A Brick for my Dad
Our Veterans Memorial Garden There are many bricks in the veteran’s memorial plaza where I live in Texas each with a different name and a different story. The brick I want to talk about looks a bit different than the rest and I hope to explain why, and why it sits with all the...
Bladder Cancer — the unfashionable disease
One of the downsides of getting old is getting sick. I never had any serious illnesses when younger and working. After I retired things changed. Like an old car my bits started to wear out and seize up. We had moved into a retirement community when my wife retired, but I kept working. The...
What is Time?
In his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the author Douglas Adams’ character Ford Prefect states that ‘time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so’. It turns out that Douglas Adams was more prescient than he perhaps imagined. In contemporary quantum physics the nature of time is hotly debated and is generally unknown –...
The UK Post Office Scandal
The UK Post Office Scandal was a massive miscarriage of justice where faulty Fujitsu’s Horizon software used by the UK Post Office falsely reported financial shortfalls occurring in sub-post offices, leading the Post Office to wrongly prosecute over 700 sub-postmasters for theft and false accounting. Many faced prison, bankruptcy, and severe distress, with 59 deaths...
Malcolm Allan and MV San Delfino
Had he survived WWII Malcolm Allan would have become my uncle in-law on the marriage of my maternal uncle George to Malcolm’s sister Florence. Sadly, he did not survive the war, dying aboard the petroleum tanker San Delfino when it was torpedoed by a German submarine near Cape Hatteras in 1942. During WWII the...
A Life a Long Time Ago
Once upon a time I was a research physicist working for a UK defense contractor. I took up this job fresh from three years as a post-Doc research assistant in a university. I had lost my interest in pure research and realized that I was much more suited to applied physics. My specialty at...
RC Sailboat Tuning Stick
A while back I saw a gadget called a TrimmBlock that was used to tune the sails of an RC sailboat. Sadly, when I tried to buy one of these, they were no longer available for purchase. To me there was only one option, make one for myself using my 3D printer. RC sailboats...
Cheap Gas and Radiation
It seems to me that the choice is a simple one; do we want cheap gas and radiation or do we not. We have survived for seventy years with the threat of nuclear Armageddon. But our adversaries were mostly sane and had similar objectives to our own. Now we face an adversary who has...
Sailboat Building Tips
3D printing is a very capable method of producing custom parts for model RC boats. I use Autodesk Fusion 360 to design my parts and 3D print them using my Creality Ender Pro. I typically use Tough PLA filament for my parts. It’s easy to print and is generally tough enough for the type...
3D Printing
I got myself a 3D printer for a Christmas gilt. Well actually, my wife bought it as a gilt but I specified the type and where to buy it from. Before you get all hissy, she specifies her jewelry gifts for me to buy for her so it is a two-way street. The printer...
About Me
I’m a retired physicist born and educated in Scotland; a naturalized US citizen living in Texas...Learn More
