remember as a council staff member it is your city and you get to call the shots.
The final one is the one in the Echo when you can be called by a journo from the Echo and have all sorts of wild allegations angrily thrown at you. When you point out some of the simple factual errors like your place of birth and schooling they get more hesitant as it becomes clear they have been fed a pack of nonsense by someone. Do they apologise for doing someone's dirty work and help get to the bottom of what has caused this abuse, of course not, they just hang up, but that's all in a days work.
When you complain to the editor one Al Machray, he repeats some other rubbish angrily and surprise surprise can't find any record of your number being called and insist it didn't happen.
You can rely on the likes of the other Al's at the echo, together with the Gow's to bring things up every so often just to keep stirring.
If the people of Liverpool had any sense they'd boycott the Echo as much as they do the Sun.
If there is a roof on this room it's provided by the security guards, eager to please anyone in power who might overlook their dodgy behaviour.
or in the real world.
Note the lines in black on the map below, no longer exist but would make the journey quicker. The red bypass under Derby has no passenger services so all timings involve 5 minutes turn around in Derby, there was a bit of track to allow a turn east while passing through Derby north but that has gone.
After messing around with the National Rail route planner and discovering it is very buggy and very limited and totally unfriendly I got these timings. These are for the fastest journeys between various points, you cannot make these journeys at this speed now because you'd have long gaps waiting for connections.
The British Rail Class 755 would seem ideally suited to the journey, the current trains are British_Rail_Class_158.
CrossCountry would be the ideal operator for this.
Carbon is used for many things and a lot of that carbon is acquired from oil, it makes a lot of sense to use Carbon obtained from direct air capture to make those products.
Plastics are some of the most common materials over 311 million tonnes are various plastics are produced every year, of that 230 million tonnes is carbon.
It is not a vast amount as just under 3% of global CO2 output, the equivalent of 33.8 million mature trees. One of the problems is in breaking the CO2 bonds recently a new Technique doubles conversion of CO2 to plastic component.
NASA long had an ambition to turn astronauts CO2 waste into food and a Finnish company has managed the trick see Food from thin air. This flour like product would be a good replacement for soya flour,which is currently decimating the amazon basin.
There have also been recent improvements in the processes for converting CO2 into long chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet engines and potentially other heavy fuel systems like diesel.
New Iron-based Catalyst Converts Carbon Dioxide into Jet Fuel
I want the right to refuse to have unvaccinated people with no medical reason in my flat and if I had a shop in my shop.
You want the right not to risk a vaccine, I want the right not to be exposed to your potential mutant infection. Having an endemic infection caused by people who choose not to be vaccinated, not only means that people who cannot be vaccinated are at risk, it means increases the number of mutations, mutations that will inevitably lead to a bypassing of the effectiveness of the vaccine.
As usual, a lot of the anti-vax stuff is from the libertarian right, which wants people to be free to do the things that libertarian right-wingers approve of but not the things other more socially-minded people approve of.
If the owner of any establishment bans those who are voluntarily unvaccinated, what legal recourse do they have if those banned enter? Is it trespass or assault? Being unvaccinated for some will be a choice, a choice that has long term consequences for others, they are seeking to impose themselves but will moan continually about their loss of freedom with no consideration of the freedom of others.
In a free society, everyone must make compromises to allow the freedom of others, the Anti-vaxers will entertain no compromise by them.
One of the questions that come up every so often is "If Liverpool gets an HS2/NPR connection where will the station be?". It is a difficult question to answer, Steve Rotheram and the LCR have effectively ruled out expanding Lime Street, saying it is simply not possible, and I completely agree. This hasn't stopped some people, who seem more interested in the architecture than the practicality of the solution.
It is important to set out the requirements for a proper connection. For me, this is full length 400m GC gauge trains. The LCR has added close proximity to Lime Street and the existing station to that I'd add it needs to be outside the loop for practical reasons.
The space we need is defined by the with of a GC Gauge carriage, which is 3.29m, the platforms at a minimum of 12m with an extra meter for wiggle room giving a total of 19.58m per 2 line set. For simplicity let's call it 20m.
The absolute minimum number of platforms is 4 this assumes HS2 & NPR, in reality adding some extra platforms for intentional and classic long-distance makes sense, so a more realistic size is 6 or 8 platforms. this would allow for reasonable expansion or transfer of all long-distance express trains to the new station. Leavening regional and semi-fast for Lime street & local for Central station. This means we are looking for a site 60m or 80m wide.
I do have a site in mind which fore fills all the requirements with perhaps up to 100m available if a small amount of pavement is taken. That site is currently occupied by the Mount Pleasant Car Park and the 051 nightclub, between Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill.
Taking 80m line and extending 450m forward takes the end of the platforms to under the cathedral.
The land climbs from the Lime street and is some 10 meters higher by May Street several meters of headspace would be needed for this interface. Having 2 concourses allows the lower concourse at the platform end to be a reasonable size and to be constructed in a pit providing a cliff-like at May Street for the tunnelling to start, meeting the incoming 2 line tunnel.
Constructing an 80m span underground would be challenging. Leaving supporting walls or building the walls would make the task easier, 3 walls each of 1m would add only 3m to the overall width and arranged as below they would provide fireproof divides between each platform in the underground section.
Track layout.
Providing access to Liverpool's other main stations via travelators could utilise the existent access to central from the basement of Lewis's.
A station of this size would likely mean that other than an expansion of Liverpool central no new station would be needed for 100 years. Providing support for an international connection via the channel tunnel.
I know that currently HS2 plans barely include Liverpool as anything other than a minor adjunct but here are several plans for a dedicated Liverpool line from 20 Miles More to my own far cheaper plan here at Lymm to Lime Street.
In a fit of boredom, I plotted out a Thetford Norwich canal to bring Norwich into the 18th century and Thetford the 17th. If for some reason you want the KMZ Thetford-Norwich Canal.kmz.
The high point is just south-east of Wymondham College north-west of London Road. Great Britain topographic map, elevation, relief
If I could find a decent overlay for google earth with contour lines I might be able to find a slightly better route or at least align it better with the rivers. The bits either side of the peak should be smooth as they follow water courses and there are, as far as I know no rapids or wiers on the route.
It is the Thet canalised from Thetford to the north side of the A11 near Besthorpe then a link across for further canalisation to Dyke Beck->To the River Tiffey which feeds into the Yare near Great Melton. In a Kayak your portage might be as little at 1.5 miles.
The Little Ouse Waveney route would look like
In the past there where plans to link Thetford with Bishop Stortford via the Little Ouse or Stor but the railways killed them off. That would have linked Thetford to London. Another less detailed plan would have linked Thetford to the Waveney, via the little Ouse, this would have brought a connection to Lowestoft.
If Thetford was connected to the canal network, though recently the last few miles is not supposed to be navigable, it may well be for small boats. This link would give access from east to west Liverpool & Wales to the Broads.
Some of the first steps in the replacement of fossil hydrocarbons with synthetics and the journey has started in am oil rich country, Norway. From January, jet fuel in Norway must contain 0.5% of biofuel, at the moment the cost is four times the cost of fossil fuel.This fuel must be made of waste fats and vegetable oil, but not palm oil. SAS have a stated aim of powering all it domestic flights by biofuel. Norway plans to increase the required proportion to 30% by 2030.
This is obviously unsustainable for the entire aviation industry. Which means Europe’s first power-to-liquid demo plant in Norway plans renewable aviation fuel production in 2023. makes sense.
This uses the techniques outline in my blog Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake but chemistry doesn't stand still. In February, Waseda University in Japan announced.
The process drops the temperature of the conversion from 300-400°C to 100°C, not only does this use a different catalyst but also adds an electric field. Reducing the temperature required gives a large reduction in the energy required. The conversion to methane is only half of the 2 energy intense processes involves in making methane.
The other energy intense process is the production of hydrogen from water and that is currently an area of intense research as not only does it have bearing on the production of synthetic hydrocarbons but hydrogen is a potential energy in its own right. Only its low density and difficulty in storage make it a less than ideal fuel. The Royal Society gave 4 options given in "Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale".
They are Thermochemical Routes to Hydrogen, Electrolytic Routes to Hydrogen, Biological Routes to Hydrogen and Solar to Fuels Routes to Hydrogen all of which have their niche usage. The ball has begun to move.
There is also artificial photosynthesis a process which looks to perform the complete production in a single device a synthetic leaf.
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| L2R Z8, Z80, Z180, Z380 & eZ80 |
