what I have learned today.

[Auntie Helen]

That Germans - or at least one of them! - can find great ways of describing their leg length for a Velomobile boom. “Dackelbeinig” = Dachshund-legged...

[Tim Hall]

That the Microsoft Surface Pro has a micro SD card slot. This comes in handy if one has an Etrex in one hand and a gpx file on ones lapdancer in the other but the cable for connecting the two is many many miles away.

[T42]

That Germans - or at least one of them! - can find great ways of describing their leg length for a Velomobile boom. “Dackelbeinig” = Dachshund-legged...

Just don't call them halb Dackel.

[Torslanda]

...better than half a pfennig!


I'll get me coat.

[hellymedic]

Some of the history and lyrics for the songs whose tunes are used in our local ice cream van chimes.

[Ham]

Lorry wheel nuts are left hand thread on the left side, for the same reasons as bike pedals.
How I have reached my old age without knowing this is hard to understand, except that I have never driven heavy vehicles. 

But as ever, cars are aberrant.

Chrysler built their cars that way through the late '60s. Of course, the cars in question were about the size of a truck/lorry.

So did Rolls-Royce.

Wire wheels for cars were also secured by handed threads.

So did 105 Series Alfa from 50's (GT Junior, Spider etc)

[Exit Stage Left]

Lorry wheel nuts are left hand thread on the left side, for the same reasons as bike pedals.
How I have reached my old age without knowing this is hard to understand, except that I have never driven heavy vehicles. 

But as ever, cars are aberrant.

Double wheeled Transits are the same. I had to teach vehicle maintenance for conservation volunteers once. They were thoroughly confused, and even put the nuts back on with the straight side abutting the wheels.

[Giraffe]

Having worked at - and sometimes for - Plessey in Towcester for 23 years, I was amazed to find that there still is a Plessey Semiconductors in Plymouth - must have been a buy-out before GEC took over Plessey.
It makes microLEDs, so has a huge potential market as mLEDs take ofer from OLEDs.

[Mr Larrington]

That Gazza and Dobbin, the "Heads" part of the teenage Dave Lister's band Smeg & The Heads, were played by Jeffrey Walker and Bill Steer of Carcass, the metal edition of of Black's Medical Dictionary.

[spesh]

... Carcass, the metal edition of of Black's Medical Dictionary.

 

[hellymedic]

That both 1p and new 5p coins stick to the rare earth magnets gifted to me by Biggsy OTP (sometimes).

Actually, I knew the 1p was magnetic but the 5p was news to me.

(I don't have other small coins to hand right now. This might help sort our cat flap issue.)

ETA my old 5p coin is not magnetic, nor is a 50p I found.

Surprisingly (to me) £1 coins are weakly magnetic.

I do like playing with magnets!

[pcolbeck]

American wheelbarrows have wooden shafts/handles.

[rafletcher]

That there is a thing called “match betting” and further, that my daughter practices it, and, indeed, would like to work for a bookies.

[rafletcher]

That British Gas is one of the cheaper dual fuel suppliers for us, a good £250 a year less than Robin Hood 

[Salvatore]

I found out today that one of my great-great-great grandfathers (or someone with the same name, same residence and same profession as one of my GGG GFs) received a "sabre cut on the right shoulder" at Peterloo.

Today I learned that there were 2 weavers called James Entwistle living in Manchester at the time of Peterloo and that the one who suffered the sabre cut was the one who wasn't my great-great-great grandfather.

Probably.

However, today I learned that while (as above) my GGG GF was not the one wounded at Peterloo, it may well have been his father (i.e. my great-great-great-great grandfather) who was slashed by a sabre on August 16th 1819 and received £1 relief for 3 weeks disablement.

I now don't feel such a fraud for attending last week's event for descendants of people present at Peterloo.

[T42]

Not so much learnt as realized, that since the small ring of a 2x11 does the work of the two inner rings of a triple it'll wear out twice as fast. The ring I just changed on my 2x11 had 20,000k on it, but the inner rings on my 3x10 have around 36,000k and are just about still OK.

[Giraffe]

Not so much learnt as realized, that since the small ring of a 2x11 does the work of the two inner rings of a triple it'll wear out twice as fast. The ring I just changed on my 2x11 had 20,000k on it, but the inner rings on my 3x10 have around 36,000k and are just about still OK.

Wear on a bearing/road is proportional to 4th. power of loading; the bigger the ring and sprockets the lower the force. As an example, a lorry that should be 10 te./axle will do double the damage to the road if laden to 12 te./axle.
In the early '90s(?) an Auk had around 56 to a suitably built block and it did last a long time. Microdrive: gimmick to get more money.

[T42]

Auk?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Audax UK rider.

[Cudzoziemiec]

That just as there are bike-shaped objects, there are ship-shaped objects. "A ship-shaped, turret-moored FPSO." Looks like a ship to me, but no, FPSO = floating production, storage and offloading unit.

[Kim]

Not to be confused with shipshape objects, presumably.

[Tim Hall]

Not to be confused with shipshape objects, presumably.

Hopefully the ship-shaped object is shipshape thobut.

[hatler]

Not to be confused with shipshape objects, presumably.

Hopefully the ship-shaped object is shipshape thobut.

At getting on for a billion, you'd like to think so.

[Cudzoziemiec]

$1.5 billion I think this one was.

[Guy]

Not to be confused with shipshape objects, presumably.

Hopefully the ship-shaped object is shipshape thobut.

But is it Bristol-fashion? And if it is, what number on the Bristol Scale?