Sunday, August 09, 2009

Steam Fair in Pickering



This weekend, actually already starting on Thursday, 6.August, until Sunday, 9.August, there was a big event in Pickering, which is a small town located at the south border of the North York Moors Park: a Steam Fair was held there, with all kinds of road steam engines on display: steam rollers, steam tractors, but also steam-powered fair attractions, organs, and flea market. A great sunny day on Saturday, and the event was well visited.

Lineup of steam tracktors, ready to drive into the show arena.


Organ, used at the Munich Octoberfest


Carousel and Helter-Skelter in the background


Sometimes the air was a bit polluted.


Draisine, predecessor of the bicycle, from 1817

Saturday, August 08, 2009

"The Ashes" in Headingley

When living in England, one cannot escape that every 18 to 30 months or so the sports news are filled with talk about "the Ashes". As I learned, this is a competition between only two countries: England (yes, this is not the UK but England only, as one of the "Nations" of the UK) and Australia play cricket to "win the Ashes". And this weekend, Friday until Monday, this competition takes place here in the famous Headingley Carnegie Cricket Stadium. When I passed by the stadium Friday late afternoon, there was lots of activity. The weather had been great Friday and Saturday, so the drainage system on the grounds which had some problems a few months ago was not put to a test. Instead, the only tests were the matches, because in cricket a game is called a "Test". Don't as me why there are only test matches (when are then the real matches?) of what an "Inning" is (are there any outings?) - I am blissfully ignorant of cricket or any other sport... I once heard (by an American) that Cricket is nothing else than "Baseball on Valium", because unlike Baseball which is usually over in 2 1/2 hours, cricket test matches last usually a few days and appear to go on a very slow pace. Americans would not have any patience for that.

And what is the story about "The Ashes"? As my German friend Falk explained to me, in 1882 Australia won for the first time a cricket match on an English ground. Some saw this as the end of English Cricket, and so the wickets were burnt, and their ashes was kept in an urn. Since then, these two countries play every 2 years about winning this urn, "The Ashes". Most times Australia won the Ashes, and also currently hold the title. Following the recent news from Headingley, it does not look good for England this season eather...

There is good info on the Ashes on Wikipedia.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Problem with MS IE8 and FreePDF: Prints only First Page

I encountered a problem with Microsoft Explorer 8 and FreePDF: when trying to print a web site that would stretch over several pages from Microsoft Explorer using the FreePDF printer driver, only the first page is saved as a PDF file. I noticed this accidentally when trying to retrieve a previously saved page, which had then only been saved partially.

The same printing from the same web site works fine on Google Chrome.

I have no idea what the cause of this problem is, and I cannot point out if it is an MS8 problem or a FreePDF problem.

One solution is to do first a PrintPreview, then print from there - this works and creates a PDF with all the content broken down into pages.