Linn Barringer

Cars are being developed to run on compressed air instead of petrol/gasoline.

In February 2007 Tata Motors signed an agreement with MDI (Moteur Developpment International). Early in June 2008 Tata announced that they were developing a car for 2008 production that will run on compressed air. It doesn’t sound like it could work, does it?

MDI has developed two types of piston engine powered by the expansion of compressed air: one runs on compressed air alone, the other uses liquid fuel to supplement the compressed air. Under 50kph (31mph) it uses air only. Over that speed the on-board compressor refills the compressed air tanks.

The existing MiniCat vehicle has a horizontally-opposed 800cc four cylinder engine.

The above details were extracted from various on-line sources, mainly:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/02/tata_motors_sig.html

To find out more, put   tata air car   into Google and you will find many reports and articles on this interesting subject.

Yesterday I added two new properties to my JustSuffolk.com website, bringing the total of individual properties to ONE HUNDRED.

Number 100 was The Old Postmill, Thorndon, pictured on the left. Click on the image for more details.

I have to thank Penny Moon for the initial suggestion and encouragement that led to me build the JustSuffolk website. It was Penny who thought that I could do “something different than the big accommodation sites.” The strategy that came from that idea was the “single county, targetted, accommodation website.” The first website to follow that plan was JustSuffolk.com, which benefits greatly from the popularity of WoodbridgeSuffolk.info. Both sites do well in Google searches.

JustSuffolk.com has subsequently been joined by other Just… websites, including the recently launched but not quite fnished JustEnglishCottages.com. As the name suggests, this is not a single-county site. Because it is a national website (like “the enemy”) with a much wider spread, I devised a different USP; brevity - I exclude marketing waffle. I have pruned the verbiage down so that busy accommodation hunters can find a suitable property much more easily.

For example, instead of describing a cottage as “ideally situated in the heart of [village] among the beautiful rolling hills, dales, and rivers of the world-famous Yorkshire Dales, ” I have described it simply as “in [village]” - the rest of the words frequently found in accommodation websites (including my own) are over-blown marketing waffle - yes, it might make it sound more attractive but I believe it can detract from actually finding the facts about a cottage, campt site, hotel or B&B. All such flowery rhetoric is similarly pared down.

During the research to add the ’seed’ properties, I was struck how often the terms “ideally situated” and “in the heart of” appeared in so many websites. So many that it did not add to the website experience at all - it just became tedious. We’ll see how well that goes down with the property-seeking audience.

There are plenty of deer in Suffolk and in June, there are stags of another kind.

While starting out on a walk from him, we came across this poor thing, covered in dust and with a damaged front left leg. It wasn’t the biggest stag beetle we’ve seen in this area but, sadly, the great majority have either apparently been squashed in the road by cars or on the pavement by humans. This one was a good 2″ (50mm) long, and was still alive.

If you see a stag beetle, please help the study into these creatures’ numbers, habitat, behaviour, etc. by submitting a report to this website.

Belated news - the Woodbridge Regatta has returned.

There wasn’t a Woodbridge regatta in 2007 and the one in 2006 was preceded by miserable weather but the day itself, in August 2006 was lovely and warm, brining out the crowds.

The 2008 Woodbridge Regatta was held on 8th June. And again, the organisers must have been wondering if they’d picked a wrong date as again, most of the week preceding the regatta was rainy and miserable. Even Saturday the 7th was pretty grim but “they” (the weather men) had forecast fine weather for Sunday. And they were right. It was a gloriously warm, even hot day, bringing was seemed to be the biggest crowds I’d ever seen on Tidemill Quay, Ferry Quay and along the river walk to the Yacht Club.

Several more photos on WoodbridgeSuffolk.info

I have recently been trying to take a photograph of an adder, because two friends have had such good results.

One has taken several with a camera phone. Another has taken a striking photo with a proper camera. This morning’s early walk in the woods was another of my adder-hunting escapades. We didn’t see any adders but had a pretty good view (but not such a good photograph) of a Reeves’s Muntjac deer. Muntjacs are lone and very shy creatures but are quite common in the woods and forests of Suffolk.

However, the “safari” was not in vain. After only a couple of minutes walking, I spotted a fox lying in a sunny spot in the undergrowth. My lack of experience with my Nikon had me fumbling with focus, and exposure pre-set type, and taking the lens cap off (again!). He was looking right at us, because we were “in the sun” from his viewpoint, but I just managed to get a reasonable photograph before he stood up and walked away.

The result is not as sharp as it might look in this reduced image - this is a small crop out of a 3872×2092 pixel image - but I was quite pleased with it, as my first ever fox photo.

My wife and I went for a relatively early walk this morning, to see if the bluebells that were so abundant and richly coloured a couple of weeks ago, were still there.

The bluebells were mostly “going over” but the early sun through the now thickening spring green beech trees bathed everything in a light that was as green as green can be. The photo has had nothing done to it except re-sizing.