Early Risers.

[Dave Hunt]

Rose with the lark (well, before 0900 anyway); friends round for lunch; several bottles of variously coloured giggle juice consumed; much chat, mostly inconsequential; friends departed after dark; crossword done; some activity in the haunted fishtank observed; time for bed.

 

Not the most exciting or productive day but I have hopes that tomorrow may include some muddling time.

 

Nothing else to report.

 

Until tomorrow.....

 

Dave

[Kingzance]

As Mr Hunt would put it, the haunted fish tank has been blasting out inane carp since we cleared away after our evening meal. Happily for me, I have managed to let her watch all the sh!t that is her diet in such matters whilst I have received my Luminar 4 software and have been going through that and a tiny bit of my various libraries of photographs taken since the start of the millennium - I will now use a phrase attributed to Captain Oates: I may be some time. Time for a small libation and a bit of eyelid inspection, peaceful and healing nights to all.

[AndyID]

38 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

IIRC the detected emissions were radiated back up the aerial - from a friend who worked in the TV business, the transmitters in his case.

 

I think that is the case. Energy emitted by the telly should be coupled into the aerial by magnetic induction from the fly-back transformer's stray field. The shield on the coax down-lead is effective against some RF coupling but not magnetic induction.

[AndyID]

There's a flock of around ten or more turkeys taking the berries off the barberry bushes outside my window. They do tend to carp all over the place but I don't have the heart to shoo them away.

 

1 hour ago, Gwiwer said:

It doesn't solve the problems of small trains not behaving but it does make one feel better from the inside out. 

 

You might want to take a look at Dead Rail. Batteries are not yet sufficient to power express trains (in 00) but they might be more than adequate for small layouts. I'm seriously considering using them for station pilots and shunters on an otherwise DC layout.

 

[Barry O]

Evening, committee meeting completed. Decisions made...now onwards and upwards...

 

If you opened the door to our RFI test chamber  turned the turret of  the Challenger 1 MBT to about 22°from centre and depressed the gun to -10° you could, by unplugging any of the power leads in the vehicle pick up Radio 2 on the test equipment...the things you find out about when you are an "expert"!

Baz

[Barry O]

Forgot to mention positive thoughts to all who ail especially Sharron and Rick, Beth and Jamie  John and Debs.

 

Goodnight all!

 

Baz

[brianusa]

20 hours ago, roundhouse said:

The BBC  channels do not have advertsing  unlike other channels. This (in brief) means that in order to pay for the BBC, anyone in the UK who is watching any TV has to have a TV license by law. There are exceptions such as those over 75 but thats a very moot point at the moment as thats due to be withdrawn.

 

[Stubby47]

Thought for the day:

 

If we are a carbon-based life form and we breath oxygen, then why is carbon monoxide so deadly?

[brianusa]

Don't know what happened with the above but in response................

     I was working in TV at the time of the introduction of ITV in the Plymouth area from Hessary Tor and one of the favourite excuses was, "but we don't watch the BBC, only ITV!"  The reasoning being ITV had commercials so why pay for a licence for the BBC which seemed to have some merit.  IIRC, it was only a fiver in those days, very cheap anyway compared with todays licence.

     Brian.

[Tony_S]

5 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

Thought for the day:

 

If we are a carbon-based life form and we breath oxygen, then why is carbon monoxide so deadly?

I do know why but don’t want to be accused of mansplaining!

[AndyID]

2 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

Thought for the day:

 

If we are a carbon-based life form and we breath oxygen, then why is carbon monoxide so deadly?

 

Good question! But which is  more deadly? Carbon monoxide, or carbon dioxide?

 

CO might kill a few of us but CO2 might well kill all of us. It's probably a case of picking your poison.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well I ended up having quite a busy morning, as we were getting in the car I remembered I had a voucher for 10p off a litre of fuel that ran out today, so I called in at Sainsbury’s and filled up! Sheila also reminded me that we needed some stuff getting from Costco, so that was also on the agenda, but I also needed to go to the big orange DIY shed for some timber and a work-surface for the desk I’m building. By the time I got back it was well past 11’s, I was still drinking my muggertea when Sheila got back!

 

The afternoon however was less hectic, a start was made on a multi dc voltage unit that I can use as a power source when I start the point control circuit I mentioned last week. A few more tweaks and I’ll have a single self contained unit that will supply stable 5v, 12v, 18v and 24v dc voltages.

 

 Goodnight all 

[Ozexpatriate]

20 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Good question! But which is  more deadly? Carbon monoxide, or carbon dioxide?

Carbon monoxide is certainly much quicker (and more toxic).

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[AndyID]

41 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Carbon monoxide is certainly much quicker (and more toxic).

 

Quicker yes, but unless you believe CO2 does not contribute to the greenhouse effect it's likely to destroy human civilization faster than anything.

 

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

You could only do that once.  Maybe.  There was a trick known to signalmen and those among us who were invited into various 'boxes by the "Bobby" on occasions.  A discreet lifting of the box-to-box phone six times would produce six clicks at the receiving end.  Had six bells been sent on the block instrument the bobby might have been working his last shift and on a serious charge given that no obstruction nor danger existed.  But six clicks on the phone was understood to mean - as the local Cornish boys would say - "Specked az bowt"   At which point anyone without reasonable business in the box would be hastily ushered out and told to "Go that way".  In the opposite direction to potentially prying eyes.

 

 

Quite easy to catch them numerous times when they couldn't see you coming and in any case quite a lot of them were usually nattering on the 'bus line (omnibus circuits where everybody on one circuit could be in on a conversation at the same time - absolutely brilliant idea because you never got an engaged tone when calling somebody and if they didn't answer their 'phone somebody else would tell you where they were).   But that was the simple stuff, the really subtle stuff was how a Signalman could let an adjacent box that somebody was about when you were actually in the 'box and they were nowhere near the 'phones - usually because I was near them going through the book.   And being equally subtle if I wanted an adjacent 'box to know that I was about I could do that just as easily without going anywhere near a 'phone if the opportunity presented itself.  And if there wasn't a chance for the Signalman to use the subtle method it was usually very easy to catch out the Signalman at an adjacent 'box if he didn't know that I was out and about.

 

It was a good job the blokes on the Salisbury - Exeter line didn't use a 6 on the box-to-box 'phones (that route was the only place we actually had any on our patch, they weren't very common in older Western 'boxes) because they used them as 'block bells' in everyday working to let the 'box in advance know when a train was entering the section.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

There's a flock of around ten or more turkeys taking the berries off the barberry bushes outside my window. They do tend to carp all over the place but I don't have the heart to shoo them away.

 

 

You might want to take a look at Dead Rail. Batteries are not yet sufficient to power express trains (in 00) but they might be more than adequate for small layouts. I'm seriously considering using them for station pilots and shunters on an otherwise DC layout.

 

Back in the 1980s here was a chap up in Leicestershire who had a large 00 GWR layout in a barn and he had decided that it would be worked like the real thing with separate Drivers and Signalmen. It had no track power at all and all the trains were radio controlled and battery powered using kit he had built specially built although commercial battery power was available for HO scale in the USA back then.

Edited November 19, 2019 by The Stationmaster

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all.

[BR60103]

Just west of Ian, we have varied frozen water forecast, but just had a couple of hours of rain.

 

Dayle thinks she may have picked something up at the opera yesterday as the soprano in La Bohème was coughing rather badly.

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

15 minutes ago, BR60103 said:

... the soprano in La Bohème was coughing rather badly

Hard to imagine a performer was the cause unless she was in the front row. Likely there are plenty of more proximate bugs about.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

... it's likely to destroy human civilization faster than anything

We have plenty of alternative and catastrophic ways of doing that very quickly.

 

A friend of mine lives in a Rocky Mountain state. Home prices where he lives are skyrocketing because there is a nearby Air Force base (mostly underground) where all the equipment is being refreshed and an influx of military contractors is underway.

 

For some strange reason this popped into my head: "Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?" ... "He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought."

 

I'm not diminishing the impact of climate change but it will take quite some time to "destroy human civilization". It is a death by a thousand cuts. Human ingenuity and tenaciousness (like all the dykes / seawalls and road raising being constructed in Miami*) will delay the inevitable for decades. Many micro-economies will change dramatically. I can imagine the California wine industry collapsing and Oregon planting Cabernet instead of Pinot Noir as the region warms and weather patterns change. It will be interesting to see how sea-level rise impacts access to fresh water in the western US - something that is already stressed to the limit today.

 

* After all the Dutch did this centuries ago - but they didn't have to deal with limestone "bedrock".

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

We have plenty of alternative and catastrophic ways of doing that very quickly.

 

I hope I'm wrong but I suspect the consequences of warming could be quite rapid. Complex systems tend to have a "tipping point".

[Robert]

Morning All,

 

It is a fairly mild morning in this part of the world.  Certainly an improvement over yesterday's biting cold.

 

I could get into the climate change debate, but I am not going to! 

 

Time for a coffee - Have a good day everyone...

[chrisf]

Good morning one and all

 

OK, I admit it, I'm stupid, despite reassuring words to the contrary proffered by various interlocutors on the phone yesterday.  I fell for that ruddy TV license e-mail scam, despite all the blatant clues that it wasn't kosher.  I must have spent an hour on the phone in all, talking in turn to TV Licensing, the bank and Action Fraud.  One lesson has been learned.  Never, ever, act on an e-mail first thing in the morning.

 

With the aim of catching up with my comics I had an early night last night.  One magazine, best not named but a clue is that its title is an anagram of LIAR, fell from my hands no less than three times before I gave in to sleep.  That was then.  By 3 am this morning I was wide awake.  What's the betting that I'll be dead on my feet by lunchtime?  Fortunately those superhuman powers with which I am sometimes credited are there to be invoked to get me through the fodder run and the ironing.  After that, who knows?

 

Neil, you are probably right in your surmise of the Leader's identity.  Latest reports are that he is in Paris, which gives Switzerland time to recover before my visit there over C*****mas.  The world of the organist appears to be on a higher plane than that of mere mortals and there is a tendency for such beings to be dismissive of the music which powers my world.  I have attended one recital given by the gentleman in question, my excuse being that I only went into the cathedral out of the rain.  The recitalist dishes out his programme at the beginning of the gig, only he doesn't call it a gig.  I was tempted to wonder where the CD was to accompany the sleeve notes.  By contrast, I attended a concert last week at which I knew who was performing but not what they would play.  Unto each his own, I suppose.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

I hope I'm wrong but I suspect the consequences of warming could be quite rapid. Complex systems tend to have a "tipping point".

I hope so too. It's my understanding that the IPCC had a 2°C target over pre-industrial levels, which now seems to be reframed into a 1.5°C target, which some sources suggest that if nothing else changes, we will exceed in 2040 ± 10 years. We are certainly running out of time to change the outcome, but a particular challenge in terms of generating action is that the dire consequences are in "the future" however long or short that might be.  2030 is only ten years away.

 

It's hard to imagine (let alone know) what the state of the democracies of the English speaking world will look like by this time next year.

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by Ozexpatriate