Early Risers.

[TheQ]

Evening Awl,

a day battling with a laptop with MS office.

It keeps trying to go to the cloud, and even when you save a file to a known place on the hard drive, it will tell you it can't access it cos it's on the cloud.

The only sure place I've found it will save to is a usb drive.

At one point I thought I'd lost 3 hours typing and updating the MRC accounts but then I found it had saved a " mobile copy" and recovered it.

All I've left to do is type in the Tea bar receipts, and the amounts in each cashbox.

 

Other than that I'm partly through reorganising the spreadsheets, having to type the same thing in two or three different spreadsheets is ridiculous. 

 

There are many new bird scarers in the fields around us and it frightened Ben so much he came up the stairs for the first time in a couple of years. Luckily SWMBO heard him make the attempt and came up  behind him to give a little help on the last few steps. He spent several hours under the table at my feet.

[polybear]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Is that  seriously the garage on the left? Plus you've got to walk out in the English weather, lovely as it always is,  from the front door to your car?

 

Here in the UK we like to keep the Garage separate from the house so that if when the leccy car bursts into flames for no reason at 3am it doesn't take the house - and you with it.

 

3 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Handy hint for those with leaking sheds - iron is the go - corrugated or zincalume, no Australians are  sufferers of leaking shed roofs.

 

Bear's shed has a double roof - iron on top and asbestos underneath; the original asbestos roof went porous and getting rid of it was going to be soooo bluddy expensive I decided to bung a few wooden battens across it then lay an iron roof on top of it.  Job's a good 'un.

 

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Blimey thats about SFr 745,000.

 

This is what SFr 735,000 gets you in Kanton Kuh:

https://www.immoscout24.ch/de/d/einfamilienhaus-kaufen-st-niklaus-vs/7942020

 

Big difference!

 

This is what £8M gets you in Bearshire; note the double garage:

 

 

The muddlin' room isn't too shabby either:

 

[NGT6 1315]

Cheers all. Weekend at last!

 

 

Weather has been like this in recent days, so hearty autumnal meals are once again on the menu.

 

I do suspect weather conditions will also contribute to incidents like this one shortly past 0400 this morning:

 

 

Taken by someone on site, it should be evident that this van isn't where it ought to be. It took until after 0800 for it to be recovered. There's been a number of such groundings this week, in fact.

 

And then there also was a rather major accident yesterday involving one tram rear-ending another, which left 49 persons injured. For reasons which should be obvious and to prevent trigger events, I will only provide this news link, assuming it isn't geoblocked: https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen/leipzig/leipzig-leipzig-land/angerbruecke-strassenbahn-unfall-polizei-verletzte-102.html 

 

Here's hoping everyone affected will recover fully, including the driver of the second tram. Regardless of whether human or technical failure might turn out to be the cause, I am sure this incident is going to haunt him for a long time...

 

Stay safe, everyone.

[TheQ]

Ben is a unhappy Collie fireworks a week early.

 

[Barry O]

Eyes were checked. More laser work scheduled.pah!

 

Pleasant afternoon at a little workshop trying to put some bits of plastic together.

 

Tea has been eaten and I am trying to drink a glass of Rioja.

 

The Lads won (hurrah!) At last!

 

Accommodation at Warley has been sorted apparently.. more details next week!

 

Better VFM?House for sale in Castle Eden

 

Baz

 

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Barry O

[joppyuk1]

On 19/10/2023 at 09:29, Compound2632 said:

 

The geography of Boston is most confusing. It's in Suffolk, with Norfolk to the south, Essex to the north, and Middlesex to the west. 

It6's not in Suffolk, it's in Lincolnshire on the line to Skegness, though the station is barely a husk of its original self these days.

[polybear]

23 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Better VFM?House for sale in Castle Eden

 

Baz

 

 

 

Someone really likes shades of grey.....

Oh yes, and the garage is cr@p

But apart from that, not too shabby at all.

[Ozexpatriate]

12 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

i have a rough and ready, unproven but compelling theory about intelligence, which is: “a physiological marker of high intelligence is poor eyesight” When you look at the really “scary-smart” individuals (Nobel Prize winner, leaders in science, medicine, engineering and technology) the vast majority wear glasses.

How many Nobel laureates are under the age of 50? When do most people need corrective vision?

 

80% of people 45-55 in the US present near-vision impairment.

 

 

77% of Nobel laureates are over 49. Data per this link.

 

Correlation is not causation.

 

I find Occam's Razor applicable, rather than "cum hoc, ergo proctor hoc" reasoning.

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, joppyuk1 said:

It6's not in Suffolk, it's in Lincolnshire on the line to Skegness, though the station is barely a husk of its original self these days.

 

Boston, MA!

[polybear]

Bear here.....

Washing done.  Tick awarded.

Then the rest of the day has been devoted to muddlin' - securing (temporarily) ply strips to a templot template then deciding that the rivet positioning on a few of them was less than ideal so they were remade.  Then a straight strip of nickel silver was secured to some of the rivets.  Can't imagine why though.....

Another Tick awarded.

 

ION.....

Yesterday's delivery from the Big River was one of these (the price seems to have jumped upwards three quid overnight):

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZT89N1K?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

 

I thought it'd be handy for cutting thin strips of ply 😉 to length, but I discovered that there's a gap between the "table" and the bottom of the fence/guide big enough for the ply to slide under.  So this afternoon I cut a couple of pieces of fibreglass board (basically PCB but without the copper) to stick to the two fences to extend them downwards to make them a tight fit against the table - hopefully that should make it usable for what I want.

 

BG

 

 

[zarniwhoop]

Got this year's covid jab - weather dry at the time. Later, got drenched wheeling trolley from Tess' back to where I'd been able to park in their car park. Nearly dry now, apart from my hair (apologies to the non-hirsuite, no offense intended).

 

Barely time to read this site any more - I fell into a rabbit hole (updating my website about TTF/OTF fonts), and went further down looking at coverage of small caps and coverage of italics.  Looks like I'm weeks away from getting to the next stage (updating CJK fonts and reworking my 'lorem ipsum' text for real Japanese and Chinese dummy text). Oh well, I might learn a little more for using xelatex/lualatex. It's the trying, and failing, to use helpful suggestions from academics who understand this stuff that really wears me out! Oh, and still got to review recent changes about preferred fonts in fontconfig (a linux/'nix tool for picking a font to render a codepoint that the chosen font doesn't include).

 

But at least it keeps me safe from the awl ;-).

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

This one is probably up there, but at least no one else can see it.

A couple of things come to mind. It's an outrageously 'cool' concept but ...

• Where is the road they needed to bring the fleet of readymix concrete trucks to pour those cantilever wings?
  • I'm guessing that they had to 'reforest' the construction access
  • I'm guessing the pond is manufactured (and that waterfall) it looks very unnatural from the air
• Where are the flyscreens?
  • This is tropical rainforest 
  • At least the cantilevers will stop most of the creepy crawlies from climbing up into bed with you from the black lagoon
  • I wouldn't want to think about the leeches
  • But the mosquitoes will carry you away
• That would be utter misery without air conditioning.
  • I stayed at a hotel in Malaysia where the lobby had an open air concept - misery in the heat and humidity does not even begin to describe it
  • Perhaps the video was shot in July or August
• I bet no one lasts more than a night or two.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Had a dry and sunny day today but as I left Tess Coes about five this afternoon it started spitting with rain, now it's persisting down. I'll soon be trying to plough through Farcebook shortly, after I've had a muggatee.

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

Ben is a unhappy Collie fireworks a week early.

We've had a lot of fireworks around here recently. It may be Diwali.

[Ozexpatriate]

14 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Where is the road they needed to bring the fleet of readymix concrete trucks to pour those cantilever wings?

Not poured onsite, but they'd still need pretty big trucks to bring pre-fab sections:

Quote

Comprised of prefabricated concrete, steel and glass, the property’s materials are designed to become a part of the surrounding environment over time and to deal with the harsh, corrosive wet tropical environment.

 

14 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'm guessing the pond is manufactured (and that waterfall) it looks very unnatural from the air

Yup.

Quote

The man-made wetland is filled with water pumped via solar energy from a nearby on-site creek. ... the property’s multiple cascading water features give off evaporative cooling effects in the drier months. 

I wasn't so worried about the 'drier' months.

 

Apparently the bedrooms are air conditioned - which makes sense in that climate.

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

6 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

It may be Diwali.

Not until November 12.

 

The six days of the larger festival begin on November 9/10 (depending on where you are) but the festival of light is the 12th.

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

53 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Where are the flyscreens?

 

Having the whole back of your house opening up the outside becomes the inside or is it the inside becoming the outside  has been the posh thing to do here in home renovations, from inner city terraces to fancy pants beach houses but the lack of flyscreens is something that I've not been able to figure out. Obviously the occupiers spend their entire time covered in aerogard, or they open it up once for the photo op when "Home Beautiful"  magazine drop around and then spend the rest of the time with the glass doors shut.

 

Building your house in the middle of a mosquito-breeding lagoon would not help things, not sure what the inspectors would have to  say when they come around to check your house for standing water during the next Ross River Fever outbreak.

 

 

[tigerburnie]

There's a nice little coastal pad up the coast a bit, though not too keen on the long walk from the heli-pad to the front door, still the butler can get me in the Bentley...............................

Dunbeath, Caithness, KW6 6EY | Property for sale | Savills

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Barry O said:

Better VFM?House for sale in Castle Eden

 

 

Not so much VFM:

 

 Sold for £25,125,000 equivalent this week. 

 

 Thats almost 2 Mar-a -Lagos.

 

Thats Glamarama beach it overlooks but still.....

 

 

 

 

For that price you  still only get one of @polybear electrical-car proof single garages but you can at least open the car doors after you drive in there by the look of it at least.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Erichill16]

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

Ben is a unhappy Collie fireworks a week early.

 

Fireworks here too,  thought it might be GDB’s  party!

[Ozexpatriate]

26 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Having the whole back of your house opening up the outside becomes the inside or is it the inside becoming the outside  has been the posh thing to do here

Very much the thing here in 'showcase' houses. We don't have nearly the bug problem that tropical Queensland (or most of Oz, or the midwestern US) has.

 

Most of them have an outdoor kitchen as well - fridge, big gas grill, pizza oven, prep-sink etc. Plus waterproof big-screen televisions etc.

 

26 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

... not sure what the inspectors would have to  say when they come around to check your house for standing water

According to the website, there are solar powered pumps circulating water from the lagoon into cascades (one was visible in the YouTube video). This would help with aeration of the lagoon/pond (a lot).

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 Sold for £25,125,000 equivalent this week. ...

Thats Glamourama beach it overlooks but still.....

How long before it's destroyed and replaced by something more 'modern'?

 

Those Sydney red-brown bricks suggest the 1920s to me.

 

Excavating the rock to build a subterranean lift/carousel carpark will be expensive.

[monkeysarefun]

19 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

How long before it's destroyed and replaced by something more 'modern'?

 

Those Sydney red-brown bricks suggest the 1920s to me.

 

Excavating the rock to build a subterranean lift/carousel carpark will be expensive.

 The bloke who bought it is apparently keeping it as-is and using it as his holiday home when he comes back from his New York advertising agency. He grew up in Perisher with 5 siblings where everything was hand-me-downs so isn't  into anything pretentious he reckons.

 

"He says Tama was the first place he lived when he left boarding school in the Southern HIghlands at the age of 18, sleeping on a couch for six months with two of his brothers"

 

Excavating probably isnt an option anyway!

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Winslow Boy]

7 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

ON the recent theme of ugly houses. This one is probably up there, but at least no one else can see it.

 

 

 

Go on - who here  would not be tempted to  take it, if only for the giant inflatable flamingo  and the "evil genius hideaway" vibe it gives off,  though granted,  its not in Basildon. 

 

If I bought it I'd invite @polybearthere and although he'd approve of the cat 5 cyclone rating he'd probably be concerned about the  potential for  salties  in the moat.

 

https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld-cape+tribulation-142937808

 

Or just watch the video!

 

 

 

Wouldn't get planning permission here. Probably along the lines of - not in keeping with local built vernacular.

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Here in the UK we like to keep the Garage separate from the house so that if when the leccy car bursts into flames for no reason at 3am it doesn't take the house - and you with it.

 

 

Bear's shed has a double roof - iron on top and asbestos underneath; the original asbestos roof went porous and getting rid of it was going to be soooo bluddy expensive I decided to bung a few wooden battens across it then lay an iron roof on top of it.  Job's a good 'un.

 

 

This is what £8M gets you in Bearshire; note the double garage:

 

 

The muddlin' room isn't too shabby either:

 

One assumes that the low wall at front is to direct the flood waters into the front door.