[AusRace] The Triffid and scoffed at and scorned by Scott

Tue Jan 9 07:51:29 AEDT 2018

Ah, the old Handicapper's Weight Charts, eh Tony.
Could never decide yea or nay with the ADE. Like you, barriers and jocks
were zeroed.

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On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Tony Moffat <tonymoffat at bigpond.com> wrote:

>
>
> 9.6 THE TRIFFID+++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Dad had a radial fan with bronze blades, one of those ones that swivelled,
> left and right, and there was no other choice, there was no way to stop it,
> it had gears to choose the swivel speed but no way to disengage them to
> leave it in one place, one direction full time. It shuddered, it made a
> crinkling noise when changing from left sweep to right sweep, and it moved,
> it waved itself around and it went right faster than it went left.
>
> I called it ‘The Triffid’ because it was tall on its pedestal, it moved
> upwards a full 2 inches when changing direction, it made this crinkling
> noise as I said, then it slumped down the previous 2 inches and moved on
> its swing of 90 degrees, maybe a little more, before it stopped, then stood
> up, then slumped down as it moved the other way. Fascinating. We didn’t
> have tv yet, can’t you tell, and we sat at the table in the dining room
> playing a boardgame or doing bookwork and ‘The Triffid’ did its thing over
> there, ‘ick’ upwards, a roar going to the other side, then an ‘ick’ upwards
> before it came back. The power cord was cloth covered and the plug was
> Bakelite. It had ten speeds, well a lot anyway, it was infinitely variable
> speedwise, you slid a lever at the back of the motor and it had to click
> three or more times before you realised it was speeding up. The variable
> speed was a selling point, because I reckon it had precious little else to
> commend it, it could’nt stop to cool you, or your soup, it just oscillated
> left then right with an ick sound at the start of each change of direction.
> Ours may have had the front mesh removed and not replaced. The blades where
> surrounded in a cage at the back and came forward where there was a circle
> with nothing in it to prevent fingers or hands or polony knobs or cucumbers
> being shoved in there, yes people did those things, one did all of them at
> least once. My friend D took the nose cone off the centre of the blade and
> drew concentric circles on this, down its width, then coloured these lines
> yellow, black and red/pink and when the fan rotates the nose cone wobbles,
> it doesn’t but it gives that impression and mesmerises you. Don’t look at
> the fan then is a common answer to peoples comment that they feel a
> flashback coming on, it was the 60’s. It got replaced with a new big
> plastic blade fan that did everything, stopped, cooled your soup,
> oscillated, was quiet. We solved the problem of what to get Dad for
> Christmas, we got him a Parker pen, Mum got a fan, and some chocolate,
> because everybody likes chocolate don’t they, Mum is not keen, but Dad and
> me like it.
>
> I took to The Triffid with the axe. You never know, you never bloody know.
>
> I had typed from a young age, like two, alright three. I remember standing
> on the chair to wind the paper in and around to get ready to type. Type was
> a loose explanation. It was more pleasant sounds in the early part, there
> were no words, nothing of consequence anyway. Really, when I could spell,
> when I knew what a word looked like, what they meant, I was skilled in
> typing. I knew that A was over here on the left, and that ON was top right
> then bottom middle, and to me it seemed automatic, those keys just fell
> into place with my two handed pecking, not fast but steady, and by 5 I was
> as quick as my Mum and by 9 I was quite an automatic typist, I had left the
> hunt and peck style behind, I thought of a sentence and as soon as the
> thought was completed, it was visible on the page. It was magic. Dads
> typewriter was an Imperial 66, a light green one and the family typewriter,
> a grey one on the table on the back veranda was also an Imperial 66, as was
> the machine at the Club, the Bowls Club and the Golf Club, the primary
> school, the high school and the Police Station, so they were popular. There
> was a supply of dozens of ribbons individually boxed and wrapped in perspex
> in his office cupboard, and we never paid for ribbon or paper or erasers or
> white out because we got his discards. There were rubbers, round ones, with
> red tape through the hole in the middle and all of that tied to the bottom
> bar so it was always handy.
>
> Dad stuck to his Parker blue pen and if you were stuck for a present buy
> him one of those, the ink user model though. They break, wear out kind of,
> the ink bladder goes awol and leaks in his pocket and the shirt ends up
> being cut up and used by me as rags to clean the mower with. But, yeah, he
> liked his Parker pens and had about 15 in a drawer in his desk, including a
> gold coated one with a gold nib. The electric typewriters came and he had
> one of those, a round ball writer, quick and deadly, it sounded efficient
> and was made to sound and react with electric quickness.
>
> His two Imperial 66 were in his garage at his retirement home later, along
> with a supply of ribbons sufficient for 10 lifetimes, with paper, and
> erasers, and Parker ink and pens, and his big jarrah desk with vinyl insert
> and inkwell. He had 1700 clients, and no computer.
>
> For 11 years I got ratings weekly, every Tuesday they arrived, priority
> post, from North Ryde post office, and that night, or by Wednesday mid
> morning, I had the Sporting Globe and the race pictures from Saturdays
> races and the sheets got stapled to that and I read and computed how they
> had arrived at the rating for most of the horses, only those out to 5
> lengths were examined so over time I had a considerable collection of data,
> occasionally I had a bet on a mid week race, it depended on shifts and
> schedules though, and occasionally the raters provided information from SA
> or QLD or WA.
>
> I had cards printed, almost A4 size and on these I did the schematics for
> each chosen race, I ignored barrier and later ignored rider changes. There
> were spaces for the jockey name, the weight, the barrier, the date of the
> run used as the base for this race, the rating. From the rating I deducted
> todays weight and generally I stopped there. My thinking was that I could
> not be that precise to zero in on the winner, instead I chose to back
> several to get me a dividend. Trifectas and quinellas then were an earner
> for me, my bank size jumped with the occasional 100% dividend from them,
> rather than a supply of steady winners which still arrived using the
> ratings.
>
> I had conversed with the rater, the provider, about correcting for weight
> carried then and now, and the barrier. He had a book with examples of
> workouts in it and in each of those, bar three, the winner was selected at
> the point I stopped at, the weight deduction from the rating. However he
> made a good and eloquent point in answering me and as he had used his
> corrections in his book he maintained his stance. There is a sample there,
> in the book, where Gala Supreme is one of three selections in The Cup, it’s
> ability score is improved by stopping at the weight deduction phase. In the
> Gala Supreme matter I also queried the use of barrier correction, in a two
> mile race. I am still not correcting for jockeys, treating them as 0,
> neither a plus or minus just a requirement. The rater maintains that a
> runner is improved by running this distance with less weight, a longer race
> with less weight. The runners score is decreased by running this distance
> with more weight, by running a longer distance with more weight. It is
> changeable what difference a lesser distance makes with more or less weight
> this race. This is the accelerating/de-acclerating effect, the ADE, that
> was scoffed at and scorned by Scott. The man who owned the ratings was very
> generous with his time and trouble in responding to my queries. These were
> always typed in the Imperial 66 typeface, as were his rating sheets
> although I was told these were composed on an early version of a composite
> program, similar to printing compositors, still in what was Imperial 66
> typeface as I said. I still have these, the ratings and the type written
> replies to my questions.
>
> On Friday nights, we had a joint child minding deal, come for bbq and
> beer, and work on tomorrows races, girls allowed and this went well for a
> few years. I did Melbourne both Handicapping and Weight Rating with another
> bloke, two others did Sydney, where there were better betting bonuses,
> together we did Brisbane and Adelaide. The group folded, it shrunk to 4 or
> so couples and was always at my place where the data was essentially but
> different needs and interests arose, kids grew. We moved and that was the
> end of it. I kept subscribing to the ratings but in a year or so found
> myself doing the workouts infrequently, and working a Saturday more often
> was a dampener, together with T ball and Rumpus, we moved again and it was
> impossible to get the ratings before Friday, priority paid or not and there
> were no form papers until mid day Saturday and none during the week. I
> cancelled after 11 years but it was still viable and remains so I believe.
> I have had a phone TAB account continually since 1978, about when they
> started I reckon. Towards the end I got a Canon programmable calculator
> with the rating program installed, you banged away at that tiny keyboard
> entering the data you wanted assessed and it went off with its 8k ram, the
> screen went blank, you tapped your pencil and it returned with an answer
> and the Basic Y/N? and in the end it collated everything and priced the
> runners to 80%, very civilised. The kids joined in, it was marked on the
> calendar whose night it was, so it was deadly serious. I went to a TRS80 ,
> perhaps more for the Pong than the ponys, again this was popular with the
> kids. It all ended when I cancelled the subscription though. This was about
> the time they became Neddybank and that was off-putting.
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> Tony
>
>
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