The TMS Annual Meeting

Sue asked me to write something for the blog about the TMS conference (the reason we went to Seattle). I suggested this was an extremely boring topic. SWMBO suggests that a good writer can make anything interesting. Here is my attempt at making TMS interesting.

The TMS (The Materials Society) annual meeting involves more than 4000 academics, ducks(family anatidea) and industry technologists converging on some unsuspecting US city for four days of exhibitions, presentations of latest research, sitting in ponds etc. Much of the talk is about metals including sessions on magnesium and aluminium (the most exciting of metals) the rest is about mallards(Anas platyrhynchos). For my own part, I was guilty of organising the cast shop aluminium sessions (extremely interesting session involving the Rolling Stones presenting on “I can’t get no qwack free DC casting”). The exalted title of “Subject Chair” gives me a mandate to cajole and threaten people into preparing papers and others into chairing the sessions (I used my last favours with Mad Pete Trullo). It also means I get to go to the author’s coffee session where session chairs meet the speakers and we eat exciting bagels and Peking duck for breakfast.

Being a cagey old veteran of these campaigns, I persuaded my young collaborators into the front line to present work I have been involved in. That way I get some of the glory if they go well but can slink back to the bunker if they are shot down in flames. This year Mark Turski (who presented on our work on applying math modelling to control cracks in difficult to cast magnesium rolling slab) and Vu Nguyen (presenting on ingot casting filling system design), both made interesting and fun presentations I was proud to be associated with.

Some of the best fun to be had at TMS is in the corridors between sessions catching up with old friends and dodging the duck poo. The exhibition has displays of latest equipment, eiderdown and technology services. Inexplicably, there was a Lamborghini on display.

Some other highlights: the opening plenary session included a talk by Mark ver Brugge from GM about how and where aluminium and duck down are being used in cars to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency. Kelly Driscol from CRU gave an interesting analysis of future power sources, duck migration and prices for aluminium production. Like all economic forecasters’ statements it comes down to “what happens depends on what happens” e.g. the price of aluminium will go up if the Chinese price of coal goes up, Middle East natural gas is offered to smelters at market price not cost price and if duck egg price goes down.

Another highlight for me was a talk on using solar energy to produce metals and there was lots of other useful stuff like calculations of the air speed velocity of a coconut laden drake, reducing furnace energy consumption and improving safety in the cast house for operators and ducks alike.

I came away thinking positive i.e. the metals industry is trying to lift its game and reduce energy consumption and help save the environment from global warming so that more ducks can enjoy our planet.

This post was sponsored by Drake International.

Damn you Jeremy Clarkson!@&^&^&^&^%#&@!!!

I managed to get through the first fortysomething years of my life blissfully unaware of and uncaring about cars. My automotive expertise was limited to a rag bag of eclectic trivia:

1. To stop a Valiant Charger fishtailing, my schoolfriend's brother would load a sack of Briquettes in the boot 
2. The Blues Brothers film includes a couple of good car chases
3. Ralph Sarich's Orbital Engine was always going to annoy the oil industry
4. Rod Stewart had a fondness for leary Italian sportscars - I knew they were Maserati because he mentioned them in the lyrics of Italian Girls on "Never a Dull Moment"
5. My mother would only ever be pulled over for speeding when the vicar was in the car with us

I had always thought of cars as a way of getting from A to B. End of story. Or so I thought. And then I discovered Top Gear.At first the effects were subtle;

• I realised that the interior of our Subaru Forester was a bit too plastic
• I discovered that the exciting car chase in Ronin included a maneuver called a four wheel drift (often considered to be the best ever filmed)
• I began to notice vast numbers of silver Mercedes in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne
• I started looking up prices on the Audi website
• Then I found I was starting to memorize model numbers of numbers of BMW's!!!!!

 

So it was really no surprise to me that I took some interest in the types of auto on the road in the US. Again, it began with curiosities; I was interested to see that Coca Cola has a fleet of hybrid electric delivery trucks. 

And I had a Sesame Street moment when I saw my first American School Bus in real life (outside the Seattle Art Gallery).

In general though, most American cars seemed pretty dull; all those Chevy sedans, Pontiacs and the occassional lumbering Lincoln Continental.

That was until we got to Arizona, Four Corners territory, the Navajo Nation, domain of the pickup truck. Everywhere you looked, pickup trucks, massive GMC's, huge Chevvys and most gigantic and popular of them all, the DODGE RAM! The name deserves capitalisation, somehow everytime I saw one (and to John's consternation), I felt compelled to shout the name out loud. We were driving a Chevvy Equinox SUV, which was a vast, heavy tank of a thing compared to Australian 4x4's; but seeing the chrome ramshead logo of a DODGE RAM! in the rear view mirror as it roared down on you was a fearsome sight indeed. 

Now the average Navajo is not wealthy, in fact the Navajo Nation is a region of quite obvious poverty. But the amazing thing about these herds of pickups was that they were mostly bright, new models, rather than the rust buckets you would expect in poorer suburbs at home. Driving through the Four Corners country you could also see that most families had more than one pickup often as well as other cars - in one case I counted 27 parked up around the same property(admittedly they were in various states of decay).

But how can this be? How are these shiny new titans acquired? And the answer may go a long way to explaining why car companies in the US are going to the wall. Dodge are offering buyers of the new DODGE RAM models the most amazing terms; No deposit, O% interest for 5 years, no payments for 2 years, plus $2,000 cash in hand to the purchaser. GMC have a similar deal, although they are offering $4,000 cash back! Of course, once you have one of these mighty beasts in your clutches, you need to feed it huge quantities of gas - depending on the model the DODGE RAM promises 12-19mpg, and that on good roads. Roads on the Reservation can rarely be said to be good, more likely quagmires of muddy red ochre in winter and sandpits in summer. Still, the memory of tiny, tiny Navajo women peering through the steering wheels of their pickup trucks in Window Rock and Kayenta was truly memorable.

So here is my Pickup Truck Parade of the South West, the top ten tonners on the road. (Interestingly, I noticed that if you leave Land Rovers out, the order of the list reverses as you drive closer to Pheonix and suburbia.)

South West Pickup Parade (4x4) 

1. Dodge Ram (Gigantic!!!)
2. GMC (Monsterous!!)
3. Chevy (Just huge!)
4. Ford (For pussies)
5. Jeep (For tour guides only)
6. Subaru(Dwarfed by everything else)
7. SUV's (Tourist hire cars)
8. Land Rover (Rare)
9. Town cars (Extremely rare)

====================

10. Toyota (on recall, the pickup that dare not speak its name...) 

Damn, you Jeremy Clarkson!

Edited to add: Sorry folks, I still don't get it about F1!
AND I still love my little Honda Jazz

QF Prog Rock

I have always been an indifferent aeronaut. I put this down to the fact that my father was an aeronautical engineer working for Vickers Armstrong (later the British Aircraft Corporation). Our dinner time conversations were often about dramatic air disasters or spectacular test flights he had taken part in, most often in an aeroplane know as "The Vomit Comet".Dad's somewhat absent minded flying style as a glider pilot didn't help either. When I was a child, being a passenger was an exciting roller coaster ride, with vivid, added comentary about pilots who had frozen to death or passed out from flying too high. As an adult, I am armed with a little too much information that I would rather not have.

Two nights ago I was once again sitting in a 747, 38,000ft above the Pacific Ocean, trying to keep calm. Yes, I know all the statistics, flying is safer than driving a car or crossing the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was doing pretty well too, floating along on a mixture of complementary scotch, champagne and a couple of Valium. Feeling smug about it too, as heavy weather in the Pacific meant that much of the flight had been moderately turbulent.(John denies this, but cannot be relied upon as he slept for the first nine hours of the flight.) But then around 4am, the Captain switched on the seatbelt sign and announced that we were going to go through some pretty "signifcant" turbulence. In aeronautical terms this means bumpy as hell. John (who had actually woken up at this point), claims it only rated 7/10 in his experience of turbulence, but even he stayed awake wearing a facial expression like an owl that was being given an enema. He claims this was because of the film he was watching (and incidentally one that he recommends): District Nine.

In flight entertainment was denied to me, as my seat, screen, handset and noise reduction headphones were all, to put it politely, completely cactus. What to do? Only one course of action, drag out the walkman and queue the prog rock; Jethro Tull, Supertramp and best of all, Quadrophenia by The Who.

The Who (or what's left them) were harshly criticised for their recent Superbowl performance. But Quadrophenia is a sublimely manic piece, recorded in 1973 when they were at the top of their form. And so here I was, bashing through the sky at 600mph accompanied by Roger Daltry's huge voice, John Entwistle's superfast bass, Pete Townshend's mad vision and best of all, the extreme,insane,drumming of Keith Moon. As a soundtrack to 1 hour and 16 minutes of inflight turbulence(yes, I timed it), nothing better - or to quote Pete Townshend; Getting high, you can't beat it...

My name is Sue and I hate flying

Highlights of Arizona

Due to patchy access to wireless and the fact that we are having such a good time, you may have noiticed little blogging has taken place lately. We are slumming it in the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco at the moment soon to leave for the airport. Full service will resume when we get home and have unpacked. However, in the meantime here are a few titbits to keep everyone interested.




Flagstaff after a winter of 8 ft of snow











Grand Canyon Snowed out on first visit but glorious sun on 2nd go






























Monument Valley

 


























Ancient Annasazi Indian ruins and pictographs and Canyon de Chelly































Plus.................Elevator cam videos by Sue.


Incidentally, thanks Brian for the comment. Yes there does seem to be a bit of a food theme to the blog entries. Just wait for our comments on American serving sizes...........