The Hungarian F1 race proved there’s little as uncertain as certainty.

At the start, some would have said that Hamilton was certain to take off from pole position and leave everyone behind until he passed the line and collected a win.

A few seconds later, he was certain to have a fight on his hands and would retake the lead from Massa, the latter having less fuel and running lighter, so Hamilton just had to pass around fuelling time, if his performance didn’t allow him to do soon earlier.

Sometime later, it was certain that Hamilton was not only not going to catch and pass Massa, but was going to lose his championship lead as puncture sent him to the pits and back down he places, leaving Massa certain to collect maximum points, and maybe none at all for Hamilton.

Then Hamilton spoiled things by managing to get his puncture repaired quickly and get back on track in a position that meant he’d pick up some points and maybe not drop back so far from the lead - there goes that certainty we’d had all day.

Then Ferrari had to really spoil things by giving Massa a duff engine, leaving him stranded three laps from the finish, certain only to be picking up no points at all, after spending most of the race certain to pick up maximum points.

And while he didn’t make it to the podium, Hamilton thwarted the uncertainty bug by succumbing to its effect when he didn’t win, but then beating it by retaining his position at the top of the driver’s points table, thanks to the finishing positions of his challengers.

Three weeks and no testing until they come out to play - that’s certainly going to be interesting to see what happens in this next phase of the competition, and what surprises are pulled out of the various hats as we head on the downhill stretch of this season.

I don’t really care how it goes - well, I suppose I do have a preference - and would like to see Hamilton make to the top, and rub Alonso’s nose in the title after the rat ruined last year for everyone. I don’t know how folk react to this guy, but his body language always looks suspect to me, he seems to be head bowed and hiding all the time, and I would never trust him as far as I could throw him.

Hot stuff - the incandescent lamp

It’s not often you can find what appears to be an innocent little question that has a powerful answer, but it looks as if asking someone about their choice of light bulb can tell you if their mental capacity borders on what probably passes for normal (whatever that might actually be), or if their brain is little more than would be installed in something that only needs to grunt, and walks around with its knuckles dragging along the ground.

Reading through some of the responses to an article about the long overdue demise of the popularity of the incandescent tungsten light bulb is enlightening, and should also make you worry with some degree of concern about how some people’s brains are wired up. Some of these responses, if you consider they reflect on some folk’s thought processes, might make you want to take a step away from someone you don’t know, just in case.

Greenpeace manage to come of the story looking like a bunch of mindless idiots as usual, with a crazy claim quoted from them that incandescent light bulbs waste 95% of the the energy they use. In the real world, CFLs may be good, but not that good, and something closer to 80% would have been more than adequate to make the case. Smaller CFLs are less beneficial than large versions, as the running gear inside the base consumes a couple of watts, and this has to be added to the rating of the bulb. So a 5 watt bulb will gobble up around 7 watts - 40% more than expected, while a 20 watt bulb eats closer to 22 watts - 10% more. This also shows how one should take care when percentages and real figures are selected by the promoter - always ask what real numbers the percentages refer to - the reality of the numbers may be a lot more significant.

David Walker from Stirling, Scotland, tells us:

The so-called improved CFLs do not illuminate higher-ceilinged traditional domestic properties adequately. They do not suit traditional light fittings. They appear dim and have no equivalent to 150 & 200w bulbs which are necessary to illuminate older properties. The mercury content is of real concern in CFLs. We only use CFLs at home for cupboard lights as cosmetically, they are horrible - and don’t light up the cupboard either. Much more development is required before the nanny state in this country imposes yet another restriction on its citizens.

David clearly has more money than sense if using 150 watt and 200 watt bulbs to light ceilings, the rest of world now uses directed lighting to see what it is doing, and must like to smash his CFLs against the interior walls of his home if mercury is a concern (hasn’t it been superseded?). I suspect he’d be at the head of queue complaining if the government failed to promote any energy saving technologies.

Tim Beeche-Newman, Reading, England, shows why hyphenated names are best avoided:

Low energy bulbs do not, in any case, save as much energy as claimed. This is because unlike conventional bulbs they produce very little heat. Therefore in a house using low energy bulbs the central heating system will have to work harder to make up the difference. Thus assuming one’s central heating system is on for 6 months per year, the actual energy saving is only half what is claimed. Ask any physicist.

A physicist puts him in his place later, but unless you’ve got a very recent, highly efficiently insulated home, the amount of heat gain from incandescent lighting waste is not going to make any difference to the work done by your central heating system. It’s the comparison of a few hundred (intermittent) watts versus a few kilowatts running for a significant period of the year.

Jimmy R, Scotland:

The main reason I am hoarding them is that I object to the bullying attitude of governments over normal bulbs. I am quite willing to change when asked but I have always had an attitude problem with those who try to push people around without cause.

I’m lost here. Other than perpetuating the suggestion that Scots have a massive chip on their shoulder about everything, what has this to do with the goodness or otherwise of CFLs? Jimmy is still free to use what he likes at the moment, unless he’s looking for a fight.

Paw Bokenfohr, Bracknell, United Kingdom, raises a much repeated complaint about dimming:

Something I didn’t see mentioned in your article, is what about those of us with dimmers? I have one in each of the bedrooms; I don’t always want full brightness, especially when I am getting up in the mornings or winding down for sleep. Why should I be made to remove these switches in order to use CFLs? I shouldn’t is the answer. I am all for reducing our carbon footprint and all, but I already recycle, have a low emission car, and my commute is less than 5 miles, and I always shower, never bath. Why shouldn’t I be able to retain my incandescent bulbs? It seems a small thing to ask.

Again, I find myself a bit lost. Our earlier commentator complain that CFLs are not bright enough for them, now we have someone complaining that they are too bright. I know it’s an extremely simple solution, but dimmers weren’t always available (and are wasteful anyway), so Paw could do something radical and daring like having more than one size of bulb fitted, and use table or floor lamps with lower wattage bulbs when winding up or getting up. Paw also demonstrates flawed logic - something which many so-called green schemes foster - by ending up with no net saving. After reducing one’s carbon footprint, instead of reaping the benefit of the reduction, its used as a sop to indulge in something wasteful, thereby wiping out any benefit.

Alison, London, England, gives us the benefit of feminine logic - if it looks pretty, who cares if it wastes energy:

I will resist these energy bulbs for as long as possible firstly because I have just bought a beautiful light fitting that would look terrible with these bulbs and secondly because I suffer from migraine and do not wish to introduce something that could trigger an attack.

And she even managed to find a medical reason to justify never changing.

Chris Markiewicz, Barnet, England, manages to stay on the medical theme, even if he slips a little in his logic:

I have a visual impairment (retinitis pigmentosa), which means I cannot see well at all in low light. The new bulbs leave it almost impossible for me to see well - I often stay in hotels and now many of them use these bulbs and I literally have to feel my way around the hotel room, whereas with the traditional bulbs I can still see reasonably clearly.

While wishing Chris the best with his impairment, I’ll wager that his problem is not confined to hotels with CFLs. In fact, since they use a quarter or so of the electricity of their hot-blooded incandescent brethren, penny-pinching hotels than put light bulbs that are little better than candles in their rooms could afford to put more powerful bulbs in their place, and still use less power. Chris’s hotels probably still had the 10 and 15 watt “hotel specials” in place, as the owners would rather pay 50 p for an old bulb, rather than the £2.50 the CFL would have cost them to replace it a few years ago.

Finally, the physicist’s contribution in response to the drivel from the first correspondent.

Chris Latham (Physicist), England:

There is a factual error in the contribution from Tim Beechey-Newman, Reading. Each unit of electrical energy delivered to the consumer takes about four units of chemical or nuclear energy to generate it. Three units of energy are lost in the generation process and transmission.

Typically, central heating systems running on a fuel such as oil or gas use about one-and-a-half units of energy to generate one unit of useful heat for the consumer. Thus, when everything is taken into account, electricity is an inefficient way to provide heating. Indeed, this is reflected in the high cost of using electricity for heating. Energy-saving lamps, therefore, do exactly what is expected: they save energy.

Actually, slipping my mildly satirical hat off for a moment, it’s all a fairly sad reflection on people’s attitudes, and unwillingness to adopt to changes, and what might be described as the “comfy pair of shoes” syndrome.

Assuming global warming is real, and that there is indeed a tipping-point which represents the point of no return if we don’t change our ways, then don’t bet on the tipping point not being reached if we’re dependent on ordinary people to do anything about not getting there being coerced.

I used to be something of a TV addict, which was possibly something of an achievement as I don’t have any interest in any of the slops such as the soaps or reality (have you ever seen anything less realistic?) shows. Probably more of a drama, factual, documentary, comedy person, this used to include quiz and game shows until they were taken over as showcases for nobodies that wanted “5 minutes of fame”.

As it is, I don’t even bother to wire in any of my video recorders into the system any longer, and I used to have four (together with a home cinema system to control them all), and just watch what comes along when it suits - and that generally means something from the past, probably the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s. That’s probably the period before the talentless discovered they could become famous by belching, farting, or smashing themselves in the face with a hammer.

Channel 4’s Countdown was a nice simple bolthole that one could take refuge in, and has largely avoided most of the irritating jazzing-up that producers seem to think is necessary with each new series. The only thing it really suffered from was the guest commentator, or celebrity, although the mild nature of the show at least ensured they appeared much as themselves, rather than their persona, so they were largely bearable.

I recall Carol Vorderman’s first appearance on TV, as a presenter on Tomorrow’s World, soon deserted. She kept on popping up, and we learnt she had earned millions from writing books years and years ago, so she’s never been short of a penny or two, or in need of another paying job. But, that didn’t stop her, and it seems she’s been coining it in for 26 years on Countdown.

Now that she’s leaving the show - and there seems to be all sorts of nastiness being stirred up around this - her wages have come into the news: Vorderman’s agent said on Saturday that the star felt forced to step down from the show when she was told to take a 90% pay cut from a salary understood to be in the region of £1m. The reason appears to be in dispute, but no-one had jumped in to dismiss the figure given.

I don’t think I’ll be watching Countdown again - whether it’s Vorderman or a replacement, the idea of someone being paid £1 million per year for placing nine cards into a grid a few times over the course of the programme, occasionally solving a simple mental arithmetic puzzle, and laughing on cue at the host’s jokes is just something I can’t take. And this million is on top of whatever is still coming in from the books, and any other exhorbitant fees for the other TV programmes and appearences she makes, and any celebrity jollies she’ll pick up a penny for showing her face at.

Nice work (that’s work?) if you can get, as they say.

If she enjoys the job so much, she can easily afford to do it for nothing, or at a nurse’s wage level. I don’t fly the flag of nurse’s pay, but it’s a handy comparison in terms of reward with regard to the value of the individual concerned.

To reuse the word “ridiculous”, that’s the only way to describe a comment made by Kathryn Apanowicz (Richard Whiteley’s ex-partner) who said of a 90% cut in that £1 million wage: “She was even contemplating taking this ridiculous figure that they offered her”.

I could probably be talked into shuffling some cards for £100,000 per annum.

It will be interesting to see if the truth about whatever is going wrong with the programme surfaces, since the current host, Des O’Connor, also handed his notice in at almost the same time, and I thought that was something of a coincidence - and started waiting for the conspiracy theory to appear in the news.

No, not spotted on the menu during an evening out on the town, but a pic spotted on the net of Sarah Jessic, oops, a potential boiled horse grooming an innocent little kitteh, just look where that long is pointing:

more cat pictures

The sixth series of BBC2’s Dragons’ Den kicked off tonight, and managed to deliver the now familiar mix of worthy cases for some funding, together with a dash of hopefuls that have you wondering if there is a team of orderlies in white coats  waiting at the exits with those jackets that are tied shut at the back, and have no holes for the hands to exit the sleeves.

But first, a word about the camera operators - are they ex-Top Gear employees? This programmes, also BBC2, used to suffer from truly atrocious camerawork as the operators seemed to view with one another from week to week to see how could produce the most irritating and intrusive and fades while moving from scene to scene, leaving you eyeballs feeling as if someone had used them to play ping-pong. Dragons’ Den seems to have the same problem now, with jarring step focus changes, odd angles, and unnecessary changes of view. We can only hope the operators are spotted by a music video producer, and moved on quickly.

There’s really one team of cowboys to comment on this week, and its the pair of con artists that turned up caliming to produce water from air. When you’re presented with crap that like from the moment they open their mouths, you know you’ve got trouble, and they went on to prove this in style. They were full of it every time they opened their mouths, even suggesting that producing water by using electricity to condense it by chilling the air was green and environmentally sound - as one of my colleagues used to say when presentations like this started “At least Dick Turpin wore a mask”.

Deborah Meaden- was spot on when she picked on the browbeating techniques of the “super-salesman” and pegged him as a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, not only was he willing to admit that he had been such a bully, he was ready to boast about it. You can go find Kirby yourself, I’m not advertising for them. This has to be one of the most reprehensible companies around, and you may remember them for their repeated appearances on That’s Life with Esther Rantzen. As far as selling goes, Kirby’s salesmen had one tool, get in your door and don’t leave until you’ve made a sale, if that means browbeating the customer for hours (the pitch can be 2-3 hours once they’re in)  until they’ve been beaten into submission, then so be it. And the deal is not cheap, neither are Kirby vacuum cleaners, finance is preferable, and they choose area where their victims will need finance to purchase their cleaners at vastly inflated prices - how else would they make their money? They just loved to people to who had no money to sign up for finance, then chase them for payment for years. Then there was the service, or lack of it, as those same folk who were being chased for their payments had no cleaner - once it broke, it was a case of weeks and months for service, if it was ever delivered.

I’m genuinely stunned that anyone standing in front of the Dragons would even admit to being involved with Kirby, worse still, the idiots with the water-from-air machine even described their operation as pyramid selling, and various other reprehensible descriptions too. It’s a wonder the Dragons didn’t call security and have them thrown out on their ears.

I have a special place reserved for people like Mr “super-salesman” - First against the wall when the revolution comes!

I’ve always been amazed to see that a tiny little Kirby shop stays open along the road from me. I only found it by chance some years ago, when I decided to go exploring down streets I don’t usually have a reason to go down. I didn’t even associated it with the Kirby con, and went to have a look in the window, and there were the cleaners, looking as ancient as they ever did. I don’t know if they’ve ever been updated, I haven’t been back for years, but they looked like escapees from the 1940s or thereabouts, as if they just kept churning the same stuff out year after year, until the machinery wears out. While they may be lovely aluminium castings, they have a price tag somewhere in the £800 or more (maybe lots more now since I haven’t come across then for years now) range, for an obsolete machine, to be paid at £10 a week, plus a suitably exorbitant rate of interest. Not a bargain, or even a good deal.

I went into that little shop once, not for anything Kirby of course, but it had a big sign over the window advertising service for a vacuum cleaner I do own - and I was looking for a part after a coin had trashed a blade inside one of its turbine brushes. When I eventually managed to get the less then intelligent girl minding the store to understand I wasn’t in the shop for anything to do with Kirby, but because of the sign, realisation dawned, but I was then informed that “He didn’t do that anymore, but had just left the sign up”.

I’m glad “He” was out that day, or it might have taken me 2 or 3 hours to get back out the door!

Whatever, the chancers were ejected with not a penny, and their plan to fleece their sales staff and customers was more than quickly uncovered.

The participants that won finding in this opening programme weren’t from the usual genres either, so the Dragons may be looking to invest in different areas in the the current economic climate, so it will be interesting to see if this is a one-off, or of the trend continues next week.

On reflection, I think they missed a trick, and should have kept Mr Kirby super-salesman there for another three hours or so, trying to talk his way into the money before they turned him down. He was already sweating buckets just from starting his pitch, and would have melted away to a wee greasy spot, or had a stroke or something if they’d kept him going. He would have deserved it too, for providing a sample machine that hadn’t been properly purged or set up, and was producing cat’s pee for the Dragons to sample.

An intriguing twist to the driver’s championship, with what amounted to a resetting of the three top contenders at the halfway stage.

After the start, things settled down and it looked as if Ferrari were succumbing to a bad weekend with mediocre describing their best, and disappointing their next best. Unusual, and all the more so after their settings proved less than ideal in the wetness of the last race. Their next outing will show if this is a pattern, or if it’s just coincidence.

Relatively unusual, component failure ruined one driver’s day, fortunately that appears to be all that was ruined for him, but the incident provided an opprtunity for ITV’s commentators to shift into overdrive as they attempted to predict the outcome for McLaren and Hamilton.

Our guides moved from puzzlement to amazement as they tried to work out when he would pit, why he didn’t pit, how he had, or had not, lost the race as a result of pittting, or not pitting, and then decided those issues were all worthy of being forgotten, as they redicsovered the vocabulary needed to describe not one, but two overtaking maneuvres.

The maneuvres were fair, there was token defence, and I’m reminded of my earlier musings about the “old” days when schumacher and Senna were defending their championship chances, and when such maueuvres were not so keenly scrutinised by race officials, and rather than merely coming close, both challenger and defender might be found to spin out of the race.

They may not have scored any points, but by not finsihing , the leader guaranteed maintaining their lead, and the challenger got no closer.

In keeping with the anolgies drawn by one of my heroes on Dragon’s Den, I’d rather have my eyelids sewn open with a rusty needle threaded with rusty barbed war and have paint stripper poured on them than watch “Sex and the City”. God knows where they find the mindless zombies that must be lined up to provide viewing figures, and now we have to watch adverts sponsored by this rubbish and featuring the tarts that appear in it.

I never thought I’d have anything even remotely complimentary to say about this programme, but I’m prepared to eat my words and thank it for one of the best images I have had conjured up for me in years.

I’ve never understood what the attraction of Sarah Jessica Parker was. All I see whenever she appears on screen is big wart which, combined with the rest of her face, just makes me want to throw up - sex is the last thing her appearance bring to mind for me.

And I’m not alone…

Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson’s inspired review of Sarah Jessica Parker’s appearance, I now have his description of her as “A boiled Horse”, so I now have a mental image of her that doesn’t make me want to puke when I see her.

Thank you Mr Clarkson.

I tried to find a quote of his description on the net, but came up with this instead:

Horsey pics

Just a brief mention for the appalling behaviour, and what must be some of the most lenient application of penalties as a result, at Round 9 of the FIA GT championship.

Circumstances during the race led to all the cars diving into the pits at the same time, this led to then stacking up there, and double parking. The result was that many couldn’t clear their own pit box, and get round the rear of the car stopped in front, so the teams had push their cars backwards so they could take a second cut. The only problem here was that the cars behind were simply piling up behind, and the result was that that cars were being pushed back into the car behind, while cars from behind were still moving forward, and crashing into the back of the cars being pushed back.

Now, this was all thanfully low speed stuff, but would still have cut the legs off any mechanics that might have been standing in the wrong place. Thankfully, it seemns that none were, but that doesn’t excuse either the drivers, or mechanics for that matter, who were placing the cars where they were.

The farce of it all was that, while we could see the TV coverage showed many cars hitting one another in the pit lane, and behaviour that was less than gentlemanly, it seems from the final commentary that only one team received a stop/go penalty as a result.

From what could be seen, either all, or none, should have been penalised.

Watching one of the Sunday morning “lifestyle” programmes this morning - yes, I have better things to do, but do stop channel surfing if I see anything remotely gadget like in someone’s grubby little paw - I was reminded of why I’ll never succumb to any of the iCrap out there, and fund Apple again. Last time was an Apple II, and look what a mistake that turned out to be. The only useful piece of software I ever ran on it was an adventure game, and I never got past the first chapter.

This morning it was a reminder at the cynical marketing ploys of their iPhone. Having launched a bit of clunky, pathetically underpowered piece of hardware and software that depended on nothing more than its looks to make it sell, they’ve now released a slightly more functional version of the thing, with proper software, storage, and network access. In fact, for the ridiculous money, all the things it should have had the day it was first launched - but that might have hurt the “second sell” aimed at the early adopters.

If it worked, it might not be so bad, but even Channel 5’s biased Gadget Show didn’t award it top spot for what it did, only its looks.

Of course, this will do wonders for their sales, and empty the pockets of the faithfull, since there’s no trade-in or upgrade route, so all the folk that have already splashed out to have the latest overpriced “must have” shiney box will have to throw them away, having had them for only a matter of months, and shell out for the newest one, or be left behind with an old-fashioned, obsoleted, uncool gadget.

Now, we all know that that’s never going to happen with the faithfull, and they’ll happily dip into their pockets, and empty them to fill Apple’s coffers to buy the newest version - and folk complain about Microsoft.

When I started jotting down some thoughts about each of the F1 races I didn’t think any of my ramblings would be worth referring back to, but maybe I was wrong.

One of my early thoughts was triggered by what I saw as a degree of unpredictability in the forthcoming season. For me, at least, the first few results didn’t show any dominance, and halfway through the season it seems that everything is far from predictable, and we have four drivers with almost the same points tally. What they had after the last race means nothing, as does the current tally, as the only total that will eventually matter is the one arrived after the last race.

After the last race, I also mentioned something that seemed to be absent, and that was the ability that Schumacher had demonstrated, when he and his Ferrari could take an apparently poor start in bad conditions, and turn it into a crushing race victory. Well, I have to eat my words again, as Hamilton and McLaren took a 4th on the starting grid, and a race that went in and out of the rain, and converted those two potential race losers into a win that made the rest of the grid look as if they had stopped somewhere for a tea-break.

There’s no point in dismissing that as a one-off either. Developments and strategies change from race to race, as do track conditions and even the driver’s attitude - and the current attack on Hamilton by the scumbags of the press (who remembers that there once used to be a phrase “Gentlemen of the press” in the dim and distant past?) - which means that once a team sees something work, and work well, they’ll do whatever they can to capitalise on it.

At this stage, I still wouldn’t want to bet a penny of my own hard-earned on any given outcome.

Well, maybe that Ferrari will walk off with the constructor’s trophy, that’s probably reasonably safe.