Monthly archives: July 2005

Green Queen

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Windsor Castle is to get its own hydro-power system.

A spokeswoman for the Queen said: “We’re constantly looking at ways of saving energy. We use energy efficient light bulbs at Buckingham Palace and recycle 99 per cent of green waste.”

Members of the Royal Family have long embraced an environmentally friendly lifestyle. The Duke of Edinburgh uses a taxi cab fuelled by liquid petroleum gas to travel around London, and water in a bore hole at Buckingham Palace is used to supply air conditioning to the Queen’s gallery before topping up the water levels in the Palace lake.

The electricity from the new plant will be fed straight into Windsor Castle and not into the local grid. It will be the biggest of its kind in the South of England. Four turbines, which will be built by npower renewables, will be submerged in two of Romney Weir’s bays.

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WCNIG!

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Webcomicsnation has launched!

I’ve been Beta testing WCN for a month or so and so far I’m very impressed with what it can do. In fact I’ve hardly even started to take advantage of all the cool stuff that’s possible using it. For instance, I’ve still got a plain white background when I could have cool colours or images. I will continue tweaking until I hit the sweet spot of good looking webcomicdom.

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Make 'n Take

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Revell-Monogram are taking a nicely proactive approach to getting children involved in model-making. They sell Make ‘n Take packs for event organisers. For $49.95 and posting you get a total of 25 kits, one in its full box and the others in bags, and promotional material. It’s ideal for setting up on a stall at an event, whether for free or a small fee.

As far as I can tell, it’s only available in the US and Canada. Maybe there are other companies running a European equivalent scheme.

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Bizarro-Kyoto?

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The US, Australia, China, India and South Korea, and possibly some more Asian countries, are to sign up to their own emmissions controlling programme. Radio news reports this morning suggested that Japan is one of those others, the only Kyoto signatory that is party to this agreement. Whilst I want to believe that this is a step forward I can’t help but think it’s a sop to their coal and other industries.

Details of the new pact have so far remained under wraps; but there are indications that it will focus on technology transfer, probably with an emphasis on cleaner ways of burning coal.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the four biggest producers of coal in the world are China, the United States, India and Australia; so it is unlikely that these nations would come up with an agreement to reduce the production and use of coal.
………
But will this be enough to curb climate change? Environmental groups are sceptical.

“It’s part of the Bush administration’s strategy to prove that the technological approach is the answer to global warming,” the director of WWF International’s Climate Change Programme, Jennifer Morgan, told BBC News.

“You only need to look at the way that emissions are going to see that’s not the case.”

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Not so Silent Bob

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Kevin Smith’s blog, AKA My Boring Ass Life. It’s typically Smith, a mixture of the mundane and slightly bizarre that’s somehow fascinating.

Mewes drives me to the airport, and I jump on the plane, taking some pics in the terminal with fans who’d been at the Con. On the plane, the dude who played “Fat Albert” (either Keenan or Kel) chats me up, saying he’d seen “Evening With” on cable, and was wondering if I’m a stand-up, and if not, what I do for a living. He’s seated beside the chick from “E.R.” and “The Grid”, and as they seem pretty chummy, I’m assuming they’re heading up to Vancouver to shoot a flick together.

I slap on my headphones and listen to “Freak Me” about thirty times in a row, while playing Gameboy Advance Tetris. Before long, we land, and I shoot through Customs and wait for my bag to come down the carousel. I get to the valet desk, but nobody’s there. I talk to Jen while waiting for half an hour, and then call the main office of the valet joint. Somebody comes down to give me my keys, and even though I’ve been waiting and I’m pissed, I still tip the guy. I’m dumb like that.

via Blogger Buzz

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Cars and Girls (oh, okay, just cars)

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There are a lot of sites out there like Jalopnik that regularly serve up links to images and articles of interest to car modellers.

Recent highlights include-

A 1,000 horsepower Toyota Supra, which would put those Fast & Furious models to shame.

A customised ’35 Ford pickup from Australia. It’s powered by LPG, but the interesting thing for any modeller is that they’re right hand drive- probably a major modification on any of the kits available.

The “Big T” model T that inspired a classic kit.

Building the perfect Demolition Derby car Anyone who got this right on a model could be looking at a show winner.

The Asphalt Invitationals. Lots of lovely rods to inspire you.

Automotive interiors from the ’70s on.

And more and more. Jalopnik’s the only car blog I subscribe to, but I bet there are a load more out there serving up this sort of inspiration as well.

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The Running Tap

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An art piece intended to highlight excessive water use is to be turned off because it has used too much water.

The Running Tap provoked passionate reactions – a few supporters and many more enraged. One sent a birthday card with the warning inside that if the tap was not turned off, the gallery would be blown up.

The irony was that in the course of producing the work, McGowan has become messianic about water wastage: yesterday he spluttered with outrage about people washing their teeth or cleaning vegetables under a running tap. At the weekend he denounced a family member for running the washing machine daily for only a handful of clothes.

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Putting some colour in his cheeks

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Sunday’s rain meant that Tiny Little Bond, as I’ve started calling him, got some colour.

The Bond mobile is coming along as well. However, I’ve managed to break one of the window pillars on the “new” Aston Martin model in exactly the same place as the old one. The plastic is obviously very thin just where it joins the body, making it vulnerable to the slightest pressure. The seats have been painted in Games Workshop Snakebite Leather, and may be getting highlights and shadows added, and the carpetting is going to be finished in a nice shade of Tan. I have a few etched metal goodies lined up to provide extra detailing. The only real problem is going to be painting the car. I don’t have an airbrush, or anywhere to use one, so I could end up finishing it with brush painting.

In other developments- the plan to sell lots of my kits on EBay backfired slightly as I got carried away and bought some kits. Overall I have cleared out some space, just not as much as I should have.

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Yippe Ki Aye, Are Kid!

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There’s a street in Salford named Buffalo Court, in honour of the Indians brought to the dirty old town by Buffalo Bill in 1887.

Just about the only relic of the Sioux visit is in local street names: Cody Court, Sundance Court, Cassidy Court, Dakota Avenue, and Kansas Avenue.

I think I used to work on Kansas Avenue, at a company that made frozen pizzas.

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The Resistance

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Verlinden is a monster amongst the small volume model manufacturers, with a huge back catalogue of excellent looking products. But they still have the same advantage that other model companies specialising in resing and similar kits have when it comes to fast turnaround, so some of their releases can be very topical. For instance they’ve recently been releasing Iraq-themed kits, though I’m not so sure about the tastefulness of this recent one, the Iraqi Insurgent-

Verlinden products are sold in the UK by Historex-Agents

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Rock Hard

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An ancient dildo has been reconstructed from stone fragments found in a German cave.

Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report.

“In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints,” explained Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University.

“There are some areas where it has some very typical scars from that,” he told the BBC News website.

Researchers believe the object’s distinctive form and etched rings around one end mean there can be little doubt as to its symbolic nature.

“It’s highly polished; it’s clearly recognisable,” said Professor Conard.

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