Early Risers.

[polybear]

Bear spent the morning gluing wallpaper edges down - what joy.....

As for this afternoon, I plan to fit the last remaining wallpaper strip to the wall - the roll is 1m wide, so new words may be heard.  Luckily it's "paste the wall" stuff, so things could be a lot worse....

 

As for the hob splashback, well it seems that the company in question "never offer free delivery" (well I saw it yesterday) and all attempts at wriggling a discount code out of them proved fruitless.  However, this Bear is not easily beaten so I applied for a Trade Account....and some hours later it was approved .  So Bear logs in, finds the splashback I want, enter the custom sizes, crop the image to suit Bear's requirements, adds it to the basket and......the Trade Discount was a grand total of sweet F.A......  Well this one earns a full-blown Turdypah, in celebration of Baz's Birthday.  Happy Birthday, Baz.

So it looks like if Bear wants his fancy splashback then I'll have to forego LDC for some time to come.....

[AndrewC]

Postman Pat came up trumps and delivered a new hose coupling for our spare portable air/con unit. The other one is now hard vented in shed so no longer "portable".

 

Office temp has now fallen from 31c to 23c and still coming down. Bliss. 

[Erichill16]

Afternoon All,

walked Sydney through the woods to the garden centre cafe first thing. Got home and did a spot of eyelid inspection and just had a bite to eat. When I’ve finished the coffee I’m drinking I’m going inside to get some work done. Mil is here talking to SWMBO so a chance I might not get disturbed for an hour or so. 
we could do with a supermarket run as no cheese, sliced meat, bread or milk but it’s so hot we can’t be bothered.

Coffee drunk so better get going.

Robert

[Chris116]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Perhaps we should ask AndyY if certain posts could come with a “trigger warning“?

Is a new handle or new head needed for the broom? I am sure you will get lots of advice on the best place to obtain them! 

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Either what you had composed in your head made perfect sense

I assumed the dinosaurs were their feathered flying descendants. 

[leopardml2341]

Holes drilled, managed with just doing 12, 4 each at 4, 7 & 13 mm.

 

There are now anti theft anchors to which to secure my (probably too large in kW terms) generator. Now to build the enclosure.

 

Back later if I've not melted.

[The White Rabbit]

Happy Birthday to Baz.

 

Another warm one. A brief trip out, only as far as the driveway though, time for a meter reading. That was quite far enough...  I changed the water in the bird baths and then back into the shade. Fur coats aren't compatible with weather like this ... but I will try and grin and bear it, which is probably a bit nicer than trying to grin and bare it. 

 

Shame Phil doesn't live closer, I have two surplus TVs (from the saga or clearing mother's house). But I don't fancy my chances of posting anything like that and it arriving in one piece. 

 

At the moment, either we're not getting a dawn chorus or I'm sleeping through it. Sleeping patterns have changed since the heatwave started. Though still awake early (and rising early to get things done before the worst of the heat) it's a later awaken, an hour or so after dawn and a bit more after the birds start chirruping. 

 

Time to go back to sitting in the fridge or a siesta. 

[Tony_S]

4 minutes ago, The White Rabbit said:

Fur coats aren't compatible with weather like this ... but I will try and grin and bear it,

When the really high temperatures were being recorded in Portland, Oregon our friend's cat was really suffering even with the air conditioning on. Our friend had fostered the cat for a shelter but could not bear to give him back so adopted him when no one else wanted him due to his respiratory problems. This was before the heat. The vet bill was a few thousand dollars. Our friend said while she was dealing with the heat her former husband (they are still civil to each other) in Australia was commenting it was really chilly where he was. 
I did notice the air con at our neighbours house and was told it was for the dogs.

Tony

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

…if I fling the bedroom windows open all night, the dinosaurs will wake me up at about 05.00 telling one another to "gerroff my land"  . Heads you lose tails you're bu**ered!.

I beg your pardon?

Either what you had composed in your head made perfect sense before the spellchecker got hold of it and posted the result or you have some extremely interesting herbal cigarettes to share with the rest of us!

Finally, a Happy Birthday to BaZ.

 

iD

Good afternoon all and Happy Birthday Baz.

 

Au contraire iD,  what I wrote was entirely scientifically valid.

 

Birds are now accepted by most palaeontologists as being therapod dinosaurs just as the dominant large animal species on our planet right now is an ape. (They are in the same group as the velociraptors that provided some  good plot value in Jurassic Park).  Although we tend to think of dinosaurs as living in the same time period, the eighty million years between the extinction of the Stegosaurus and the arrival of the Tyrannosaurus is far greater than the sixty six million years separating the latter's disappearance in the K-T extinction (probably caused by a large asteroid or comet)  and now.

We have no problem accepting the small shrew like creatures that survived the K-T as mammals, not just creatures that mammals are descended from,  so it would be illogical not to accept birds as being the one group of small dinosaur species* that also survived.

 

*(There is fossil evidence that of all the avian dinosaurs, it was only the ground dwelling species that survived the K-T because of the resulting global deforestation. I can't help thinking that there is a lesson for us in that!) 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Pacific231G

[southern42]

‘ afternoon all from the terrace in red dragon land.

 

Hot down on the track yesterday. (Hotter in the cab!) First thing, I found a rabbit(?)* hole on my track check when I came across a sizeable twig & threw it up the bank! 

* A bit big for rabbits I think. Check out the thread I started, Who lives here? Wildlife homes.

(Let me know if there is a similar thread I should be posting if necessary;)

 

On one of my passenger runs, I had one of those magical moments of exchange of whistle/horn between Transport for Wales Class 150 & Geirionydd. Hope my passengers enjoyed it! Needless to say the 150 horn was far more flamboyant!

 

Not all pleasure - it is putting out the rubbish day for tomorrow’s collection: brown food bin

- whereby waste food in compostable binliners undergoes anaerobic digestion  https://www.gwynedd.llyw.cymru/en/Residents/Bins-and-recycling/What-goes-into-the-bin/What-happens-to-food-waste.aspx.
Recyclables go into a 3 tier set of blue bins on wheels. Non recyclables go into black bin liners once every 3 weeks. Garden waste £35 p.a. fortnightly. 

Off for mugadecaf now before I melt!

Enjoy the good weather if you can.

 

Polly

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Someone mentioned James Bonds machine gun equipped Aston Martin DB5. A truly remarkable car as the machine guns occupy the same space as the front wheels of the car. Eye lids urgently require inspection, be back later.

[southern42]

Happy birthday Baz. Enjoy your day.

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from a Sidcup that is sultry.

 

We've been to Silverstone. Racing was enjoyed. Christian Horner was booed.

 

And now back to work I suspect this laptop is not too keen on the heat as it has cut out about 4 times today, usually when I am on a Teams call. I have got no more of those scheduled for the day so hopefully it will work for the rest of the day.

 

No time to try to catch up the weekend's posts so I hope all is well.

[The Lurker]

26 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Good afternoon all and Happy Birthday Baz.

 

Au contraire, iD what I wrote was entirely scientifically valid.

 

Birds are now accepted by most palaeontologists as being therapod dinosaurs just as the dominant large animal species on our planet right now is an ape. (They are in the same group as the velociraptors that provided some  good plot value in Jurassic Park).  Although we tend to think of dinosaurs as living in the same time period, the eighty million years between the extinction of the Stegosaurus and the arrival of the Tyrannosaurus is far greater than the sixty six million years separating the latter's disappearance in the K-T extinction (probably caused by a large asteroid or comet)  and now.

We have no problem accepting the small shrew like creatures that survived the K-T as mammals so it would be illogical not to accept birds as being the one group of small dinosaur species* that also survived.

 

*(There is fossil evidence that of all the avian dinosaurs, it was only the ground dwelling species that survived the K-T because of the resulting global deforestation. I can't help thinking that there is a lesson for us in that!) 

 

Sadly for Jurassic Park there is now evidence that the 'raptors and a number of other dinosaurs had a feathery covering so might have looked very different from the CGI imaginings.

 

The latest consensus seems to be that the Chicxulub crater is the "smoking gun" - the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction.

[The Lurker]

and happy birthday Baz

[iL Dottore]

46 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

...Au contraire iD,  what I wrote was entirely scientifically valid.

 

Birds are now accepted by most palaeontologists as being therapod dinosaurs just as the dominant large animal species on our planet right now is an ape. (They are in the same group as the velociraptors that provided some  good plot value in Jurassic Park).  Although we tend to think of dinosaurs as living in the same time period, the eighty million years between the extinction of the Stegosaurus and the arrival of the Tyrannosaurus is far greater than the sixty six million years separating the latter's disappearance in the K-T extinction (probably caused by a large asteroid or comet)  and now.

We have no problem accepting the small shrew like creatures that survived the K-T as mammals, not just creatures that mammals are descended from,  so it would be illogical not to accept birds as being the one group of small dinosaur species* that also survived.

 

*(There is fossil evidence that of all the avian dinosaurs, it was only the ground dwelling species that survived the K-T because of the resulting global deforestation. I can't help thinking that there is a lesson for us in that!) 

 

Oh! Now I understand.

 

I have no doubt that birds have a long ancestry dating back to a small ground-dwelling dinosaur. Unlike some, I believe that the geological and paleontological evidence is more than compelling, it's about as solid as such evidence can be.

 

As to our perception that they were just animals, instead of some [or many?] being tool-using sentient, self-aware beings, is perhaps wishful thinking. Sixty-million years (or more) erases an awful lot (even plastics and radioactives will degrade and disappear in 60 million years). Who knows, if we were able to go back in time by 70 million years we might find a society of saurians listening to the equivalent of iTunes whilst complaining that the equivalent of the railway was running late, again.....

 

iD

[Gwiwer]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

There IS such a thing as Air Conditioning.

Very popular in hot weather, I’m led to believe….

It would be very popular indeed right here right now. If only it were installed.  Most recent British cars claim to offer "air-conditioning" which turns out to be a cold-blow of the heater.  Much the same as I have at my feet right now in the office - the fan is moving already-warm air around but is not cooling anything.  It just feels a bit better.  

 

By contrast in Australia air-conditioning, whilst by no means universal, does actually keep you COOL.  We have a split system in the home we still own there.  On a 40-degree day with that set to 23C (which you might think is warm) it's beautiful when you come indoors.  It uses an obscene amount of power to keep Australia air-conditioned and on warm summer nights most homes will have theirs running continuously but hey - comfort.  

 

One of the things I learned very quickly was to open the car door, stand back and count to 10.  The interior can reach dangerous temperatures; let the hot air out before attempting to enter.  Every Aussie knows how to drive with just one finger-tip on the wheel and changing fingers every few seconds when one starts burning   Vinyl seats are not a common feature now but once were - you took a towel or shirt to sit on to avoid burning your thighs.  And you never, NEVER, turn the air-con on full-bore when entering the car.  Drive away with the windows open for a few minutes then ease it from warmer to cooler and close the windows.  A windscreen parked in 40C of sunlight can reach 60C.  Blow a cold gale of air across the inside of that and PING  Cracked screen.  

 

Meanwhile it's still warm Upon the Hill of Strawberries where the residents seem to be quite sensibly dressed.  Though the cat is complaining about being hot in his fur coat.  Nope - can't help with that one.  Drink the water.  It's good for you.  

 

 

[Pacific231G]

9 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Oh! Now I understand.

 

I have no doubt that birds have a long ancestry dating back to a small ground-dwelling dinosaur. Unlike some, I believe that the geological and paleontological evidence is more than compelling, it's about as solid as such evidence can be.

 

As to our perception that they were just animals, instead of some [or many?] being tool-using sentient, self-aware beings, is perhaps wishful thinking. Sixty-million years (or more) erases an awful lot (even plastics and radioactives will degrade and disappear in 60 million years). Who knows, if we were able to go back in time by 70 million years we might find a society of saurians listening to the equivalent of iTunes whilst complaining that the equivalent of the railway was running late, again.....

 

iD

It's a nice thought and entirely possible that 66m years after our extinction there would be no trace of our cleverness apart from a few fossils.  What may argue against a dino equivalent of us is the number and range of large dinosaurs that were around at the time of their extinction. Given how good at problem solving birds such as corvids are now known to be (dropping stones into a container to raise the water level enough to drink it is something your cat would likely never figure out)  there's no reason  why a dinosaur with our level of intelligence couldn't have emerged. However, if it had then the fossil record would surely include a preponderance of that one species during the time they were around and a likely deficit of very large dinos. (Think of the woolly rhinos, giant kangaroos, mammoths, Buffalo, giant ground sloths, giant deer and moas that went extinct once we showed up)

There is an interesting (albeit very repetitive and annoyingly American) TV series, Life After People that looks at just how long it would take for most and finally all trace of humankind to vanish if we were suddenly not around, 

[Ian Abel]

Moanday.

 

Friday was a continued back-and-forth with the IT (Incompetent Tw@ts??) department as they struggled to get my new laptop to accept a password - I despair!

 

Weekend came and went and no Idea how most of the time was spent. We did have a delightful happy hour/Indian take-out at Trevor and Meagans.

Yesterday some weeding and little else productive

 

Today - woo hoo - the new corporate laptop showed up, to shouts of "who cares"  So I now use this one for the corporate email etc., and the one I've used for YEARS for all my work with clients - what a pain, definitely NO CHANCE I'm installing all the tools I need/use on this new laptop, not got the energy for that waste of time!

 

18 and sunny first thing, zero% chance of precipitation today, high in the 31-32 range.

 

Onward.

[jamie92208]

4 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

It's a nice thought and entirely possible that 66m years after our extinction there would be no trace of our cleverness apart from a few fossils.  What may argue against a dino equivalent of us is the number and range of large dinosaurs that were around at the time of their extinction. Given how good at problem solving birds such as corvids are now known to be (dropping stones into a container to raise the water level enough to drink it is something your cat would likely never figure out)  there's no reason  why a dinosaur with our level of intelligence couldn't have emerged. However, if it had then the fossil record would surely include a preponderance of that one species during the time they were around and a likely deficit of very large dinos. (Think of the woolly rhinos, giant kangaroos, mammoths, Buffalo, giant ground sloths, giant deer and moas that went extinct once we showed up)

There is an interesting (albeit very repetitive and annoyingly American) TV series, Life After People that looks at just how long it would take for most and finally all trace of humankind to vanish if we were suddenly not around, 

Aren't the Crocodillians the other major animal group to survive from that era.

 

Jamie

[Danemouth]

Well the capital of the Principality has an extreme weather warning until at least Thursday

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57893385

 

My car had been stood in the sun all day on Saturday - got in it at 17:00 and the dashboard gauge proclaimed 37c

 

Dave

who is staying indoors as he burns like a lobster if not extremely careful.

[simontaylor484]

Evening all 

 

Happy birthday Baz you share the day with the Mrs.

Archeoptryx remains have been found in the fossil record which show they were feathered. They are supposedly the link between the flying reptile and modern birds.

 

@chrisf I like Kate Rusby too, as well as Sea sick Steve i started out with nothing and still got most of it left. I also like the Unthanks but they always remind me of Dalziel steelworks which  is on Unthank Road 

[zarniwhoop]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

I Given how good at problem solving birds such as corvids are now known to be (dropping stones into a container to raise the water level enough to drink it is something your cat would likely never figure out)  there's no reason  why a dinosaur with our level of intelligence couldn't have emerged. However, if it had then the fossil record would surely include a preponderance of that one species during the time they were around and a likely deficit of very large dinos. 

If you enjoy Sir Pterry's discworld writings, some of the associated 'The Science of Discworld' books have interesting takes on this, e.g. a civilisation of crabs.

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Oh! Now I understand.

 

I have no doubt that birds have a long ancestry dating back to a small ground-dwelling dinosaur. Unlike some, I believe that the geological and paleontological evidence is more than compelling, it's about as solid as such evidence can be.

 

As to our perception that they were just animals, instead of some [or many?] being tool-using sentient, self-aware beings, is perhaps wishful thinking. Sixty-million years (or more) erases an awful lot (even plastics and radioactives will degrade and disappear in 60 million years). Who knows, if we were able to go back in time by 70 million years we might find a society of saurians listening to the equivalent of iTunes whilst complaining that the equivalent of the railway was running late, again.....

 

iD

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. When it comes to intelligence there is an animal, a mammal living on Earth today that some reckon is at least as intelligent as primates. That animal is the Dolphin 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin. What if there was an animal 66 million years ago that had that sort of intelligence but like the dolphin was confined to the oceans. Another thing is the dinosaurs were reptiles, and many were cold blooded relying on the sun to warm their bodies, not only to get their muscles to work but their brains as well. This might be one of the reasons why the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. The ash thrown up by the meteorite strike would have blotted out the sun for several years.

Edited July 19, 2021 by PhilJ W

[polybear]

3 hours ago, The Lurker said:

We've been to Silverstone. Racing was enjoyed. Christian Horner was booed.

 

Can't imagine why...

Incidentally, his guy had an impact of 51g when he hit the tyres.  I'll bet he knew about that this morning.

 

3 hours ago, The Lurker said:

And now back to work I suspect this laptop is not too keen on the heat as it has cut out about 4 times today, usually when I am on a Teams call. I have got no more of those scheduled for the day so hopefully it will work for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

If you haven't done so recently it might be worthwhile taking the bottom off and checking for a build up of dust in the fan etc. Often works wonders, and can be pretty scary just how much dross builds up in there.

 

In other news:

Bear has glued the big chunk of wallpaper to the wall - it took all afternoon for ONE strip of paper; very fiddly, with lots of angles, corners, window reveal, worktop jutting out, sink unit jutting out - but less than the worktop etc. etc.  I had hoped to get it finished, but I've still got a 7ft long(ish) x 3" wide strip to do - that's an easy bit though, and will wait until tomorrow.

Puppers is really missing out when not having such fun.....

 

Bear's Tip of The Day:

Stay out of the Loft - Bear's wallpapering tools were there....

 

Bear's Bonus Tip of the Day (Part One):

Ovens work very well as a Toaster....when you remember to turn them on.....

 

Bear's Bonus Tip of  the Day (Part Two):

Toast tastes best when it's not black.  The kitchen doesn't look foggy either....