Early Risers.

[polybear]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Yes. Absolutely, especially if CAKE or CAKE-LIKE substances were involved.

In fact, I suspect that P Bear would make a trusty minion for Captain Cynical were sufficient CAKE on offer....

 

Bears don't "do" Minion....

Though it is heart-warming to know that Capt. C suspects that Bear would be considered "Trusty".  Your cake is safe in Bear's paws, have no fear.....

 

Quote

Recent data peg the average US male at 90Kg, the average UK male at 82Kg and the average Euro male at 70kg. 

 

Bear was an "average" UK Male last April-ish, and is now an average Euro Male.  More cake needed, obviously.

 

In other news:

 

Bear has inspected 143 floor tiles for defects prior to arrival of the Tiler on monday -week; one tile had a very slightly chipped edge on one corner, so that has been marked with a bit of tape and can live underneath a kitchen unit, or be used in a location requiring cutting.  Door frame painted, paint stripped from pipework (Bear had forgotten the joys of full-fat Nitromors on bare skin - now reminded), din dins done, then walls prepped for priming tomorrow.

 

Also researching the choice of "durable" and "scrubbable" matt and eggshell paints for the walls; Bear also came across an interesting snippet regarding oil-based white paint for interior woodwork.  As many may know, such paint has a habit of yellowing over time (made significantly worse in recent years due to changes imposed by the relevant authorities on paint manufacturers); woodwork not receiving light (such as the inside of a cupboard door, or skirting behind a bed) fares the worst.  Bear read today that such yellowing can be delayed & reduced if the paint receives light as it is drying.  No idea if it is total rollox or not, but the kitchen and bathroom lights are staying on for a good few hours....

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by polybear

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

In my view the only way t make tea is in a pot - which has fu irst been warmed.  However tea bags can be convenient on occasion si they have their uses but I always try to make sure that I squeeze them out (using the spoon) before removing them from the cup - a trick I picked up in Aus.

Tea made with loose leaves in a pre-warmed pot is far better than bagged tea made in a mug.  But, as you say, horses for courses and I'm not going to get up 15 minutes earlier every day just to brew up in a pot for one.  I'll stick with the routine which is kettle on - toast in - kettle boils - pour into pre-bagged mug - toast pops - spread toast - de-bag tea and insert milk.  

 

Aussies don't seem to drink a lot of tea but squeezing out the bag on the spoon is definitely a thing there.  

 

Which reminds me.  It's a good couple of hours since my last mugger.  Time to excite the water in the blue device  

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I heard the sirens going about twenty minutes ago but when I went to the front of the house just now I could see the flashing blue lights. It was an ambulance and paramedic and police cars outside. I spoke to my neighbour and he told me that his son had been attacked with a knife. He'd managed to make it to my neighbour who dialled 999. He has a stab wound in the neck, fortunately not serious enough to cause any worries (he managed to make the half mile or so to his fathers house). The incident happened in a small park that is sometimes a hangout for drug addicts.

[iL Dottore]

47 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Though it is heart-warming to know that Capt. C suspects that Bear would be considered "Trusty".  Your cake is safe in Bear's paws, have no fear.....

Captain Cynical is a firm but fair Minion employer. Should Mr P Bear’s situation in the UK change and he finds himself bereft of CAKE with little prospect of it on the horizon; he would be welcome to join the CC Team. With room and board provided, should Mr P Bear choose to take his salary in CAKE (above and beyond the standard Minion cake-ration) he is more than welcome to take his renumeration in LDC (Lemon Drizzle Cake).

However, although Captain Cynical tolerates insubordination (nothing worse than being surrounded by “yes men”), theft of Captain Cynical’s, or any Minion’s, property is dealt with harshly (the last Minion who thought he could commit theft with impunity is now helping support the Gotthard Base Tunnel...)

[Winslow Boy]

Wow that must be a big minion to support the Gotthard Base Tunnel or does he have assistance

[tigerburnie]

1 hour ago, Ian Abel said:

 

Car died - well, not quite, but had a sever issue, while returning from picking up the Indian meal, looks like the right rear spring/strut may have taken leave of its anchor point

Car deposited at local service garage, they may not be able to get to it until Friday. Having Jemma rent a car at the airport for the weekend, so we have transport for her and Mrs.

 

-2 and sunny, headed for +5. Snow far receding.

 

Tally ho.

Is that an Asian Indian or Red Indian meal there.........................................................?

[tigerburnie]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Bears don't "do" Minion....

 

 

 

 

 

I love a Minion, my grandkids got Santa to get me one a couple of years back, obviously they insisted on the farting Stuart one 

We would go into the toy shop set one off and the three of us stood there chuckling, the shop owner threatened to throw us out if we didn't stop doing it lol.

Edited March 4, 2021 by tigerburnie

[JohnDMJ]

Good Evening, just passing through!

 

Starting work at 06:00 is playing havoc with the rhythms of life!

 

A quick scan picked up these:

 

22 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Bear's introduction (and finale, for that matter) to programming was also via the 6502 during my HNC College Course.  Hexadecimal, IIRC.

 

 

As did Bear's.  Pile of cr@p so I'm told - I kept well away from such evils.

 

I still have my Commodore Pet which I used to program quite happily in machine code and have fond memories of Hexadecimal nomenclature.

 

For the likes of BarryO, in the mid to late 80's, I wrote a cricket scoring program in BASIC with 8088 machine code for some routines; it ran very well on an Amstrad PPC640 and recorded several cricket matches (including ball vector diagrams)! In machine code, the function keys could be mapped to normal, +Alt, +SHIFT and +CTRL giving some 40 options (IIRC there were only ten F-keys!)

 

22 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

The signaller had fun with that as well.  Considered to be a Cat. A. Incident  

 

 

I first saw this post but then was copied in on another part of the same topic:

 

Now, it all makes sense, even if you do have to paws for thought! (Hat, Coat, etc.)

Edited March 4, 2021 by JohnDMJ

[New Haven Neil]

Good to see you John!

[laurenceb]

1 hour ago, tigerburnie said:

I love a Minion, my grandkids got Santa to get me one a couple of years back, obviously they insisted on the farting Stuart one 

We would go into the toy shop set one off and the three of us stood there chuckling, the shop owner threatened to throw us out if we didn't stop doing it lol.

I hate the things! they give me the creeps!

[sixoh8sixoh]

6 hours ago, jonny777 said:

I soaked a large piece of tissue in after shave and jammed it inside my mouth in the general area of the swelling. I left it there for about an hour and then went to bed. I took the tissue out of my mouth before I lay down and just hoped that I could get to sleep. 

 

In the event, I slept very well and when I woke up in the morning, not only had the pain vanished, but so had the swollen area of my gums. I had no more trouble for the rest of my stay. I assume the bacteria had been driven away by the alien environment of after shave. 

 

 

You Brut!

Edited March 4, 2021 by sixoh8sixoh

[sixoh8sixoh]

Evening all from the wilds beyond the Wall. Today has been another crazily busy one with me now feeling beyond tired. Takeaway jumbo sausage and chips has been consumed which is going to propel me from average UK male towards our transatlantic friends. 
 

Hopefully a good night’s sleep will help and the weekend, and looking further ahead, Purdah, can’t come soon enough. 

[andyram]

Evening all. My good wishes all round with supportive thoughts to those who are suffering whether it be tooth ache or post jab. Thank you to all who offered comments about the shortage of a certain part which is adding to the shortage of the Sony console. I had been aware of this issue via the news and it certainly is one of the issues impacting on supply.

 

Meanwhile the search continues yielding nothing but more frustration. Last night I checked a few sites from my iPad whilst partaking in a pre-bed drink. The usual out of stock messages dominated. Then I called up the Argos app. A couple of days ago I had managed to add the item to the trolley but got no further. The item had sat, faded out, in the trolley ever since - until last night when it appeared in full colour with the phrase "available for same day delivery" alongside. I clicked on it, got to the item page - but instead of the opportunity to complete purchase it had the "out of stock" message. Knowing how Argos have a habit of restocking items at silly times, I spent a while refreshing and checking but to no avail. The only result was less sleep than required and a day spent feeling very tired. Ironically, the situation has not changed and the item still remains in the trolley with the same delivery message followed by the out of stock alert at checkout. 

 

 This morning there was further frustration. The large toy supermarket - Smyths, was due to be restocking today. Laptop was on as soon as I got up and regularly refreshed with nothing happening. At 8.35 (precise time I know), I went to make breakfast - came back with tea and toast to find the whole allocation for the day had been on the site and sold out in less than ten minutes! 

 

 Internet sites are certainly not my friends. I also awoke to an alert from the shop site. A decent sized order which was very welcome. However, the order was made up of 5 x a specific GWR wagon from the 2019 set of releases. These have long since sold out and, so I thought, had been removed from the website. This has happened a few times recently where the site engine does not fully remove the item even when it has been deleted. Very annoying. Occasionally. it has been caused by me forgetting to update the inventory on some days. The result of this order being that I will have to disappoint the customer and refund. I have, this afternoon, undertaken a full stock take of current and pre-ordered wagon stock to make sure the inventory is up to date. The benefit was I found a couple of others that had slipped the net although, on this occasion, it was the website error and not me!

 

Stay safe and sane.

 

Andy

[Ian Abel]

2 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Is that an Asian Indian or Red Indian meal there.........................................................?

The Asian Indian variety... for the record, the second term here would be Native American, all over references are definitely discouraged/verboten!

 

[simontaylor484]

There were reports the other week that unscrupulous folk were using some form of bot to bag ps5s and then resell.At inflated prices 

[simontaylor484]

What a mistake to make 

 

The Mrs was out in the garden with dog this afternoon a head appears over fence from next door and says have unspoken to next door about taking part of the fence down(ours).

 

My Mrs heard this and said to this mystery head no she b well hasn't 

 

The fence is ours if it's touched its criminal damage and if you set foot on our property you will get sued for trespass. God knows what they having done its not renovation that requires access from our side so they not covered by access to neighbouring land act 1992 not that they have provided written or verbal notice to request. We haven't had a problem with them before but we won't have people just riding roughshod over our rights. We think they are having a conservatory built let's hope they have employed bricks that can lay overhand

[Gwiwer]

We don't often mention the subject here but some of us are not regular visitors to other parts of the site nor to my antisocial media presence.  The journal is also unlikely to be widely known in these quarters.  

 

I am quietly very satisfied indeed to finally have my efforts in print and more so to have scored a cover photo with my first ever layout article.  

https://railmodelleraustralia.com/RMA Mag March 2021 web.pdf

[monkeysarefun]

12 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

I also watched Ben Fogle in Chernobyl. Very interesting some nutters though especially those who broke in to the hospital basement which was full of highly radioactive firefighters equipment.

 

 

That is reminiscent of the Goiania Incident in Brazil. A small capsule of isotope used in Xray equipment was nicked  with some other equipment from an  abondoned hospital for scrap value.

  Ended up in four deaths, the demolition of several houses and the wholesale removal of topsoil from several sites.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

 

 

[andyram]

49 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

There were reports the other week that unscrupulous folk were using some form of bot to bag ps5s and then resell.At inflated prices 

 

These "scalpers" as they are known are notorious at these times. EBay has plenty of these people selling the console for inflated prices. I would sooner wait than give money to these people. Whilst the ethics of the practise is debatable, the one thing that can be said is such purchases would not have the same security as one made from a known retailer in the event of something going wrong.

[monkeysarefun]

8 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

In my view the only way t make tea is in a pot - which has fu irst been warmed.  However tea bags can be convenient on occasion si they have their uses but I always try to make sure that I squeeze them out (using the spoon) before removing them from the cup - a trick I picked up in Aus.

 

 

Thats actually to make sure we kill any spiders in them.

[simontaylor484]

Thanks for sharing that article Rick very interesting and nice modelling 

 

If any other Er,s  get an article published let us know especially because some of us don't know your real names

[simontaylor484]

25 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

That is reminiscent of the Goiania Incident in Brazil. A small capsule of isotope used in Xray equipment was nicked  with some other equipment from an  abondoned hospital for scrap value.

  Ended up in four deaths, the demolition of several houses and the wholesale removal of topsoil from several sites.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

 

 

The basement had been filled in but the guide did say a fireman helmet had been taken that was highly radioactive. There was also a room where dressings from injured firefighters had been dumped they were highly radioactive

[Dave Hunt]

9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I winder if Dave H knew this aircraft?

 

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/toymaker-Hornby-chief-executive-buys-hawker-hunter-aircraft-which-once-stood-outside-airfix-factory-in-hull-as-tribute-3150428

 

Nearly but not quite. It is a Mk 6 reg. no. XF509; the nearest to that I've flown was XF512 on 63 Sqn. RAF Chivenor in 1968 before I was posted out to Singapore on Mk. 9s. If he gets it airworthy and wants someone to fly it though....

 

The sciatica is still causing grief but I managed to get the modelling mojo in gear for a while and splashed some paint around (whilst sitting comfortably [ish]) before surveying the Hunt Towers defences to check on the bear and hippo deterrence. The reason for that was that the next thing on my agenda was the manufacture of a lemon drizzle cake but luckily there has so far been a complete absence of ursine or pachyderm infestation. There is still some cake left, though, so I may have to call on Captain Cynical to deploy some of his special service troops in a defensive shield until it is gone.

 

I'm afraid that I can't join in the discussion on tea making as I abhor the stuff but when it comes to coffee I have strict criteria - it must look like coffee, smell like coffee and taste like coffee. Hence the tar like substance that the US Navy Commander with whom I shared and office in San Diego had brewing at all times passed the test, even though I had to dilute it, as have most of the substances that I have been subjected to in various other establishments around the world, both military and civil. Even the odd cup of Camp coffee has been found acceptable as have various instant brews but when it comes to Starbucks two of my criteria are not met. Since it is coffee coloured I leave it to your imagination to decide which are the failures.  

 

Stay safe and well everyone.

 

Dave  

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Just had an excellent Zoom presentation by one of our (SEERS) members who now resides in Edinburgh. He is heavily involved with miniature railways and runs his own 7 1/4 inch gauge locomotive, very interesting. Now to catch up with Farcebook.

Edited March 5, 2021 by PhilJ W

[laurenceb]

Night awl