Early Risers.

[polybear]

Bear here....

A Woolly Kinda Day....

The Hand Rail is now danglin' (hopefully) very firmly on the wall in the Hallway - that little exercise managed to see off the majority of the morning.  A Big Tick.

All I need to do now is find a suitable doormat to grace the Hall - hopefully one that won't move, mark the carpet (some can do, apparently) and is good at scraping boots.  Oh yes, and the right size and colour....

The (rather nice 😉) NNND has gone on Hols for ten days - Bear has been promoted to Gardening Duties (a.k.a. hose pipe squirter) as required.  I can do that....

 

Oh yes, and Postie Pat (or Patricia) has failed to put in an appearance for parcel collection duties AGAIN 🤬.  Looks like Bear will have to do it himself.  Poo.

 

Bear finds himself in a definite Flaky Groove, however - there's a distinct air of "what's the fuggin' point?" danglin' over Bear Towers at the moment.  Double Triple Turdycurses.  I know exactly what started it - it was walking around Stevenage Town Centre yesterday and seeing various individuals....it got me thinking "that'll probably be Bear in ten years time....."

(Note to Self:  Don't ever, EVER go to that s. hole again)

 

In other news.....

I see that a certain Barge down in Portland is headline news yet again; there was a rather good letter in one of those freebie newspapers (the Metro?) yesterday, as found on many Railway Stations.  It was written by a Retired Lt Cdr (RN), pointing out that the freebie accommodation on the Barge was a huge improvement (and some) on that given to RN Sailors defending our shores, often for months on end.  LDC Awarded....

 

Bear gone.

[pH]

11 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Today’s Google search for “1/24 scale, helicopter kits“ return quite a few hundred results, a huge number of which did not feature either the right scale or even feature a helicopter.

Do you really want a search which returns only items which satisfy the search terms exactly? For example, with that search, would you be happy with it missing items which would be retrieved with the searches:

 

“1/24 scale, helicopter kit“  or “1/24 scale, helicopter model“ ?

 

Unless you are trying to retrieve a single item that you know to be there (e.g. you’ve looked at it before), it’s always better to start off with a broad search, in an attempt to catch everything you might want, recognizing that you will get a lot you don’t want (and almost certainly still miss stuff you would be interested in). Then, assuming you do get results, gradually add criteria to narrow the search, as you did.

 

I do take your point about ‘sponsored’ items appearing first.

[The White Rabbit]

24 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear here....

 

All I need to do now is find a suitable doormat to grace the Hall - hopefully one that won't move, mark the carpet (some can do, apparently) and is good at scraping boots.  Oh yes, and the right size and colour....

 

In partnership with CC's GMH Industries... :

 

[iL Dottore]

13 minutes ago, pH said:

Do you really want a search which returns only items which satisfy the search terms exactly? For example, with that search, would you be happy with it missing items which would be retrieved with the searches:

 

“1/24 scale, helicopter kit“  or “1/24 scale, helicopter model“ ?

 

Unless you are trying to retrieve a single item that you know to be there (e.g. you’ve looked at it before), it’s always better to start off with a broad search, in an attempt to catch everything you might want, recognizing that you will get a lot you don’t want (and almost certainly still miss stuff you would be interested in). Then, assuming you do get results, gradually add criteria to narrow the search, as you did.

 

I do take your point about ‘sponsored’ items appearing first.

You make a good observation about specificity; however given how sophisticated modern search engines can be, I would have thought that tge search engine would be able to return the first N results for “1/24 scale helicopter kits” (or models) or for “1/24 scale” or for “helicopter kits”,  and not for “1/32 scale” and/or “tank kits”.  Perhaps AI will be better?
 

Of course, to be a wee bit cynical, just as supermarkets put items they especially want to sell* in a prominent position on the way to the checkout, perhaps that’s now what’s happening with Google searches

 

* I vaguely remember a book (or perhaps a TV programme???) that claimed that supermarkets get paid handsomely by product manufacturers to prominently display their items in the places most heavily frequented by shoppers in the store

[Coombe Barton]

... Twenty four years today since Lizard with the Lights Out field trip ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/08/11/postcards-from-the-periphery-2023-23-another-government-hiccup-and-a-beatles-topknot/
 

[pH]

16 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I would have thought that tge search engine would be able to return the first N results … for “1/24 scale” or for “helicopter kits”,  and not for “1/32 scale” and/or “tank kits”

So would you, or would you not, expect it to return a result for a 1/24th scale tank kit?

 

Or for a 1/32 scale helicopter kit?

Edited August 11, 2023 by pH

[PupCam]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

Perhaps our resident Fraggle & Puppershire Resident might like to give this a try.....

 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/motorcycle-rider-lies-down-comfortably-at-high-speed-on-highway/vi-AA1eTP1T?ocid=socialshare

Most certainly not!     
 

Looks too close to a Hardley Abletoo …..

 

 

[Dave John]

Humour me il Dottore.

Junk Google. It is a sales platform not a search engine. Try Duck Duck Go, selectable under preferences > search on safari and I assume other browsers. 

Search for 1/24 scale helicopter kits. 

Note the difference. 

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Certainly, manufacturer websites are incredibly helpful, but you gotta know who the manufacturers are in the first place…

For aircraft models I would normally look at hannants.co.uk but 1/24 helicopter kits seem to be remarkably scarce, only two and not in stock anyway. Other scales. Like 1/35, 1/48 and 1/72 have a bigger selection. 

[Gwiwer]

It has long irritated me that kits of aircraft and watercraft are scaled at 1:72 while railways and road vehicles are scaled at 1:76. It is just as frustrating that many people are scaled at 1:87 (which of course matches many trains and road vehicles). Getting the “look” right when mixing scales is of course part of the skill of the hobby. 

[PupCam]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

You make a good observation about specificity; however given how sophisticated modern search engines can be, I would have thought that tge search engine would be able to return the first N results for “1/24 scale helicopter kits” (or models) or for “1/24 scale” or for “helicopter kits”,  and not for “1/32 scale” and/or “tank kits”.  Perhaps AI will be better?
 

Of course, to be a wee bit cynical, just as supermarkets put items they especially want to sell* in a prominent position on the way to the checkout, perhaps that’s now what’s happening with Google searches

 

* I vaguely remember a book (or perhaps a TV programme???) that claimed that supermarkets get paid handsomely by product manufacturers to prominently display their items in the places most heavily frequented by shoppers in the store

 

I get very irritated by "search engines"  that can't or won't actually apply a simple bit of boolean logic to their search results no matter how hard you try to encourage them.    Whether they are truly a sales engine (e.g. Amazon) or a sales engine masquerading as search engine (e.g. insert usual suspects here) their inability to reflect one's wishes (even if you exclude specific terms) is truly bewildering and annoying in equal measure.

 

1 hour ago, Dave John said:

Humour me il Dottore.

Junk Google. It is a sales platform not a search engine. Try Duck Duck Go, selectable under preferences > search on safari and I assume other browsers. 

Search for 1/24 scale helicopter kits. 

Note the difference.

 

And has been for a very long time.   It didn't get so very big, so very rich and so very powerful by giving you the answer to "Who won the university boat race in 1857?"  (or any one of millions of random questions).

 

Being a cynical sort of Pup I do wonder how  the DuckDuckGo business model works..    They don't sell your "information" allegedly but it can't be down to some altruistic Dax the Duck can it .......

 

..... and a bit of searching suggests:

 

How does DuckDuckGo make money?

 

DuckDuckGo Business Model Analysis. DuckDuckGo makes money in two simple ways: Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. Advertising is shown based on the keywords typed into the search box. Affiliate revenues come from Amazon and eBay affiliate programs.

 

TTFN

[zarniwhoop]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

You make a good observation about specificity; however given how sophisticated modern search engines can be, I would have thought that tge search engine would be able to return the first N results for “1/24 scale helicopter kits” (or models) or for “1/24 scale” or for “helicopter kits”,  and not for “1/32 scale” and/or “tank kits”.  Perhaps AI will be better?

I've recently been searching for specific screen fonts, to see if the versions I documented some years ago are still available at the sites I linked to, and seem to have the same content - I want to revise some of the items there, and to include some other fonts.. One font I had looked at in the past used to contain a small capitals ('S C') variant in the single package (regular, bold, italic, etc), but no longer does. Eventually found it at google fonts, but the first matches went to various sites, one in japanese which I cannot read, another where you had to register, and the blurb under the extracts mostly said something like "does not contain 'S C'" - but it is easy to skip over that part of the text.

 

Part of the trouble is that sometimes we put in search terms trying to guess at what will produce some semi-useful results, and other times we know exactly what we are looking for and want it to match all the search terms.

[zarniwhoop]

I almost never use Duck Duck Go,when I do it is for a specific search term and usually returns very few results. I couldn't remember which small caps font I had been searching for, so I looked at one on my list.

 

The first 4 gurgle results showed the font name including SC, the next did not show SC in the brief text example, but did not have any comment afterwards, and it was only after that when I found a "match" which had at the end 'Missing: SC ‎| Show results with: SC' (that match would have taken me to an Adobe site).

 

The Duck had one result which mentioned S C, at the bottom of the first page - a bit above that were two images labelled as what I asked for (EB Garamond S C), but clearly they were NOT small caps. I don't think I'll be using the Duck  any more often than I have been, while continuing to swear from time to time about the irrelevant results google gives me.🙂

[NGT6 1315]

On the subject of submarines, I’ve also been aboard HMS Otus, now a floating museum in Sassnitz on Rügen:

 

https://hms-otus.com

[jamie92208]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Good afternoon all,

 

Time for a quality rant:

On behalf of Captain Cynical, I have been looking for some

helicopters (well, to be completely accurate and transparent - looking for large-scale helicopter model kits).

 

Now, I have long, long come to the conclusion that the internal search engine on Amazon only provides completely biased-towards-featured-item garbage – given that when you type in something like “1/24 scale, helicopter model kit“ it will give you quite a few pages of “search results“ with the “featured” items taking up the first several pages of the results. And as invariably is the case, the results of your search for – specifically – 1/24 scale helicopter models will include 1/72 spitfires, 1/600 waterline ship models, 1/48 bus kits and so forth. Should you then sort the search results by price, the hundred pages or so of results suddenly become half that and should you have the temerity, the audacity, to sort by <average customer review> your hundred plus pages of results dwindle to a mere handful of pages - if that.

 

All that is not news; many have come to the conclusion that Amazon is now nothing more than an outlet for poor quality items sold cheaply (although not always cheaply), and made in a certain country on the other side of the world).

 

What is new, and the subject of my rant, is that Google now seems to be going down the same road. Today’s Google search for “1/24 scale, helicopter kits“ return quite a few hundred results, a huge number of which did not feature either the right scale or even feature a helicopter. Furthermore,  most of the results on the first few pages of the Google search were for “sponsored“ websites/services/items.

 

I have now come to the conclusion that if you really want to find out about what 1/24 scale, helicopter models, what guitar pedals, what ship models or even what suppliers of spare parts for antique cars are out there, you need to drop in on one of the relevant hobby forums (fora?)

 

Certainly, manufacturer websites are incredibly helpful, but you gotta know who the manufacturers are in the first place…

 

Rant over.

 

iD

p.s. i wonder if I qualify for a “Beary”

p.p.s. I was looking for two different types of helicopters as a large scale kit: I’ve found the first:

 

I would second @Tony S' suggestion of going to a decent model shops website then selecting your preferences.  I know that for model boats there is a great shop in Cornwall but I can' t remember the name of it.  I sometimes drool over the sailing ship wooden kits.  Then think of the groaning shelves of shame. 

 

Jamie

 

 

[TheQ]

Evening Awl. The only sub I've been on was at Haslar iirc, being only twelve then it was an easy clamber, as was the tour round a " live" warship later the same day, but after all these years I can't remember what it was..

 

Another trip was HMS Victory and the big house used to control D Day.

 

For some reason our school in Wiltshire about 45miles from the sea, on the edge of Salisbury plain inhabited by mostly army children was affiliated with the Navy...

 

Just back from the MRC no errant brown trousered BMW drivers tonight, landscape gardener tonight planting grass...

Hopefully the SWO thinks it short enough..

Disaster in the T bar the kettle wouldn't turn on although it lit up with power..

So what to do?

Yep turn it off and on at the wall....

 

 

 

Yep it worked!!!

 

Herpes have finally admitted they've got my parcel, 3 days after the supplier said they'd collected it.. it doesn't inspire me with tomorrows planned delivery date..

 

A song we regularly had to sing at that school

Good night Awl.

Edited August 11, 2023 by TheQ

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The trip to Waitrose that was mooted this morning, never happened. So, I spent the latter part of the morning and most of the afternoon in the cool of the cellar, putting the final touches to the turntable article I’m writing for the MERG journal. My initial article described how I modified the turntable, what motor I chose and the variable speed controller I made. When I converted it to PDF, it but ran to 16 pages! So, I decided it needed trimming down a bit, so I removed everything that wasn’t connected to the indexing system and got it down to 9 pages! However, there are only about 4 pages of actual text, the rest are either photos, drawings, parts or references. I’ve just got to give it a final re-read through before sending it off to the editor, which will probably be early next week.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Picking up on a few points.

 

On @iL Dottore rant, don’t you just hate it when retailers/ebay come up with suggestions for you like ‘ we know you’ve looked at  the Fleischmann N gauge Re 4/4 and thought this LGB Hartz  mountain 2-10-2 may be of interest’. 
 

Rugan, I’m hoping to go there for my birthday treat and may check out the sub.

 

Das Boot is a very good film about life on a WW2 U boat from the early years of the war when the U boots roamed relatively freely to the later years when they were ‘floating coffins’. It is in German, with subtitles but still well worth watching.

 

There’s a submarine in the key side in Vladivostok but I don’t suppose any of us will be going to see it any time soon.

Hope the drivel makes sense as  be bothered checking grammar or spelling so 

Goodnight.

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Erichill16

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

It has long irritated me that kits of aircraft and watercraft are scaled at 1:72 while railways and road vehicles are scaled at 1:76. It is just as frustrating that many people are scaled at 1:87 (which of course matches many trains and road vehicles). Getting the “look” right when mixing scales is of course part of the skill of the hobby. 

The concept of scale did not come about until the 1920's when mass produced models (Hornby?) came into being (before that models were scratch built or if you had the money were commissioned). Also there was no crossover between modelling genres. Wooden model aircraft kits were introduced by Skytrex in the 1930's and they chose a scale of 1/72 or 1/6th of an inch to the foot, the logic being that the models of the then contemporary aircraft would be easy to handle. Furthermore Skytrex models were used for aircraft identification at the start of WW2 but later solid hard rubber models were used (which are now collectables). 1/76 scale, or to be accurate is actually 1/76.2 created by translating imperial to metric as a scale (4mm to the foot). How and why that scale was arrived at is a very complicated story that would take to long to relate here. These scales can be mixed with careful placement to give a forced perspective.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I done a 'big shop' this afternoon and I'm now knackered so I'm off to bed shortly.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[southern42]

and ' night all and nos da from me.

 

[monkeysarefun]

Although my new 3D Printer beckons, today dawned brilliant and blue and too good to spend inside. Realising that the harbour is somewhere I haven't been to since well before the plague, I went that way.

 

I managed to get  away before the weekend kids sports traffic hit the road, and I've gotta put a shout out for the road system these days. We spent most of the naughties with roadworks but now I hit the motorway about 10 minutes from here, and the next time I stop is when I'm pulling off the motorway and into the road that the parking station near the Opera House is.  I don't think I got below 70 the whole way, 5 stars.

 

I did the harbour walk and wandered around the Botanic Gardens and foreshore, enjoying the sun, the screeching  of parrots and the enhanced scenery provided by the fact that the Womens World Cup is in town.

 

I've never actually taken photos of the harbour, when you live somewhere you tend to take it for granted  so I pulled out my phone and played tourist.

 

First up, the usual suspects, taken from Mrs Macquaries chair, a headland where the wife of one of the early governors used to visit frequently, probably thinking "What this place needs is a bloody big bridge and an Opera House"

 

 

 

 

I attempted  a panoramic shot from the same place:

 

 

 

 

Some botanicals in the botanical gardens:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fort Denison, a fort with martello tower just off of the Opera House. Originally called "Rock Island", it was initially used to confine convicts in irons as a secondary   punishment, food was bread and water rowed across from the shore, it became known as Pinchgut, still also called that today.

 

In 1796 a gibbet was erected on the island. One convict to be hanged and then gibbeted there was Francis Morgan. In 1793, the British transported him to New South Wales for life as punishment for a murder. The authorities in NSW executed Morgan for bashing Simon Raven to death in Sydney on 18 October 1796. On 30 November 1796, Morgan was hanged; following his execution, his body was the gibbetted on Pinchgut. His skeleton was still hanging there four years after his execution. He said to the hangman that the only thing worth mentioning was the superb view of the harbour from his high elevation, and that he was sure there were no waters the world over to compare with it for beauty.

 

The fort was completed in the 1850's following fears of a surprise attack, brought about by two American naval vessels arriving in the harbour one night in the 1830's with no one noticing them:

 

 

 

 

 

It is almost impossible to take a dud photo of the Opera  House:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued!

 

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

... oil companies collectively have a history of misinformation propaganda about the deleterious effects of burning the stuff going back 60-odd years

Irrefutably so. I believe I have mentioned that Exxon-Mobil donated their research archives to (I believe) Arizona State University* the University of Texas. It is a treasure trove of scholarly works by company employees predicting climate change, measuring sea temperatures using company oil tankers and alternative energy research in solar power, Lithium batteries and electric vehicles - dating back as far as the 1970s. A font of information for enterprising journalists.

 

They predicted fossil fuel-induced climate change. Then they buried and obfuscated their own findings.

 

The PBS Frontline documentary series covered this in detail. The documentary is online. It is very compelling in terms of what they knew, when they knew it and what they did about it.

 

* In the documentary linked at 12:03 in episode 1.

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Ozexpatriate