Early Risers.

[andyram]

Thanks to everyone for advice on the damp problems. No cellar here but the lowest three rows of bricks seem to have a very damp look to them. Sarah thinks the damp proofing has gone although parents think it is due to the amount of stuff we have stored around the house. It is not nice to be stuck in the middle of this!

 

We are definitely moving stuff to the driest parts of the property and trying to lift things off the floor. I will get the dehumidifier when Sarah and Amber have moved out when there is a little more room.

 

I've just got back from dropping the car off. A brisk three mile walk back home made me sweat a little but it was nice to get a bit of fresh air.

[The Stationmaster]

Morning all,

 

Weather is not much brighter here than elsewhere by the sound of things but we are promised only occasional 'light showers' and Mrs stationmaster has determined on a bed stripping day so that might lead to a change (worsenment) in the weather; I am detailed 'dining room' tidying which I fear might lead to blows because all that needs tidying is the table whrereas I see my task as replacing all my various boxes into the room, oops

 

We had what appeared to be a slight damp problem in one corner of the dining room but I was instructed to place a bookcase further into the corner so 'under protest' I have done so and when the rainy season tails off I will investigate the outside of the wall which is where any potential problem might lie.  But as naught compared with Andy's troubles which sound serious and I suspect might result from the bungalow standing empty although the amount of wetness sounds unfortunately like something much more serious which leaves me wondering about what is under the floor, especially in that part of the country, roll on the new house.

 

Have a good day one & all be it work, play, or 'forced labour'.

[beast66606]

Morning all,

 

Finally caught up again !.

 

Another horrible day weather wise around 'ere, there are several flooded roads which made the local news, most unusual.

 

My son and his girlfriend are heading my way on Saturday so only a few days to go until my little baby is back with his Dad - can't wait. I've booked next week off as they are staying until Wednesday and I thought the break would do me good.

 

Here's a photo to prove it was raining heavily on Saturday

 

 

One of my video cameras bit the dust, it was knackered anyway, the screw where the tripod mount goes had lost it's thread and become detached, beyond economic repair but still working - I taped the tripod mount to the base which works ok. However a strong gust of wind knocked it over and it lost the clip which holds the battery in place, again I've done a Heath Robinson repair which is Ok but will cause problems when I'm in a rush as the battery needs careful mounting - so a new camcorder has been ordered and banking on some good sales of my second hand stock at the Wigan show I invested in a good one. The most annoying thing was the memory card also failed, so I lost the whole days worth of videos, fortunately I have two cameras and generally use the other one for forward facing (ie the trains comes towards the camera) so the more unusual workings were captured and the videos are safe. The card is beyond recovery, if I put it in the computer it's not accessible, if I put it in the camera, the camera won't switch on - indicating a short circuit on the card - ho hum.

 

Have a good day all.

[southern42]

Hi all,
Lazy weekend out and about so just spent two days catching up on here since my last post. Never thought I'd get to the finish post what with birthdays, events, new job, travelling, family visits, meals out, internal and external conditions, modelling, weather and under the weather...
 
To save time I was very sparse on clicking any buttons (my laptop is very slow at posting these) so please select whatever is appropriate to your news.
Disagree and Indecipherable not applicable.
Cloud and mist here.
 
Enjoy your day. Incoming posts to read now.
 
Polly

 

Edit: Removed replicated Buttons because they linked to an ER's post. So Polly's not quite so clever, after all. Where's the disagree button?

Edited May 27, 2014 by southern42

[Oldddudders]

Morning all

 

The misery in others' lives makes me feel lucky on ERs at times!

 

Blowy with a chance of a shower, but reasonably mild. Rain can be patchy. About 18 30 last night I thought I'd nip down to Intermarche for a few essentials, but on looking out of the door, found it was chucking it down. So off with suede jacket, on with Gore-Tex. One km from home the road was dry! Arrived in St Cosme - a whole 3 km from the house, and even by the time I'd shopped and come out again, not a drop.

 

Earlier I'd had Guy the dobbin-dentist arrive, somewhat later than expected, so the poor girls had been tethered for a couple of hours. They never enjoy his visits. After all, having a device stuck in yer gob to keep it open isn't much fun, but then having a long shaft with a grinding wheel attacking yer teeth is worse, no doubt. Bronte was better behaved than some previous visits - after we'd chased her several times round the field, as she slipped away from Guy's rope. He thought a couple of years before they need further treatment, and by that time Varian may have slipped away.

 

Alison is here sorting the flowerbed. I have managed a reasonable amount of mowing over the last two afternoons before rain stopped play. The place does need a good strim, though.

 

Hope your working week has started well.

[Jock67B]

Morning folks, a fairly dismal start here at the seaside! Madam is now fussing about disposal of the rubbish from Sundays efforts and so I guess she'll be contacting 'a man with a van' any time soon.

Neil, the ever changing weather on 'The Island' never ceases to amaze me - one would think that picking the start of June to hold the TT races would give the best chance for dry racing. Looking back over back the years, I seem to have as many images of riding in horrendous conditions as I do in sunshine - particularly over the mountain! Very few circuits can boast such diverse conditions in the course of one lap!

MickB, sorry to hear of your problems ref. the treatment of DD1; I used to teach 'disability awareness' and must confess I was often astounded by the general ignorance that surrounds the subject. I would have thought that such teaching should be a standard requirement for local authority staff, especially those dealing with sensitive issues. At least you know that the law is now largely with you - good luck, and try to stay calm!

Off to check what has been added to my list for today!

Kind regards,

Jock.

[DDolfelin]

Polly, I've tried clicking on your recommended symbols but they don't work properly.

[PhilJ W]

Another senior moment this morning, made a pot of tea for breakfast and forgot to 'charge' the pot with tea.

[southern42]

Polly, I've tried clicking on your recommended symbols but they don't work properly.

So did I, DD, so I've removed them!

 

Polly

 

Edit - see edit on previous post.

Edited May 27, 2014 by southern42

[Tony_S]

Another senior moment this morning, made a pot of tea for breakfast and forgot to 'charge' the pot with tea.

Not quite as bad as pouring the water into the teabag caddy!

[Smiffy2]

My son, great photographer and used to do pro work, advised me to consider memory cards as consumables, change them often, and if it's important change the card halfway through the shoot. I've lost two, fortunately only one with pictures I wanted.

[Oldddudders]

My son, great photographer and used to do pro work, advised me to consider memory cards as consumables, change them often, and if it's important change the card halfway through the shoot. I've lost two, fortunately only one with pictures I wanted.

Card technology continues to improve, too, so you get more performance with recent cards. The latest Compact Flash cards - now only used in the top-flight cameras, I suspect, due to their bulk - run at 1066X, which could be useful for train sequences where you just mash the shutter. As cameras get more megapixels, file size increases, too, so you need faster cards to keep up.

[The Stationmaster]

Another senior moment this morning, made a pot of tea for breakfast and forgot to 'charge' the pot with tea.

It's a regular procedure here!  But look on the bright side, at least it warms the pot very thoroughly.

[Smiffy2]

Card technology continues to improve, too, so you get more performance with recent cards. The latest Compact Flash cards - now only used in the top-flight cameras, I suspect, due to their bulk - run at 1066X, which could be useful for train sequences where you just mash the shutter. As cameras get more megapixels, file size increases, too, so you need faster cards to keep up.

 

I replaced all my cards recently with 16GB SanDisk Ultra SDHC. Anything above 16gig seems pointless, because even at full definition that's almost 1000 images on the Nikon (less if shooting HDR of course) and I usually change the card after 200. 

 

Top tip - old memory cards make nice compact storage disks and they're smaller and easier to use than DVDs.

[beast66606]

Card technology continues to improve, too, so you get more performance with recent cards. The latest Compact Flash cards - now only used in the top-flight cameras, I suspect, due to their bulk - run at 1066X, which could be useful for train sequences where you just mash the shutter. As cameras get more megapixels, file size increases, too, so you need faster cards to keep up.

 

Mine are 1000x for the still shots, the camcorders don't need such high speed but it was still a decent one - s*** happens, better the camcorder than the still.

Formatting is also better than deleting all images as the format is able to detect any bad areas.

[Smiffy2]

Agree with formatting.

I download everything onto whatever device (iPad, laptop or iMac) is at hand and iCould and Photostream sends it to everything. Then onto a big hard drive, possibly another memory card, and then format the card. Not terribly OCD about it at all...

[Oldddudders]

I replaced all my cards recently with 16GB SanDisk Ultra SDHC. Anything above 16gig seems pointless, because even at full definition that's almost 1000 images on the Nikon (less if shooting HDR of course) and I usually change the card after 200. 

 

 

The next couple of weeks see max use of my Nikon D300s, which remains Nikon's best camera for sports photography if you haven't got an exotic lens, as it is 1.5x, so my 300 mm f4 becomes 450 mm. I can get through more than 1k images in a day at Le Mans, but as it's only 12 MP and I'm a jpeg person, it doesn't use too much space. Nikon's newer D7xxx series cameras are better in other respects - but have tiny buffers, which constrain long bursts of images.

 

When I bought my D2h in 2004, I "invested" in a 2GB card - costing almost £200! Card prices now are so much more accessible. I have a 32 GB Toshiba SDHC here, 30MB/s, which I think cost peanuts. Your son is right - updating your cards is worth the effort.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Oldddudders

[Barry O]

Morning all,

late on parade as her self is on half term so she didn't need to get up early.

 

Busy day yesterday - Team A elected to field first..wrong! team B scored 118 all out of 47 overs.....then team A were 39 all out......then it rained!

 

Had a pleasant evening in the pub comparing notes with some Yorkshire supporters who were also in the Antipodes earlier this year - they made the mistake of going to the Ashes - we went to enjoy ourselves!  

 

Invoicing etc completed so a trip to the post office is required then... some modelling time beckons...

 

Baz in a sunny if slightly overcast Leeds

[station cat]

Not quite as bad as pouring the water into the teabag caddy!

 

Such an impressive screwup that i'm tempted to give it a craftsmanship/clever rating. Still at least you got a good strong cuppa out of it.

[Shedman5]

Morning, just, recovering from a great weekend of sport which turned out to be more playing than watching. Entered the clubs veteran tennis tournament singles and doubles and got further in both than I or my body had expected.

This morning I am paying the price so a lazy no very lazy day planned running a few trains this afternoon.

 

Grey day here but no rain yet.

 

Enjoy whats left and I will now try and catch up on the comings and goings over the weekend.

[NGT6 1315]

Afternoon all. Been rainy for most of the day and more is predicted to follow into the night. T-storm warning remains in effect, too.

 

Note to self, if you can avoid conversations which you expect to upset you in any way, do so when you got a lesson to run immediately after which you know will be taxing as well... I'm quite glad I'm at home and can spare some time for myself now.

[Ian Abel]

Morning...everyone survived the holiday weekend it seems, that's good

 

Mrs has finally recovered from whatever bug/virus got her over the weekend, just in time to return to work - yay!

Had some "frustrating" modelling time yesterday;

1) Attempted to fix shorting loco - DJH Std. 5 that was custom built for me years ago. There's an intermittent short somewhere in the pickups on the tender, they seem to occasionally touch the brake rodding best I can tell. Thought I had it fixed, ran loco around for about an HOUR straight whilst I did other things. Then, when I starting bringing it into the MPD to shed for the night, shorted again <arrrgghhh> getting annoying as it wastes a LOT of time fettling with it every time.

2) Started installing Cobalt digitals - ONE refuses to respond to anything, seems to be DOA, annoying because they seem a little quirky setting them up, so I thought it was teething troubles, and b*ugger**ed about with it for about 30 minutes before deciding to move on and shelve it awaiting return/replacement.

 

Weather is getting "July-like" here already, we're rushing headlong into 28-32 degress supposedly later this week, and the humidity is soaring, so on with the air-conditioner already... not supposed to be like this until late-July at least!!!

Quite odd to have temperatures in the 80s and Lake Superior has ice chunks floating in it still - http://www.weather.com/news/lake-superior-ice-memorial-day-weekend-2014-20140526

 

Right now it's 19 and light rain, supposed to reach 27 later.

 

Have a good Tuesday everyone, HUMP day already tomorrow...

[PhilJ W]

Not quite as bad as pouring the water into the teabag caddy!

Haven't done that yet, the teapot is round and chromium plated, the caddy is square and is decorated with 'Chinese' paintings, but given time...

[Tony_S]

 

Had some "frustrating" modelling time yesterday;

1) Attempted to fix shorting loco - DJH Std. 5 that was custom built for me years ago. There's an intermittent short somewhere in the pickups on the tender, they seem to occasionally touch the brake rodding best I can tell. Thought I had it fixed, ran loco around for about an HOUR straight whilst I did other things. Then, when I starting bringing it into the MPD to shed for the night, shorted again <arrrgghhh> getting annoying as it wastes a LOT of time fettling with it every time.

 

Intermittent faults are so annoying whether on cars or model railways. I solved the tender short problem on my "Clan Line" by disconnecting the wiring to the tender. The fault was in  the Hornby connection. I will remake it with miniature plugs one day but there aren't any places on my layout (yet) where tender extra pickup is necessary.

[gordon s]

Went to a Classic Car Rally at Prestatyn yesterday.

I was amazed! Hundreds of vehicles on display.

I took some pictures I'll put on the 'Old Cars' thread but nowhere near a comprehensive insight.

Meanwhile, here's one for Gordon if he shows up:

 

CobraA.jpg

 

Christ, Sam's put on a bit of weight since she went away on holiday…..