Early Risers.

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Probably some Brit ex-pat who took his UK electric chain saw into the woods and only then realised that the plug would not fit into his French extension lead.

 

It might had been my Dad. He had a habit of sawing or strimming through his own power cable, and then throwing the whole lot into the woods in rage and disgust.

[New Haven Neil]

Another fail to post ER here, from a rock that surely must be closer to the Lake District than it was yesterday.  It was fair howlin' when we went to bed, but stopped quite suddenly about 3am.  Today is dead still, couldn't be more of a contrast.

 

We have been gifted a good heap of dry firewood from a friend that no longer uses their open fire, so did two FULL carloads this morning (Mrs NHN's Picasso in van mode) and then stacked and chopped until after lunch.  Most of it was OK for size but over length for our burner, so I got my big chop/mitre saw out and halved a lot of them.  My hands are now seized. The load altogether is about half of our winter consumption by the look of it, so it was well worth the effort.  Friends are getting taken out for a posh curry next weekend in thanks.  The Picasso is less than impressed, needs a good clean out now!

 

ION been out for a sneaky gelato, really shouldn't have that but it was a minor celebration after scoring the firewood!  Even better, Mrs NHN has a cooking head on so I don't have to prepare or cok dinner.  Win.

Edited 4 hours ago by New Haven Neil

[polybear]

5 hours ago, Grizz said:

The Deltic Wars……part one……

 

It was a quiet sunny morning in mid October when I naughty Grizzly Bear, who should probably have been hibernating by now and was therefore being a bit mischievous, lobbed the first grenade of the war…….😎

 

 

 

 

 

……and so it began…..

 

 

 

Ahhh....THAT Deltic......Bear thought you meant one like this:

 

Or even worse, this monstrosity  😱.....

 

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

I dont know about train price equivalencies here , but this ute sold for £776,000 - whats THAT in Deltoids?

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW MUCH??  😲  Nice, admittedly - but what's so special about it?

[DaveF]

I went to church, things went went pretty well as usual.

 

I realised I had a gammon steak to eat so had grilled gammon, fried eggs and tomatoes with a few chips for lunch, which made a nice change.  The tomatoes were almost the last from this year's greenhouse crop, I have just enough left to have as part of a salad tomorrow.

 

This afternoon I had a spam parking charge notification - the main give away was that Oct was spelt as Otc and the whole things was not quite right - it offered a discount, apart from that the "so called" government wording at the bottom looked correct (it was lifted from a gov.uk site) so I can see why people are taken in by them.  It has been reported as spam, the number blocked and the text deleted.

 

Apart from that I have cleaned the cooker, done a bit more in the garden and decided to leave the sweet peas for a few more days as there are still some buds which might open.  Then they will go as they are beginning to collapse.

 

As it is dull and cold here are a few more sunny photos I took yesterday to make you cheerful.  The colours really were intense, it was a very clear bright morning.

 

Bolam Lake

 

Autumn at Bolam Lake

 

A piece of Northumberland countryside near Bolam.

 

David

Edited 4 hours ago by DaveF

[polybear]

ION.....

 

Bear isn't easily impressed, but...

I reckon that SpaceX Jobbie was rather clever...I was expecting it to end in a glorious Tram Smash...

[Hroth]

Just put the telly on to occupy my time while the chicken, leek and potatoe bake... baked.  The first things that came up were pictures of people prising live oysters open with their metal knives and swallowing the contents whole!  DISGUSTING!!!  They shouldn't show this sort of behaviour on the telly before 9pm!

 

 

[PupCam]

Afternoon!

 

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

A Deltic is a British diesel locomotive that has achieved almost mythical status in the eyes of the gullible and impressionable, notwithstanding its various technical and mechanical flaws and limitations.

 

Such is the devotion of the besotted that they acquire copies or "models" of said locomotive to take home with them (what they actually do with them in the privacy of their homes - it's best not to speculate)

 

Such "models" are available in a variety of sizes ("scales") with a variety of features. Such is the tight-fistedness of many adherents to the "Cult of the Deltic" that the cheapest "model" available (£85 about A$185) has become a de-facto currency reference for (what many would consider as) "minor financial transactions" (aka "spending pocket money")

 

Wikipedia

 

FACTS, FACTS, FACTS my dear boy!     Pontification must be based on facts and the fundamental fact here is completely wrong and £85 don't enter into it!  

 

Now, let me explain again about the Deltic currency.

 

1 Deltic   =   The recommended  retail price of ONE 4mm scale Accurescale (DC) Deltic which to all intents and purposes is £170.00*

 

We also learnt the other day that the secondary currency of the "Sound Equipped Deltic" is

 

1 Sound Equiped Deltic   =   The recommended  retail price of ONE 4mm scale Accurescale (DCC Sound Equipped) Deltic** which to all intents and purposes is £260.00

 

You'd be hard pushed to get a Lima version for £85 (so I'm told)!

 

* Well actually it's £169.99 but I'll fight you for the penny and it's academic anyway as there aren't any in stock hence my recent comment regarding the surprising stability of the currency

** The clue is in the name.  A bit like the recently flooded houses in Puppershire in the road called "Brookside"

 

Wikipedia?  -  My *rs*!    You'll be telling us you are "interested"  in the GWR next! ***

 

*** Counselling is available for that too these days

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

9,129.41 BSD

 

Just plain wrong I'm afraid as even the cheapest electronic calculator will confirm.      If such a simple calculation cannot be evaluated correctly then there's no hope for the O Level stuff.   

How much did you say you charge for your "professional" services per hour?    And how would you possibly know how many hours and how much to charge? 🤣

 

If you wish you can re-submit your homework to see if you can get the correct answer but I'm afraid any such re-submission will merit a mark of no better than a "D".

 

4 hours ago, Hroth said:

Nahhhhh.....

 

The green one is a Deltic.

 

The blue one is a DP1, and is called "Deltic".

 

Simples!!!

 

Essentially that's perfectly correct.   

 

There are further details that could be added but the fear of a salvo of low-flying awls prevents me from elaborating.      I had a yellow card last week and I'm not risking it!

 

4 hours ago, Grizz said:

I’m thinking of switching my Deltic based religious beliefs to BR Rail Blue with full yellow ends and with none of that Finsbury Park silver and white painted heresy neither!  

 

Come on Grizz, you can make it.  Keep talking to us, we can get you some help.   There are specialist counsellors who can help you with such terrible thoughts.   Be strong!

 

5 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

More single use plastic waste.

 

Ban artisanal cream cakes due to there contribution to the plastic mountain. It's our Swiss Correspondent whose causing us to be engulfed by a rising tide of irresponsible us of single use plastic.

 

Where's an international arrest warrant when you need one. Just think with one arrest we sort Global Warming out.

 

And not only that, they didn't look very healthy and three of them!    Call the dietician.

 

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

That's all good, that is.

 

It means that you have a functioning immune system which is happily playing with its new toys. Lucky Bear.

 

You don't want a wimpy immune system that decides to look the other way when the vaccine turns up and then runs and hides when the virus rolls into town

 

Nope, you want an immune system that gives the new vaccine's antigens a good kicking and then - when the virus rocks up - is right up front, tossing a lethal looking flic-knife from hand to hand, screaming "c'mon if you're hard enough"

 

As for "spending Deltics", when it comes to the comfort, convenience, enjoyment and satisfaction of "me, myself and I" I don't scrimp on Deltics. I don't have kids and I can't take it with me. Mrs iD is well provided for and  I aim to leave a huge fortune of SFr 0.01 to the taxman.

 

Ah, that will explain why my immune response to yesterday's COVID jab is hiding behind the sofa without making the tiniest of squeaks then.    B*gg*r!

 

ION

 

A trip to the football stadium in Milton Keynes was had this morning.  Those that know me know I would never venture to such places on a match day as I, like many others here, have absolutely no interest in Kickball.    I was going to come up with the old line father used to use that went along the lines of "22 grown men kicking a bag of wind about"  but such phrases don't cover it all these days and, shock horror, no doubt someone somewhere might get offended 🙄.

 

Anyway, I'm sure you all know the reason for my visit where I spied the very large offering from a certain well-known personality from the world of musical entertainment.     I have to say it was very large and very good albeit it was only half there as I understand it.    No matter, it enthralled a Junior Junior Puppers for quite a while who announced correctly most of the objects that passed before his eyes although all blue smooth, steamy, pointy things do not a duck make.   Still it's early days to pick up the subtle difference between types of things and specific instances of those types and with that suitably abstract explanation I could be talking about data types in a computer program thus sparing the mighty awl🤞

 

I will be settling down to watch Bob and Paul in the next of their most excellent telly-visual programs and no, Puppers doesn't do fishing either.

 

TTFN

 

 

 

 

 

[jamie92208]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

@Grizz

 

@monkeysarefun  A smidgeon over D 4,300 I understand. Possibly a bargain...

 

Ah the smidgeon, a wonderful unit of quantity. Along with the tad and other such thinks.  According to the threat Tom Lehrerbit just takes a smidgeon to poison a pigeon. 

 

Jamie

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

 

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Very late on parade today, we overslept and then went straight outside. I swept up a load of leaves first, as there was a lot in front of the workshop door.  Once that was done, I continued making the helix jig. I turned 2 brass drill guides on the lathe then fitted them into the jig frame I made yesterday and left the glue to set whilst I had some dinner. Once the glue had dried I then drilled and tested the jig, it works perfectly, I can now drill 2 holes in each piece, both holes are equidistant from the ends, they are exactly in the centre of the edge and the boards can be fitted together anyway round, in every case, the corners alway line up. Am I a happy bunny, yes I am 🤗.

 

Below are a couple of photos of the completed jig. 

 

This one is of the jig itself, showing the 2 brass drill guides. 

This one is of the jig in place, ready to drill a pair of holes. 

In the back can be seen a section of helix that has already got a pair of dowels fitted. 

 

The flakey plywood on the end and sides doesn’t look good, but it’s actually quite smooth and the outer edges and corners have been rounded off. However, I’m going to paint the jig, which I hope will stop bits flaking off. 

[PhilJ W]

To add to the Deltic debate, this too is a Deltic.

https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/trucks-and-heavy-equipment/fireground-classic-1965-mack-superpumper-big-water-from-the-napier-deltic-diesel/

[pH]

4 hours ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 

 I think it's here by that wall .

 

Impressive - how long did it take you to find that?

 

The scrapings are evidently pretty pure water since there’s a salmon-bearing stream almost immediately behind that wall, and a salmon hatchery a few yards downstream. They would not be allowed to put any polluted water into that environment.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon from Estuary-Land. I actually made money at the toy fair by selling a coach that was surplus to requirements (I ordered it twice) and got £5 more tan I paid for it. I didn't buy much otherwise, only a few diecasts. Now dinners ready, the micro has just pinged so time for din-dins.

[Sidecar Racer]

11 minutes ago, pH said:

Impressive - how long did it take you to find that?

 

The scrapings are evidently pretty pure water since there’s a salmon-bearing stream almost immediately behind that wall, and a salmon hatchery a few yards downstream. They would not be allowed to put any polluted water into that environment.

 

 About 5 minutes , your clue of the CPR terminus gives Port Moody , a scan over the area looking for the ice rink .

once that's found then zoom in and look for an  area outside the rink that is not going to be in people's way but

with some trees behind it .      

[TheQ]

Evening Awl,

 

Forecast, 15 to 20 mph slowly reducing, to 5- 10 mph. Actual, 10-15 mph, reducing to 3/5 of not a lot.

Direction Northwesterly actually anywhere from south westerly to North westerly.

Max temp 8 C , 46 F. Accurate, but it was colder than that most of the time.

Mostly cloudy. Accurate.

Tide lightly in, in race 1, not a lot race 2, strongly out race 3.

 

Race 1, course 3p, Xp twice.

 

Reasonable start above the others everyone on starboard tack  as the general wind was from the right hand  bank.

Could have done with being  a further 20ft lower for stronger wind.

About conditions generally suiting BM, gradually moved up to second or third by the first bend, but at the bend the increasing wind favoured the bigger boats, the next section was directly into the wind , BM dropped a couple of places. But still had others behind at Buoy 3, rounding that the rest of the fleet swept past on the run, BM being blanketed by the bigger boats.

 

So for the rest of the race it was follow the leader, BM as usual did well up wind not so well down wind. Was not too far behind at the finish probably mid fleet on handicap or just better.

 

Race 2, much less wind,

About a minute before the start I called water at the starboard end, the outer of the two boat completely cocked up, catching the mainsheet of a Norfolk dinghy, trapping BM and the boat between . The dinghy helm got free, but by then we were down to ten seconds, so us group of 3 boats were in the lee of the club house, I'd intended to be 20 to 30 ft of the port end..

So we dived down into the wind and set off in pursuit.. amazingly we caught up, helped by the lead group of boats having to tack off the left hand bank while us pursuers were able to sail. Straight on if somewhat slowly.

 

By the corner BM was up to third, then I made a mistake and tried to sweep round the stern of the second place boat as it tacked off. Unfortunately BM just touched bottom, and as I tried to tack off / get off the mud, several boats went past.

From then on it was follow the leader, but the wind was very much reducing, favouring BM , BM was within 40 ft of two of the fleet, and the others not far ahead. The Line crew remarked as I tied up BM had beaten most of the fleet.

 

For a change it was full roast dinner for lunch at the club followed by choccy cake or cheese cake for £13 a person, dry good it was too.

 

The afternoon race was in very light winds, a reduced course of 2P, XP, twice with 2 brought closer to the start.

Started well, 

 Just before the bend the pulled out to pass the leader, but that meant further out into the river into the tide so BM slowed, the leader got away. Carried on all of us struggling against the tide with the lack of wind..

 Ok once round buoy 2 the big boats behind swept past,  on rounding X it was getting really hard to make progress but BM got past one boat, unfortunately they then got above BM slowing BM badly.. then that boat gave up, ss did others. So at the end BM was second, ... Because there were only two of us left in our fleet!!!.

 

On mooring up it was sails off, boom and jib into the landrover.. that's BMs last race of the season. Next week is a passage race of up to 20 miles, BM doesn't qualify as its double handers only..

 

 

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

12 hours ago, polybear said:

It never ceases to amaze me that when the winner gets 81M votes and the loser 74M then 11,000 extra votes for the loser would make them the winner.  And I'm not even going to attempt to understand it - life's too short.

Absolutely no different in gerrymandered parliamentary districts. It was normal while I was growing up in Queensland for a minority of voters to elect the state government majority.

[Chris Snowdon]

17 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

Dolphins can be pretty vicious too. Another species we like to see as cute and fun.

In the same series as we saw the chimps doing cannibalism on their next-door tribe, and the crocdile dinner-party. (relatively early Channel Five, I think - as well as the dismal soft porn, they did some decent OTW documentaries), we watched some dolphins "greeting" (ie, lynching) a lone orca.  Not pretty.  So, is mob-violence a "higher" mammalian trait?

[Chris Snowdon]

18 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Evening Awl,

 

Forecast, 15 to 20 mph slowly reducing, to 5- 10 mph. Actual, 10-15 mph, reducing to 3/5 of not a lot.

Direction Northwesterly actually anywhere from south westerly to North westerly.

Max temp 8 C , 46 F. Accurate, but it was colder than that most of the time.

Mostly cloudy. Accurate.

Tide lightly in, in race 1, not a lot race 2, strongly out race 3.

 

Race 1, course 3p, Xp twice.

 

Reasonable start above the others everyone on starboard tack  as the general wind was from the right hand  bank.

Could have done with being  a further 20ft lower for stronger wind.

About conditions generally suiting BM, gradually moved up to second or third by the first bend, but at the bend the increasing wind favoured the bigger boats, the next section was directly into the wind , BM dropped a couple of places. But still had others behind at Buoy 3, rounding that the rest of the fleet swept past on the run, BM being blanketed by the bigger boats.

 

So for the rest of the race it was follow the leader, BM as usual did well up wind not so well down wind. Was not too far behind at the finish probably mid fleet on handicap or just better.

 

Race 2, much less wind,

About a minute before the start I called water at the starboard end, the outer of the two boat completely cocked up, catching the mainsheet of a Norfolk dinghy, trapping BM and the boat between . The dinghy helm got free, but by then we were down to ten seconds, so us group of 3 boats were in the lee of the club house, I'd intended to be 20 to 30 ft of the port end..

So we dived down into the wind and set off in pursuit.. amazingly we caught up, helped by the lead group of boats having to tack off the left hand bank while us pursuers were able to sail. Straight on if somewhat slowly.

 

By the corner BM was up to third, then I made a mistake and tried to sweep round the stern of the second place boat as it tacked off. Unfortunately BM just touched bottom, and as I tried to tack off / get off the mud, several boats went past.

From then on it was follow the leader, but the wind was very much reducing, favouring BM , BM was within 40 ft of two of the fleet, and the others not far ahead. The Line crew remarked as I tied up BM had beaten most of the fleet.

 

For a change it was full roast dinner for lunch at the club followed by choccy cake or cheese cake for £13 a person, dry good it was too.

 

The afternoon race was in very light winds, a reduced course of 2P, XP, twice with 2 brought closer to the start.

Started well, 

 Just before the bend the pulled out to pass the leader, but that meant further out into the river into the tide so BM slowed, the leader got away. Carried on all of us struggling against the tide with the lack of wind..

 Ok once round buoy 2 the big boats behind swept past,  on rounding X it was getting really hard to make progress but BM got past one boat, unfortunately they then got above BM slowing BM badly.. then that boat gave up, ss did others. So at the end BM was second, ... Because there were only two of us left in our fleet!!!.

 

On mooring up it was sails off, boom and jib into the landrover.. that's BMs last race of the season. Next week is a passage race of up to 20 miles, BM doesn't qualify as its double handers only..

 

 

 

 

Is it a simple coincidence that this sounds rather like the America's Cup report I heard an hour or so ago?  There seems to be some overlap!  Imagine that your day was affected by the same patterns which ended theirs early.

 

FW/cs

[Ozexpatriate]

8 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Jeez the UK obviously  thrives on rules, fine print and bureaucracy!

Is this some sort of epiphany for you? 😉

[Ozexpatriate]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

The Swiss moved to biodegradable food-safe plastic a long time ago

Flavio, wasn't your photograph taken in Japan?

[PupCam]

Remarkable!

 

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-5-launch-super-heavy-booster-catch-success-video

 

[Chris Snowdon]

35 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

9 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Jeez the UK obviously  thrives on rules, fine print and bureaucracy!

Is this some sort of epiphany for you? 😉

Also, and from whom do you believe or imagine that the US learnt its own version of that?  My job used to require translating the red-tape into clear black print, according to the completely different languages used on either side of The Pond.  I certainly wasn't the first and almost certainly won't be the last!

 

BR/cs

[Chris Snowdon]

15 minutes ago, PupCam said:

Remarkable!

 

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-5-launch-super-heavy-booster-catch-success-video

 

The Badger's Nadgers.  They had pleanty of practice with the earlier LVs but this went really well (regardless of the dewey-eyed hype, this went really, really well!).  Good luck to them.  You're an R/C A/C chap so you know how easy the theory is, and how difficult the execution.

[monkeysarefun]

55 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Absolutely no different in gerrymandered parliamentary districts. It was normal while I was growing up in Queensland for a minority of voters to elect the state government majority.

YEs and I seem to recall general pearl-clutching after the UK election due to the fact that  something like 65% of voters DIDNT  vote  for the winner.

[PhilJ W]

When I switched on my computer this afternoon I opened RMweb and it appeared normal  but I later discovered that instead of the page I closed on it opened at the top of the following page. It was only when I went to check on something that I spotted it. I have also noticed the same problems on other threads as here on ER's, not available, 504's etc. and all occur when opening a new page. I doubt therefore that opening a new or replacement ER's thread will make one iota of difference as ER's is the most frequently used thread and making the problems more common.

[Chris Snowdon]

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

YEs and I seem to recall general pearl-clutching after the UK election due to the fact that  something like 65% of voters DIDNT  vote  for the winner.

Understood, and probably agreed, and probably a cautionary example for voters in democracies elsewhere.  Similar to some other earlier nonsense here, since when everything since has been "52% for, 48% against", which is actually b0ll0ck5 when there was only a 65% turnout (so each side can, but usually can't be bothered to, claim an extra 35% of the whole) and remains dis-spiritingly divisive.  The idiot who called this divisive and unproductive nonsense, without qualifying it on minimum turnout, nor legislating for the "advisory" nature of it, promply sh4t his drawers and ran away, leaving others to make the best of it.