Friday, June 20

Newcomen Engine

We spent the last day of vacation in Edinburgh,and what a wonderful day it was. Edinburgh may not inspire a lot of photography, but it’s a very nice city. We spent the morning at the Botanical Garden. It’s an excellent garden – over 70 acres. We didn’t even have time to see it all.

For lunch, we left the gardens and had high tea. This was the nicest tea we had. Everybody knows that some words have different meanings in the UK. Normally, it’s not a real issue. But if you’re in the UK and you want a biscuit, you better order a “scone”. Because if you order a “biscuit”, you’ll get a cookie. I don’t know whether they have what we call scones in England.

Watt Engine

Then it was off to the National Museum of Scotland. We enjoyed an excellent introductory tour. The highlight for me was the steam engine exhibit. They had a Newcomen (atmosphere) steam engine. These were used to pump water out of coal mines, and were the size of a small house. They also had a James Watt – Boulton engine. The Newcoman engines were used without significant improvements for 50 years. Watt’s improvements made steam engines three times more efficient. When he was done, engines went from 1% to 3% efficient! A couple of their steam engines were “running” (they were driven by a hidden motor). Well, they can hardly fire up a boiler in the museum building. One could see the valves being switched on and off, and get an excellent idea of how the engines worked. The man running the exhibit was quite knowledgeable. He pointed out all of Watt’s major improvements and explained how each improvement made the engine better — even the unique planetary  gear that Watt invented to keep from paying for somebody else’s patent!

Saturday, June 21

We spent the entire day on the plane. Our first flight from Edinburgh to London was half an hour late. That was no big deal because we had a 2-hour layover in London, and because our flight home left over an hour late. We finally made it home about 9:30. Too bad the airlines can’t be as on-time as the trains. It felt strange to see it was dark outside already. It was a wonderful vacation. We had such a good time, we are already talking about where we will go next year.

Amazing Things We Encountered

The shower in our guest house in S-U-A had a control box mounted to the wall. It had a dial for temperature, a dial with 5 positions from “low” to “high”, and a push button marked “Power”. Our first morning there, I was turning dials and pushing buttons, but no water was coming out of the shower head. It took me over 10 minutes to figure this thing out. Converting a residence into a guest house means adding lots of bathrooms. If the hot water heater can’t handle all those showers, one can install an individual electric water heater and run just one cold water pipe to the heater. The British love to have cut-off switches everywhere. In the US, a typical electrical power outlet has two plugs. In the UK, it has two plugs and two switches. This shower heater also had a cut-off switch. It was a pull string hanging from the ceiling, far away from the shower.

It’s common for rooms in the US to have a drip coffee maker. If a guest wants tea, there are often tea bags, but the hot water comes from the coffee maker. Some people claim the hot water always tastes faintly of coffee. The UK has more tea drinkers, so rooms provide a water heater. This is a pitcher with an immersion heater coil in the bottom. Those who want coffee have to make due with instant. What’s amazing is how quickly these things bring water to boil. A US outlet can provide 150 to 200 Watts. The UK uses 220 V and the outlet hardware looks like it’s designed for at least 15 A. I figure they can get 400 W or more from their outlets. They use it all. These water heaters bring 4 cups of water to a full boil in less than two minutes.

In the US, complaining about our ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a national sport. But at least some of us have a choice. If I don’t like Comcast, I can use Verizon FIOS. I realize that not everybody in the US has a choice, but eventually I think many will. In the UK, people can select from many different ISP companies. But all ISPs rely on British Telecom for their data lines. If one doesn’t like the service provided by British Telecom, one can move to France. (Or so I was told. I don’t have a lot of personal evidence, but what I saw doesn’t contradict this.) What’s amazing is that I have seen several articles containing a list of quality of Internet service for different countries. The US is always near the bottom of the list, below many 3rd world countries. I don’t know how these lists are compiled, but our home Internet is superior to anything I experienced in the UK.

Tuesday, June 17

Edinburgh Castle

Our train didn’t leave Windermere until 1. After our pre-breakfast hike, there wasn’t much more we could do, so we took it easy in the morning. This was the first time we were on a train that was late. Our first train was on time as usual. Our second train had only four stops. The penultimate stop was in the outskirts of Edinburgh. For some reason, they held us up just before we pulled into the station. As a result, we were a few minutes late on arrival. I wish transportation in the US could be this good. We made a wrong turn walking to our guest house and walked an extra block. But we were checked in by 4:30. Our plan was to visit Edinburgh castle the next morning, so we decided to walk up to the castle before going to bed. It turned out that we had to climb a significant hill. Poor Danita overdid the walks a little bit. We were crossing a street where the light was turning. I told Danita to hurry up. But her calves were so sore, she just didn’t have any “hurry up” left. We were both pretty tired by the time we got back to our guest house.

Wednesday, June 18

Edinburgh from the Parapets

We spent 5 hours at Edinburgh Castle. They offer an introductory tour, which was both was amusing and informative. Then we used the audio tour to visit the rest of the castle. It isn’t one castle so much as several, that were built on top of each other, or were significant expansions or additions as the castle was used for different purposes over the years. The only complete building from the midevael castle was St. Margeret’s Chapel, which dates back to 1150 (not quite as old as the oldest part of the Tower of London).

Castle Great Room Roof

The most impressive building was the great room. This building was re-done in the Victorian era, with very predictable results. But the amazing part of the building was the oak roof trusses, which were original. It was a huge building. The roof was supported only by the walls. The beams were all hand-fitted and pegged. It is an amazing roof. The Tower of London was breached only once — by a bunch of peasants who were mad at the king and especially some bishop, who they thought was taxing them too much. (They ended up beheading the bishop.) In contrast, Edinburgh Castle was breached several times over the years, as the English and Scottish went back and forth over who ruled Scotland. The contrast between Edinburgh Castle and the Tower of London is huge, but no where larger than the Crown Jewels. The crown of Scotland is the oldest crown used by a monarch in Europe. But it has no significant jewels. They have a scepter and a sword, which were both gifts from England (given at different times). The only other thing they have in their Crown Jewels room is a stone, used by King Robert the Bruce as a throne when he was crowned king. (Think “Bravehart”, but without all the Mel Gibson histrionics.)

Sir Walter Raleigh Monument (I don’t have a lot of Edinburgh pics)

We spent the rest of the day wandering down the Royal Mile. We visited St. Giles Cathedral. Our last attraction was the Real Mary’s King Close. “Close” is the word used for a narrow street. We were able to walk down a couple of Closes later on. It’s easy to touch the walls on both sides of the Close at the same time. When Edinburgh built a new city council chambers building, they simply built it on top of the existing buildings in the area, effectively burying Real Mary’s King Close, using the walls from those buildings as a free foundation for the new building. There was no reason not to do this. The area was a slum at the time. Some enterprising individuals opened several of the buried buildings to show how the poor, middle class, and upper-middle class lived in the 16th century. I thought that 16th century life in Stratford-Upon-Avon was hard and lacking in conveniences, but not so bad overall. I would not want to live in a city in the 16th century. Apartments were very small. Limited land inside the city walls meant that houses were several stories high. Most people had to walk up and down several flights of steps to get to their apartments, of course carrying all their food, water, and other supplies up those stairs. And urban sanitation was absolutely abysmal. They said the average life expectancy was 40. Given the infant death rate, that meant a significant number of people lived to 60 or more. But given the living conditions, I don’t see how anybody managed to live that long.

Thursday, June 19

We spent our morning finishing the walk down the Royal Mile, then visited the Edinburgh City Museum (not much of a museum, but it is free) and Holeyrood Palace, the royal residence when the queen is in Edinburgh. It’s also where Mary Queen of Scotts lived when she was queen of Scotland, and where her son James was born. James went on to be the first person who was king of both England and Scotland (and also France, but nobody around here much cares about France). We heard a lot about Scottish history at the castle and again at the palace. Even the Scottish guides couldn’t make Mary Queen of Scotts look good.

Flowers growing out of the rock at Arthur’s Seat

The weather was so nice we decided to spend the afternoon outside. We walked up Aurthor’s Seat. This is an extinct volcano not far from the palace. It takes some effort to walk up, but the view of Edinburgh is the best you can get. While we were up there, we had a good view of Calton Hill. We saw Nelson’s column, then noticed something that looked like a Roman Ruin right next to it. We hadn’t read about this in the travel literature, so we looked it up. It turned out to be the National Monument for the soldiers that died in the Napoleanic wars. Unfortunately, they ran out of money and it was never finished. It is sometimes called “Edinburgh’s Folly”, and other times called names even less flattering.

Edinburgh from Arthurs Seat

Windermere is the End of the Line

The lake district is where the English go to vacation. There were more English than foreign tourists. It’s an untypical area by US standards. It’s a tourist town with lots of people having a good time. It’s a national park on government owned land. It’s also a national park on privately owned land. Many of the trails we walked were through farmers’ sheep fields. It’s a busy town (actually, two towns). It’s also a very rural area with very small hamlets and extremely low population density. All of this is an within easy walk.

The two tourist towns are Bowness, on the lake, and Windermere, 2 miles north and up the hill. The train station is in Windermere. Our guest house was half way between the two towns. The location was fine, because we ended up in both towns every day. The lake is the largest in the UK, but it’s only about 1/3 the size of the largest of the Finger Lakes — 10 miles long by 1 mile wide.

Saturday, June 14

The trip involved 3 trains and a walk across Burmingham from one train station to another. The walk was through heavy traffic and the way was not marked very well, but we made it on time. The toilet on our second train was astounding. I stepped into a comfortably large room with a circular door. There was no handle or lock on the door. Instead, I had to find a panel with three round buttons on the opposite wall. Each button was encircled with a light. The top button closed the door. Once the door was closed, the top button changed from green to red, and the bottom two buttons turned green. The next button down locked the door. Locking the door turned the lock button red and left the bottom button, used to open the door, green. Because I didn’t lock the door quickly enough, a pleasant but disembodied female voice warned that the door is not locked. Having mastered that, I turned my attention to the toilet. About that time, I heard the disembodied woman announce a list of things I should not flush down the toilet. There were the items I expected to hear, plus many more, such as “old cell phones”, “junk mail”, “unpaid bills”, and “your ex’s cardigan”.

We arrived in Windermere on time late in the afternoon. We checked in and walked around to get our bearings. We visited the National Parks information booth and bought a pamphlet of 5 self-guided walks. These were listed by type, the types being “superb”, “wonderful”, “perfect”, “truly excellent”, and “magnificent”. We chose the first three. The first walk involved taking a ferry across the lake, so we stumbled around until we found the ferry. Since we were in Bowness, we ate at one of the restaurants near the lake. We had a wonderful dinner, but they aren’t big on veggies.

Sunday, June 15

I was going crazy. The room had no room. There was one folding wooden chair, but no practical way to unfold it and sit in it. In the US, bed and breakfasts typically offer a sitting room. This makes it easy for one of us to read while the other one sleeps or bustles around the room. None of the guest houses we stayed at in England offer this. I went down to the dining room, just so I could sit down in a chair to read. The owner explained that we had selected an economy room. We could have a much nicer room for a small upgrade fee. Fortunately, this was Sunday, which meant that  lot of people were checking out. We took the upgrade without even seeing the room. When we got in the room late in the afternoon, we found the upgrade to be a bargain. The room was twice a big. There were two comfortable chairs, with plenty of space to use them. Even the shower was larger.

Country Lane

The weather was cloudy with a few showers, but it never rained while we were outside. This was the day of our longest walk. The official walk is a little over 6  miles, but leaving from our guest house, it was 8 or 9 miles overall. (That’s nothing compared to what Dani will be doing, but it is significant for us.) We were equipped, not stripped; with rain gear, cool weather gear, warm weather gear, a GPS (for breadcrumbs, in case we got totally lost), day packs, water bottles, walking sticks — the works. The locals just walk. They may have the better idea. The ferry was quite interesting. It doesn’t have a propeller or a rudder. Instead, they have two steel cables that lay at the bottom of the lake. The cables wrap around a large wheel on either side of the ferry. The ferry pulls itself across the lake by turning the cable wheels. The walk was through a very rural area. The most populated section we traversed was a hamlet with a hand full of houses and a country church. The fields were beautiful. When we got back we wanted to check the times for the laundromat, so we walked up to Windermere to get the times off the door. Then we went to “Lazy Daisy’s” for a very good dinner and a killer desert.

Monday, June 16

Wild Flowers

We started the day by walking up to the laundromat in Windermere with our dirty laundry, then down to Bowness. We combined a lake boat ride with a visit to the local motor museum. The museum wasn’t expensive, but it was a bit of a disapointment. About half the exhibits were motorcycles, the other half cars. When I was young, I owned several English cars and knew a bunch of guys who owned other English cars. None of the cars I was familiar with were on display. The only iconic car on display was a Delorean. There were no Rolls Royces, no Jaguar X-types, no Austin-Healey anythings (although there were a couple of Austins). No Astin-Martins, or Mercedes. Nothing from the era of very long hoods and external manifold pipes. There were a few very early cars of the type that were gasolene engines mounted to modified horse carts, but nothing of historical significance. We had a nice time anyway, and the lake cruise was very nice.

Windermere Tea

We got back from the tour before the laundry was ready. We hadn’t had an English afternoon tea yet, and there were plenty of little cafes that would help us check that off the list. We picked one that looked promising. The owner came by with a long story that he was out of scones because a large Japanese group had come by for afternoon tea in the morning. (Gasp!)  It turns out he meant he had no proper scones (with raisins). He had plenty of cheese scones, which were perfectly fine with us, just so long as he had the cream, jam and butter. I took a picture of our Tea, in honor of the Japanese connection (the Japanese were fond of taking pictures of their meals). Danita went conventional and drank tea. I wanted a large espresso. The owner cheerfully told me there were no restrictions on the tea, I was free to have anything I wanted. So I had what I wanted. After that, it was time to walk up to Windermere to collect the laundry. The restaurant we picked for dinner was closed on Mondays, so we plunked ourselves and our laundry down at an Italian Bistro next door, and had some very good pizza for dinner.

View from the Top

After we ate and dropped the laundry off at our room, it was time for the hike. There is good daylight until after 9:30, so we could take a late hike. We took a climb up a local hill to get a breathtaking 360-degree view of the area. I wanted to get more pictures, but my phone battery was all petered out. I was able to get one quick pic. Then I had to content myself with looking at the landscape. We got back to the hotel a little after 9. We fell asleep pretty quickly.

Tuesday, June 17

Sunrise

It was the day to travel to Edinburgh, but the train didn’t leave until 1. We woke up early (before 4:30). There was already plenty of daylight, so we took a pre-breakfast hike around the lake area. We watched the sunrise over the lake and saw some wonderful areas. If you want to see beautiful countryside, I know some places to go. Now I know one more. We got back so early that we both had showers, did some of our packing, and were still too early for the 8:30 breakfast.

Meadow Flowers

Thursday – Friday, June 12 -13

For most of his career, Shakespeare lived in London while his wife and children lived in S-U-A (Stratford-Upon-Avon). Shakespeare visited his family once or twice a year. It took him 4 days to make the trip. We did it in two hours. Of course, his trip included an overnight stop at Cambridge University, where rumor has it he had a mistress. (Or was it Oxford University? I get the two mixed up.) We woke up early as usual. The train didn’t leave until Noon (a fair restriction in exchange for a £6 fare). We didn’t have anything planned (everything being closed until 10 in any event). We decided it was as easy to wait at the train station as to wait in the hotel room. It turns out our train station was within a block of 221B Baker Street. Yes, there is a Victorian house at that address. Yes, there is a museum in the house. No, we did not go to the Sherlock Holmes museum. If you look at the reviews on-line, you probably wouldn’t go either. It’s good to have a Kindle or iPad with a few books on it.

Anne Hathaway’s cottage

After we arrived at S-U-A and checked into our guest house, we went to visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage. (Anne was Shakespeare’s wife. This house was where she grew up.) It was our first visit to a Tudor-era location. While there was a lot of similarity to Colonial-era sites we have seen before, the 200-year difference was obvious. We learned that a common way for middle-class families to build a house was to build with two rooms separated by a breezeway. This separated the living quarters from the kitchen. The house was built without fireplaces. Fires were built in the middle of the room. It turns out a good thatch roof blocked the rain while letting the smoke out. When children came along, one could build a ledge (a half-floor – similar to a loft). In the mean time, one could start adding a couple of chimneys. Once the chimneys were in, one could add the second story under the existing roof. Only the very rich had fire places on the second floor. It was a pretty good system.

Mary Arden’s Farm

They roll the sidewalks up early in S-U-A. We’re not big for spending much time in a pub, so we picked up a bottle of wine and went to our room for the night. The next day, we visited Mary Arden’s Farm (where Shakespeare spent a lot of time), Shakespeare’s birth place, a couple of houses his children owned, and Trinity Church where he is buried. We were amazed that so many Tudor buildings associated with Shakespeare are still in existence.

Upper Class Tudor House

The difference in wealth between Shakespeare as a child (his parents were middle-class) and Shakespeare at the height of his fame was obvious and astounding. The very wealthy had 10-foot ceilings, interior doors so tall that one could walk through without stooping, wide and straight staircases, and painted canvas wall coverings (they look like tapistries when the neighbors look through the windows). The last house we saw was the first house in S-U-A that was originally built with glass windows. (The glass was imported from Italy.) Shakespeare’s grandson lived at the last house we visited, which was on the way from Shakespeare’s house to Church. We certainly stood on the floor Shakespeare stood on and saw the fireplace he sat at while visiting. (The pic is labeled “Shakespeare’s Hearth”, even though it was technically his daughter’s hearth.)

Shakespeare’s Hearth

Did you know … in addition to meatless Fridays, Tudor England had two additional days most weeks where meat was not eaten? By this time, the last vestiges of Catholicism were gone. But it was important that England have a ready supply of seafaring men. So they needed a large fishing fleet. So they needed to create a large demand for fish. Did you know … the transition from feudal to modern society happened in just 50 years. It all happened within the lifetime of Shakespeare’s parents.

Shakespeare’s Grave

Shakespeare would normally have gone to the university (was it Oxford or Cambridge?). He didn’t because of his father ran into financial difficulties. Instead, after going to grammar school where he learned Latin and Greek, he was self-educated by reading books. He couldn’t afford books, of course. He borrowed them, eventually becoming good friends with a few book stall owners in London and using them as a library. He was quite an entrepreneur. He and 5 fellow-actors formed the company that built the Globe theatre. To be successful, it wasn’t enough to have enormous talent. They also needed dependable place to perform that was near London but outside the city limits (to escape control of the arbitrary London laws). As you can tell, having read a little about Shakespeare added enormously to the enjoyment of this part of the trip.

Canal Ferry – the man is turning the paddle wheel by hand. (This is not the ferry we took.)

We had a little time late in the afternoon, so we took a short cruise on the canal, then went back to our room to watch the Star Trek movie “The Wrath of Kahn”. Talk about high culture — it doesn’t get any better than this. The weather continues to be delightful, and the prices in S-U-A are much more reasonable than in London. When we’re on the train, we buy those horrid pre-made sandwiches the English are so fond of. But we are also finding eateries where the food is quite good.

S-U-A is where I bought my favorite coffee cup of the trip. The printing consists of some of Shakespeare’s better insults, which is pretty cool. It is marketed by the Philosopher’s Guild. If you turn the cup upside-down, it says “For best results, use other side”. They also have a very clever training video at www.philosophersguild.com/PAKE .

Wednesday, June 11

V&A Tippoo’s Tiger – Use Google to get an interesting story. But avoid the two very boring posts on the V&A site.

This was Danita’s day. We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which focuses on art and design. We started with a 1-hour docent introductory tour. She was so good at her job that even I got interested. After that we wondered around until Danita took pity on me and we went to their cafe for a very good lunch. Then it was off to the National Gallery to see Nelson’s butt and some artwork. I spent my time going through the Impressionists exhibit (which was amazingly small, considering the stature of London’s premier art museum). When Danita was ready to leave, she came to find me. We decided to take some time off and just rest in the hotel for a while.

Taxi Strike

On the way back to the hotel, we saw a long line of Taxis all queued up. This was the Taxi strike against UBER (an internet / smart phone ride service) that made international news. Before the strike started, the cabs were all properly queued up. Drivers were standing around outside their cabs, enjoying the wonderful weather, chatting amiably. We approached one driver to see where he got his ice cream. He cheerfully let us know, then cheerfully answered our questions about the strike. The drivers weren’t dumb. The strike was at mid-day. They were all back at work at the end of the work day, when the demand for taxi service is high.

Hyde Park

After dinner, we took the metro to Hyde Park and walked around the lake. We saw a fabulous rose garden, the Lady Diana memorial fountain, and of course lots of people enjoying themselves. We took so many trips on the metro that our Oyster card maxed out. Our return trip to the hotel showed a charge of “0.00”. Woo-Hoo!

Hyde Park

Tuesday, June 10:

This was an ambitious day. We took the train for a day-trip to Bletchley Park. When we got back, we had tickets to the London Ballet at the Opera House.

We started out going to Bletchley Park, where the WW II code breaking effort against the Germans and Japanese was headquartered. I’ve long been interested in this, partly because of the secrecy and partly because of my work with cryptography at Schlumberger / Axalto / Gemalto. We started out being anxious about catching our train, which left from the Euston train station. We knew we had to switch tubes at the Victoria tube station. We had been there Sunday and had found it very confusing. We weren’t confident of our ability to navigate to Euston, and we woke up early. So we decided to go up to Euston right away and have breakfast in Euston. It turns out we got there with no troubles, and had almost 2 hours for breakfast. The nice thing was that we found an American-style diner for breakfast. Danita had an excellent waffle. I did not order quite as wisely, but my sausage and egg breakfast was perfectly acceptable. Best of all, we finally got good American coffee. Europeans love their espresso. I admit, their espresso is quite good. But for breakfast, I like having a large mug of coffee, preferably with free refills. Europeans aren’t big on refills. And their idea of American coffee is to add hot water to an espresso. The result is a mess. This diner actually had good American coffee, and even offered us one free refill.

The train ride was a little under an hour, and it was a delight. The train was clean, quiet, efficient, and on-time. I mean exactly on time. I looked at my watch when the train started pulling out of London. It was the exact advertised departure time to the minute. The same was true of our arrival in Bletchley, and also on the return trip. It turned out that most of our train rides were equally on-time. Our last ride was from Windermere to Edinburgh. The first train was a few minutes late. The second train got held up at a stop on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and got us in several minutes late. I wish we could find transportation like this in the US.

Bletchley Mansion

We started with a guided tour of Bletchley Park. This was a very good decision because the guide was very knowledgeable and gave us a great overview of the facility. It’s a good thing, because the area is pretty much a mess. It was so secret for so long that many of the buildings are rather run down. After it was finally opened, it was run with virtually no funds, basically by volunteers. Now the British government has decided to turn it into a first-class destination. They have a very long way to go. Some people were given the wrong origin for the tour and had to join us a few minutes late. We were given the correct destination (Hut 12), but the “1” was missing from the hut number and there was no sign indicating the tour started there. They have managed to assemble one major exhibit, which the printed material indicates is in Hut 6. However, this exhibit has been moved to behind the reception building. Hut 6 is closed, and no signs indicate where the exhibit is to be found. The site is used as a technology incubator, so over half the buildings are not open to the public. Again, no signs indicate what is open and what is not. In spite of these limitations, I had a great time and I learned a lot about the history and overall operation that I didn’t know. (This wasn’t a major attraction for poor Danita. But she was a good trouper.)

English Typex Machine with Enigma Mods. These machines worked like the German Enigma. They were used for message decryption, once the settings were known.

The best surprise about the Bletchley Park was their focus not on just the decryption, but on all aspects of the operation: monitoring and intercepting German messages, extracting meta-data, figuring out the code words or buzz words used by the Germans, and indexing their information. Only Brittian could have pulled this off. Their world-wide empire meant they had the world’s leading communications network, with outposts everywhere. Bletchley Park had a huge database to track and help interpret their information. There were no computer databases, of course. This database used people and punch cards. They ran an average of 5 million cards a day through their sorting and collating machines. Alan Turing’s work in decryption and computer design was awesome. But it would not have been useful without the rest of the operation, which was mind-mindbogglingly amazing.

BOMBE

They have made a few of the buildings available to other groups to host other museums. One group runs the computer museum, which contains a rebuilt “BOMBE”. This machine was used to help decrypt messages encoded with the German Enigma machine. The mathematicians (mostly grad students from Cambridge or Oxford) would manually find a schema diagram. This diagram was entered in the BOMBE. Typically, 4 or five Enigma settings would match the schema. The BOMBE used rotary switches to step through all possible combinations, stopping on each setting that matched the schema. Each of these settings was used to try to decrypt the message, until they had the setting for the day. It was quite a clever machine and greatly sped up the decryption of messages. It was a joy to be able to watch it work.

Colossus – This machine is not curved. The curving is an artifact of the pan0roma feature of my phone.

Colossus runs a fixed program, but the parameters can be changed. This punched paper tape enters the parameters.

The much more interesting machine, however, is Colossus. There are plenty of arguements about what has to be included before a machine becomes a “computer”. Depending on your definition, Colossus was either the first computer, or the direct predecessor of the first computer. The Colossus was used to help find schemas for signal traffic used by the German High Command. (This traffic used a machine more secure than the Enigma machine.) They built 10 Colossus machines. No two machines were the same. They were all destroyed, partially for security and partially because the scientists and engineers were quickly moving on to better machines. However, there was enough information available to rebuild Colossus. I saw the rebuilt Colussus and watched it work. It’s a 100% functional machine, completely true to the original. It’s the only one in the world, and it was amazing to watch it work. Colussus wasn’t officially open for tourists Tuesday. They had a tour, but the tour didn’t include it. However, I was able to sneak in behind a school group. After the group moved on, one of the guys stayed behind to show me a few more things and watch it work a little longer.

Dekatron (also not curved)

We then took the official tour, available on Tuesdays only. We saw several more very early computers which I found totally interesting. The most interesting of these was the Dekatron. If you don’t think Colossus qualifies as a computer, then the Dekatron was the first digital computer. It was fully programmable, had an ALU, memory, and output. It was based on a 10-position cold cathode tube (a little like a Nixie display). It was naturally a decimal machine (not binary) and consumed very little power when compared to other computers based on vacuum tubes.

After that, things got less interesting and even I was happy when the tour ended. Poor Danita, of course, was mildly interested, but found herself lagging behind most of the day.

Coming back to the hotel was mostly uneventful except that we somehow got into the wrong tube station and had to take a different line, which turned out to be the only line in London that was delayed due to some kind of signaling problem. This was a kind of a big deal because we had tickets to the Royal Ballet. The tube station near the Opera House is closed, forcing a rather long and obscure walk through part of London we had not yet visited. We didn’t want to be late for Ballet, so we hailed a cab. I’m convinced it took us as long to get to the Opera house as if we had walked, due to evening traffic. But we arrived in plenty of time.

The ballet was incredibly good. London has one of the world’s best ballet companies which, of course, performs with their own live pit orchestra. The Opera House is an amazing venue. It all adds up to extremely high expectations, which the performance easily exceeded. They started out with an ballet based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, along with Mendelssohn’s music. You might recall we watched stage actors perform the play with the BSO playing the music. I joked that the Baltimore show was better, because the audience gave the BSO a standing ovation but the London audience did not. But the simple fact was that the stage setting, choreography, and dancing were all superb — as was the pit orchestra. It was an incredible experience, and the night wasn’t over yet. We next watched a contemporary dance. I cannot even begin to describe it, but it was another incredible performance, in a totally different style than the traditional style of the first dance. But wait, there’s more! We were treated to a third dance, which was the funniest ballet we ever saw. I can say this without hesitation, because it was the first funny ballet I ever saw. It never occurred to me that ballet could even be funny. They had a pianist on stage to play as the soloist with the orchestra. He did a kind of Liberace routine, but without all the sequins and exaggerated arm waving. The dance included dancers that got their steps wrong, ended up in the wrong place, etc. In the end, the dancers were being butterflies. The pianist finally got so disgusted he stopped playing and started chasing the dancers with an over-sized butterfly net. It could have been exasperating “stick”, but it was very well done by dancers and musicians who obviously knew exactly what they were doing and exactly how to make it funny. So we ended up with 3 dances, all very well done, and all in different styles.

When we got back to our hotel, it was almost midnight. We were in high spirits but quite tired, and immediately fell asleep.

Monday, June 9

St. Paul’s

There was no time for sleeping in today. We were in London with a lot of things to get done. The forecast was for thunderstorms in the afternoon, but the day turned out to be a nice one. There was a brief shower, which occurred after we got back to our room for the night. In fact, we had good to excellent weather every day of our trip in the UK. There were a couple of other cloudy days, and we kept our umbrellas handy on those days, but I never used my umbrella because it never rained while we were outside. Temperatures were a little above normal. Our warmest day was in Edinburgh, where the high was 82 degrees.

Our day was focused on two main attractions — St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. Both of these are in old London. Our hotel is on the other side of central London, near Westminster Cathedral. So this was our inaugural visit to this part of town, as well as our inaugural use of the tube.

At the top of St. Paul’s

St. Paul’s Cathedral opened first, so we went there first. This is one of the more recognizable buildings in London. The building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It was his seminal work. The dome is the highest and largest (if one applies the correct modifiers). There are actually 2 domes. The outside dome is 365 feet high. We were both surprised how much there was to see. After visiting the main floor, one can walk up three levels.

Selfie in a reflecting Statue

The first level is the “whispering gallery”, about half way up the inside dome. If you do it right, two people can stand on opposite sides of the dome. A person on one side can hear the other person whispering on the other side. We didn’t do it right, because the only thing we heard was a lot of other people whispering “Can you hear me?” The next level up is the stone gallery, a balcony around the outside of the dome. It is about as high as the inside dome. The third level, some 530 steps from the main floor, goes around the top of the outside dome. Danita and I both made it to the top in good form. The view is exhilarating. After this, we went down to the crypt. Our audio guides had excellent presentations, but we found we weren’t as interested in the crypt, so we moved on to the Tower of London.

Beefeater Tour Guide

All the guide books say one should start the Tower of London with a Beefeater Tour, and they are right. It was a very interesting, entertaining, and informative tour. This guy loved tweaking the Americans. One of his favorite lines was “This is history” (comparing the 900 years of the Tower of London to the 300-year history of the US). Of course, what he didn’t mention is that the written history of London goes back to Roman times. We’ve seen the Roman ruins in Barcelona. That’s history. English archiological history goes back even further to Stonehenge. Danita saw a stone circle from the train on Tuesday (I was napping.) But London doesn’t have any major touring areas from Roman or earlier times.

Tower of London

The Tower of London is the original castle in London, built by William the Conqueror to protect himself from his conquest. (It seems the Saxons didn’t take very kindly to being ruled by a Norman king.) William died before the castle was finished. His son, William II, finished the castle. Succeeding kings used it — it was their official residence for about 500 years. It is unique because the original stones still stand as they were originally built in 1100 (more or less). Most of the exhibits are original items (not reproductions).

Original and Authentic Chopping Block

The Normans were far advanced of the English. They were using chimneys, which the English wouldn’t start doing for another 100 years. (The English generally built a fire in the middle of the room on the floor.) Not only that, but the Normans used stealth chimneys. Fireplaces had slots on either side of the flue. Smoke was dispersed and discharged such that nobody could see it from outside the castle. Outsiders couldn’t see whether the fireplaces were in use.

Authentic and Original Henry VIII’s Armor

After that we wandered around and stumbled into the tour of St. John’s Chapel. (Pictures weren’t allowed because it is still used for worship services.) I’m not sure how far back one has to go before saying “This is history”, but I was quite satisfied to sit in the chapel where William II and his queen celebrated mass.

By this time we were getting our London legs. I was not surprised to find it is quite easy to navigate the tube. London streets are another matter. They go in all different directions. I had a data plan for my phone. I found it’s quite addictive to have instant, full-time access to data. The navigation aid I was counting on most was my phone’s GPS, along with Google Maps. It was useful, but there were issues, especially in London. The GPS got confused with all the signals bouncing off the tall buildings around us. It generally knew where we were, but sometimes was off by one street. Errors were worse with direction. If we were walking north, sometimes the GPS would say we were walking south. Finally, my phone had trouble holding a battery charge all day, so I had to limit my time viewing the map screen. Fortunately, we had an unexpected  navigation aid for London streets. In fact, navigating London is amazingly easy, thanks to London’s brilliantly designed “You are here” maps. These are found every few blocks in London’s central district, oriented so that the “you are here” arrow shows exactly where you are and which way you are facing. Just about everything a tourist could want to get to is marked on this map. Each display had two maps, one marking a 5-minute walk and the other a 10-minute walk. These were quite a surprise, because the two tour books I read don’t mention them. I wish they had, because we spent quite a bit of effort looking for how to walk to our next destination, and most of that effort would have been avoided if we had known about these brilliant tourist aids.

Traitor Gate. This thing is *heavy* Not even Mel Gibson held this up with one hand while fighting with the other.

Our other surprise was the quality of the food. The English are famous for having lousy cuisine. We certainly had some perfectly awful “grab and go” breakfasts and lunches, where sandwiches are made ahead of time, sitting on the shelf. But throughout our visit in the UK, restaurant food was quite good. When we took the time to have a “sit down and order” meal, we were never disappointed. I had Welsh pastry, meat pies, meat Yorkshire pudding, Italian pasta, pizza, etc. It was all good or excellent. We found there weren’t many vegetables. And it helps that we were smart about what we ordered. No “bangers and mash”, no “fish and chips”, and no “haggis”. Coffee was available everywhere we went and it was pretty good to excellent. I even found that tea can be a pleasant drink, if one adds enough milk and sugar.

When we got back to our hotel, we were pretty tired and spent some time watching very bad TV until we could say it was late enough to go to bed.

we’re back, safe and sound. Because I didn’t have a computer with me, I couldn’t write this up as we went along. I tried doing some drafts, but now I have hundreds of pics and disjointed thoughts to sort through. It’s a bit daunting. Nevertheless, here’s our first day in the UK.

Sunday, June 8:

Big Ben

We had a smooth flight and arrived in London on time. Since we were disoriented and a little tired, we decided to take a rather expensive cab to the hotel. Did we waste our money? One can take public transportation from the airport to our hotel. However, we met another family from the US who was in London for their third time. They got totally lost and spent most of the day trying to find their hotel, taking various public transports and dragging their suitcases behind them. We spent most of the day having a good time (as you will soon see) and decided our money was well spent.

Having Fun at Trafalgar Square

We got to the hotel well before check-in time, but the room was available and they let us check in early. We found ourselves in the middle of a perfect day — sunny, with highs in the low 70s. Besides that, it was Sunday and the last day of mid-break (when schools are off for a week). Plus, the World Cup was starting soon (that’s a big deal in Europe). As a result, we saw tons of people everywhere we went, all having a good time. This was especially true in the parks. Everywhere there was grass, there were people enjoying themselves. There were street performers and outdoor concerts. The streets were filled.

Thames from the London Eye

We spent the day walking around central London. We saw all the normal landmarks in this part of town — the Thames, Trafagal Square, Big Ben and Parliament Building, etc. In our travels, we rode the London Eye (like a giant Ferris wheel.) They run it like a cheesy attraction. But the view is dramatic, and it’s a lot of fun.

Gold Coach

The other attraction we visited was the Royal Mews (a more conventional name would be the Royal Stables.) They only had two of the horses there, and the official limousine was being used in the D-Day celebration. But we saw many royal carriages. The one here was built by George III, to celebrate his victory over the French in the 7-years war and the mighty power of England. It’s so huge and heavy it requires a team of 8 horses to pull. It’s very uncomfortable to ride in. And 15 years later he got spanked by some upstart Yanks.

Nelson

It was a very tough day and a lot of walking, but we met our primary goal of staying awake until 9. We also met our secondary goals. I got a UK SIM card for my phone that includes a data plan, and we purchased Oyster cards. These are the best way to use The Tube (the London subway).

Our biggest surprise for the day (besides the amazingly good weather) was Trafalgar Square. It has a tall column topped by a statue of Lord Nelson. The best way to get a picture of this famous column is from the steps of the National Gallery (art museum) — which has a fine view of his butt. The square is filled with the expected array of rather serious statues, complete with large lions and lots of famous dead white men. But it has one very strange, very blue statue of a chicken. We have no idea at all of what that’s about.

Blue Rooster

First day surprises:

“Look Left / Look Right” is painted on the street next to every curb. Extremely useful for the disoriented visitor.

It can be hard to understand wait staff, if English is not their first language

I am writing this on Thursday, June 5. There are no pics this week.

We’re leaving on our visit to the UK Saturday evening. I published our itinerary earlier, and am repeating it at the bottom of this post. If you are interested in contacting us while we are in the UK, here are some things to know. The best way to contact us is to send an email to deichenlaub@gmail.com. I plan to get a UK SIM card with a data plan. I should receive the Email on my phone so long as we have a cell phone signal. This should be everywhere except perhaps a few hours while hiking in Windermere. If you feel the need to call, it is best to call my Google number (410-417-8854). Google will send me an Email. I can play the voice mail from that Email. Danita’s phone does not work in the UK. We will have only my cell phone and Danita’s iPad. I hear that public Wi-Fi is not very good in the UK, so our web access will likely be limited. I won’t be posting much while we are there, because I don’t know how to move pictures from my phone to the web without a computer.

As you might have guessed, my computer, a Lenovo Think Pad, is still not working. The problem is the fan, so I thought it would be relatively easy to get it fixed. I took it to one shop. They said they could fix it, but then they said they couldn’t find any new fans. I took it to a second shop that specializes in fixing Lenovo Think Pads. They ordered the fan, only to find out that the supplier’s web site said they had 200 fans in stock, but actually they didn’t have any. Fans are available only from Lenovo, and they cost $500. I wish I had bought the 3-year service contract. My fan died after 2 years, 11 months. I could have had one of those fans for free. I started a serious search for a replacement computer. There are some very nice computers available these days that aren’t made by Lenovo, but they are quite expensive. (50% more than what I paid 3 years ago for my Lenovo, or more.) I finally settled on an HP Split X2. The entire computer is in the display part, which can be separated from the keyboard and used as a touch-screen tablet. The unit sold in the stores does not meet my requirements. But by ordering directly from HP, with the right options, I was able to get quite a nice computer at a reasonable cost. (I upgraded to a dual-band Wi-Fi, the better screen, and included a 500 GB rotating disk drive in the keyboard section.)  This time I bought the 3-year service contract. That probably means my computer will die in 3 years, 1 month. Because it’s special order, it should ship about the same time we get back from vacation.

Two of the places we enjoy eating Sunday breakfast are Bob Evans and Mimi’s. They both issue plenty of coupons, most of which exclude Sundays or breakfast. That’s understandable, because Sunday is their busiest breakfast. But lately, they’ve been having breakfast BOGO battles. We have so many BOGOs we’re having trouble using them all before they expire. We were kind of keeping up, using a Bob Evans BOGO last Sunday. Then we got a BOGO for Mimi’s. That’s bad news, because we’ll be in the UK Sunday. Fortunately, we just happened to run out of breakfast food, so we’ll have to go out for breakfast Saturday. I’m thinking we’ll be using our Mimi’s breakfast BOGO.

It was a busy week. Last Sunday we had the last our last BSO concert. They offered a performance of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. The BSO was there to play Mendelssohn’s incidental music. I’ve seen the play and I’ve heard the music. I was skeptical, but it turned out to be a delightful performance. I couldn’t understand everything the actors said and could understand very little of what was sung, but knowing the plot was very helpful. I never realized how brilliant Mendelssohn’s music was until now.

My work at Habitat is lurching on in it’s normal way. I’ve been working for two years to get all their ReStores networked to their main server. They will have FIOS internet installed in their main office Tuesday. This is a key event that allows their IT support company to do a major piece of the project while we are in the UK. That’s very good news, but I recently realized that while all their computers are updated and ready, their Columbia store never connected to their local network correctly. It’s a long story, but the result is that the Columbia store could not be connected to the new network. Fortunately, I was able to get that squared away this week.Then, at the last minute, the office manager sent an Email saying she wanted to check with the CFO to make sure they will proceed as planned. To put it very politely, my feelings were “My, oh my”.

Three years ago, our clubhouse office purchased an inexpensive inkjet “all in one” printer to be their fax / scanner / backup printer. Besides the high cost of ink, this printer was not built to stand up to the heavy usage they give it. They asked me to recommend a replacement printer. I suggested a specific model of an HP color laser all in one. The board approved it and one of the ladies ordered it. Unfortunately, she ordered a completely different printer sold by Dell. This thing has some of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen. After 3 hours of work, the scanner still wasn’t working. I finally called Dell. At least she took our recommendation and bought the 3-year service contract. If she hadn’t bought that, Dell wouldn’t have helped and scanner still wouldn’t be working. Everything was squared away by yesterday afternoon.

Our deck is coming along. The contractor started laying the floor yesterday. He will be done with the floor today or tomorrow. That will end this phase of the project. The support column and beams were trimmed with white boards. This was the source of the problems, because the trim held water from the rain and the support beams became saturated with water. We decided to split the work into two parts. After the floor is done, we will let the support beams stay open to the air for a while to dry out. Then we will put up new trim using white vinyl boards. The next slot the contractor has available is in August, which will give plenty of time for the lumber to dry out.

Danita’s been spending time polishing our UK itinerary. She found more hiking options for us in Windermere and has been reviewing things we might want to see in Edinburgh. We will have very long days for the next two weeks. London is as far north as Newfoundland. We’ll be there for the summer solstice. We will have about 17 hours of daylight each day. “Daylight” is not the same as “sunshine”. The forecast is calling for plenty of rain, which I suppose is normal for that part of the world. When I purchased train tickets to go from London to Bletchey Park, I picked up a BOGO. If one prints out the coupon and shows their train ticket, they get a free admission. Danita found out this is common throughout the UK. It won’t help us in London (because we are arriving in London by plane). And it won’t help in Windermere (the admission to the hiking trails, when converted to US dollars, is approximately — nothing). But it is quite useful in Bletchley Park, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and Edinburgh. Purchasing tickets ahead, traveling mid-day, and printing coupons before we leave, we will save quite a bit.  We were able to get all our train tickets for £15 or less, which is a good deal. The BOGOs turn a good deal into an amazing bargin.

That’s all the news. I hope this finds everybody doing well. Here’s our itinerary. (“BA” is British Air.)