Twice today I have been thwarted by a lack of pound coins

Every so often I am in either Lewisham or Woolwich and go past one of those veg / fruit markets where everything is being sold from the exact same plastic or metal bowls. I've rarely bought from them as they seem to take cash (things are often £1 for a bowl), I generally want a much smaller amount of whatever item it is they're selling and so pick them up from the local greengrocers or the supermarket.

Today though, I wanted to get lots of red bell peppers from the market - they were selling a box of 16 for a fiver at Lewisham - so that I could roast them.

The bank (HSBC) doesn't deal with coins it turns out. In fact I kind of knew this as when I last tried to drop of some bags of pennies and so on they said I needed to go to a post office. So without cash I didn't buy my market peppers bonanza. 

Then I went to Ikea to pick up some of their delicious frozen Grönsakskaka vegetable medallions (potato, broccoli, cheese, onion, cream) and a bag of their sweet liquorice. Sadly they didn't have any of the sweet, only salted (I'm sure it's delicious) and I was about to leave when I spotted a vending machine that had some in. 

It only takes coins though!! 

Staff are very helpful in Ikea and quite a lot of effort was applied by five of them (thank you) in getting the vending machine opened and two bags of liquorice released which I then had to pay for at the self-service till. 

Unfortunately the products have actually been discontinued (wail!) so no amount of barcode scanning worked and I had to pretend to buy the salty ones to let it go through. 

It's a while since I've come across a vending machine that only takes coins though.

Congratulations to the "Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund" projects which will inspire young people into aviation careers

For the last few years the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Department for Transport (DfT) have run a competition for organisations to bid for money to support aviation outreach programmes for young people. 

The "Reach for the Sky" challenge fund wants to widen the future pool of people aspiring to work in aviation as the sector expands, involving big technological changes while aiming for greater sustainability.

As a huge fan of aircraft I'm rather keen on this sort of thing. I and a colleague did apply - we wanted to showcase "ComputAviation" careers (yes I made up that word) through our CS4FN* magazine and blog for schools. There's a huge overlap between computer science skills and all things aviation and we wanted to write about them all. Alas we weren't successful, we might try again next year. And we'll probably write about them anyway^ :) 

Happily at least two of the funded projects do relate to computer science (in bold below) so I'll be able to write about them on the work blog in 2026, so I'm looking forward to that. 

The projects named as being funded in 2025 are (press release 12 Dec 2025)

• Aerobility
• Air League 
• Bright Futures
• Codes4Drones 
• East London Advanced Technology Training (ELATT)
  
• Fantasy Wings 
• Get with the program
• Mason Foundation
  
• Tech, Engineering, Creative (TEC) Women

2024 funded projects were

• 4Ward Futures
• Aerobility
• ARPAS UK
• Based in Space
• Children’s Radio UK
• Codes4Drones
• Education and Employers Taskforce
• ELATT
• Get With the Program Ltd
• Kings Academy Lord Wilson
• London Luton Airport Operations ltd
• London Met university
• Manchester Airport Groups
• SaxonAir Charter
• TEC Women CIC
• The Kings Trust
• Youth and Community Connexions
• University of Sussex
  

2023 funded projects were

• Big Ideas Community Interest Group
• Cambridge Science Centre
• Education and Employers Taskforce
  
• Flight Crowd
• Harlow College
• Leicester Education and Business Company
• London City Airport
• The Air League
• TEC Women CIC
• University of Leeds

*CS4FN - Computer Science For Fun, a public engagement project from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London. We have a blog and a free computing magazine for schools; here are some of the aviation-related articles we've written. We also have a 'jobs in computing' site too with a section on jobs in aviation and computing.  

^Ideas for articles include: Ada programming language in avionics and Air Traffic Control, core rope memory in space flight, fly-by-wire avionics, software bugs, digital twins, FlightRadar, GPS, navigation, head-up displays (Pepper’s ghost), flight information boards, ticketing and booking (cookies), air traffic control, on-board wifi, entertainment systems (TVs etc) - and this being hacked, AI decision-making, engine testing, 3D printing, CAD design, biometric passports (Canadian story, Reclaim your name and non-standard letters), ATC (and some aircraft) still have software updates via floppy disks, radar, secure communications, radio (communication protocols), fuel efficiency, moving to battery operated flights, green / sustainability, weather modelling (turbulence), drones and safety, flight simulator software, cyber security, solar flares. Ground-collision avoidance, early use of calculation machines in WW2 aircraft. Computational aeroacoustics at QMUL. Abraham Wald and the ‘red dots’, safety features, checklists, expansion of aviation safety into other fields, semiotics (safety information) and signage at airports (also an example of abstraction), airport semaphore comms by ramp agents. Aviation influencers on TikTok (computing as a sharing medium).

 

 

 

A couple of things I do when I apply for grants

1. Take the URL / link / address of the page the call is published on and stick it into Twitter etc to see what people are saying about the call and who is doing the saying. 

When applying for a grant a few years ago this helped me discover an interview with two of the people involved in the grant we were applying for. They were being asked what they were looking for and promoting the scheme. This interview was incredibly helpful but was not particularly flagged up anywhere and I pretty much found it by accident. 

Often, but not always, the first people to share the link will be involved in the project or organisation in some way so may have useful things to say about it.

2. See who has been funded previously and the type of project they did. I might search for the name of the grant on Twitter etc and add in words like "delighted" or "announce" etc.

Clicking on the link in their post or the website link on their profile can give me more info about that project but searching on Google can also put that information in context. This strategy recently pointed me towards an evaluation of a previous instance of the grant (because the organisation was listed in the evaluation), which also pointed me to more funded project examples and more info about what the funders had been looking for. 

Commentary
I think of this background research also as 'chaining' or 'triangulation' - using one bit of information to find another, then using that to search for other stuff and so on. Possibly everyone is already doing this and so I'm not doing anything unusual, but I've not seen it explicitly mentioned (or failed to notice because I'm newer to grant applications*) so thought I'd write it down here in case it's useful.

Background
Although I've worked in academia since 2010 it's only more recently that I've been involved in applying for grants. I've previously applied (successfully) for local small grants up to £10k and been on a few decision-making grant panels at that sort of level of funding.

More recently I've helped on some larger grants and am currently waiting to hear the outcome of one and planning an application for another mid-range grant when it opens again next year.

I've just noticed the 'teal and orange'-ness of some AI images & realised films might be to 'blame' (training data)

I googled to find something about the highest helicopter flown and read this article ('How high can helicopters fly?') which includes an image that I'm certain is AI generated (Ctrl+F as explained to jump straight to it)*. It's very "teal and orange" and I was suddenly struck by how many other AI images I'd subliminally noticed that also have this colour arrangement, though I'd not really elevated the notion to conscious thought until now.

Back in 2010 my friend @jjsanderson shared on Twitter an article called 'Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness' (March 2010) which explained the reasoning behind and overuse of these colour tones in film. It introduces an interesting artificiality to film which is visually arresting, but sometimes a bit too much.

Briefly: human skin tones are in the orange spectrum (pink to brown) and colour theory puts blue as the 'opposite' so enhancing orange and blue tones brings out skin tones and shadows in contrast. 

Squares of teal (left) and orange (right)

Wondered if others had noticed this appearing in AI images - yes. A year ago ;)

This color scheme shouts that your image was AI-generated
(April 2024 or March 2024 - date given as 03/04/2024)
This specifically references film as possible training data and also suggests, for those who wish to generate their own AI slop on Midjourney etc, some ways of getting round the 'teal/orange bias in AI generated images'. (It also pointed me to a TV Tropes article, Orange/Blue Contrast (date not given), which gives further examples of teal/orange use in film and television).

Here's a Reddit post asking the same question: Anyone else notice that some AI images look sort of yellow? (April 2025)

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

*Ctrl+F is a keyboard shortcut for Edit / Find on a computer. On a Mac it's Command F (press and hold the ⌘ then tap the F key).

Setting myself the challenge of seeing a Piaggio Avanti (P-180) landing at City Airport or Biggin Hill

I have recently discovered that I can access FlightRadar's Filters simply by creating an account. 

This lets me do things like display only one particular type of aircraft so I can see exactly how many Airbus A380s are currently 'in play' (in flight, recently landed or about to set off) as long as they have their transponders (transmitters, and receivers) on. 

A380s are long-range aircraft so in the air for several hours. If I want to see one landing at Heathrow (LHR) I can either hover over likely candidates on FlightRadar's map and see where they're headed or tweak the filter to show only those landing at (or taking off) from LHR. If I wanted to visit Heathrow for a spot of plane spotting I'd easily be able to arrange timings so that I'm in the right place to see one coming in.

The Piaggio Avanti is a different and tricker beast to capture. As far as I can tell it's not involved in any regularly scheduled flights to or from London as they're all private aircraft. There will be some private individuals / owners being whisked (or whisking themselves) from some luxurious starting point to London, also some chartered flights where some people have booked City X to London and there are spare seats are available (for some eyewatering sums of money*, which is generally why I'm not on board as well).

The journeys are much shorter (also much louder) so I think to complete this quest I'd need to do take account of a few things, and I think luck will play a big part.

Biggin Hill: It takes me about 2 hours to get to Biggin Hill (a 90 minute bus journey but also have to be ready to leave the house and hopefully not have too long to wait for buses). Since many P-180 journeys are about this duration if one's due to land at Biggin I'd have to be on the move soon after it takes off (obviously it's better for me if it's coming from further away).

It also depends on the direction it's landing in as if it's coming in from the 'difficult to get to by public transport' part of the runway that's a non-starter (though I'd be able to check this before setting off, assuming the wind direction doesn't change while I'm en route).

City Airport: Despite living quite close to City Airport as the crow, or aircraft, flies, it's a bit fiddly to get to by public transport so I'd probably allow an hour or so. I'd take different journeys to get to different positions depending on which runway direction is in use. A P-180 coming over Connaught Bridge to land would be lovely.

So it looks like I probably need to check FlightRadar24 every half an hour every day to be reasonably certain of seeing one land! Alas... I am dipping in and out though. Just in case a likely candidate appears.

Current P-180 journeys at time of writing.

XGO2VE
Dortmund DTM departed 13:49, arriving at 14:20 at Braunschweig BWE (D-IINO)

OYO3
Pamplona PNA due to depart at 14:30, due to arrive at 16:09 at Paris LBG (F-HSIT)

OYO5A
Lyon LYN departed 14:09 local time, arriving 14:27 at Valence VAF (F-HXPG)

T7CHMG
Plovdiv PDV departed 15:10 local time, arriving Tbilisi (TBS) at 18:10 (T7-CHMG)

CGRTG
Detroit YIP departed 07:57 and no info about destination or journey time (C-GRTG)

N224JD
Chicago PWK 06:34 arriving at Nashville QQN at 07:51 (N224JD)

N413TB
St Louis SUS 06:12 arriving Tampa TPA at 09:28 (N413TB)

Nary a one coming to London though

*Some prices have come down, when I first looked into it a flight was about £12k and some I've seen recently have been £6k. But still... it does seem like it would be a bit of an expensive indulgence!

- - - - - - - 

Edit: 16 October 2025
Bother. I just happened to look at FlightRadar24 at the exact moment D-IINO was getting ready to leave Biggin Hill (BQH) for Dusseldorf Monchengladbach (MGL) - flight XGO2LN. Even more frustrating it had landed there from Nice (1hr 56m journey, flight XGO2KB) at 12:26. If I'd looked at FlightRadar24 at a little after 10.30 in the morning (11.30am in Nice) I'd have seen it getting ready to take off there and head to Biggin. It would have been a bit tight but I could have got there in time. 

Alas though I would only have seen the aircraft as it taxied up the runway towards me after landing as it landed from the 'wrong' direction*. It also took off to Dusseldorf pointing in the 'wrong' direction too, so at no point would the aircraft have flown above my head. 

The quest continues ;) 

*Wrong direction
I'm standing on the main road and the runway is angled not North South but 30˚NE and 210˚SW. If the aircraft taking off is pointing at 30˚ it's taking off away from me. If it's landing facing 210˚SW then it's coming towards me, but from the far end of the runway. Both no use for me.

By the little pockets on the back of my jeans hopefully you can see that I'm facing the runway as I gaze at the imaginary Piaggio taking off away from me ;) If it was landing while on a 30˚ heading I'd be happily looking behind me as it came in to land over my head.

Schematic of Biggin Hill runway with a tiny version of me at one end of it (safely behind barriers!) hoping to catch some aircraft landing or taking off. I am facing 30˚ NE, shown by 03 on the bottom end of the runway. The top end of the runway, shown by 21 representing 210˚SW direction, is about a mile from me. So aircraft landing up there aren't visible without binoculars.

Edit: 17 October 2025
Same thing happened today but this time I was ready for it, but only slightly. I happened to check FlightRadar24 with my Piaggio filter active and spotted that one (D-IPPY) was on the move and heading to Biggin Hill. Unfortunately it was due to land in 50 minutes and it takes me at least 90 mins to get there, so no chance of seeing it land (I did watch it land on FlightRadar though and it landed on Runway 21 so wouldn't have been much to see).

Because planes were taking off on Runway 21 too (21 means the direction, 210˚) it would have flown over my head if it was departing later, so I got ready to leave (I could have been a bit quicker!) and headed out. Journey was much slower too and I only got part of the way before I checked again - two hours had already passed, and D-IPPY was moving towards the runway ready to take off again. Bother.