Early Risers.

[DaveF]

Yesterday evening I watched another Swiss cab ride, this time from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen on the Metre gauge Berner Oberland Bahn.  Once again it was on YouTube.

 

A little later I had a phone call from the consultant to see how I am getting on and to answer a couple of questions, his secretary had e mailed me earlier about something as well.  Not bad for a Sunday!

 

I watched a bit of TV and went to bed quite early.  I woke during the night but fell asleep again quickly and ended up with about 8 hours sleep.

 

This morning I was very tired so have spent most of the day sitting quietly reading.  As usual my cleaner came during the morning.  Jennifer next door bought me a get well card and a big bunch of daffodils.  Other friends returned from their trip to Australia and Hong Kong and called in to see how I am.

 

A few minutes ago I had a phone call from the hospital giving me the date for my follow up meeting with the consultant next month, a few minutes later the letter came to me by e mail.  The rest of the evening will be quiet, a bit of TV and another early night.

 

David

[Gwiwer]

Evening all. 
 

I hope this isn’t paywalled - I can see it freely.
 

As I mentioned above we were up in Lostwithiel to celebrate a friend’s birthday on Saturday night.  As one does we stopped at - well as close as we could to - the Co-op to purchase some Falling Down Waters.  I parked on Church Lane outside a little café. 
 

Dr SWMBO asked me to go to the shop in the pouring rain and because it was around 100 yards away. Farther than she can comfortably walk unaided. I was happy to go but asked if she was happy to swap seats in case the car had to be moved. It was on a single yellow but also in a very narrow street.  She chose to do the shopping. 
 

She shuffled away to the shop at which point I had a very strange sensation that I should immediately move the car. 
 

I drove round to stop outside the Co-op despite this fully blocking the road and requiring me to shunt to and fro a few times to allow traffic past. 
 

As Dr SWMBO climbed back into the car we heard shouts from the spot where I had been parked. It being Saturday night we thought no more of it until an hour later when some other guests arrived, proffering apologies that they couldn’t drive or even walk through town because it “was closed off by fire engines”. 
 

If I hadn’t moved and as I had been right beside this I might have been damaged by it and potentially with our transport also damaged. Because I would have been out of the car to open the other door for Dr SWMBO. 

 

It does make you think ……

 

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/live-cornwall-building-collapses-street-9107523

[New Haven Neil]

Evenin' orl.

 

I'd stay clear from Lostwithneil, Rick!  I wonder if your subconscious heard the wall beginning to move and rang the internal warning bells?

 

The daffylids are looking nice now.  Not all out yet but getting there.

 

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

The daffylids are looking nice now

Oh yes. We are fully daffed. 
 

 

[jjb1970]

On traditional, tools, skills and stuff, I used to work with a chap in Lloyd's Register who had started life as a draughtsman in one of the yards in Sunderland and then went to study engineering. I was always amazed by his drawing skills, and the precision. His equivalent of the old 'back of an envelope' sketch was basically an engineering drawing with all the lines drawn to a precise width and colour using an old fashioned pencil. That was another thing that stuck in my mind, he insisted on old fashioned pencils rather than self propelled pencils, he was always sharpening them but he had that skill of rotating the pencil as he drew to maintain constant line width and colour. These days it's a rapidly dying skill as drawings have been done using computer aided design for decades, but it's impressive to see someone who is properly good at technical drawing.

[Coombe Barton]

... tomorrow in for nine, then later meeting (I trust) with students who have been habitually absent. If they don’t I move to get them removed. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/covid-nothing-new-nor-in-politics-nor-in-the-world/

[jjb1970]

I struggled to keep a straight face today, apparently the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea present a threat to peace and stability in the Middle East, the way it was said would infer that the Middle East is an oasis of peace, stability and harmonious co-existence unsullied by war. Not quite sure I'd agree with that.

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

On traditional, tools, skills and stuff, I used to work with a chap in Lloyd's Register who had started life as a draughtsman in one of the yards in Sunderland and then went to study engineering. I was always amazed by his drawing skills, and the precision. His equivalent of the old 'back of an envelope' sketch was basically an engineering drawing with all the lines drawn to a precise width and colour using an old fashioned pencil. That was another thing that stuck in my mind, he insisted on old fashioned pencils rather than self propelled pencils, he was always sharpening them but he had that skill of rotating the pencil as he drew to maintain constant line width and colour. These days it's a rapidly dying skill as drawings have been done using computer aided design for decades, but it's impressive to see someone who is properly good at technical drawing.

 

It was something (there had to be something....) I was really good at, and got a Distinction in finals back when I was a gadget.  I really enjoyed engineering drawing, and it was drawing - I'm pre-CAD!  Didn't use it again really, but when we were doing commissions it helped to be able to read drawings, and spot errors etc, but someone else did the CADs to our instruction.  The best result was Sea Lion.

 

 

 

[Barry O]

31 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

It was something (there had to be something....) I was really good at, and got a Distinction in finals back when I was a gadget.  I really enjoyed engineering drawing, and it was drawing - I'm pre-CAD!  Didn't use it again really, but when we were doing commissions it helped to be able to read drawings, and spot errors etc, but someone else did the CADs to our instruction.  The best result was Sea Lion.

 

 

 

Very nice.. 

 

My technical drawing was not of the best.. but I can knock out system plans, programme charts , process flow charts with ease...

 

Baz

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. A quiet evening with nothing on the telly and I've caught up with Farcebook. I don't feel ready for bed yet so I'm going to do a few sudoku puzzles. 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Sidecar Racer]

2 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... tomorrow in for nine, then later meeting (I trust) with students who have been habitually absent. If they don’t I move to get them removed. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/covid-nothing-new-nor-in-politics-nor-in-the-world/

 

Here you go John , show em you aint joking .

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Can't see 2/2, so I'll never know...

[BR60103]

First year of high school we had two choices: art or music,  shop or home ec.  (The second was not really a choice). Second year it was one of the four.  I think that was because I added Latin to the mix. Third year there was a fifth choice: German, which I took.  Fourth year things stayed pretty much the same. 

Fifth and final year was university qualification prep. This required passing 9 papers. Languages counted as two and one had to be English. There were three maths, 4 sciences, history and geography and some foreign languages.  I managed to take an extra, extra-hard math instead of phys ed. (I got 48 on this paper and tied for top in the township) These exams were set province-wide and marked centrally. My math teacher was one marking the Problems paper and he said that he'd recognized mine because of a mistake I'd discussed with him afterwards. 

Shop class was half a year metal shop and the other half wood shop with drafting. I never did welding because I had two projects that were bashing a bowl out of a sheet of brass.

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

19 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

 a @monkeysarefun Electric Horse Repellent

18 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Would that be the Model A - to repel electric horses or the Model B - powered by electrickery to repel horses? 

"Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

 

An electric horse would be way beyond Rick Deckard's means. It would be much coveted.

 

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

"Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

 

An electric horse would be way beyond Rick Deckard's means. It would be much coveted.

 

One of Phillip K Dick's masterpieces.

Unusually, the film adaptation by Ridley Scott* - although only vaguely similar to the novella - was definitely a masterpiece as well (Bladerunner, if you didn't know already).

 

I have most of PKD's work - including 5 volumes of collected short stories - and (I would argue) one of the hallmarks of his work is how he subtly bends perception of reality.

 

I once made the mistake of reading 3 volumes of his short stories in a single sitting and at the end of the session I was somewhat disoriented and disconnected for about half-an-hour or so until my brain caught up with the fact that I was no longer immersed in these subtly different and somewhat disorienting and sometimes disturbing worlds.

 

I read an awful lot of science-fiction when I was younger, mostly "proper" science fiction (by "proper" I mean work that takes existing scientific fact and extrapolates it to the future or asks the question "if X was possible, what would society look like/do?"), although I did read some "space opera" (things along the lines of "Star Cadet Chimpy and the venomous electric horses of Mars"). 
 

The 50s, 60s and 70s were certainly the golden age for science fiction writing, with numerous memorable (and frequently in many ways influential) short stories, novellas and books being published. Things like:

For I have no mouth, but I must scream.

A boy and his dog.

Foundation.

Stranger in a strange land.

I, robot.

The Andromeda strain.

 

And so on.

 

There were also quite a few attempts (sometimes successful) at bringing "proper" science-fiction to TV – such as with the Twilight Zone and The Andromeda Strain.

 

And now what do we have? Endless very bad adaptations of comic book stories – frequently  (badly) written to push the Hollywood agenda du jour. And in today's Topsy Turvy World, if a film or TV series gets slated on "Rotten Tomatoes" (or similar) by the viewing public it's not the fault of bad writing, bad directing, bad casting and all-round general bad filmmaking, it's the fault of the viewer who is  considered by the critics and Hollywood as deficient in a number of important (to them) ways.
 

A perfect example is the all female remake of Ghostbusters. It was absolutely slated by moviegoers and – of course – the response from the filmmakers (and Hollywood) was that this was due to the fact that all the movie viewers were bigoted ignorant sexist pigs. Although, in reality, the film was badly written, badly cast and badly directed (There is a very entertaining video on YouTube that shows - through the use of film clips - how the original Ghostbusters was able to provide wonderfully comic moments with the minimum of effort and dialogue, something that the all female Ghostbusters reboot failed to do with loads of dialogue and lots of effort).

* Ridley Scott has the distinction of having made two of the best (and most influential) Sci Fi films of all time: the aforementioned Blade Runner and Alien.

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, a draughty but dry 10c on the rock, with no set plans as yet for the day.  Pottering in the garage is likely.

 

Oh Ridley Scott, very much yes on him and his work, he is also from my home town as an added fan bonus.  My late teen reading was much the same as iD's list, Dick, Asimov, Heinlein, and so on.  I'm still partial to good SF but haven't read anything new in that direction for a while, I'm stuck on Anne Cleeves type police procedurals.

[Hroth]

10 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... tomorrow in for nine, then later meeting (I trust) with students who have been habitually absent. If they don’t I move to get them removed. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/covid-nothing-new-nor-in-politics-nor-in-the-world/

 

With extreme prejudice?

 

[The Lurker]

I too have been a voracious reader of SF and Fantasy. My leanings in the SF world tended towards the space opera side of things but I did enjoy Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke books as well as the likes of James Blish, JG Ballard. Later SF writers included Ben Bova, Greg Bear, Alistair Reynolds, Neil Asher, CJ Cherryh and so on. Basically, between the ages of 8 and 18 I was getting the maximum 4 books a week from Paddock Wood library. When I got to be around 16, I got a library membership in Tonbridge too, and so was able to get books from a wider range (in addition to the Paddock Wood ones). It's a wonder I got any school work done = but then there was not a lot of telly, and the choice of what telly there was belonged strictly to my parents; if they did not want to watch, the telly went off. And by the time I was mid-teens, the thought of watching another excruciating sitcom was too much for me anyway. We're talking Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em, Dad's Army, Last of the Summer wine, Are you being served? To my mind all shows that well outstayed their welcome; the original good ideas ran out and the show started to revolve around a silly stunt or contraption. (not sure about the first of these - not sure I ever liked that show).

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

I used to read a lot of Sci Fi books when younger. Nearest I get now are Discworld books.

 

I have some admin to do today, plus a bit of preparation for a meeting tomorrow evening. .. I think the accounts are strange.. they cover such a long period of time..

 

Otherwise today will be a bitza day... trying to get lots of bits and pieces finished..

 

Time to head off to the tea pot, get a brew sorted then.. kick today into action.

 

Try to enjoy your day!

 

Baz

 

 

[jjb1970]

One of the reasons Fawlty Towers is still so fondly remembered is they avoided the trap that bedevils TV shows of going on far too long. They made 12 episodes which were scripted to perfection and delivered by a magnificent cast, it was TV comedy greatness and perhaps the high point of the genre. I really enjoyed Only Fools and Horses but it went on way too long and ended up very tired and formulaic, while Last of the Summer Wine morphed into a sort of strange twee nostalgia soap opera. I loved Open All Hours, they stopped before it all went off. On Dad's Army, I thought it went off the boil a bit after Walker's sad demise. On a more modern theme I loved Bottom, but they made a movie version which was heinous, so bad I left the cinema about halfway through. One that I can never make my mind up about is the Office, the BBC one with Ricky Gervais. The first series was wonderful, the second series was also brilliantly written and acted but I found it difficult to watch as it was a masterful portrayal of a guy basically breaking down and I found it too close to the bone having seen a similar scenario play out in real life when I was younger.

[jjb1970]

I love science fiction, it's one of the few fiction genres I read, I mainly read history and books about transport. My favourite remains Frank Herbert's Dune, though I found the sequels got steadily worse. The original Dune book had a depth which was insane, Herbert created an entire historic back story and planetary eco-system and managed to write a huge novel of incredibly complexity which was consistent with his whole back story. The appendixes are wonderful reading in their own right. Asimov's Foundation and Robot stories were wonderful, though the Apple TV adaptation of Foundation was awful. Well, it may have been decent TV if it had been titled differently but it wasn't Asimov's Foundation, it really annoys me when TV producers hijack a much loved book, use the title and then basically ignore the original story. A guilty pleasure is the Warhammer 40K universe, I have never been interested in war gaming or their models but I somehow got into the lore and started reading the books. This might sound silly, but a reason I like it is the unremitting awfulness of that universe, it is full on bleak and devoid of positives in a way that very few other franchises would have the nerve to try (they always have to give a feel good angle and like happy endings). And at his best Arthur C Clarke was brilliant. A reasonably recent one I really enjoyed was Lu Cixin's Three Body Problem. That one has also been made into a film or mini-series, it'll be interesting to see if they stay true to the story. A TV adaptation which I loved was The Expanse, that was amazingly faithful to the spirit of the books while making changes to make it work on TV, best TV (or even movie) Sci-Fi for many many years.

[TheQ]

Asimov, Heinlein, Clark,  were my SF reading about the age of 10 to 12, but the majority of books were and still are factual.

Back then I read 12 books a week, by the expedient of going to the school library twice a week so changing two books each time, and the village library twice a week with having been given special permission for an adult permit allowing 4 books a change.

 

Mooring Awl,

5 3/4 hours sleep long awake 1 hours sleep.

During the long awake I remembered I hadn't ordered some casting plaster.. I had mentioned before that I thought the plaster I have was failing. Well the mix I used in the pantile roof mould when dry remained a powder. Plaster ordered.

 

Ben the kind Collie, let me sleep over time, we went out on patrol, ground still soft, still just one bunch of daffs out, the water has stopped flowing out of the garden out onto the road.

 

Light grey clouds, dry , rain forecast tonight..

 

Time I went upstairs and collected the Austin K6s as I intend to start building the radars for them. Also the stabilizing legs need construction.

 

 

 

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Today’s weather is pretty much like yesterday, one minute it’s sunny, the next overcast and looks as if it’ll chuckitdarn any minute. I’m in two minds as to whether I should attempt to do some gardening, or finish putting the last few boxes that are still in the cellar away. I’ll make a muggertea in a few minutes to take with me and decide once that’s done. 
 

Back later.
 

Brian