whart57

3 hours ago, Izzy said:

 

And I'm afraid that while it may seem simple to you that's just all gobbledygook to me. Way above my pay grade and what my old brain can cope with sadly. I'd love to be able to deal with it but digging around in Windows device manager and registry is pushing it for me.

 

Before I say any more can I stress that the rule of "your model railway - your rules" applies even more strongly when it comes to personal computing choices, so while I may come across as a Linux evangelist at times, I'm not, everyone else's choice is theirs to make. Except Bill Gates when he keeps coming round asking for more money.

That said, if you can emerge from Windows Device Manager and the Registry with sanity still intact, then 95% of what you need for Linux is there, and the other 5% you probably don't need. You seem to have fixed things but if you get into a similar bind again maybe try a thread on Wheeltappers on getting started with Linux. Or if you have an old PC try an install of something like Lubuntu or Linux-Lite as an experiment.

20 hours ago, Ian J. said:

Linux's biggest problem is that you're considered to be either a 'dumb' user, or an outright Guru. There's no allowance for being a power user who only occasionally needs to change settings, where GUI elements help to remember how to set things. The command line requires seriously learnt knowledge, retained in memory constantly, and doesn't allow for making sure typos don't screw things up.

Actually, no. What you need is a basic set of CLI instructions, not so much under your fingers but so that you recognise them. Most things you can use your favourite search engine to describe your problem, add the terms "Ubuntu" or "Linux" and there will usually be someone providing a potential solution. At first glance that may appear to be written in Hungarian but if you recognise the commonest commands then you can see what the solution proposed might be.

Key ones these days are (in Ubuntu systems)

sudo    -    this gives you root (aka administrator) privileges for the command you type immediately behind it and you will be prompted for a password.

apt   -    this is the command line version of the software install programme. You will almost certainly want to "sudo" this to make sure you have write permissions in all the locations needed. For example sudo apt install mypaint is a command line instruction to install a programme called "mypaint" (an interesting art application incidentally)

ps  -ef    -     this lists running apps. This will return a huge list so you want to "pipe" it to another command

|              -    the "pipe" command. This is found next to the "Z" key on UK keyboards but will be somewhere else on others. Put between two commands it outputs the result of the first to be the input to the second, so:

                     ps -ef | more returns that list of running apps one page at a time and you advance by pressing the space bar.

grep      -     is a simple word search, very useful connected to ps -ef via a pipe:

                    ps -ef | grep -i firefox will list all processes associated with Mozilla Firefox. It's useful to discover a zombie left by some badly behaved javascript in a web page. Unix systems like Linux - but unlike Windows - are case sensitive. the "-i" switch makes grep case insensitive.

top      -     lists the top resource hungry applications

A little bit of play is needed to learn how to use cd, cp and mv to navigate directories and copy and move files

A decade or so ago it would have been necessary to know how to unpack an archive, unzip a compressed directory or link files, but I haven't done that in years, the graphical application managers do the job well enough. It's been a while too since I needed to use vi to edit a set up file, and as for complicated scripting using sed and awk, I never needed that in my personal computing, only in my work stuff. I couldn't do it now anyway.

Any command in a solution can be checked using the internet so you can decide how uncomfortable you feel with something before proceeding.

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Kubuntu is a nice graphical version of Ubuntu with the KDE GUI but is still nowhere near as straightforward to use as Windows or Mac.

 

I'd agree. I like Ubuntu but I have some 25 years experience of working with UNIX systems behind me. My wife prefers Ubuntu and Open Office over Windows and Office 365 too, but that's only because she has Linux IT support available 24/7 within shouting distance.

Trying to make Linux distributions more friendly for non-techies generally creates pushback from the techies. Partly because of a sense of dumbing down but also because greater user friendliness often comes with knocking out the quick shortcuts techies like to use as a trade-off

The last Windows version I've used to any extent was Windows 7. When Windows 8 came out it was a WTF moment - where have they put everything? The pro versions for business might be OK but I felt the home versions were really dumbed down. That went for things like Office as well. I have Windows 10 on the PC but it's a dual boot machine and if I ever do boot into Windows I'd better leave aside a day or two for getting and installing all the updates it decides are needed. Since then - or in fact for about ten years before that - I have done everything on Linux and using Open Source software.

Now it has to be said that I first installed Linux as Red Hat 4 back when we still put "19" at the front of the year number, and I spent a large chunk of my working life working on UNIX systems. I was also working for IBM when that company made the decision to make Red Hat Linux the internal standard. IBM have since bought the Red Hat company.

Now it seems to me that every Windows upgrade causes problems, so I am glad to be out of that loop. I know I will have to upgrade my Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22 sometime in the next two years but in the past that has been pretty straightforward. My background and capabilities are obviously not usual ones, but I do like being able to look at logs and query via the command line when things go wrong.

So to answer the top question - no, not me.

And now London Irish have put themselves into administration. Key here is whether the property company that owns the Sunbury training ground is also going into administration or whether it's just the playing side. As in so many cases the ownership of assets is more complex and murky than it needs to be.

When I first went along to watch Herne Bay the entrance was three shillings (15p). Mind you getting into a First Division game (no Premier League then) only cost six shillings. And if you were lucky you could see the pitch ........

Apparently the RFU themselves have a £40m income shortfall as well.

Announcement at 7pm this evening apparently.

Apparently Brentford FC don't want to extend the lease at the Gtech stadium so even if Irish survive they need to find a ground, and according to the Guardian the Americans wanting to take over are really only interested in the Sunbury training ground as a base for a future London NFL franchise. (I wonder what the Khans, owners of Fulham FC and Jacksonville Tigers, think of that potential rival for a London franchise)

Ten team Premiership here we come.

More on London Irish ........

Big trouble now, HMRC have launched winding up procedures because of an unpaid tax bill. Other creditors can usually be squared, HMRC though, once they start getting 'm learned friends involved, go for the full whack.

I hope that the government and its pair of experts do recognise one big difference between the second and third tiers of rugby union and rugby league. In league most of the clubs in the lower pro divisions form part of the identity of the towns they hail from. In towns like Batley, Featherstone, Dewsbury, the RL club has much deeper roots than their union equivalents have. RL does have its new clubs, and they all prop up the lower end of the third tier. Clubs like Cornwall, West Wales etc. However whatever the changes the RL bring at the top, there is that resilience in the middle between the professional and amateur competitions.

The clubs that form the middle tiers of rugby union however are more fringes to the communities they hail from. Different histories and thus a different present. What works in RL may not work in RU.

On 30/05/2023 at 12:15, Player of trains said:

Forgive me if this one has been posted but as I've just done one myself I've thought a dead engine no matter its form of locomotion can be a bit of a cliché depending on the context of where it is. Especially with the weathered models that can be found on EBay. By depending on context I mean usually some dead hollowed out engine at the back of a yard not necessarily near any engineering facilities that might be stripping it? Well at home on a heritage layout, light railway or engine shed but a bit odd elsewhere. 

If modelling a preserved heritage railway in the 1980s of course it would be no more of a cliche than having a station platform, rather a reality

The RFU have granted London Irish a seven day extension if players and staff are paid their May salaries. Confirmation in the morning after a committee meeting currently being held.

15 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Seems London Irish are to be suspended from the Premiership according to the Torygraph, looks like the ten team league will arrive a year early

London Irish to be suspended from Premiership as offers made for Henry Arundell and Tom Pearson (msn.com)

5pm deadline this evening for London Irish to demonstrate they have the wherewithal to complete the next Premiership season.

The players are already looking for new clubs, but the salary cap means there will be few opportunities at other Premiership clubs, few will want the pay cut inevitable if they drop down to the Championship so most will probably head abroad, America if not closer to home.

Congratulations to Halifax and Ascot who came out top at the non-league day at Wembley. And commiserations to Gateshead and Newport Pagnell. I presume that Ascot won't be able to defend their win next season owing to promotion from their step 5 league.

I've just been through restoring track plans and some of the pictures lost in the Great Crash

Where does that put Wasps? National 2 or the regional leagues, and which region of the several Wasps has bounced around in these last years?

6 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Trouble is a Cudworth 118 - or anything else of that era  - would have absolutely nothing to run with and the market for any particular passenger or goods vehicle ( long before Common User, of course ) would be miniscule ........... unless you're happy with generic stuff.

Titfield Thunderbolt anyone?

I should point out that my personal fantasy is not presented as a serious proposal. Someone , I think it was the late Bernard Holland, once said that in railway modelling you can sell two of anything, the challenge is selling more than two.

The loco I did put on the form as a suggestion for Rapido was an On16.5 version of the Welshpool Beyer Peacocks. That would be interesting

3 hours ago, CUCKOO LINE said:

Bachmann already do the C class so 01 is a better bet and still one in existence.

I think "did" is the correct tense. The Bachmann website shows only an SR unlined black version.

I'd agree that an O1 is a more adventurous option, but personally I'd love to see a Cudworth 118 class 2-4-0. The mainstay of SER passenger services in the second half of the nineteenth century it would push pre-Group modelling back from the Edwardian period it is stuck in. And, unlike most RTR pre-Group is actually a contemporary of GWR Broad Gauge.

On 14/04/2023 at 17:16, GeoffBird said:

In the article about bthe SECR stock, there is this unfinished sentence: "The 6w SECR brakes will also be leaving the factory within the next month. These fabulous little brake vans complement our previous range of SECR freight stock. A limited number of our SECR ballast wagons and box vans remain available to order. All they need now is a loco..."   Is this a hint at a fuuture SECR freight loco -  an Class O1 perhaps - even one with the Siriling cab would do for EKR fans.

The last engines on the EKR were straightforward O1s, either number 100 (given that number because no-one had told the Ashford paint shop what number to put on and they guessed the EKR didn't have more than 99 locos) or the trio kept after Nationalisation at Dover for the Tilmanstone run.

O1s also ran on the K&ESR after Nationalisation too as well as being used over the entire SECR and former SECR network for light goods work.

That said, Rapido are more likely to do a C

On 01/05/2023 at 00:23, Invicta said:

 

I lived in Herne Bay for a number of years and there are a number of similar MacFarlane stench pipes surviving around the town- there were a couple in my road, although lacking the weathervanes seen on the Sutton example- though this listed one in Grand Drive Herne Bay still has both crown and vane.

The worrying thing is that underneath it is probably a pipe direct into the sea which is allowed to let sewage overflow into it. Hampton pier is just over the hill from there and that had signs on it warning people not to eat the shellfish a couple of years ago

I checked with the Little Bus Company and unfortunately they have sold out of Puffin kits and as yet no plans to reintroduce it. A shame really but that is the way things go.

10 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've checked, you started it.

I made a joke.

On 04/05/2023 at 13:51, The Johnster said:

But the huge majority of Cardiffians are opposed to any consideration at all for the Welsh language.  They don't speak it, have no interest in it, and resent it, because they are terrified that they will be called upon to learn it one day if the Welsh speakers get their way.  They regard Welsh as a dead language which only survives on remote farms and is used by a certain powerful politico-media population that is centred on a certain area of the city as a means of expressing their superiority over monoglot English-speaking Cardiffians and of accessing funding for their various projects and agendae. 

That is until the English come along and try to forcibly ban Welsh ......

The experience of other languages is that they wither until a hated oppressor tries to impose their language. We see that happening in Ukraine where Russian speakers are refusing to use the language and instead trying to use Ukrainian, a language a minority had as first language before the invasion, instead. Over in Ireland too, Gaelic was resistant to well meaning efforts to keep it alive until Irish Republicans in the North learnt it and adopted it during the Troubles. Then it became more cool.

14 hours ago, Chris M said:

No we are just down wind of a hill.

 

Well that would cause a dead zone, though it also depends whether there is a possible route to you via reflections.

Round here we have a better signal in winter than in summer. Weather conditions don't seem to be the cause, but what might be are leaves on the many trees between us and the Midhurst transmitter.

It wasn't remarked upon much at the time, but Oldham's first home fixture in the National League back in August was against Dorking Wanderers. So a club that had spent the last thirty years descending from the Premier League met a club that started at the bottom of the Crawley and District League in 1999. Must be rare to have such vastly different club histories.