Beware of insects with moustaches

Water must flow for all

I have written about my obsession with showerheads before, the way I tease the rubberised nipples if it is restricted or no water flow from any of the teats, this usually due to calcification.

Blog - Quite eccentric and borderline crazy

It is not enough to stand under the shower, I look up and if just one of the teats is restricted, it needs to be sorted out. Every teat must be supplying a spray of water at its optimal capacity. In our apartment, I was met with a little extra difficulty, the teasing of the nipples did not work on two of the outlets of the innermost circle of 5.

The overhead shower which is a Hans Grohe product, the company founded in 1901 and is probably a global leader in faucets, showers, and taps with the model ‘Raindance’ of which there are many variants.

A census of the teats

After a few trials, I attempted unpicking the teats with a toothpick to no avail. Eventually, I dismantled the showerhead and found calcified deposits in the feeder assembly that I was able to unpick with a toothpick. On reassembling the showerhead, all the teats began working as intended.

Another thing that had bothered me was finding a simple mathematical formula to calculate the number of teats on a showerhead. There are diverse types, square, circular, rectangular, oblong and so on. This determines how the teats are arranged in the showerhead.

I have mostly encountered the circular arrangement with concentric circles with a quintuple setting in the innermost circle radiating out to 6 or 7 concentric circles. On the basic count, there were 5 on the innermost circle, then 10 on the next and 15 on the following.

A formula is reused

This would suggest an arithmetic or mathematical series. So, if there were 3 concentric circles based on multiples of 5 teats in each concentric circle, the total number of teats would be 5 + 10 + 15 = 30.

What makes this interesting is the cumulative number of teats and the series developing. On the 1^st circle it is 5 or 5 * 1, for the second it is 15 or 5 * 3 and on the third, it is 30 or 5 * 6. I well-known series of 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28 … is forming in the process. This, I have learnt is the triangular number sequence.

The detail from the link about suggests a formula of n(n + 1)/2. This would deal the determining the number of teats for regular concentric circles where each consecutive circle is a multiple in the natural sequence of the innermost circle. The series in the paragraph above would suffice for where the innermost circle has one teat and the next concentric circle has 3 using the triangular number sequence.

Hansgrohe Raindance showerhead

All numbers matter

The showerhead in the picture has m = 5 teats on the innermost circle with n = 6 concentric circles. For which I now have the formula m * n(n + 1)/2 and whilst the formula can be decomposed further, it is neater to keep it this way. I would then have 5 * 6(6 +1)/2 = 5 * 6 * 7 / 2 = 105 teats.

On the referenced blog where the rainfall showerhead at the Royal York Hotel had 7 concentric circles with 5 being the multiple, the applied formula would result in 5 * 7 * 8 /2 = 140 teats.

With my showerhead conundrum solved, I will happily bother my head with something obscure and productively silly as finding out if there are really any insects with moustaches in Cape Town, this showerhead mystery already fits the bill.

 Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Thought Picnic: The recant of the pedant

Too much attention

Pedantry and facetiousness, the bothersome discomfiture of seeking the proper and correct out of the disordered and the ignorant.

Maybe, it just the lack of attention to detail, the kind of detail that means if and consideration were paid to the minutiae no one will be pulling their hairs out in frustration trying to fix problems that should never have been there in the first place. Hey! I literally live in a working world of the Wild West.

Letting it be

Yet, for my sanity and sanity indeed, I find that some things are not worth venting over, we resort to doing what we know best to do and hope that our troubles are assuaged to some extent by the gratitude of some who can deign to appreciate that our intentions and deeds are for more than the good and tending towards the best that could be done in the circumstances.

Another thing one has decided to tolerate and probably ignore is that has been a bugbear for too long, the ignorance of the sartorial, all buttons done up on a suit jacket.

A Shibboleth of difference

One must accept that not everyone will know and there was a time I did not know too, but I have known for too long now that I can hardly remember when I didn’t know what to do.

Then again, like a watchword or a password, tolerance has given this to the Shibboleth, those who are aware are appreciated for knowing and those who are not are left on the scrapheap of the separated and ignorance.

For this and for that

There is no lifelong aim to bring culture to the Philistine just like not every glistening stone can be cut into a precious gem. You choose your stones with care before you fashion the stone for greater value. I can live with the fact that we cannot all be meticulously pedantic to a fault and annoying irritation.

If I do not have to exercise the emotional negativity of prejudging those outside the tent of proper and right, I can accommodate difference enough to know that we would never all be the same, that kind of diversity makes for what our humanity is all about.

It is with great difficulty that I can carry this mental disposition into my professional life and long may it be that this will be the hallmark for which one is known and remembered for.

Quite eccentric and borderline crazy

Traits on the strange

There is a trait I can find so useful and at the same time quite debilitating, beyond seeing, I have a tendency to observe to the point of obsession, my senses are somewhat attuned to a low-spectrum autistic level that I could combine pedantry with facetiousness without thinking of how burdensomely boring or silly it might appear to others.

On the other side of this, I might see things in a particular way, either rightly or wrongly and fail to persuaded of another perspective, which sometimes means I will rather keep my counsel than give an opinion. The worst part of this trait is when I am quick to react to things I should have been slow at deciding on and slow to react to things I should have been quicker to react to.

I embrace this all as part of my humanity, the successes and the regrets whilst trying as much as I can to improve myself.

Noticing the errors in notices

On my visit to Yorkshire two weekends ago, we stopped over in Leeds before spending the night in York, I saw things I could not ignore. I have a penchant for reading notices, plaques, signs, instructions and much else.

Not that I read to find fault, but where there is fault and you will find a lot of that on my blogs because I rarely proofread my drafts before posting and only get to correct errors in grammar and construction much later, but where I find fault, as I was saying, I cannot seem to ignore them.

In the Leeds Corn Exchange, I found the toilets in the basement just as my bladder was indicating it needed emptying. Having done the business and washing my hands, I was drying my hands when I looked up and saw the notice that seemed to start off well. [Wikipedia]

The Oxford comma and after that it all went downhill from there, normally hyphenated words missing the hyphen, American spelling, phonetical spelling, personalisation and number agreement errors. Three sentences on a notice and these many problems?

Assemble on Assembly Street

The Leeds Corn Exchange is a magnificent Victoria building, we were quite taken by the ornate design of the ceiling and obviously, for modern times there are health and safety regulations to adhere to. [LCE Website]

On the landing of the upper floor, having been through some of the shops, not too far from the vintage camera store, there was a Fire Action notice which anyone should take seriously in the event of a fire. Somehow, this notice looked funny and almost like a joke because the assembly point if we were to evacuate the building was Assembly Street.

On first reading, one would really have thought they got it wrong, however, there really is an Assembly Street in Leeds and don’t mess about if you are caught in an emergency just because the designated assembly point looks unusually funny or strange. I also hate to report that stranger things and crimes have happened on that street too. A woman was raped there in June. [Yorkshire Evening Post]

Teasing shower nipples

Now, onto one of the more bizarre traits I have. The bathroom of our not-so-well-appointed room at the Royal York Hotel had what you might call a rainfall showerhead.

A stationary ceiling fixture that apparently rains on you with controls on the wall for flow rate and temperature. However, this also had rubber teats extending from the metal surface that was supposed to distribute the rain shower evenly.

Yet, as with many shower heads with rubber teats, I cannot help but look at the flow and in that identify which teats are not working or distributing water out of alignment with the general flow because of blockages, usually limescale.

Then I pinch those shower head teats which seems to free them of blockages until all the teats were working. I somehow cannot stand the sight of the water flowing out of the teat out of alignment without doing something to fix it.

You can call that finicky or pernickety, but I end up with a good rain shower and it also shows that no matter who well things seem to be cleaned up, some things are just not up the standard expected. In this case, the showerhead, and to someone with my kind of fixation, well …