Early Risers.

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl Inner Temple Here,

Further sleep was obtained,

 

Did someone mention Horsey?

Sailing on Horsey mere.

 

And a picture of national trust Horsey dyke and windpump

 

There is a pub and cafe in the village,

About a mile from the beach where you can watch seals.

 

And more distance but walkable to my garden, where today's tasks will include,

Replacing the tarpaulin over the boat, the beast from the east finished off the old one.

Clearing, branches and twigs brought down by the beast and previous storms.

 

But first a mugacoffee and some ibuprophen as today walking that distance would be painful if possible.

 

Oh yes Horsey mere is named after horses..

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Dull and dismal but dry here at the moment. There may be some rain or drizzle with sunny spells later.

Glad to say that I had a good night's sleep and my back pain has eased.

One rugby match watched yesterday and Saracens were too good for Quins but a very scrappy game with far too many lengthy stoppages, especially scrum resets. I think 13 or 14 minutes were lost in the second half.

More matches to watch later today. (1 recorded and 1 live)

Great and very noisy time had here last night with Nicki and the kids. Everybody is now stirring again and the noise and laughter levels are building. The Boss will shortly be taking orders for breakfast. I shall just have everything that is on offer.   

Have a good one,

Bob.

Edited March 25, 2018 by grandadbob

[jamie92208]

Morning all from a bright and sunny village.    The day was further brightened by Q's photos of Horsey Mere.  My memories of there go back to a sailing holiday when I was 17 and one evening our flotilla moored at Horsey mere and there was a girls flotilla there as well   I will not got further.

 

Yesterday went well.  Off to Heaton Park after breakfast then down to the transport fair at Boyle Street museum followed by a couple of hours riding round on the tram system to ride the routes that I still needed to, namely Oldham to Rochdale and the 2nd city crossing.   Then back home and an evening modelling but not trains (Debs pay attention there), but a cardboard battleship.  More info on my layout thread.

 

Today is church then tidying as the step dragon in law is coming for dinner.  I will no doubt have several tasks allocated but as yet they have not been specified.

 

Rick, those paintings are fabulous, what a marvellous find. 

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. A bit grey here this morning but it might get sunny later. Your mum's paintings are a fantastic find Rick and I hope that they can be put on display permanently. Certainly we all have hidden talents but mine are so well hidden that even I can't find them. Muggertee 2 awaits so be back later.

[Gwiwer]

Morning all. Departed the Hill of Strawberries bound for the Palace of Ally. More later.

[JohnDMJ]

A great evening out with the various Cumbria crew as per usual in central London and anther visit to the USA discussed.

 

Not long after I arrived home from said gathering then!

[The Stationmaster]

Morning all,

 

Rick the pictures are good but the real gem for me is the one at the bottom of your post - amazingly brilliant, a marvellous picture.  And Jamie's post intrigues - the 'not got further' after the flotilla of girls arrived can obviously be read in several different varying from the extremes of drawing a veil of discretion over subsequent events to one of a total lack of success - what a wicked tease you are sir   4th mugatea of the day is now to hand and the management is currently engaged in her least favourite task of ironing while thus far my sole task is to get the shopping and no doubt carry various ironed items upstairs - that apart she will be having a day of rest as she re-grourted the floor tiles in the bathroom yesterday while laddo and I were enjoying ourselves at Ally Pally.  I have a suspicion that she will no doubt be seeking at some stage to redeem the brownie points that has earned her, a sort of boot on the other foot job in terms of brownie point acquisition and subsequent use.

 

Have a good day one and all and may those at the mercy of TfL have enjoyable journeys.

[AndyB]

Morning all,

 

Ally Pally is not for me - quite a long / expensive trip and domestic responsibilities....nah, it's the 3-deep scrum round each layout that'd make me wonder why I was there. 

An upcoming exhibition at Church Stretton, combined with a pub lunch* with a former colleague does, however, appeal. And it may get me out of a walk up the Wrekin with the MiL setting an unhealthily fast pace. From the blurb I'm not sure what layouts will be available, but last year it was fun and a good standard. 

 

Another reason for staying put this weekend was to do a bit more work on my new baseboards. 

 

* a nearby pub is offering a special called "Fidget pie". If you remove the best and worst reviews of said pie from tripadvisor you may well be left with a rather indifferent offering. 

 

A 4-day week beckons. I'd have taken Thursday off but someone called a 10-minute meeting on Thursday afternoon. Maybe see if I can do a quick "dial in" and take the day off anyway. 

[shortliner]

Rick - great pictures, but can I say that harbour scene is a masterpiece - LOVE IT!

[Simon G]

Morning all (just),

 

Been awake since about 4am, probably due to the steroid component of my current drug cocktail. However, as it is successfully doing its job in making me feel OK, I can put up with the sleep, as I will catch up in due course.

 

The morning has been partly spent converting a video of the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway in the 1960s, into a short section from between Keswick and Threlkeld after a request from the BBC as they wanted some footage of trains crossing the River Greta there. As the film is copyrighted to our MRC, we agreed to only give them the short bit, and then on the understanding that Derwent Railway Society is credited if they choose to use our footage. I will await the outcome after sending them a CD.

 

Beautiful day here again, so may get put for a short stroll this afternoon.

[81C]

 Her.... what are you doing today I'm cleaning the garage and removing the storage heater from the landing.

 Her.... I'm going to do some gardening so don't get in my way.

I cleaned the garage and sweep all the saw dust off the floor from doing the flooring job inside the house, the garage now done I 

collect up the tools for the next job  Her walks into the garage with shoes caked in mud and leaves a trail of mess across

the floor and says to me whats up.   I really do dispair somedays and was thinking of writing a TV comedy about her antics

I'd make millions as you could not make it up. 

 

Now I have finished all the chores I've retreated to the cave while she is beating the carp out of something in the garden .

[TheQ]

Afternoon awl,

I'm now lying here, having taken more ibuprophen, 6 hour were spent clearing around the boat removing the old tarpaulin and plastic cover. More tarpaulin now fitted, but I'm just to knackered to continue. I need to cut another sheet of plastic, to fit the boat under tarpaulin.

 

The shelter, of the tarpaulin has allowed brambles and other wildlife to grow so a lot of clearing was required.

 

Most of the work was under the supervision of Ben the Border Collie, he really supervises the barrow, he in love with the big green rubber tyres. I think he thinks they are giant tennis balls.

[shortliner]

Bitcoin Explained

Have you ever wondered about  “bitcoin”. . .  . . . .Well, here’s a full explanation in terms everyone can understand.

A lot of wild monkeys lived near a village. They ran loose all over the place.

One day a merchant came to the village to buy these monkeys!

He announced that he would buy the monkeys @ $100 each!

The villagers thought that the man was mad.

They thought how can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?

Still, some people caught some monkeys and gave them to the merchant and, sure enough, he gave $100 for each monkey!

This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.

After a few days, the merchant announced that he would now buy monkeys @ $200 each!

Even the lazy villagers  ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!

And they sold those monkeys @ $200 each!

Then the merchant announced that he would buy monkeys @ $500 each!

The villagers started to lose sleep! ... They caught six or seven monkeys, but that was all that were left, and got $500 each!

The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.

Then the merchant announced that he was going home for a week.  But when he returned, he would buy monkeys at $1000 each!

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he had already bought.  He, alone, was taking care of all the monkeys in a cage.

The merchant went home.

The villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell at $1000 each.

Then the employee told them that he would sell some monkeys, privately, @ $700 each in secret.

This news spread like fire.  Since the merchant would buy monkeys @ $1000 each, there was a $300 profit for each monkey!

The next day, villagers made a queue near the monkey cage!

The employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each.  The rich bought monkeys in big lots.  The poor borrowed money from money lenders and also bought monkeys!

The villagers took care of their monkeys and waited expectantly for the merchant to return.

But nobody came! ...So they ran to the employee...

But he had already left, too !

And then the villagers realized that they had just bought useless stray monkeys @ $700 each and were unable to sell them!

The Bitcoin probably will be the next “monkey business”.

 

It will make a lot of people bankrupt, but a few people filthy rich in this—"monkey business”.

[AndyB]

I think one of the best uses for bitcoins - or equivalents - is to be a miner of said things. 

And the reason for this is simple.

And cunning.

 

To fulfill the blockchain calculations takes a decent games pcb card etc, preferably a few of them, and that leaving this running 24x7 burns electricity but makes a modest profit over and above the cost of the electricity.

Now, a waste product of this whole process is heat.

 

So, relocate the home-made mining rig to the garage and your model railway room becomes habitable throughout the winter months - and someone else is paying for this    (along with the environment    )

 

The downside is that to repay the cost of the investment in pcbs you'd need to leave it running through the summer, too*, before the pace of calculations speeds up to a point where it can no-longer be done using your pcbs. At that point you need to flog the games pcb cards to gammers who are irate cos so many people bought the cards that the prices went up and they had to go and get Saturday jobs to pay for them. 

 

* take a tapping off the heat sink and use it as a means of heating your domestic water. I bet this makes more economic sense than solar panels! 

[Tony_S]

The graphics card in my PC has 8Gb of ram. My first BBC micro had 32k of ram and was considered to have rather good graphics!

[Tony_S]

I think the solar panel v Bitcoin mining may have a slight setback. The sun is a long-term energy supply. I believe that there are a finite number of Bitcoin to be "mined". I didn't really pay too much attention though to cyber currency 101 as it isn't anything likely to be something I invest in. I did find some old pound coins last week though...

Edited March 25, 2018 by Tony_S

[JohnDMJ]

Afternoon all.

In a train heading to Enfield Chase.

Enjoyable day at the exhibition. Met up for liquid lunch. I also managed to see Baz making some shunting movements.

I bought some track that I didn't plan to.

 

 

Evening all,

 

From Ally Pally we have returned - good job the lad accompanied me as my somewhat unhelpful leg took a dislike to various parts of our travelling - seems to be a consequence of yesterday's visit to and wandering about at Waddesdon Manor following a rather satisfactory lunch there; definitely back on the repeat visit list.

 

Good to meet folk at Ally Pally today and a pleasant chat ensued over glasses of of various beverages.  No money was spent with John's employer but as Kernow had looked after my coat I considered it only polite to spend a bit with him while the miracle workers of Lightmoor Press had two new arrivals demanding exchange for them taking the details off one of my pieces of embossed plastic that carefully hides something called a chip.   Alas we left later than intended as another RMweb member kindly invited me to have a look at his layout to see how it was operated and having crawled underneath to the central operating area I was immediately sat down and told that's the next move on that card and that what's you have to operate - 45 minutes were then enjoyably spent playing trains running the Grantham Yard 'box part of the timetable sequence - many thanks to '4479' for the invite, and what a superb layout Grantham is.  That visit also gave a chance to have a natter with Baz of this parish before leaving the layout, and of course an earlier conversation with Ian (Roundhouse) who was there with an HO scale slice of the USA which was outperforming the Brighton line by a big margin.  Overall a good day at the show and all the better for meeting various members of this august body (and don't tell 'her' but another country house has duly been added to the roster).

 

Somewhat tired I decided that we should take a taxi from Finsbury park to Paddington instead of me having to do uncomfortable battle with stairs at three stations - it cost a few quid (well quite a few to be honest) but worth it for the convenience it offered then we met another RMweb member (not of this particular part of the forum) on the train from Paddington who also knows laddo as they are both regulars at the Great Cockcrow Railway so that rounded out the day quite nicely.

 

 

Good morning one and all

 

Quite a lot happened yesterday.  On my way to the station at around 6 am a young lad coming the other way stopped me and asked if I had spotted a blue lanyard with key attached.  Sadly for him I had not.  The key was his front door key and he lived alone.  He was certain that he had it when he left the night club.  There was not a lot I could do save to shake him by his proffered hand and wish for a satisfactory outcome.  After a bit of sloppy operating at Bedford my East Midlands train reached St Pancras punctually, I had a good breakfast at "Eat O'Clock" and headed for the Northern Heights, repelling beggars left, right and centre as I made for the Underground.  A short sharp "Nope" works wonders.  The 313 which took me from the incredibly dingy GN platform at Highbury to the damp Alexandra Palace bore very little paint.  Once I had finally negotiated the bag search [how welcoming] and the zig-zag post-office-like queue it was into the show.  The contents of the shopping list were swiftly purchased and stowed .  I met lots of people I know and some that up to then I didn't but I am conscious thst there were some in attendance that I did not get to see - sorry, Roundhouse, for one.  At the lunchtime ERs gathering I did my best to hide under a palm leaf but how successful my camouflage was will have to wait to be discovered until JohnDMJ posts his photo.  On the way from Wood Green to Kings Cross one chap with a tripod seemed determined to wreak havoc.  While crossing the road to the tube he managed to clout a woman with it.  His prompt apology was met with a less than ladylike utterance.  The silly bu99er then got the tripod stuck in the train's closing doors.  A pleasant hour and a half with a very old friend at the Parcel Yard, another bout of East Midlands Trains and back to Bedford where the bus driver addressed me by name!

 

I think I shall spend today quietly. 

 

Rick, that artwork is a wonderful discovery and merits exhibition.

 

Phew.  I need my fortifying porridge.  Warm thoughts and best wishes to the ailing, recovering and missing.

 

Chris  

 

After a good day at Ally Pally yesterday, followed by a few beers with Roundhouse and Barrow MRC, I have decided that today will be of a very lazy nature, especially not having arrived home until gone 23:00!

 

From yesterday's gathering, I offer this photo of the 'gang'. Mr York did pass by and stopped for a chat but this is not recorded!

 

 

From left to right (make that right to left as my 'puter's playing silly bs with photos!) we have FootballSpecial, The Stationmaster Unravelled, ChrisF and TonyS. ChrisF - the palm leaf was not of sufficient size!

Edited March 25, 2018 by JohnDMJ

[NGT6 1315]

A‘noon all. Slept till after 10 am today, so I suppose I needed a lot of extra rest...

 

Spent some time in the garden, seeding the first veg for the season, too. However, I also enjoyed dozing on a blanket on the lawn for a bit.

 

Rick, thank you for sharing these pictures. Certainly much talent evident there and I fully agree they should be shown to a larger audience.

Simon, I hope you’ll get through this round of chemo with as little trouble as possible.

 

Cheers...

[AndyB]

I think the solar panel v Bitcoin mining may have a slight setback. The sun is a long-term energy supply. I believe that there are a finite number of Bitcoin to be "mined". I didn't really pay too much attention though to cyber currency 101 as it isn't anything likely to be something I invest in. I did find some old pound coins last week though...

 

I understand from colleagues who have a side line in mining that other crypto-currencies are available. 

As Alan mentions other folk invest in new "start ups currencies", known as an ICO - Initial Coin Offering. 

[Dick Turpin]

I've been waiting for Sh B itcoin to go tits up for some time. It seemed the sort of bovine fertiliser for the gullible that was just asking for for it. 

[trisonic]

 

20180324_123132.jpg

 

 

 

Love that photo!

 

This one covers (almost) all tastes on RMWeb:

 

 

 

Best, Pete.

 

PS I forgot that I managed to cut the grass today:

 

 

 

Edited March 25, 2018 by trisonic

[Gwiwer]

From the Palace of Ally I have returned. Not laden with a backpack-full of goodies but with a selection of new weathering brushes, some Aqua Magic and a Hornby Railroad Mk1 in chocolate and cream destined to be a weathering demonstration item and in due course a “COND” vehicle dumped in a weed-grown siding.

 

I introduced myself to members of the Twickenham MRC with whom I shall endeavour to spend more time in the future, greetings were exchanged with our illustrious leader, chats had with the Kernow MRC “away team” (Chris and Sam), Joel from Dapol and various of the Bachmann / Woodland team. Any other RMwebbers who I may have passed incognito please consider yourselves duly Gwiwered.

 

Still having mind-boggles over the rediscovered artwork. Your thoughts and comments are very much appreciated, thank you.

 

Best wishes to all. Special thoughts to our sick list.

[Happy Hippo]

 

An upcoming exhibition at Church Stretton, combined with a pub lunch* with a former colleague does, however, appeal. And it may get me out of a walk up the Wrekin with the MiL setting an unhealthily fast pace. From the blurb I'm not sure what layouts will be available, but last year it was fun and a good standard. 

 

 

Andy,

 

I will be there, but without the live steamers. This year it is the turn of some 7 mm stuff.  It's my small shunting plank and is definitely 'work in progress', although this is as was requested by the organisers.

 

The plan being to show visitors how things get built, so although the track is complete,  and trains will be running, scenery is in the process of being added, and there might even be some 'how we do it stage by stage' stuff to compare.

 

Unlike some layouts, we will stop and start as required to answer questions and demonstrate how things work (or don't). There will be bits to pick up and look at (Under the supervision of whoever is on duty 'front of house)

 

I'm currently busy writing explanatory notes to beef up the display.

[Tony_S]

Andy,

 

I will be there, but without the live steamers. This year it is the turn of some 7 mm stuff.  It's my small shunting plank and is definitely 'work in progress', although this is as was requested by the organisers.

 

The plan being to show visitors how things get built, so although the track is complete,  and trains will be running, scenery is in the process of being added, and there might even be some 'how we do it stage by stage' stuff to compare.

 

Unlike some layouts, we will stop and start as required to answer questions and demonstrate how things work (or don't). There will be bits to pick up and look at (Under the supervision of whoever is on duty 'front of house)

 

I'm currently busy writing explanatory notes to beef up the display.

I really like seeing some "work in progress" exhibits. Though it can be scary to see year by year how much is made in comparison with my sloth like effort.

[Tony_S]

I really like seeing some "work in progress" exhibits. Though it can be scary to see year by year how much is made in comparison with my sloth like effort.

Though sloth like may be appropriate as John's photo a few posts ago does appear to show me suspended from the ceiling.