RoadTransport

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• Commented on Motorola Tries Cashing in On Apollo
  Hardly reprehensible, I'd say, but unnecessary. Oddly, here in the UK the noun 'glamour' leads to the adjective 'glamorous'....
• Commented on Death by Chocolate (no, really): worker dies in hot cocoa mixing vat
  I'm with all the 'not funny', 'not nice' commenters. Sorry, Xeni, but I think you've blown this one. Still love BoingBoing, though....
• Commented on Limo with a sink on the fender, 1940
  #9 Most coachbuilt cars (ie those without mass-produced steel bodywork) in the 20s and 30s had bodywork built of aluminium (sorry, aLOOminum) on a wooden frame - although many had Weymann-style bodywork of cloth over wood. The 'limousine' looks a...
• Commented on Otto, a fan
  A swiz is a chiz, as eny fule kno....
• Commented on Every possible 4-bit 32-sample waveform...
  And overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out......
• Commented on Phantom Corsair from 1938
  #39 (er, that's me) was wrong - even a cursory google reveals that Merrily We Live and The Young In Heart are quite separate 1938 screwball comedies. I don't know quite how I got that wrong; most likely I saw...
• Commented on Phantom Corsair from 1938
  By the way, Kaiza (#37), the Phantom Corsair was based on the chassis of a Cord 812 - your favourite car, itself designed by BoingBoing regular Raymond Loewy. Also, you guys have got to see The Young in Heart -...
• Commented on Tiny statue from the third century CE
  Whoah, hold on a minute! The "third century CE"? Now I think of myself as a reasonably well-informed sort, but it took a full 40 seconds of Googling to confirm that CE is a synonym for AD. But what is...
• Commented on Helicopters for everyone!
  Autogyros/autogiros/gyrocopters were a recurring theme in fiction in the 30s, it seems: Stella Gibbons' wonderful Cold Comfort Farm has characters arriving by autogyro, as I recall. The excellent film version wimped out, using a biplane instead (but at least it...
• Commented on Review: AccuNAS AN2L is easy and versatile
  The web interface looks awfully like that of my QNAP TS-109 II. I'm a little afraid to try out all the web server functionality, but it seems to work well as a Squeezebox/UPnP music server; uses very little power, too...
• Commented on Robot built from upcoming kids science fiction trilogy
  Nice advert, Jason! Uncharitably, perhaps, this reminds me of a cartoon (from the New Yorker?) showing two caped superheroes flying together, one saying to the other, "I'm hoping to go into writing children's books". On a similar theme, there's another...
• Commented on Letter to a Young Engineer (from a purported Honda employee)
  #6 - I agree absolutely. Oh, hang on, what's this? A shame - that "Impossible Dream" advert was terrific (and rather poignant now)....
• Commented on Proto-steampunk ironworks of 1865
  I see more than a little Rowland Emett in this picture. There are too few of his delightful drawings on the Web (how he'd have loved "The Web"!) but plenty of pictures of his (rather coarser) whimsical machines, including the...
• Commented on Ah, Horseradish!
  One of the best meals of my life was at the Schweizerhaus, a beer garden in the Prater Park in Vienna (just by the Ferris wheel from The Third Man). We were travelling round Europe and hadn't eaten properly for...
• Commented on Ford on selling 65MPG Euro-diesel car in U.S.: Nah, Americans won't buy it
  Lots of good comments in this thread, but a few points could be straightened. First off: diesel engines can be converted to run on CNG (or LNG, or LPG for that matter) - either by turning them into spark-ignition Otto-cycle...
• Commented on Audiophile Releases of Classic Rock Albums: Get 'Em While You Can
  Just to say: you're right, Richard. It is a joy to listen to Nick Drake on SACD, and the sheer unforced musicality of some of the format is a pleasure (as long as the engineers have done their job properly,...
• Commented on BBtv: Russell Porter with "folk-n-roll" band Rachel Unthank & The Winterset (music)
  Oh, yes. I saw them live in a small venue a few months ago, and they were spine-tingling. I'd quibble with the "folk-rock" category, though - they range from pretty raw traditional folk (with some hard-core North-Eastern dialect) to jazz-inflected...
• Commented on "With the Chemex, even a moron can make good coffee.”
  As I recall, James Bond had a Chemex coffee maker at home. Of course, your modern Bond would use an AeroPress... (cue argument) Which reminds me of the late Alan Coren's peerless Bond spoof "Doctor No will see you now",...
• Commented on Hydro-4000 fuel injection device; Boing Boing Huckster Dismantling Squad: Assemble!
  #30: Sheesh, Nex, way to miss the point! Yes, of course the individual 'trails' of volatile fuel would be practically invisible - but even a minuscule quantity of diesel fuel is pretty easily detected from the smell. On a major...
• Commented on Hydro-4000 fuel injection device; Boing Boing Huckster Dismantling Squad: Assemble!
  Oh dear. That's a terrible way to judge fuel consumption. It's good that the driver element was apparently eliminated (I assume that they used cruise control); however, apart from the obvious discrepancies in speed and distance (20 minutes at 55mph...
• Commented on Creepy Michael Jackson fright-mask
  Schrecklich! It does look awfully like Lon Chaney (Senior) in the 1925 "Phantom of the Opera": See here...
• Commented on Hydro-4000 fuel injection device; Boing Boing Huckster Dismantling Squad: Assemble!
  As Farhad Manjoo points out in his Machinist piece: "drivers may have adjusted their driving styles after installing the hydrogen boost..." This is the nub of it - people always drive more steadily (and economically) when they are being monitored,...
• Commented on Clue Premier Edition becomes diorama of gruesome murder
  Why Cluedo? Simply because it sounds like Ludo - Latin for "I play". And it was published in the UK (by Waddingtons) before making it to the US. This document (beware, you'll get a crick in the neck reading it)...
• Commented on Sisters rescued from horrific circus sideshow
  Is it just me who thought: "You're my wife now, Dave!" ? Sorry......
• Commented on 1927 "Baby Bugatti" Recreation as Pedal Car
  This is one of a number of high-quality T52 replicas available, including the French Violette (correctly electrically driven, and a snip at Euro 30,000!), the British Tulabug and the Argentinian Pur Sang. Incidentally, Pur Sang also makes splendid recreations of...
• Commented on Matchbox car catalog from 1969
  Sorry, kids: those of you who reckon this must be a Scalextric setup are dead wrong. It's a Matchbox Motorised Motorway, which is probably closest to what Anonymous (comment#6) described as the Speedtrack. The Matchbox Motorised Motorway was a figure-of-8...
• Commented on Ha'penny, haunting thriller about an alternate British Reich
  And don't forget Ian R MacLeod's wonderful, understated novel 'The Summer Isles', which posits a fascist Britain in the Thirties, and which seems to share some of the themes of Jo Walton's book (the protagonist is gay, for example). MacLeod's...