Category: Facebook

Coryton’s Future?

I did quite a few jobs at The Coryton Refinery over the years in the Mobil, then briefly BP, days before it was sold to Petroplus. Interesting that it is the Swiss parent company that is actually going bust – wonder where the losses actually are? And I wonder what their ownership is  – oil majors, or more general investors? (They also own one of the Teeside oil depots.)

Would there be any value in BP buying the concern back – I don’t believe they actually own and operate any UK refineries directly these days since Grangemouth was also sold to Ineos. Are old refineries just not viable in Europe/UK? What were Petroplus expectations when they originally bought Coryton, not really all that long ago?

(Pretty sure shortages is a non-issue other than distribution logistics adjustment.)

Designers Who Code

Interesting Garry Tan piece.

Reminds me of a conversation years ago – and several since. A colleague reporting to myself and another manager simultaneously found herself conflicted. As an engineer whose job had nothing directly to do with producing software products, she announced she was doing a course on coding (some variant of C, back in the day). Not asking specifically for funding or time off, just a bit of leeway and acknowledgement for her initiative. We needed tools and, whilst she / we never envisaged she’d be producing the tools we needed, she’d be better placed to understand the process of getting them delivered against our needs. I was game, but the other manager told her that coding was skill she didn’t need and more or less (publicly) instructed her to drop the course.

Regretted several times myself not learning coding, beyond noddy script-editing stuff. Increasing understanding of processes you need to manage is obviously part of it, but often we’ve concluded that producing a working prototype of what was needed, is much more effective than writing a comprehensive specification between engineer and developer, at either the individual or inter-organizational level. (If software is your business, interactive, iterative prototyping “agile” methods have been the rage for some time, but those for whom software is “merely” an enabler of core business could learn a thing or two.)

(The counter argument, really just a call for balance, is not to have the hobbyist hacker “secondary” developer get too far into the product process before you have an unsustainable, unmanageable, mill-stone of a product on your hands.)

The Wrong Boson

Interesting, after all the press buzz last week about possible hints and indications that might suggest the speculative Higgs Boson (all designed to sell Cox’s book in time for Christmas no doubt), that this week the paper published indicates a new “Chi_b(3P)” boson, whatever that is.

What is really interesting, given yesterday’s post about the workings of science, is the paper itself appears as a 17 page PDF, 13-1/2 of which are the acknowledgements and references to the LHC Atlas team 2590 individuals (excluding deceased!) and 212 institutions by name. What is the point?

Boeing vs Airbus

Interesting having posted twice about the Air France A330 disaster (including just yesterday) to see this Slashdot story (via Johan on Facebook) about a Quantas A330 problem around the same time, 3 years ago. The comment thread is interesting, kinda reinforces my comment of yesterday:

A. … the number of [computer bug] accidents will likely still be fewer than those caused by human drivers.

B. Which is actually [why] Airbus relies on sensor input over the “pilot”. Boeing believes in the opposite. I’m inclined to believe Airbus in that the majority of accidents are human error over computer error.

C. The problem with aviation accidents is the relatively small sample size. With cars [in the Google auto-driving story] there will be much more data points.

I guessed B’s point yesterday, though I have no specific knowledge. The point is really this, fly-by-wire or not, pilots and the automation technology together form one complex “system” – the behaviour of one affects the other. The people and the software are both subject to (imperfect) testing and validation. Even with fly-by-wire, the total system (including pilot behaviour and psychology) can be designed with greater total inherent safety – fewer failure modes that lead to loss of control.

I’m a big fan of Airbus, but these are, as I said, scary problems.

Inbred to Destruction ?

Interesting. I remember thinking when I saw John Gosden explaining reassuringly “freakish, but it happens (painlessly?) all the time” as he tended to Rewilding, being put-down at Ascot in July, that race horses must have fragile cannon-bones. In fact not being interested in horses I had to look up cannon-bones on-line at the time. (Only interested because son-of-a-friend William Buick won the particular race on Gosden-trained Nathaniel.)

No-one wants to be watching the Derby, Kentucky Derby or Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 2018 and to see another horse fall, broken under its own weight and heritage.

To avoid such problems in thoroughbreds, and to maintain the genetic health of these most athletic of animals … the thoroughbred industry should periodically, every 5-10 years, re-check to see what the levels of inbreeding are.