Monday 24 October 2016

If it ain't broke, break it


It's a real 'back to school' Monday, even though it is half-term. I've given up trying to get anyone to respond positively to emails on the estate, so today I will drive there to discuss the way forward in person, and this will take an hour or two.

The trouble is that they have to have a full meeting about the smallest of decisions, and every manager has to be there and take notes.

I will stop off and trim a bit of wood from one component of the BROWSER (you know what I am talking about) using a tool which would produce too much dust in our compact but adorable city apartment. After this, it will fold to the best of its ability - which is not much. I have seldom seen a more badly designed practical object. This is probably the way their father and his father's father have been making the things for 100 years, so the design is now fixed.

It is almost pointless to have it collapsable, since it never fully collapses and the disadvantages probably outweigh the advantages of having it as a rigid structure. I now have a very good insight as to how it became so comprehensively damaged. I think the destruction was brought about by frustration rather than obesity - or possibly both. "Who is the fattest person in the room? Right. It is your job to sit on the browser. Take a run-up"

Most bits of bad design get handed down from generation to generation, and this is where the innovators step in. The trouble is that most innovators want to leave their mark, and they are usually very ugly marks.

The modern world of stone conservation is an extremely conservative one which - although only dating back 30 years or so - is steeped in the history and practices of over 2000 years. If you want to know more, search for Professor Baker and Wells Cathedral.

Lime mortars have been made to extremely exacting standards which follow ancient recipes to the letter, with page upon page of reports written as follow-up to the jobs, usually by someone who qualified as an Art Historian.

One day, someone was browsing through a 250 year-old recipe when they noticed a rather odd ingredient - an ingredient which had been dutifully added to dozens of mortar mixes on some very important jobs. It turned out that this stuff (I forget what it was now) became written in to the recipe by accident, possibly when the composer's mind wandered when he was thinking of that night's shopping list.

Some people I know were extremely anxious to replicate a particular lime-mortar for a building which dated back to almost 400 years, so they sent a sample of the original to a laboratory for analysis.

After a few weeks, the results came back.

This old lump of good mortar contained the usual stuff - lime, sharp sand, ash, but there was one ingredient which took a bit of identifying under the microscope.

It turned out to be yard-sweepings. Whoever made it - probably a lowly lad -  became fed up with both sweeping the yard and collecting ingredients for the mortar, so saved time and effort by combining the two.

It cost quite a lot of money for the scientists to return this information.

24 comments:

  1. My builder used a simple Lime Mortar to lay the very beautiful floor tiles in our 'tower'. He said (by way of passing) that if I ever wanted to, I could lift them all up and take them away with me to lay again elsewhere. I thought this a rather odd attribute to Lime Mortar.

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    1. 2 things, I think. One is that you have every intention of dying at you house and not moving and the other is that - unless I am mistaken - you view mortar as a glue, when it is a bedding compound. You are not alone in this.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I would permamently erase this, but I need the comments. John Gray gets around 40 for saying that he is not going to post today = too busy. I, on the other hand, promise to reply to all comments the next day because I am too busy, and I do. The tart.

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    2. I would comment more often if my syntax were good. Your writing is wonderful, your posts are always very interesting and the "technical" ones are well explained; I even understand them. Thank you.
      Greetings Maria x

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    3. Shouldn't that be, 'syntax WAS good'? ONLY JOKING! Thank you.

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    4. Oh yes and, of course, if it wasn't for my bad grammar! :)
      X

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    5. I don't even know what syntax is, unless it's a Canadian tax on cigarettes or booze.

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    6. I was the subject of double trouble. I do wish Mr Blogger would fix it.

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  3. I thought that was how scientists in labs made their money - analysing and then telling you what you already knew.
    Incidentally - that photograph reminds me that the farmer has had his broom for fifty years - rhe same broom - it has of course had seven new heads and five new handles.

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    1. I was going to make the same joke about my mother's axe, but didn't. Engineering architects make money by doing that, but we use their insurance policies as a safeguard.

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  4. Tom, what you wrote about a chain of bad design being passed along until ... some iconoclast comes along, and makes a change that turns out to be a good improvement, or even re-invention, made lots of sense to me.

    It seems as if the current speed of technological change and appetite for quick fixes (and coffee in a paper cups) might not quite guarantee a better tomorrow for those who remember and value what was not broken.

    Christmas card painting going well. Tomorrow I'll attend an Apple workshop about the Cloud.

    Best wishes.

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    1. We watched a celebrationary prog. on TV about the bridge over the river from England to Wales, 50 years old now. They had a breakthrough of suspension bridge construction technique DURING the build that was world beating. Hopefully no Tacoma worries from now on.

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    2. Frances: Take my advice - if you want to avoid everyone in the world gaining access to all your files, or running the risk of losing all of them in one go, avoid any Cloud storage. Just boost up the storage space on your own computer.

      The latest cyber-attacks on international organisations are made by hacking into devices like security webcams for remote baby-sitting which have not had a password set, then linking them all together as one device which launches itself at someone else's system. It is very scary. All devices - including routers - leave the factory with a generic password and user name which you have to personalise. The user name is 'admin' and athe password is 'password'. Easy-peasy to hack.

      Potty: They have built a new, improved bridge into Wales right alongside the old one. We now have a chice of how to get out of Wales free.

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    3. Thank you, Tom. What you mention about "open access" and the recent cyber attacks is very much on my mind, too. I'll be asking lots of questions at this afternoon's workshop, and let you know what sort of party line I hear in the answers.

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    4. If you have a Mac, stick to the old OS system. The new ones are riddled with information sharing inclusions.

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    5. Apple will deny there are any problems Frances.

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  5. Calling it a browser rack makes it easier to understand what it is.

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    1. That's what I call innovative thinking. I will call it that from now on.

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  6. Browser? Browser rack?I have no idea what you are referring to!

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    1. Sorry. I should have read your posts in order. I've never heard the term browser used for this sort of rack.

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    2. Maybe you were thinking of 'torture' rather than 'browser'?

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