Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

A very enjoyable Zoom meeting this evening and looking forward to the next one.

Indeed.

 

After the meeting (11:00am for me) I had my daily constitutional a bit later than usual. Network coverage of the PGA golf tour event at Riviera in LA was scheduled for noon. When I turned it on they were in a weather delay and had been for a couple of hours. There was not a cloud in the bright blue LA sky. Apparently the weather delay was due to it being windy. (This felt like an "only in LA" sort of thing but supposedly it was windy enough to be moving the balls on greens.)

 

So I watched the women's Australian Open tennis final I had recorded. I accidentally saw a headline announcing the winner while waiting for the Zoom meeting to begin at 8:00am but it was still enjoyable. By the time I finished watching the tennis, play had evidently only just resumed at Riviera. CBS promised to continue golf coverage on the west coast after the scheduled end at 3:00pm, but the local affiliate must not have got the memo because they went to their regular junk Saturday afternoon programming.

 

So here I am.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[sixoh8sixoh]

Nice to see so many of you this evening, especially as such an irregular contributor these days!

 

Life has rather got in the way over the last couple of years, with various house moves and other events limiting my free time... I now have all my railway models in one place (rather than split between Durham and Edinburgh) and since Dad passed away in 2019, I've sold some of his models that don't fit my requirements, plus some of my older non-DCC stock. I'm in the process of selling my parents' house (as administrator of the estate) and my Mum is due to move to Edinburgh at some point in the next couple of months.

 

I've started drawing up bits of my parents' house in 4mm/foot but I'm no good with CAD or drawing programs so at the moment I'm trying to hand draw it onto paper with a steel ruler but I'm perhaps not as accurate as I could be with more practice. The intention is to have a OO scale replica of the old house to remember it by when we no longer have it.

 

I'm keeping my OH awake as I type this so better wish you all a goodnight for now!

[Ozexpatriate]

2 minutes ago, sixoh8sixoh said:

I'm perhaps not as accurate as I could be with more practice. The intention is to have a OO scale replica of the old house to remember it by when we no longer have it.

Selective compression and artistic license are rarely out of place when modelling.

[Barry O]

Thanks to all ERs who could join our virtual get together.

 

For some reason I feel a bit tired.. so..

 

Goodnight all!

Baz

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, brianusa said:

The most evocative example of WM was used as background music was in the film "On the Beach" as the atomic cloud slowly reached the Southern Hemisphere and Gregory Peck and his sub crew sailed away!

    Brian.

One of the most depressing, yet thought-provoking, movies I have seen.  Of passing interest is that a good deal of it was filmed in Frankston, including the railway scenes, which was home to Yours Truly and SWMBO for 17 years.  The city has been significantly redeveloped since the movie was made and the station is now on its second rebuild!  

 

Quote

Zoom

A shame to have missed the gathering but I knew I would be otherwise engaged and bowed out at an early stage of the planning.  Hopefully another time.  In the end I had a lengthy and pre-arranged chat with Former Neighbour (Upstairs) who spends much of her time currently talking to her yet-to-be-met man in the US of A via electronic means.  They have regular movie-and-meal "dates" and earlier today had managed a "virtual karaoke" session.  We had set tonight as a catch-up chat some time ago allowing her to not be otherwise engaged.  

 

It appears to be the early minutes of Sunday morning so Good Morning all and Good Night.  Sleep well, stay safe.  

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[TheSignalEngineer]

46 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

A priority interrupt. Have you added power functions to that latest interpretation of the Hogwarts Express?

 

(While quite visibly underscale it is at least, excepting the tender and the shorty four-wheeled coaches, a much better Hall interpretation than the original LEGO Hogwarts Express which had coach bogies under the footplate.)

 

Not yet. We were discussing that tonight. My daughter has seen a way of doing it on one of the Lego forums so it is on the to do list.

[Ozexpatriate]

On 13/02/2021 at 15:23, pH said:

That ice accumulation does not look nice, for trees or power lines.

Following up on last weekend's ice event in Portland, you were quite right.

 

Wintry precipitation began on Thursday night. By Monday afternoon we were finally in a full melt where I am situated. During the storm the Portland metro area was roughly bisected by a NW / SE line, north of which was mostly snow, south of which was mostly freezing rain. I got the freezing rain and ended up with almost 5cm of ice on my patio furniture.

 

By Sunday things turned badly. I lost electrical power for about 23 hours starting on Sunday afternoon. I had a restless night listening to ice and branches falling. Had the melt started about 24 hours sooner there would have been much less tree damage. Most of the trees in the area sustained some damage including a lovely and symmetrical Japanese dwarf maple in front of my house which lost fully half of it's canopy when a branch snapped at the heart of the tree. At one point about 350,000 regional consumers were without power. Line crews from as far away as Montana had come to Portland to help. As of last night, about 50,000 were still without electricity, almost a week later.

 

It is a bit of a helpless feeling being 'trapped' with impassable roads (to my rear-wheel vehicle) and no central heat, light, refrigeration, television, internet, or telephony*. I did at least have running water with the house being well insulated, the pipes weren't going to freeze.

 

* My mobile telephone reception at home is poor. It really only works when connected to my WiFi. I kept some charge on the 'phone by using the laptop to charge it but it could handle little more than text messages. I also have a landline but the base station for the cordless handsets needs power and even the backup corded telephone has a battery in it somewhere that didn't make it through the duration of the outage. (The fibre to POTS converter has a finite battery as well.)

 

Wednesday saw an all day outage of cable television and internet for some unknown reason. Truly a 'first world problem' but irritating all the same.

 

Of course I can't really complain. Texas was far worse this week. They had frigid temperatures and rolling blackouts leading to broken pipes and boil orders. 

[Ozexpatriate]

8 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

My daughter has seen a way of doing it on one of the Lego forums so it is on the to do list.

Simplest might be to rebuild the tender as the motive power.

 

LEGO has changed their power systems (again).

 

The old unit (88002, branded "power functions") is retiring and sold out online at LEGO in the US. I believe it is essentially the same as element 4584375 in the high speed train in the photograph. You could find it on the second hand LEGO market.

 

The new unit (88011, branded "powered up") replaces 88002. It can be connected to a power pack that responds via Bluetooth to a mobile phone throttle. The "Move Hub" (88006) is expensive.

 

[brianusa]

Michael, many sympathies.  We never had it that bad, about ten inches of snow of which little bits remain in shady areas. We got around all right as our Accura is 4WD.   Hope all is back to normal for you.

     Brian.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, brianusa said:

The most evocative example of WM was used as background music was in the film "On the Beach" as the atomic cloud slowly reached the Southern Hemisphere and Gregory Peck and his sub crew sailed away!

 

41 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

One of the most depressing, yet thought-provoking, movies I have seen. 

For me, Waltzing Matilda at the end of "On the Beach" is a bit cringe inducing - but that's more of an Australian reaction than a comment on the film itself.

[southern42]

Good to see everyone this afternoon-evening. Quite a gathering. Well done Baz and all - or should that be awl?

 

It is that time again so, to the sound of a persisting wind,

‘ night all and nos da. 
 

Polly

[Ozexpatriate]

7 minutes ago, brianusa said:

Hope all is back to normal for you.

Yes, thank you. I still have to spend some time in the garden tying up the arborvitae, but things are 'back to normal' for me. The local park is a drop off point for tree debris. There's a front end loader constantly filling dump trucks with branches all day.

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

Dribble Dribble.....

(MInd you, at thirty bob for 9 bikkies they'd wanna be good..

Pfff! Here the chocolate ginger ones are $14.95 - thats about 8 pounds a box...

 

Lucky we are all rich here.

[BR60103]

Palm oil was the subject of a newspaper article today. Someone had felt that butter was getting harder to spread at room temperature. Apparently the cows are being fed something with palm oil and the stuff is changing the composition of the butter fat.

Do any of you know about jitneys? An early 20th century version of Uber. People with access to a car would travel along streetcar (tram) routes and pick up riders for a nickel (jitney) (5 cents). They tended to stay on the more popular routes. It petered out when the drivers found that they had to make repairs and sometimes their employers (at other jobs) found out what their vehicles were being used for. Can't remember if regulation also happened. (Source is a book called Fares Please.)

 

[iL Dottore]

9 hours ago, BoD said:

...Is there any photographic evidence?..

Yes! It’s currently in the hands of the police.

(it was a great Zoom meeting by the way)

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Pfff! Here the chocolate ginger ones are $14.95 - thats about 8 pounds a box...

 

Lucky we are all rich here.

$14.95? Don’t make me larf. You should see the prices of imported delicacies here in Switzerland. A jar of British lemon curd, for example, costs as little as £0.65 at Sainsbury’s, here British lemon curd costs CHF 7.95 (£6.33) plus postage. The Swiss COOP also does lemon curd (in their gourmet “Fine Food” range) at a slightly more reasonable CHF 5.95 (£4.73). I know being a Supervillain is reasonably profitable (although the price of bear and hippo traps is bordering on the objectionable nowadays), but even so. It’s the principle of the thing. I and many of my minions are looking forward to the day I can go to London on a supply run (which will, of course, include a meet-up with the miscreants and old lags that comprise the ER brains trust). So, “what will be on the shopping list?”, I hear you ask. Well, the obvious Supervillain stables (Champagne, Caviar, Single Malt whiskies) I can get easily, and perhaps more cheaply, in Switzerland. The London shopping list will include the following:

• Selected meat products (Sausages, Black pudding, Haggis, Pork Pies)
• Individual puddings (sticky toffee, spotted d1ck, etc)
• Store cupboard staples (Bird’s Custard powder, Coleman’s mustard, piccalilli, Branston’s pickle)
• Hard to find (in Switzerland) Asian spices and ingredients.

All stuff that either stores well or freezes well.

Things are getting slightly “challenging” at the Alpine recount at the moment as Captain Cynical has run out of sausages, porkpies and haggis. Porkpies can be manufactured “under license” (if you will) in Captain Cynical’s kitchen, but proper bangers and haggis are more difficult to make at home. Certainly, with haggis, the problem is sourcing all the raw ingredients. Even the most open-minded and adventurous Swiss butcher is unlikely to be able to get his hands on a sheep‘s stomach.

 

Captain Cynical is anxiously awaiting the opening of the borders so that the dwindling stocks of British essentials can be replenished.

 

And on that sad note I bid you a great Sunday

Edited February 21, 2021 by iL Dottore

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl Inner Temple Hare,

6 hours sleep so far, I'll try for more shortly.

 

Yesterday was mostly blue skies and quite warm but breezy. Today is forecast to be cloudy with a little rain and my forepaws agree.

 

I see the BBC micro computer is now 40 years old, where did that time go?, I couldn't afford one , but built my own computer from a kit soldering chips onto a board.

The BBC micro was £235 that's £906 today ..ouch..

 

Just had to force this tablet back into UK keyboard, there must have been an update, as it went to dollars instead of pounds.

 

Plans for today, shelf building and trimming metal bits to size. The metal bits, one is easy a short straight length. The other is to fit inside the triangle of the boat trailer chassis at a certain distance up the triangle. So needs to be a fairly precise length with sloped ends.

 

The morning pink pills are taking effect.

Time for more sleep

 

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

Interesting to see the comments about those who claim to be “refugees“. It’s a very difficult situation, but what angers me about these people is that their selfishness impedes, if not prevents, real refugees (who do everything legally) from getting the asylum they need. I may be a cynic, but I couldn’t help noticing that a huge number of the Syrian (supposed) refugees were fit men of military age and yet, when you look at all the old cinema news reels documenting the plight of refugees in conflicts such as World War II, the Korean war and the Vietnam war, the refugees were women, children and the elderly, not fit men of military age.

 

I have nothing against economic migrants. I could be classified as an economic migrant as I came to Switzerland for work. However, the difference was (and is), that everything was done legally, I was not given any handouts and was expected not only to make my own way from the very beginning but also expected to integrate and learn the language and customs of Switzerland.
 

So why not welcome economic migrants, but on the proviso of no handouts, no support and a requirement for them to learn the language and customs of the country that they end up in. And for those who are truly destitute upon arrival, provide them with a loan that has to be repaid within, say, five years of arrival. Add to this “no handout“ approach the requirement for all economic migrants and refugees to have an ID card. By removing the attraction of free handouts (no matter how meagre they may be) and the ability to disappear into the undergrowth upon arrival, then I think we would see a significant drop in numbers. 

 

Properly managed, migrants, immigrants and refugees could bring and contribute a lot to the countries they end up in; badly managed....

[Erichill16]

Morning All, 

Turning into a proper early riser. Well not really, just can’t sleep so SWMBO and I have just had some breakfast and hope to get more eyelid inspection.

Im too wanting to make a journey to Europe as I’m in need of provisions. Fortunately it’s just one item. Gluten free Zwie bak. I’ve seen it in Holland, Germany and Switzerland and it’s a product that Schar make but it’s a product they don’t supply to the uk market. For those that don’t know what it is, it’s like Melba toast.

Anyway, I’m going to try for a bit more eyelid inspection, nothing to get up for.

Regards

Robert

 

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all!  It came so close to being 'good morning' but an attack of cramp in the left leg at 00.45 hours put paid to that.  First, many, many thanks for all the kind birthday greetings.  As some know, my mother died suddenly on my 37th birthday and I did not feel inclined to mark a difficult anniversary with much in the way of joy.  Half a lifetime later there has been some healing.  Yesterday morning I drove as usual to Cambridge Crematorium and reflected with bird song to help me before returning home and getting on with the rest of the day.  On a post in the gardens was a sign which read "Fire Assembly Point".  This struck me as a tad unfortunate at a crematorium.

 

The time just flew by yesterday afternoon during the virtual gathering of ERs, a good idea so ably organised by Barry.  The event did so much to lift my spirits but that was not its purpose.  Meeting fellow ERs is always a good experience, as is knowing who they are when you meet them!  When shows return my name badge will reappear.  [Good heavens, I'm being positive, and at this time of the morning too!]  So, one day, will The Tie.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[jamie92208]

Good morning from the Charente.  It's a bit grey here but not damp.   

 

It was great to take part in the Zoom yesterday and to see old and new faces, and to be able to put faces and names to several avatars.  A big thank you to Baz for organising it all.

 

It was a good day her for other reasons as it was officially, at least according to our French neighbours, the last day of winter.   How do we know this, simples, we saw and heard flocks of migrating common cranes going over us at lunchtime, many hundreds of them, sounding like a Parisian traffic jam with all the honking they made. This was the first flock

with some in close up.

App apparently they are heading from Spain/Portugal/Morocco, to Northern Germany and Scandinavia

A few minutes later another large flock went over, moving very fast with wind assistance.

We saw them in 2019 but missed them last year.   We don't see them come south but in September do get Storks which roost on the electricity poles.

 

Anyway after tea we watched TV.   I had managed a bit of time in the shed, changing the colour of some things that move.

 

This morning it's market day and after that who knows.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Did not sleep well as I had cramps/spasms in my legs on and off. Pah!

 

Of course a network of ER "posting agents" could allow items to be procured then sent on to other ERs... just thinking...

 

@iL Dottore i don't think trying to mail our local butchers sausage (including dragon ones) or black pudding would work...sorry!

 

 I have been informed that today will be a "makedoandmend" day. I may just down load a new phone ring tone..  now should it be an L60 (Chieftain) or a CV12 (Challenger)? That may bring a smile to me when the phone "rings".

 

Technology can be wonderful..but I am saddened by reading the "look at me I have reinvented the wheel" seen in many technology magazines...

 

Have a great day! Positive thoughts to all!

Baz

 

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Barry O

[polybear]

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Pfff! Here the chocolate ginger ones are $14.95 - thats about 8 pounds a box...

 

Lucky we are all rich here.

 

The last choccy ginger ones that Bear bought were 8p a pack - McVities too.

Mind you, they were on a clearance special in the local Co-op.  Four packets fell into Bear's basket, strangely

On the subject of Oz, this made the BBC radio news yesterday:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56137597

No-one is forced to have the vaccine, but it seems there are numpties who still feel the need to demonstrate.....

Mention of Israel was also made, where they have introduced a "Green Passport" scheme which is valid for 6 months and comes into effect one week after your second vaccine dose; it gives the holder access to additional venues such as gyms, hotels and synagogues.  However, the anti-vaxxers aren't happy with that either, as they feel they are being discriminated against.....

 

Bear's Tip of the Day:

Never, EVER, sh1t on a Bear - we're less than keen, unsurprisingly:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56136249

 

And someone was lucky not to get this land on their bonce (scroll down):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56141673

(And as it happened in the USA - with apologies to fellow ER'ers, I expect a number of claims from those starting huge compensation claims for damage, stress. personal injury, therapists costs etc etc after suffering life-long headaches and memory loss after being hit by a falling 16BA nut).  Cynical? Bear?

Edited February 21, 2021 by polybear