It is simply heart-breaking when you journey to somewhere like South Korea, where there are miles and miles of huge shipyards churning out tankers, as its a grim reminder of what we once had here on the Clyde and the skills and jobs we have lost.
In a salient lesson to everyone on complex software projects, one yards latest attempt to build an innovative new car ferry has been a financial and political disaster - move fast and break things doesn't work very well with ship design! It's almost finished and doing regular sea trials at the moment to find the last bugs .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Glen_Sannox_(2017)
There's a real sad lesson for everyone involved here; enough patriotism was built up to support the idea of giving Scottish shipbuilding one last go, to bridge into the 21st century, and Ferguson Marine dropped the ball so hard that it's not coming back.
Can you imagine the response you'd get to suggesting that you build miles of shipyards up the West coast of Scotland these days? You'd die under an avalanche of environmental impact statements.
I live on the Firth of Clyde and the Waverley passes my house twice a day during the summer, plus it sales round the local lochs so when you are out and about you always catch glimpses of it. Part of it's charm and allure is that not only is it beautifully restored, but you can visit the engine room to see a traditional piston engine, and observe the paddles in the water as well - it's a gateway drug into engineering for many a child here. There is something magnificent about watching the Waverley catching and passing a Vanguard-class Trident submarine on it's way into or out of base. The paddle steamers certainly aren't slow - the Waverley is one of the fastest boats on the river - it's faster than the cross-clyde Ferries normally - I check them all using the magnificent Marine Traffic app! For anyone in London, it does a short Autumn season down there, sailing under Tower Bride and out to Southend for a trip round the big windfarm etc
fellow firth of clyde-r here so I love the point about seeing the Waverley pass the subs!
Family and I went for a trip on Waverley last summer and it was great. Seeing the engine in action up close really is something for someone who's so used to moving bits around.
And when she gets up to speed on the open water it really feels fast.
> SSE’s £100m commitment to further developing Coire Glas comes as the leading low carbon energy infrastructure company awaits the UK Government’s decision on how it intends to financially support the deployment of long-duration electricity storage, as set out in last year’s British Energy Security Strategy.
> This could include the introduction by the UK Government of a ‘revenue stabilisation mechanism’ in the form of an adapted Cap and Floor scheme to support investment in long-duration storage. This would also be alongside broader consideration of how the electricity market, including the Capacity Mechanism and the Flexibility Markets, value the contribution of low carbon flexible assets such as pumped storage.
AKA... They're waiting for a government handout before they begin build. While they can 'buy low, sell high' and make a lot of money, they also want a government guarantee that they will make that much money. Payouts from that guarantee will effectively become an electricity tax.
If you are ever up in Scotland, you can still visit Cruachan - the sister power station at Loch Awe with a very similar design. I took my children there two months ago. They were as amazed as I hoped they would be! Visiting hours here: https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/
If you are a Star Wars fan, Cruachan is the location of The Empire’s base in Andor.
As a Scot, who’s done a lot of hillwalking in the past (and been scared witless by airforce jets suddenly appearing over the brim of a hill) it was amazing to see tie-fighters whooshing across the Scottish landscape.
I visited Cruachan in 2019 by happenstance. It is really cool! I'm going to look for the Star Wars tie in - the architecture certainly does fit the theme. You can watch a Pathe video on Royal Opening of the dam and power station here https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/87792/
If the Panoptigon playing Kraftwerk "Uranium" does not send a shiver up the spine of anyone in tech, then you my friend should have a good hard look in the mirror.
Happens in the SCSI emulator market as well - there is a company massively marking up SCSI emulators and praying on naive musicians. Which is fair enough given they set them up before sending them out, but it still irks my sense of fairness
Ah good point. Hadn't considered mods as a distro mechanism. I still have all the mods I made in the late 80s/90s - rendered them and uploaded to Soundcloud for the world to enjoy / laugh at ... a very resilient format!
My Akai S1000 sampler from the late 80s still has it's floppy drive, which I occasionally still use even though it has a modern SD-card based emulated SCSI hard disk as well. I could change the floppy to a Gotek USB drive, but I'm not interested
I love using it. It triggers so many happy teen memories from my BBC B and Amiga!
It's Hunterston in case anyone wants to read-up - just down the road from me and sadly the AGR is now being de-fuelled as it heads for the big pile in the sky .... such a feature on the local coastline
Exactly - there is no default blocking of adult material in the UK, it's scaremongering based on proposed legislation that will probably never make it to the statute books. Some ISPs and telcos have implemented their own systems to protect children, which is a policy matter for them and them alone. There are plenty of ISPs who give you a raw unfiltered Internet. As a result of this inaccuracy, it weakens the rest of the talk for me - how much else is being made up?
So the wikipedia article [0] is wrong? It says the big 4 (TalkTalk, Sky, BT and Virgin) all implemented it. Or do you say that because some tiny ISPs don’t that it’s scaremongering?
They were told by the goverment "If you don't do it on your own, we will make you do it", so the big ISPs did (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk). This was back in 2012.
> But ministers have always been clear that if industry did not go far enough or fast enough, the government would consider further action - including potentially regulation.
The filter is turned on by default from the biggest ISPs however each one of them asks if you would like to disable it during the onboarding process.
Same goes for mobile internet, the only diffence there is if you are using PAYG you have to validate your age via a credit card or using a form of ID at your providers local store.
>it's scaremongering based on proposed legislation that will probably never make it to the statute books.
As someone following this horrendous bill, can you tell me what gives you that impression, given that it's passed two readings in the Commons and HL doesn't seem to be particularly vocal about slowing it down?
