The Night Mail

[newbryford]

On 08/07/2022 at 12:34, Dave Hunt said:

I was once on the footplate of a GWR 2-8-0T 

 

Stop right there.

 

What is this mythical G*R 2-8-0 you speak of?

I thought they only had 4-6-0s that all look the same and a couple of minor variations of Paneer (at least that's how I think you spell it 🙃)  tank?

[Winslow Boy]

12 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Not buried, I hope. 

 

All depends on what your definition is of 'buried'. You see in my line of work there's buried as in six feet under and then there's buried as in helping to feed the roses with important elements if you know what I mean. Nudge nudge say no more. Do you want to buy a Norwegian blue parrot mate?

[Northmoor]

31 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I am always amazed how many people who study sciences at university end up working in the finance industry.  

A common source of complaint in the Engineering profession is that too many engineering grads don't go into the field, but go into the banking and finance sector (which usually offers more money).  I've always considered that it shows Engineers to have a valued status.

We have to be numerate - which a frightening proportion of the population are not - and are taught to develop a problem-solving mindset.  These are pretty important skills when you might be managing tens of millions of someone else's hard-earned wonga.

 

@Florence Locomotive Works, the sort of craftsmanship and light engineering you're doing demonstrates you probably already have the mathematical skills of say, the upper 20th percentile of the population.  You have to consider there is a significant proportion of people who cannot understand the ten times table......

[bbishop]

39 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

There may not be many careers as a historian but the skills gained studying for such a degree have some relevance to other careers.  The analysis and research methods employed are useful. I have a degree in chemical physics and it wasn’t really a path to a career in the chemical or physics fields though I did teach physics in a school. I am always amazed how many people who study sciences at university end up working in the finance industry.  
Edit

Just seen @Compound2632’s reply after posting mine. 

Me, for example.  Bill

[newbryford]

1 minute ago, Northmoor said:

 

 

@Florence Locomotive Works, the sort of craftsmanship and light engineering you're doing demonstrates you probably already have the mathematical skills of say, the upper 20th percentile of the population.  You have to consider there is a significant proportion of people who cannot understand the ten times table......

 

Is that the other 78%?

[Happy Hippo]

14 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

Stop right there.

 

What is this mythical G*R 2-8-0 you speak of?

I thought they only had 4-6-0s that all look the same and a couple of minor variations of Paneer (at least that's how I think you spell it 🙃)  tank?

The only mythical G*r 2-8-0 is the yellow one.

[newbryford]

12 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

The only mythical G*r 2-8-0 is the yellow one.

 

One of these? It's almost yellow

 

[AndyID]

4 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

 with me to college (which is looking likely to be Edinburgh)

Which one, if I may ask? (I went to Edinburgh Uni.)

[Florence Locomotive Works]

2 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Which one, if I may ask? (I went to Edinburgh Uni.)

That'd be the one.

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

The only mythical G*r 2-8-0 is the yellow one.

I thought that was a submarine.

[AndyID]

1 minute ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

That'd be the one.

 

'twas a few years ago in my case 😀

 

I do remember we had a Canadian lecturer who insisted on pronouncing cement as "sea-ment", to which the entire class would respond in unison "si-ment!"

[AndyID]

14 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

That'd be the one.

 

I was also "employed" at Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde (also in Glasgow) but it was a while ago. Edinburgh and the Glasgow Uni's were all very dynamic then and I owe them a lot. My claim to fame is I found a very serious defect in Intel's 8080 microprocessor before anyone else, including Intel 😀

[AndyID]

Quite toasty here at the moment. This looks like fun.

 

https://fb.watch/e9RnkjUfHQ/

[BR60103]

5 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear here.....

 

Bear has really got into Talking Books whilst doing the lounge refurb (thanks Tony); the current book is one of the Harry Potter series.  It's amazing just how many things occur in the books that I have no recollection of seeing in the film version.  Not altogether surprising though - some of the HP talking books are the best part of 40 hours long.

 

I have this theory that converting written literature to dramatic form properly increases the time taken muchly.

Brideshead Revisited (a novel) was very well converted to television as a 17 hour serial. I think that a normal 90-150 minute movie can't contain much more than a novelette or possibly a longish short story. If it becomes a musical or opera then the content really has to be cut back.

 

However, in The Wizard of Oz, in which page of the book does Dorothy arrive in Oz?

 

Internet service in Canada is now back to nearly normal.  Apparently the provider had just attempted a system upgrade.

 

[BR60103]

I just remembered that a writer I follow wrote about doing the young adult novelizations of the early Star Wars films.  She was given a copy of the script to work from and at one point encountered the line "The Jedi fight."

 

And I heard that in an older set of films would be "The Stooges enter and do their stuff."

 

[pH]

48 minutes ago, BR60103 said:

Internet service in Canada is now back to nearly normal.  Apparently the provider had just attempted a system upgrade.

 

I didn’t lose a second of service here in BC🙂.

[SM42]

5 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Yah boo sucks. I might not have a shed but I do have a garden and I bet you can fit more than six people in it.

 

So have I  but that's when it doesn't look like the local builders merchants. 

 

I also have some serious trenches to fill in, that would easily accommodate half a dozen.  

 

Andy two sheds 😀

[iL Dottore]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

PB, welcome back, but I think you've missed the part about Ian not having a shed

Well, I don’t have a shed either.

 

But I do have a workshop in a converted air raid shelter under the house.

 

Would you consider that a “deep shed”?

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Stop right there.

 

What is this mythical G*R 2-8-0 you speak of?

I thought they only had 4-6-0s that all look the same and a couple of minor variations of Paneer (at least that's how I think you spell it 🙃)  tank?

(A very large, musclebound, scarred gentleman in a tight black suit and mirrored sunglasses cracks his knuckles and speaks)

“Mr @newbryford my good friend Mr Brunel is very upset about your comments. And when Mr Brunel gets upset, I get upset. Strange thing is though, when I get upset I get very clumsy and accidentally break things – like this handcrafted brass model of yours which I have accidentally dropped a brick on”

Edited July 10, 2022 by iL Dottore

[iL Dottore]

36 minutes ago, SM42 said:

….I also have some serious trenches to fill in, that would easily accommodate half a dozen.  

Dead or alive?

[iL Dottore]

 

3 hours ago, BR60103 said:

I just remembered that a writer I follow wrote about doing the young adult novelizations of the early Star Wars films.  She was given a copy of the script to work from and at one point encountered the line "The Jedi fight."

 

Ignoring, for the moment, how scientifically ludicrous most of the Star Wars films are (about 99.9% of the time), one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how inept the Imperial Stormtroopers are. Apart from their inability to hit the side of the barn with their laser blasters, their protective armour is about as protective as the skin on a bowl of cold custard.
 

But if you look at it logically (and perhaps also with an experienced military eye [as some on TNM have]) then in “reality“ the Imperial Stormtroopers (IS) of the Emperor’s and Darth Vader’s personal protection regiments would be very. very, different to those portrayed on screen. In terms of its’ standards the IS would be like the GIGN, the Sayeret Matkal, the SAS, Navy Seals, The Special Boat Service and the Spetsnaz GRU rolled into one and then pumped up on steroids. They would all be battle hardened veterans (and in the Star Wars empire there would be a lot of battles) – meaning they had a lot of experience of not getting killed whilst killing a lot of other beings. They would also have the best weaponry and armour Imperial technology could provide (after all they are guarding the Emperor and working for Darth Vader – neither of whom I can see settling for second best).

 

They would make mincemeat out of Luke Skywalker and his farm boys and that ragtag bunch of rebels.

Edited July 10, 2022 by iL Dottore

[AndyID]

7 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Well the parents wish for me to study history, which would be great but there are few prospects with such a degree. Engineering would be good but I’m rubbish at math, so it’s undecided upon at the moment.

 

I was rubbish at math too but it turned out I was exceptional in the relatively new field of boolean algebra. Once I had that under my belt I went back and discovered that a lot of Calculus was just a lot of wavy-armed nonsense by mathematicians trying to demonstrate their superiority. Calculus is just a simple method of solving real-world problems. The problem is many mathematicians have little experience of the real world 🙂

 

That's not an uncommon problem in education. Almost all math was developed to understand science, perhaps all.

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Well the parents wish for me to study history, which would be great but there are few prospects with such a degree. Engineering would be good but I’m rubbish at math, so it’s undecided upon at the moment.

 

Bear's philosphy....

Do something that (a) you enjoy that (b) also stands a fair chance of enabling you to earn a living.

 

7 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

My niece's husband is a head hunter for a big corporation and says that whatever the subject matter for a degree, the award of that degree indicates the ability to apply oneself and to learn. Hence it is of value for many types of work outside the degree subject, although there are obviously some jobs, such as engineering, where further education in an allied subject, or subjects, is a pre requisite.

 

Bear recalls a machine shop guy (working in Luton?) that was on a local radio phone-in; he mentioned that their new Supervisor (degree n' all that) on the shop floor didn't appear to know a lot about Engineering.  So they casually asked him one day what degree he had...

"Art", came the reply - "Cos it's the easiest way to get a degree".

[AndyID]

38 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

 the Spetsnaz GRU

 Dream on 😀

[iL Dottore]

3 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 Dream on 😀

????