There are many hundreds of thousands of old sub-standard terrace houses across the UK in many of the big cities, all waiting demolition thanks to the the policies espoused by the last Labour government. Earlier this week, Charles Clover wrote a great piece in the Sunday Times suggesting that rather than "demolish and grass-over", the councils should give these blighted properties to individuals to refurbish at their own expense.
This proposal immediately rang a bell with me, as it echoed a similar policy espoused by speakers at the Building Research Establishment three years ago. One company was doing a deal with local authorities and renovating, not one house at a time, but whole streets. The effect was brilliant: Marooned owners suddenly found themselves with new neighbours instead of boarded up wrecks: First-time buyers found themselves with affordable homes in perfect condition with all mod-cons and insulated to a high standard. The LA saw its income restored and shared the profit on values with the company.
What happened? There's no sign of this happening now. It's likely the collapse in property values and the drying up of mortgages killed it in the intervening period. Whatever, this idea needs reviving, and Charles Clover puts a new spin on it.
Read Charles Clover's full article at www.supasash.com ("Affordable homes" link on the left). It deserves shouting about.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
What I HATE about my i-Phone
The way the text prompts are automatic instead of optional drives me MAD!
I know I can turn it off, but that's NOT what I mean. it's the assumption that I want the alternative word offered, and have to say "no" if not. I seem to have a wider technical vocabulary than Apple. That means, if I'm writing fast I'm constantly having to go back and correct the "corrections".
Maddening. Grrrrr!
It's not the spelling function I'm concerned with. That works well. The thing that drives me mad is the feature that offers an alternative word and asks me to say "no" if it's not what I want. It means that most of the time I get it whether I want it or not.
The obvious solution, of course, is to offer a choice of protocol from "auto replacement" to "optional replacement".
If it thinks it knows better than me, it should have the courtesy to let me ignore it. That's what I call "product development".
Simples.
I know I can turn it off, but that's NOT what I mean. it's the assumption that I want the alternative word offered, and have to say "no" if not. I seem to have a wider technical vocabulary than Apple. That means, if I'm writing fast I'm constantly having to go back and correct the "corrections".
Maddening. Grrrrr!
It's not the spelling function I'm concerned with. That works well. The thing that drives me mad is the feature that offers an alternative word and asks me to say "no" if it's not what I want. It means that most of the time I get it whether I want it or not.
The obvious solution, of course, is to offer a choice of protocol from "auto replacement" to "optional replacement".
If it thinks it knows better than me, it should have the courtesy to let me ignore it. That's what I call "product development".
Simples.
Friday, November 18, 2011
It's the assumptions wot get you.
No one doubts the mathematics underlying subjects such as engineering or particle physics, but the assumptions on which they are based sometimes turn out to be flawed, and thereby wreck the consensus of the standard theory. The historic belief in the existence of phlogiston - a mysterious substance or property of elements that enabled combustion - was sunk without trace once modern chemistry explained the true state of affairs.
So, what lies behind the shocking discovery that neutrinos can travel faster than light (if true). Does the assertion underpinning all of modern physics - that nothing can travel faster than light - fall? If so everything changes. Genius Fred Hoyle was ridiculed for standing by his Steady State theory, but what if the red-shift explained by receding galaxies has another explanation: Some 80% of the mass in the universe can't be found: the so-called Dark Matter. Light travels more slowly through dense material than through a vacuum. If this dark matter is spread uniformly throughout 'empty' space, however thinly, could the red-shifted light from distant galaxies show not that they are receding, but that the light from them has travelled through something less than a perfect vacuum. Dark matter perhaps?
Will someone explain why not, please.
So, what lies behind the shocking discovery that neutrinos can travel faster than light (if true). Does the assertion underpinning all of modern physics - that nothing can travel faster than light - fall? If so everything changes. Genius Fred Hoyle was ridiculed for standing by his Steady State theory, but what if the red-shift explained by receding galaxies has another explanation: Some 80% of the mass in the universe can't be found: the so-called Dark Matter. Light travels more slowly through dense material than through a vacuum. If this dark matter is spread uniformly throughout 'empty' space, however thinly, could the red-shifted light from distant galaxies show not that they are receding, but that the light from them has travelled through something less than a perfect vacuum. Dark matter perhaps?
Will someone explain why not, please.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Quad glazing: the next big thing? Or not.
There's a new kid on the block: Quadruple glazing. It's been around for years in curtain-walling systems, but is now being presented as the next development for the domestic market.
However, efficient though it is in preventing heat-loss, quad glazing is not without an environmental cost: Glass manufacture (melting sand at very high temperature) takes a great deal of energy. A member of the West Midlands Manufacturing Advisory Group once described premature sealed-unit failure as "an environmental disaster". Quad glazing will, at a stroke, double the environmental cost.
Somewhere, there is a point of diminishing returns, and my gut feeling is that that quad glazing is over the top. I tend to prefer the Heat Mirror approach which achieves much the same result for a far lower environmental cost. I would be very interested in seeing the embodied energy cost of the two systems set against notional energy savings.
The best energy-saving measure is still another layer of clothing with the thermostat turned down, and there's vast scope for the future in intelligent heat-mapping and distribution inside buildings.
However, efficient though it is in preventing heat-loss, quad glazing is not without an environmental cost: Glass manufacture (melting sand at very high temperature) takes a great deal of energy. A member of the West Midlands Manufacturing Advisory Group once described premature sealed-unit failure as "an environmental disaster". Quad glazing will, at a stroke, double the environmental cost.
Somewhere, there is a point of diminishing returns, and my gut feeling is that that quad glazing is over the top. I tend to prefer the Heat Mirror approach which achieves much the same result for a far lower environmental cost. I would be very interested in seeing the embodied energy cost of the two systems set against notional energy savings.
The best energy-saving measure is still another layer of clothing with the thermostat turned down, and there's vast scope for the future in intelligent heat-mapping and distribution inside buildings.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Would You Believe It? Nos.1 to 3
In a week that has seen the arrival of the seven-billionth inhabitant of our planet, I found myself pondering some of the astonishing coincidences that I have seen in the last thirty years, in a population of mere millions.
No 1
In 1976 our family was dispersed around the world. My parents had been visiting us in Mallorca, and were six hours late leaving for England with their flight delayed by violent storms. My sister was living in Dubai, and made an unscheduled trip back to England on the spur of the moment. In an age without mobile phones, and without any knowledge that the others were travelling, they bumped into each other in a crowded Terminal 4 at Heathrow.
No. 2
In the 1980s I had a woodworking business in the centre of Birmingham, and took on a new member of staff from a Skill Centre. (Remember them?). This chap had been a navigator in the rapidly-shrinking merchant navy, and had re-trained as a carpenter/joiner. He lived in Walsall, some seven or eight miles to the west of the city.
On the way over to his first job in Solihull, some seven or eight miles to the east of the city, I gave him strict instructions to keep his mouth shut: I did not particularly want the client to know that he was new to the business. Not good for confidence, you understand. The job was a timber conservatory roof, round at the back of the property. While I was showing my new man what was required of him, the client - a chap in his early forties, I guess - stepped out of the kitchen door, looked at my new employee and said "What are you doing here? You were in the merchant navy last time I saw you".
Said client was an insurance salesman, and my new chippie had been one of his clients. Would you believe it? There were seven million inhabitants in the West Midlands conurbation, and I picked two that knew each other, despite living fourteen miles apart with England's second-city between them.
No. 3
A few years ago my wife and I were walking the Coleridge Way in Somerset with friends. At one rural B&B we were joined at breakfast by another couple from somewhere down south, and exchanged some polite conversation, during which our home town came up. "Oh!, I lived there once." said the chap. "I used to keep my horse in K**** H*******." (a village just south of the town). "That's a coincidence." says I. "We lived there, too, until a few years ago". He then mentioned the name of the chap from whom we bought our house. To cut a long story short, it turned out that our new acquaintance had kept his horse in the stable of the barnyard of the house we had bought twenty years before.
Coincidence, or what?
No 1
In 1976 our family was dispersed around the world. My parents had been visiting us in Mallorca, and were six hours late leaving for England with their flight delayed by violent storms. My sister was living in Dubai, and made an unscheduled trip back to England on the spur of the moment. In an age without mobile phones, and without any knowledge that the others were travelling, they bumped into each other in a crowded Terminal 4 at Heathrow.
No. 2
In the 1980s I had a woodworking business in the centre of Birmingham, and took on a new member of staff from a Skill Centre. (Remember them?). This chap had been a navigator in the rapidly-shrinking merchant navy, and had re-trained as a carpenter/joiner. He lived in Walsall, some seven or eight miles to the west of the city.
On the way over to his first job in Solihull, some seven or eight miles to the east of the city, I gave him strict instructions to keep his mouth shut: I did not particularly want the client to know that he was new to the business. Not good for confidence, you understand. The job was a timber conservatory roof, round at the back of the property. While I was showing my new man what was required of him, the client - a chap in his early forties, I guess - stepped out of the kitchen door, looked at my new employee and said "What are you doing here? You were in the merchant navy last time I saw you".
Said client was an insurance salesman, and my new chippie had been one of his clients. Would you believe it? There were seven million inhabitants in the West Midlands conurbation, and I picked two that knew each other, despite living fourteen miles apart with England's second-city between them.
No. 3
A few years ago my wife and I were walking the Coleridge Way in Somerset with friends. At one rural B&B we were joined at breakfast by another couple from somewhere down south, and exchanged some polite conversation, during which our home town came up. "Oh!, I lived there once." said the chap. "I used to keep my horse in K**** H*******." (a village just south of the town). "That's a coincidence." says I. "We lived there, too, until a few years ago". He then mentioned the name of the chap from whom we bought our house. To cut a long story short, it turned out that our new acquaintance had kept his horse in the stable of the barnyard of the house we had bought twenty years before.
Coincidence, or what?
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