Andrew Wyld

@andrewwyld.bsky.social

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A partly corroded, faded aluminium substation sign that says: SOUTH EASTERN ELECTRICITY BOARD HIGH VOLTAGE KEEP OUT DANGER OF DEATH the KEEP OUT part of the message is in urgent, oblique capitals on a heavy bar at the centre of the sign, and between the two words is a dynamic black jagged arrow with a drop shadow in white which appears to leap from the sign.
"Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) and Danny Olsen (Peter Capaldi) walk along a beach discussing the importance of the petroleum industry as, behind them, the sky glows with the opalescent muted pink and mauve light of the recently set sun and the sea washes gently up the sands, in a way, one feels, it has done for thousands upon thousands of years. Seabirds call plaintively as Olsen observes that without oil, you wouldn't have any Perspex. All around them, the sea, teeming with life, oscillates gently, caressed by the moon and sun.
A class 14 diesel hydraulic locomotive starting its engine at Tenterden station on the Kent and East Sussex Railway
Two cover prints of La Déesse. Which is a single, by the way, by my group Music Research Unit. Why did I pick a French title that many find hard to pronounce, you ask? I now wonder myself. However, the cover art has a Citroën DS, which sounds like day ess in French, and a lovely lady, its driver, standing imperiously next to it. The title is a pun on the nickname of the car and the meaning of déesse—goddess. The prints are in red and blue and I did a lot of carving with a craft knife to make them.
Thirty light grey 1×1 round plate Lego pieces
A hassock from Guildford Cathedral showing some stylised electrical transmission towers, with the wires crossing in an X with similar proportions to a saltire
A replica of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. The original piece was a mass produced urinal which Marcel Duchamp bought, signed "R. MUTT" and exhibited. He thought mass produced objects could be genuinely beautiful and this was one reason to exhibit the toilet in a gallery. For another reason to exhibit a toilet in a gallery, the reader may wish to consult the expert understanding of a nearby small child. The replica was painstakingly handmade sometime in the sixties, missing both points.
The sheet music and lyrics for The Pigeon Poisoner Meets His Maker, my tribute to Tom Lehrer, zoomed out to a size where it's unperformable. There are eight pages! It has time signature changes!
Welcome to MIDSOMER Home of the murders Please drive carefully Not that it will make any difference
Merde, dalèques!
The Pigeon Poisoner Meets His Maker now has a third verse, though not in lyrics. But there are no lyrics in this, which is still just the piano score. There's an empty vocal line, though I know what the tune is. Notating music is very fiddly, though not as fiddly as when I used Lilypond decades ago; Lilypond is basically a markup language and you write your parts out painstakingly, compile them, and then swear and fix all the problems. MuseScore is way more fun for a musician, while still being much less expensive than Sibelius. Mind you, I still haven't figured out how to notate broken chords effectively. I hope you don't mind my opening up to you like this.
Ridiculous piano part for an even more ridiculous song entitled "The Pigeon Poisoner Meets His Maker"
BURPER KING oaarrrp scuse me
A concrete staircase in Swanley town square with a relief mural by William Mitchell, one of a set created in 1971.
Belchford Fulletby
A prohibitory sign, showing a person moving stiffly with their limbs at awkward angles, surrounded by a red circle with a line through it and the caption "passengers must not do the Robot".
An early British motorway route indicator with the main carriageway inclined ten degrees to the right
A diagram of the path-length taken by an audio signal travelling from a driver through a Leslie treble horn to a microphone, as a function of the angle of the treble horn. The treble rotor consists of two horns, facing in opposite directions, rotating around a common centre. A driver at the centre passes sound into the throat of both horns, and it is projected up each to the end of the horn. Let the treble rotor radius be r. A microphone is placed at a distance from the centre of the treble rotor. For reasons that will shortly be obvious, let this distance be a multiple k of the treble rotor radius. The treble rotor rotates clockwise as seen from above. Let the angle of rotation at a given time, with respect to the axis from the centre of the treble rotor to the microphone, be theta. The sound first has to travel a distance r up the treble horn, and it then leaves at the end and travels a further distance to the microphone. That distance is the hypotenuse of a right triangle. One side of the right triangle is r sin theta, the sideways displacement of the treble horn. The other side is kr - r cos theta, that is, the total distance from the centre of the treble horn to the microphone, less the longitudinal displacement of the treble horn. Thus, the hypotenuse of the right triangle has length r times the square root of the sum of k minus cos theta all squared and sin theta squared. Thus the total distance travelled is that, plus r.
My Leslie 760 with two AKG P170 microphones placed at right angles and aimed at the treble rotor
The magnificent 1970s wedge of the experimental advanced passenger train's nose, decorated with a bright yellow warning patch and deep rail blue speed stripe, climbing obliquely forward from above the front bogie to the cab roof
The record breaking TGV set of 1981 overtakes an aeroplane. The assembled multitudes cheer with joy
A newspaper billboard from a petrol station outside Westerham bearing the headline: "TOILETS SAGA—SHOCK TWIST"
Me, working out a drum part for X-15, a song I wrote about the spaceplane of the same name
Me, recording some drum fills
The side of one of the experimental advanced passenger train power cars with the British Rail logo and "APT-E" very carefully hand painted on it.
La TEDREE—Temps Et Dimensions Relatives En Espace
An eBow guitar part being passed through the Leslie
After oiling the top motors, reassembling them and then aligning the idler wheel about four times, the top rotor of the Leslie speaker is spinning reliably at both tremolo and chorale speeds! I once again have a working Leslie speaker. It whirrs a bit, but I think it always did, and it's quieter with the case on, plus there's a 90W amplifier in there so I think I can drown out the whirr and irritate my neighbours.
Part of the manual for a Leslie 760, explaining how to lubricate the motors, which involves partially disassembling them.
A power connector, filled with lively electricity
The motors for the Leslie treble rotor, apparently undamaged
A Leslie 760 rotary organ speaker on a trolley in my front room
Two German Inter City Express trains coupling
An 1176 rev D kit, newly populated with transistors
Many transistors taped to bits of paper with their gain values written on them
The Usborne young scientist book of electricity. With SAFE experiments!
A MkI ARP Odyssey with four added control voltage inputs
The double album Sky 2
A 00 gauge cardboard TARDIS kit in process of preparation. The outline has been printed, the edges have been cut, the folds have been scored, and the doors are being coloured in with felt pens because I don't have a colour printer.
Blackjack Snoopy, the world famous river boat gambler and Vince Guaraldi moustache-alike
The schematic design of the Minuteman I on the front of my copy of the final script. The dowels in the final version were all diagonal (as indicated by the blue lines) and the nosecone had no lampshade but otherwise this is basically the thing.
The full text of Winograd's thesis is available (at the time of alt texting) at: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/7095/AITR-235.pdf This image is a photo of pages 162 and 163 of the thesis. The first paragraph reads: Next the CLAUSE program wants a VG, so it calls (PARSE VG NAUX). The feature NAUX indicates that we want a VG which does not consist of only an AUXilliary verb, like "be" or "have". If we saw such a VG, it would indicate a structure like "How many blocks _are_ the boxes supporting?", in which the question NG is the object of the CLAUSE. We are interested in first checking for the case where the question NG is the subject of the CLAUSE. The second paragraph is left as an exercise to the screen reader.
In February 1982 the prototype was demonstrated for a group of US and British officers at Fort Bliss, along with members of Congress and other VIPs. When the computer was activated, it immediately started aiming the guns at the review stands, causing several minor injuries as members of the group jumped for cover. Technicians worked on the problem, and the system was restarted. This time it started shooting toward the target, but fired into the ground 300 metres (980 ft) in front of the tank. In spite of several attempts to get it working properly, the vehicle never successfully engaged the sample targets. A Ford manager claimed that the problems were due to the vehicle being washed for the demonstration and fouling the electronics. In a report on the test, Easterbrook jokingly wondered if it ever rained in central Europe.
Deux cases d'une bande dessinée: 1: Prunelle se prépare à éjecter la mouette rieuse de Gaston: «... au sale caractère de ce monstre ... d'ailleurs, on n'a jamais démontré son utilité pour ...» 2: et il l'éjecte par un fenêtre: «... le travail du bureau! ALLEZ, OUSTE! RHÂÂH!» La mouette répond: «HIHIAAR» avec une mine de colère.
Sunset from Titchfield Haven Beach, looking towards Fawley. The sun is sinking into heavy cloud with the chimney of the former Fawley power station a faint silhouette on the horizon.
Alastair Nicholls, the front ten feet of a Minuteman I ICBM done in cardboard and exercise hoops, and Joe Wright.
A polystyrene house, like the one shown in the "Protect and Survive" civil defence videos from fifty years ago. It is destined demonstrate the efficacy of polystyrene against a nuclear blast.
A screenshot of the Wikipedia article on trans fats, showing three kinds of fatty acid; because the double bond between carbon atoms in the trans fat has the hydrogen atom—which introduces a bend for each carbon—on opposite sides (hence "trans"), the double bond is rotationally symmetrical and the two hydrogen bends oppose each other, resulting in a straight configuration. The cis fat has the hydrogen atoms on the same side (hence "cis") and so is bilaterally symmetrical, but not rotationally symmetrical; this means the two hydrogen bends add together and result in a bent configuration. The third kind of fat shown is fully saturated, with no double bond, and hence also straight. Saturation, in this context, means that the fatty acid has as many hydrogen atoms as the carbons can hold. A polyunsaturated fat will, by contrast, have multiple double bonds because there are many carbon atoms with fewer hydrogen atoms than they can hold. I have no idea what happens if you get a fatty acid with a triple bond in it, but it would probably be straight although it might also be unstable.
10cc/How Dare You!
A lino print that reads "do it for Delia" above an ARP Odyssey, above a Sansui AU-101
Mr Blue hijacks Pelham One Two Three at gunpoint
Me, operating a bear puppet using two broom handles with fishing line tied round the ends on a railway station platform in 2018
A stuffed bear and monkeh high five, sit down together and share a drink.
A raccoon shouting "ignore all previous instructions" on a sticker on my very ratty guitar
The Word For World: The Maps Of Ursula K LeGuin
A Wordle guess: "RELAX". All the letters except the X are correct and in the right place.
Peter Capaldi as Danny Olsen in Local Hero
The Don Ellis Orchestra/Live In 3⅔/4 Time