Something to read while you're waiting for Sue Gray's report on B⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎ J⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎'s ⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎⬛︎ 
Happy invoicing!
- He Spent 25 Years Infiltrating Nazis, the Klan, and Biker Gangs - ”Scott was a top undercover agent for the FBI, putting himself in harm's way dozens of times. Now, he’s telling his story for the first time to sound the alarm about the threat of far-right extremists in America.” He's had some extremely hair-raising encounters
- World’s brightest x-rays reveal COVID-19’s damage to the body - ”When Paul Tafforeau saw his first experimental scans of a COVID-19 victim’s lung, he thought he had failed… It was the end of May 2020, and scientists were anxious for a better view of the ways human organs were being ravaged by COVID-19. Tafforeau had been tasked with developing a technique that could make use of the powerful x-rays generated at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. He’d pushed boundaries on high-resolution x-rays of rock-hard fossils and desiccated mummies as an ESRF staff scientist. Now, he was dismayed by a lump of soft, squishy tissue.”
- The Rescue Artists of the New Avalanche Age - ”The world’s most elite helicopter rescue team is more important than ever, as skiers and snowboarders venture further in the backcountry and climate change makes mountain conditions more dangerous.” Or you could just not go to the Alps?
- Searching for Susy Thunder - ”In the ’80s, Susan Headley ran with the best of them—phone phreakers, social engineers, and the most notorious computer hackers of the era. Then she disappeared.” Claire L. Evans tracks down a legendary hacker.
- The Winchcombe Meteorite: one year on - ”It was the first UK meteorite fall for 30 years. Here we gather the story of a remarkable community hunt involving pandemic precautions, social media spikes and some very lucky guinea pigs.” Good piece on searching for meteorite fragments in lockdown.
- On the Insanity of Being a Scrabble Enthusiast - Paging mudskipper: ”The problem when you start playing Scrabble—especially if you start as a kid—is simply that you don’t know many words… You spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a word, any word, with the tiles on your rack, and then trying to figure out where to play them, and discovering that the whole enormously frustrating effort was worth, like, six points.”
- Bobs Telephone File - The Webs Wonder, TELEPHONES, SWITCHBOARDS, PMBX, PAX, PABX, ERICSSON TELEPHONES, BRITISH TELEPHONES, GPO, BT, POST OFFICE, ERICSSON, TELEPHONE SYSTEMS & KEYSYSTEMS, GEC TELEPHONES, FOREST of DEAN, LOCAL EXCHANGE TRADING SYSTEM, LETS - I'll forgive Bob the excessive SEO in his title tags as this site has loads of info about UK telephones. From the "New to Telephones" section: ”This site and many like it are not that friendly to those who know little about telephones. To make matters worse my site is devoted only to UK telephony… I have started with Telephones and further down this page I will link you to other subjects, like how to wire them up.”
- How you could survive (and prosper) in the Middle Ages - Handy hints for using that Time Machine you got for Christmas: ”The first major problem is that you don’t speak their language. You know modern English, but the English in the fourteenth century is very different… Find some way to begin writing, even if it is taking a stick and drawing letters into the dirt. It doesn’t really matter what you write, since the villagers will not understand modern English either. But they will soon realize that you are an educated person, as relatively few people could read or write. You have already revealed that you are person of some importance.”
- Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip - Ken Shirriff digs into the classic timer: ”Signetics released the 555 timer in mid-1972 and the chip below has a January 1973 date code (7304), so it must be one of the first 555 timers. Curiously, it is not labeled 555, so perhaps it is a prototype or internal version. I took detailed die photos, which I discuss in this blog post.”
- Charles Brooks Photography - You've probably seen this photo of the inside of a cello before, but Charles Brooks photographs the inside of other musical instruments too. ”This is part of a series I'm undertaking on the internals of fine instruments. I use a special technique called focus stacking which has the effect of making these small spaces seem vast. This is a simple optical illusion. Our brains are wired to expect close up macro shots to have a shallow depth of field. By combining dozens, sometimes hundreds, of shots I ensure that the photo is sharp from front to back. This tricks the mind into believing that the image is of something much larger than reality.”
Happy invoicing!
Travellers such as tinkers would usually carry a bell and ring it, both to inform villagers of their arrival or passing through, and to avoid suspicion they were loitering or sneaking around with criminal intent.
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