"Made in Scotland, from Girders"

You'd probably had to have traveled to Scotland or the northern reaches of England to get that reference.  It is one of the many slogans of a peculiar beverage called Iron Brew.  Or if you want to be picky, Irn Bru.  The busy bodies in some agency said they had to change the name because the stuff is not technically brewed and contains only trace amounts of iron.

But it sure looks like rusty water.  And the first time I ever drank it - also the first time I'd ever eaten Scotch Eggs - rusty water was my general impression.*  And yet, it is the most popular soft drink in Scotland.  By the way, another of their slogans is "Scotland's Other National Drink".

As this time line of cans shows, the stuff has been around for a while.  Weirdly it got started in the US in the 1880s, and did not make it to Scotland until around 1900.  Sometimes peculiar American products thrive in new environs.  See Spam for instance.

In general adverts in the UK are far wittier than what we see in the US.  And for a product aimed at Scots?  Very over the top and with that delightful accent.  Here's a highlight reel of just some of the Best of Iron Brew ads.  Uh, as with anything that spans decades there is some humor that you could not get away with today.  That does not make it any less humorous.

Enjoy.

*/When I was over last May I tried it for a second time.  And...they seem to have changed the formula.  It was bad in different ways!  Some of the ads above allude to variations on the basic "Bru".  They make a diet version.  And for a while at least, an Iron Brew based Energy Drink. I'm fairly brave trying food and drink on foreign travels, but that would be too much.

England 2025 - The Usual Odd People

Offered with minimal commentary.

Now, you might be wondering why there is no "Album Cover" photo this year.  It is after all a long standing tradition that we pose moodily for the camera in the fashion of some 70's band.  

Well its like this.  Half of the "Anaerobes" decided to spend the in between Saturday going to a big tattoo show in Newcastle.  It was rather..........well, I don't know exactly what it was but this was part of the entertainment there:

Yikes.  Could it be that the Anaerobes will split up, with one branch going sort of "Death Metal" and renaming themselves Anoxia?  Lots of flames, almost as much as on that 60th birthday cake, Pete!

Northumberlandia - Now that's a Big Girl

No doubt you've heard the expression "Coals to Newcastle".  They used to mine a great deal of coal in the area back in the day.  Which left a bit of a mess.  Some years back an open pit mine just north of Newcastle was tidied up in a rather distinctive way....by making the world's largest nude figure out of 1.5 million tons of rock and mine tailings.  Behold Northumberlandia, the Lady of the North.

I've seen her from the air when approaching the Newcastle airport.  Although she is posed somewhat demurely, you can't help but notice those 100 foot tall....er....mounds.

On our recent visit several members of our band of adventurers went in for a closer look.

And of course.....

That's Sue, our excavator-novelist.  She has a history of doing cartwheels over various landscapes.  While far from being a Prude, she did at least show Prudence in not attempting to careen straight off the giant nipple and down into the Cleavage below.

I don't get to use my Larger than Life tag very often, but the Lady of the North deserves nothing less.  

A One star review, and a Shot across the Bow.

Ah, Facebook.  There was a time when it was the unquestioned global information exchange.  Also of cat videos which I'm fine with.  I had little use for it until my archaeology friends encouraged me to hop on as a way to stay in touch.  I've stuck with it.  So far.....

I know many people are unhappy with the platform for reasons political.  Me, I'm tolerant of such things.  You provide a service that I find useful, respond to what your customers want, and are not total jerks.....I'll stick around.

But in the last six months Facebook has, as I see it, taken a huge nose dive in quality.

Not across the board.  I still stay in touch with those far flung friends and enjoy seeing their posts of travels, adventures.  And in some cases, cute cats.  But there's all this other "stuff" now.

I'm fine with Sponsored Posts.  FB needs to make money.  I glance at them and move on.  But there are other more intrusive ways FB shoves stuff in front of me.

For a while it was big batches of people (?) they suggested I follow.  Most of them were of no interest to me.  Every professional and semi-professional sport in the US and the UK was suggested.  As well as lots of other junk.  I only really got annoyed when the suggestions got Suggestive.  Scantily clad young ladies who, if followed into a dark alleyway, would at best rob you at knifepoint.

You can get rid of these suggestions by using the established FB system, just hitting the "no thanks" button near the top of such solicitations.  If they come back a second time you can report them for a variety of things.  Selling illegal animals was my favorite.

The Suggestive suggestions are now gone, but something worse lingers on.  Facebook Reels.

No doubt in response to Tiktok, FB launched this a year or two back.  And the subject matter is A) not relevant to me and B) often disgusting.  A majority seem to come from Asia, and I suspect more than a few are AI generated.  You can click on Show me Less of This at the upper right corner of a batch....and the same ones turn up instantly.  You can also click on individual Reels and report them as disgusting, violent, etc.  This seems harsh, but the content is in many cases precisely that.  You get people draining abscesses, both human and veterinary.  You get people collecting huge hauls of small unhappy looking fish from muddy ponds in the Philippines.  You get tattoos and tattoo removal.  You get stuff that - from the teaser photo - falls into the "Don't know, don't wanna know" category.

Reelly now.  We have the equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria, the Library of Congress and pretty much every classic of stage, screen and page available in a hand held device....and we get this:

Facebook ignores any guidance along the lines of "For the love of Zuckerman, don't show me this".  And there is no official way to nuke the Reels feature entirely.

But there are unofficial ways.  I'm looking at a browser extension that will let me get rid of Reels and other dreck on Facebook.  FB is understandably not happy about this sort of software and the odds are fair that it would in response become poutingly become less functional overall.

So here's the deal.  I'm standing pat until after the spring archaeology jaunt.  After that I'm going to tame Facebook, and if the Algorithms strike back I will ditch it entirely.

For those reading my regular writings (Detritus of Empire) that I cross post here, well, I'm looking at Substack as an alternative.  I'd keep it free of course.  

OK Facebook, that there's your shot across the bow.  I'd like to think its close enough to splash a little water up on the bridge and leave a few muddy, unhappy fish flopping at the feet of Admiral Zuckerberg.

------------------------------------------

Ever wonder how much the internet is keeping an eye on you?  We all have our anecdotes.  Here's another.  A few days after composing the above, and while it was still in Draft, Facebook Reels went away.  Coincidence?  Or Admiral Zuckerberg staring at the dead fish all around his bridge and telling his first mate (probably the flatulent little girl shown above) to stand down.....

Back Underground

It has been a while since I took the short drive over to work at "Sand Land", the astonishingly eccentric project some friends of mine have been at for a decade or so.  Not everyone understands Sand Land.  I mean...buy a ravine and bring in volunteers to excavate an underground tunnel system?  With stair cases, a spiral slide, a tavern, and...well I'm not sure what else is in there at the moment because I just came to work, not to take the latest tour.

So, its underground we go...

Hard hat, head lamp, respirator, coveralls.  More kit than most "pit ponies" had.  

It's always important to pay attention to signs..

My job was to load, haul and dump wagons of already excavated sand.  Yes, sand.  Its what you get, and get a lot of, when you excavate sandstone.

Here's a short video clip I took while running the wagon back in.  I don't go so fast when dragging it out.

Always nice to see the light of day at the end of  a day of hauling.  I'm told I set the one person record for loads hauled.  This sounds like flattery but is in keeping with what I usually do at Vindolanda or when working on the Homesteading project.  Digging is mostly just good mechanics and determination.

There is a lot of other eccentric stuff at Sand Land.  Just to the left of the tunnel exit is their rifle range.  This got me into a discussion about deer hunting there.  The property and sight lines at this spot are a bit cramped, but they have more "stuff" on top of the hill.

I could totally see setting up for bow hunting on top of the surplus McDonald's Play Land.  I would have to be careful not to put a hole in the geodesic dome salvaged from a Cold War radar station.....

Exercise and Eccentricity.  I need more of  both.

Evil Fungus

When you are a dog owner you keep an eye on where you are stepping.  So when I spotted this on the ground I was naturally puzzled and a little impressed....

But no, not a particularly compact dog deposit, this is some kind of weird fungus.  Not a fan.  Another clump of the stuff nearby was even a bit more disturbing....

I've seen this movie.  So have you.  It's called Alien.

Exploding Whale Day

  

At this point the majority of you are saying "What the heck?", while a few oddball savants are saying "A bit early, isn't it?".   For the second group I'll just say that given all the excitement in our political arena I'm not sure that one week after the election a story about putrid blubber raining down from the sky would stand out in the least.

So....

There is actually a considerable, er, corpus of data on dead, beached whales blowing up.  Sometimes just by the natural, if disgusting, process of decomposition.  But by far the most exciting example of the genre occurred back in 1970, and had the assistance of a poorly thought out half ton of dynamite.

A 45 ton sperm whale washed up on the beach at Florence Oregon on November 9th.  After three days in which the whale got stinkier, it was decided that the best course of action would be to blow the whale up with explosives.  The idea being that it would then be in smaller bits which would either be eaten by the converging mob of seagulls or be in small enough parts that hauling them away would be simpler.  Beaches were at that time under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Highway Department, an outfit who had a bit of experience in blowing up obstructions.  It did not go well.  No, not well at all.......

Delightfully this event has become part of local lore.  There is an Exploding Whale Memorial Park in downtown Florence.  Every November the locals hold Exploding Whale Days.  Delightfully, the cub reporter who appeared in the above video 54 years ago is still with us and will be in attendance!  I can't actually find out much more about the festival.  It seems to involve a funky art show and at 3:45, a public toast in memory of the whale.  I like that.

Florence Oregon is not too far from Eugene where they have a minor league baseball team.  It is somewhat in vogue - probably for extra merch sales - for teams to have special "alternate uniforms".  So last year the Eugene Emeralds played a few games as the "Exploding Whales".  

The logo is actually a lot cooler than the uniforms.....

Well, food for thought.  This probably caught my eye based on our own experiences sighting a similar beached whale on our Florida trip in March.  The folks in charge of that situation appear to have been well aware of the Exploding Whale legend, and learned from it.

So a Happy Exploding Whale Day to you, one and all.  When the actual official day rolls around on November 12th lets hope the air is not filled with panic and a fine mist of rancid goo.

Because no opportunity for a silly picture should go to waste......

Because my photographer friend Pete and I only overlapped for a week plus a day on either end, the number of odd photos of each other is reduced in number this year.  We tried to make up for it in quality.  Because as we go through life, no opportunity for a silly photo should ever go to waste....

Pete sporting a "Hairy Buffalo Ear" at the Hexham Boot Sale:

At the same event, we both try on rubber dinosaur masks.  The guy standing behind Pete makes it look as if he actually has two heads.

Chillingham Castle had some opportunities for striking a pose.....

Stocks are surprisingly even less comfortable than you'd imagine.  Also at Chillingham I took to the pulpit in the chapel and delivered a brief sermon to my flock.  They remained unrepentant.

Guess that's about it.  Next year we'll try to get Pete and I on the same dig....aiming our cameras at each other constantly.....

England 2024 - Appalling Dog Treats at the Boot Fair

When I'm over to northern England on my archaeology jaunts I always make a point of attending the Hexham Car Boot Fair the Sunday before the dig begins.  Why?  Well I always make the trip with carry on only luggage and sometimes it is helpful to pick up a few extra, cheap garments.  And its fun, always something peculiar to see, especially if you are a bit jet lagged and culture shocked by a recent trans Atlantic flight.  And this year the Boot Fair - its basically a flea market -did not disappoint.

I found a booth that sold the most unusual treats for dogs.  Oh, I'm used to things like pigs ears and cow hooves, sometimes Hank gets that sort of treat at Christmas.  But....Ostrich Neck???

And how about:  Rabbit Ears!

There was only one item that was fully sold out.  I wonder what Puffed Beef Lung is like?

They had big bins of "Hairy Buffalo Ears".  This of course prompted me to pose for another silly photo.  Note the Mr. Whippy ice cream truck in the background.

But the weirdest one of all was also the least specific.  I was not tempted to take any of this stuff home.  Just imagine trying to get through security checkpoints and various agricultural control stations.  "Sir, what is this?"  "Well, its a trachea."  "Whose trachea was it?" "Well....I'm really not sure......"

An Annual Tradition

 For reasons hardly worth trying to explain our little band of recurring excavators takes a "70's Album Cover" photo every year.  Here's this year's offering from the Old as Dirt Tour.

One of these years I'll get around to doing a complete back story to The Anaerobes, perhaps even a "Spinal Tap" sort of mockumentary film would be in order.....

So....I Might Become an Orc.....

Idle Hands....you know what they say about 'em.

In this interval where robotics is ramping down but England is still a ways off my attention wanders here and there.

Recently one of my geocaches was found by someone whose note indicated he was in town to watch his son play for the Eau Claire Orcs Rugby Team.  I had no inkling that there was such a thing.  It brought back memories.

When my boys were in the high school/middle school age bracket I took a couple of them over to England for a visit.  The oldest came back and decided to start an informal rugby league.  In his role as Commissioner of Rugby he did get a couple of teams together, and they played with enthusiasm and a loose understanding of the rules.  The fad ended when one of his pals broke both wrists.

Fast forward a couple of decades....

Here's The Orcs, or as they sometimes style themselves, The Horde.

A redoubtable looking crew, with no casts or splints visible.  I do wonder about the guy in the front row who has some kind of mouth guard in place.  Perhaps to prevent him from biting people?

Their facebook page does have a form you can fill out if you are interested in playing.  That would be.......well, all sorts of adjectives could serve.  Fun, Brief, and Ill Considered are the first few that occur to me.

So I'll probably settle for just getting a shirt.  This one is pretty cool:

But I opted for the simpler T shirt version.  They are being printed locally and I can save delivery costs if I pick it up from a guy whose name is unfamiliar to me but is presumably The Head Orc.  Perhaps that's him in the team photo wearing a jersey with a gigantic White Hand of Saruman on it?!

Looking around for a photo of one of these "White Hand" orcs from Lord of the Rings I ran across what looks to be a photo of a cast member on break.   Art imitates Life I suspect....

Robotics 2024 - Random Odd Things.....

The FIRST Robotics competition season is over, but the work goes on.  We are starting to recruit for what will be a major training effort.  Graduating nine seniors tends to do that.  And we have lots of things to ponder regards team organization, which areas to concentrate our prototyping on, etc.  But first, and FIRST, lets tidy up some random things that have been sitting around....

No, not some strange new robot mechanism.  The pit crew was very excited when we got them a vacuum cleaner that runs off the same Milwaukee tool battery packs as our drills and other power tools.  It helps keep things clean in our build space and in our competition pit.  The excitement over a vacuum cleaner?   Well, these are small town kids who get excited by the escalators in one of our competition venues....

Testing your robot requires a degree of driving beyond gentle steering.  And with our plywood prototype field elements that poses an issue.  So....we found some bags of cement sitting around the shop!  The stuff taped to the back of the tool cabinet are extra pieces of polycarbonate for robot repairs at the event.  Thankfully these at least were not needed...

Opinions vary, but mine is that this year's game was sub par.  Among other things, the game pieces were not robust.  Immediately everyone's mechanisms started generating bits of orange debris we called Cheezit Dust.  Eventually the rings just broke.

You'd think that all these years of robot stuff and I'd know things like this, but recently I learned the origins of the "Mr. Roboto" song.  As this year's game had a musical theme it should not have been a surprise that a team from up the road a ways had a decorative device based on this:

Pretty clever, it is a wooden "record player" built into the structure and launching mechanism of their robot.  Oh, but it gets cooler....

And as long as I'm trying to embed video clips into a blog running on 20 year old software.....

You may recall that there were a number of team to team awards being given out this year.  We got several including a "Cooperatition Award" made from an old 45 that had been painted and had decals applied to it.  So.....could you still play it?  And what would you hear?????

Nimrods - Prophecy of the Six. Full Movie

Yes, this is one of the odder things that I put in front of you on occasion.  Another feature length installment in the Nimrod story.

It makes more sense - but still not total sense - if you've seen the first Nimrod movie.....

Full disclosure.  I have two sons, one current and one future daughter in law, two grandkids and Bill, my taxidermy squirrel spirit animal involved in these two movies.  Also, depending on how gullible you may be, and additional six grandchildren who have been temporarily misplaced.  Hey, that'll happen sometimes.

One of my Less Good Ideas

When working with the robotics team I throw out lots of ideas.  Some are good, a few are great.  Others....well, nobody is perfect and I figure I'm further away than most.  

For tournament matches it is three robots versus three.  The "sides" are identified by color, so you need to make sets of protective, padded bumpers in red and blue and be able to change them quickly.  Well this year we have an "over the bumper" intake system, and are anticipating a rather vigorous game with respect to defense.  This could result in a bit of scuffing up of our swell red and blue competition bumpers.  So I thought it would be nice to have a set just for practice use.  Testing before events and use during the pre-tournament practice matches the day before the competition.  So far, so good.

Well we had a bunch of the orange fabric that was used in the Robot School "pumpkin bot".  I said just use that.  It was neatly done, with everyone adding their signature and well wishes.

Unfortunately this is the exact color of this year's game piece, and with lots of teams using sophisticated vision tracking, going out on the practice floor with these bumpers would probably mean the autonomous phase of the match would feature up to five robots - friend and foe alike - zeroing in on us and trying to pick us up and launch us.  Sigh.  I had to admit my error and ask the long suffering team member to pull this off and replace it with a patchwork of red and blue.

She got to wear the 5826 sash while doing so.  That was a better idea of mine, recycling old bumpers into things.  We have a sash, a cape and this year might build a small sofa for the pit crew to sit on.  Now, if we can just get the robot finished and reliable they might even have a chance to sit down!

Axman Redux

It's been a long time since I went over to Axman Surplus in St. Paul.  I've been trying to reduce the amount of random stuff in my basement, and Axman has serious Hoarder potential for those of us who like gadgets and kitsch.

I had heard that the place was broken into during the unrest a few summers back.  Looters in search of items that could be swigged or re-sold probably stood there a moment in silence, then went on to more productive targets.   

Is Axman still the King of Surplus Stores in 2024?

Without filling up my basement workshop (which I do refer to as Area 51) I can still enjoy the creative, ironic signage...

On that last one I think they missed a Cerberus reference.....

A few items at Axman are not for sale, being more permanent décor.  This emotive Jesus has been there for a long time.  His sign used to say "Go Easy on Jeezy".  Still Covid Days in his corner.  Guessing that raising Lazarus is harder than it once was...

Sometimes things get a little dark.  This looks to be a sort of pull over doll's head wig,.  Probably it went with the mannikin heads you often find staring at you from a top shelf.

Not that the Kitty and Shark masks for kids directly adjacent are all that much better.

Yes, Axman is still The King, at least by the standards of shopping entertainment per dollar spent. And I always enjoy the odd stickers and signs slapped on the outside of the building.  I've long suspected they mostly represented local bands who appear and disappear like May Fly hatches.  But I'm never quite sure...

DOGS Should VOTE.  (said to be a reference from a video game called Second Life.  But maybe also a band?)

I actually think this last one is Peak Axman.  A band called PathosMosfet would be pretty cool.  Combine a Emo sort of vibe with the name of an electronic component.  Or is it a reference to a specific brand of Italian made Amp?  Or both?  This time internet gives no answers...