Grant Hutchison's Blog, page 4

Small Scale Shop 1/96 Lunar Module: Part 1

Having recently completed my new, improved version of the 1/96 Command/Service Module of Apollo 11, using a RealSpace resin kit supplemented by 3D-printed parts from The Aerospace Place, I decided I might as well go the whole hog and build a better 1/96 Lunar Module too. All this is a hangover from my long, slow build … Continue reading Small Scale Shop 1/96 Lunar Module: Part 1 →

Annular Solar Eclipse

As this post goes live, it’s only a few days until an annular solar eclipse, like the one pictured above, will sweep across the Americas on 14 October 2023. Annular eclipses get their name from Latin anulus, “small ring”, which refers to the ring of sunlight that’s visible around the lunar disc, as shown in the image … Continue reading Annular Solar Eclipse →

Abbreviation & Contraction

We were watching the excellent Lesley Manville in the film Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris (2022) the other night, and I found myself mildly irritated by the punctuation of the title. (This sort of thing happens to me—it’s a curse.) The film is based on a book by Paul Gallico, Mrs. ’Arris Goes To Paris … Continue reading Abbreviation & Contraction →

Alan S.C. Ross: Linguistic Class Indicators In The Present Day (1954)

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him. George Bernard Shaw, introduction to Pygmalion (1913) Alan Ross was Professor of Linguistics at Birmingham University when he published this paper in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, the journal of the Modern Language Society of Helsinki, although The Dictionary of National … Continue reading Alan S.C. Ross: Linguistic Class Indicators In The Present Day (1954) →

Four English Words Derived From Gaelic

Ach, he’s feeling the shortage of whisky. We’re all feeling it, Sergeant. Never mind. Good things will come again, and we’ll have whisky galore. Uisge beatha gu leòir. Compton Mackenzie, Whisky Galore (1947) I’ve written before about the relative dearth of Scottish Gaelic vocabulary in Scottish English. Much of the difference in vocabulary between Scottish … Continue reading Four English Words Derived From Gaelic →

RealSpace Models 1/96 Apollo Block II Command/Service Module (Again): Part 4

So last time I left you with a cliff-hanger. Sorry about that—the opportunity so rarely presents itself on this blog. You may recall that things were coming along well with my re-do of the paintwork on this kit, and I’d got to the point of masking off some of the RCS thrusters on the Command … Continue reading RealSpace Models 1/96 Apollo Block II Command/Service Module (Again): Part 4 →

Blue Supermoon: Part 2

We recently had a blue supermoon (on 31 August 2023). If you saw it, did you think it was super? Me neither. In my previous post, I wrote about blue moons—what they are, why they happen—and in this post I aim to do the same for supermoons. Supermoons happen when a full moon occurs at a … Continue reading Blue Supermoon: Part 2 →

Blue Supermoon (Part Two)

We recently had a blue supermoon (on 31 August 2023). If you saw it, did you think it was super? Me neither. In my previous post, I wrote about blue moons—what they are, why they happen—and in this post I aim to do the same for supermoons. Supermoons happen when a full moon occurs at a … Continue reading Blue Supermoon (Part Two) →

Blue Supermoon: Part 1

On 31 August 2023 we’re going to have a blue supermoon, which will be neither particularly blue, nor particularly super, though to read some of the media coverage of these events, you might expect to see something like the image above. So I thought I might write a bit about blue moons (this post) and … Continue reading Blue Supermoon: Part 1 →

Blue Supermoon (Part One)

On 31 August 2023 we’re going to have a blue supermoon, which will be neither particularly blue, nor particularly super, though to read some of the media coverage of these events, you might expect to see something like the image above. So I thought I might write a bit about blue moons (this post) and … Continue reading Blue Supermoon (Part One) →