woodenhead

"Look, pal - some people just don't do encouragement, or civilized discussion.

But it ain't bullying, argument, or snarling.

It's abrasive diplomacy - right ... !"

(Cue some waster delivering a "Glasgow kiss".)

Seriously though, it's just as well that a number of us aren't too keen on that stuff, either. Nice and friendly ... it most certainly is not!!

For me, it's when the lawyers (armchair or otherwise) get involved that a tread outlives its usefulness. Some haven't even got past the first page.

It's posts like that, that make me send 'Cease and Desist' letters....

come an ave a go if u fink ur ard enuf....

I think we're having R.evenge - a dish best served cold

I'll be on a diet.... 

(Subtle, eh?)

I shall be going to the Sentinel Takeaway and having number 08 from the menu, but not number 31.

Sounds like a fair swap.

I read your post explaining why you're in this position - my sympathies - but would just say the obvious: Don't rush into it.  To avoid accidentally disposing of something you regret later, try following this process:

1. List the layouts you plan to build, in order of likelihood from most to least (we're all planning more than one, aren't we?).
2. Map all your rolling stock against the layouts.
3. Pick out those that are only mapped against one layout and rank them in order of least likely layout to most likely.
4. Sell the lowest value items first, as they are probably the easiest to replace if you've made a mistake.

That's probably all blindingly obvious but sometimes I find doing something like this makes it easier to justify a decision to myself.

Rob

It's going through my head all the time.

The OO stuff has been away since mid 2019 when I moved rooms, I got rid of some at the end of last year which was the easy bit and it funded the foray into DCC sound in N which I am quite happy with.

In OO I have stock covering SR and GWR in the 1930s, it is the SR stock I am thinking of selling and keeping the GWR stuff as a little GWR branch is in my head whereas a similar SR one isn't anymore.  I thought I'd regret it when I sold my OO SR tender engines, but I didn't, but I really don't want to part with a GW Bulldog.

What I don't think I will be having is a large OO layout anytime soon, the N gauge takes up half the room, I have space for a small OO layout but even a branch line station terminus needs more space than I have for an OO railway at the moment, certainly with the amount of stock I have. 

My thinking is a return to what I was meant to do when I first went and bought some OO gauge - sidings for a bit of shunting and one or two locos.

What I am stuck between is wanting to dabble in North American, but also something in OO that is BR Blue and the solution I have at the moment is a small stabling point at the end of an industrial spur with a couple of sidings for shunting wagons and a line for stabling locos - keeping the scenics basic this could swap out to an NA shortline end of spur.

However, I do recognise that I may regret selling the SR stuff and I could just spend a chunk on diesels and see where it takes me before I sell the other stuff.  My days of collecting though I think are behind me, I also have to much N gauge which at some point also needs thinning out tad, the diesels are out at the moment but in the box are ex GW, SR and LMS locos plus stock.

More space is always welcome!

For completeness, you could always consider an O gauge shunting plank..... 

it will be an unboxing of the OO stuff event.

If I go with N I have to start the layout over and my wife pointed out I do have an OO itch so why not do that and have both.

How nice of her - now I can buy some of the rather nice Rapido SECR open wagons that are coming too.

So N gauge BR Blue sorted, OO steam sorted, but what to do with the N gauge steam stuff...

You didn’t embarrass yourself by using the wrong knife and fork then? 

I do have a habit for blurting out words I shouldn't but yesterday I remained under control

Good on you! From my family's experience, I have decided that a potential sign of a lasting marriage is how well the two sets of in-laws get on with each other!

The paint (lavender) was bought one week before the very first lockdown back in 2020..............ended up with no time to do the decorating and Mrs W hasn't had a weekend away since lockdown for me to be able to clear the bedroom.

I underestimated how long it would take - started 3pm on Friday, finished today at 3pm only took time out to eat and sleep.  Then rushed to the shops to stock on on fruit and salad for the return of memsaab.

One problem my 20 year old trusty edging pad is losing it's sponginess and I don't know if I can find a suitable replacement for the next room on the list.

I am absolutely knackered now and I missed the Warrington show that I was going to go to.

All in time for Mrs W to come back saying what a lovely time she's had and asks what else what else you've been up to.

She's already asked why her lotions and potions are not as she likes them - how the heck do I know which ones are important and which ones are for the bin.

I also have a pile of 'what the heck is this for' for her to sort through

He didn't half look nervous going into the big P*nis shaped rocket.

Pleased he has gone into space, but he is not an astronaut, no matter how many times they say he is.

He was a passenger along with the other three on the 10 minute trip.

The days of astronauts piloting craft in to low earth orbit are in the past, the crews going to the ISS are passengers as well for the most part now as everything's automated.

Dr Evil didn't invite you to go on the second trip on his Phallic shaped ship then?  

No he didn't, not rich or famous enough.

However, I am pleased they have finally gotten themselves someone other than the single guy with an iPhone for the imagery - two on the rocket today, they need to learn some PR lessons from SpaceX.

The big p*nis is still a good rocket and it does what it sets out to with little fuss, also all the legal stuff with Nasa, he is doing himself no favours

Calm yourself?

Sounds more like an adminstration of a General Anaesthetic!

It was administered over 7 hours.

All was good until we had to do Oxford Rd to Piccadilly on a seperate service - people were using the express services and TPE to get to Piccadilly to get the tram to Heaton Park.  The train was completely rammed with drunk youth in various states of dress, we had one corner near a door and my wife was considering just getting off the train.  I had to reassure her it was just for 2 minutes then they would all get off, which they did, but left the train in a right state, cans everywhere till the airport where a cleaner got on during the reversal.

I've just dug out some old photos I took of Fallowfield station after the track was lifted - there were piles of wooden sleepers scattered about - I guess that answers the question.

The pics aren't very good, not worth posting, I should have gone out with a camera when there was track, maybe even trains lol.

SPD Ltd (Speedy Prompt Delivery) was the distribution arm of Van den Burghs and a division of Unilever.  They had a number of sites around the country and, I think,  usually had a rail connection. Van den Burghs had a large factory at Port Sunlight and did a lot of distribution by rail. The SPD depots did local deliveries by road after receiving the main consignments from BR. They seem to have picked some unfortunate sites that seemed to suffer from the adjacent railway suffering closure. This was certainly the case at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Plodder Lane in Bolton and, indeed, your site at Wilbraham Road.

The line outlived their railway connection by at least 20 years, I think they shut the actual depot in the 1980s, a decade or more after they lost the rail connection.

Yes, a map and compass, but the problem with Kinder and the peat bogs is being able to maintain your route and direction. Often best to do a walk around the perimeter of the Kinder plateau on a clear day - you get your good views and at least you have a reasonable idea of where you are.

Graham

If the trend for staycations continues, they're going to have to build more countryside to cope with demand

Overheard at the summit of The Cobbler a few weeks back..."Isn't it great being up here, so remote, at one with nature.  Would be better if there was a coffee shop with wifi access"...

But did you see any red squiggles?

As for pigeons...

I forgot to mention the truly sad news, the red squirrels were not to be seen!!

There has been a grey squirrel or squirrels in the area with squirrel pox, the greys are just carriers but for the reds it is fatal - they've confirmed at least 4 dead, but we had a good look around and we saw just one crow and one magpie.  It was really sad being there, the place was completely silent, nothing moving.

Thats bad, last time I was there we saw one...

Its about time Grey Squirrel Pie was back on the menu as a patriotic duty!

I work in procurement for injection moulded (plus other medium) items, from raw materials to doorsteps, so I have an idea.  At an individual item level the footprint is very small, a full production run, of a decent sized range (say Bachmann for instance) is pretty huge.  You may already have seen, but if not, have a look online at the landscape destruction in the Australian Ore Mines, which is where the majority of ore comes from to produce the steel used to make the moulds for injection moulded items.  Add to that the transportation by rail and huge ships over thousands of miles, then the steel works footprint themselves and all the fuels/electricity/gas.  Its quite jaw dropping,  significantly more than the recent a space trip.  Whether or not your models are 2nd hand and bought locally doesn't mean anything, they were still made from raw materials and transported to where you bought them from.

The fundamental point of my post is that people are very quick to tell successful rich people what to do with their money.  If someone suggested to me what to do with my money, they wouldn't like the response.  If I had the money to follow my dreams and go to space, damn right I would do it and wouldn't feel in the slightest bit guilty.

I understand where you're coming from, but of course the individual item (not the entire industry) is what should be compared to the individual trip to space. Also, by purchasing second hand models I am not adding any carbon emmisions to those already created. The products were manufactured to satisfy the demands of somebody else, often before I was born. I had nothing to do with that process and no action that I am able to take could prevent them from occuring. I am simply reusing what is now somebody else's waste. If there wasn't a second hand market, these items would go to landfill once their first owners had finished with them. That would be considerably worse for the environment.

Regarding the second point, I had realised that you were unhappy with the criticism of the spending of these two individuals. As I explained above, I would be happy to face such criticism myself. Clearly you would not be and that is the source of our difference of opinion on the morality of it. As this is personal to each of us, I find it unlikely that either of us will be persuaded to change our minds. It is perhaps best that we agree to disagree on this point, as further discussion will only become tediously repetetive, which is sure to lead to unneccessary frustration.

I agree with you, thank you for taking the time to join in the discussion, I've enjoyed it

Good luck!

I live away from home during the week, and rarely eat meat or bread. Just seafood, pulses, vegetables, and fruit. You can make some surprisingly filling and tasty meals without meat.

Try a salad of chickpeas, olive oil, lime juice, chopped chilli, chopped tomato, minced garlic, and coriander.

Or frying raw prawns in olive oil, with garlic, chilli, and coriander, finishing off with lime juice; served with couscous or rice. Yum!

Haha - I forgot, these will be personal salads for me so I can toss in garlic and onion - the wife has an intolerance but I am free to eat almost anything - except whatever it is some Thai food contains that means I have to remain within 2 minutes of a receptical.

That was 30s more than I needed. 

Apparently it hasn't ended, there's lots of these games for weeks.

What? Are you saying there is some sort of football tournament on at the moment? 

You can't beat a bit of drumming.

Just be glad they didn't get a set of bagpipes....

However, I'd be inclined to dig out my copy of HiFi News & Record Review Test CD HFN003, which has two excellent dynamic range tests:

Track thirteen is a one-and-a-half-minute solo drum kit.

Track fourteen is the infamous "The Garage Door Or The Dynamic Range Of Real Life" which really puts a system through it's paces. Played at a volume that is just on the safe side for your speakers, the garage door will have heads popping out to see what the racket is all the way down the street...

As long as the person is a refuse collector or has a large skip in their garden about to be taken away, you'll be ok.

It twas the belly sticking out under the t-shirt that did it.

Depends who is wearing the T-shirt

If you are that yellow I'd say the doctors is required! 

@Captain Kernow Ignorance is bliss...

@woodenhead I feel your distress. But at least you found it!

You wouldn't think I'd written this code before and designed whole web applications using it successfully.

But today it's for an exam that I am in the middle of and I am upset because exams bring out the worst in me when it comes to feeling like an impostor and I wasn't even able to string the basics together.

Luckily I still have till the end of Friday to complete the project and it's now back on track - just.

asp.net framework - happy with, asp.net core mvc whoa, I can see all the notes but can I get it playing the tune I want, not yet.  My problem is I've taken some of the words to heart in the project requirements and tried to go all in on something I am not yet comfortable with, when I can justify the old school stuff as that is what I deal in day to day.

Anyway, back to some late night code work - old school style

error at line 38

But when you import a .csv file into Excel, you can set what delimiter you want to use.  The default is a comma, because that's the most common delimiter in a .csv file, but it can be changed to a colon, tab, space or whatever you want it to use.

What I don't understand is why anyone would want to use a .csv to transfer text.

This is my issue, something in the file is setting off a comma for delimiting when not asked for, I think it is more a weakness in Excel than anything, the file itself looks sound in it's structure.  I've put in some logic to cover it off.

The transfer didn't originally have this free text in it, was meant to be data, then the recipient asked if we would add the last update comments and it went downhill from there.  It's been working fine for 12 months, then wham all of a sudden Excel wants to play.

Also just discovered by accident how RMweb secures itself from SQL Injection attempts.

Thought I'd been kicked out for good for a moment

.... but can others make it worse?

It's amazing how the assumption is always "your code has broken", a thing which rarely happens. As you say, if it's been running happily for months, then some external factor must have changed.

Al.

I once walked from my old house in Heptonstall to Howarth on a sunny day. Getting onto the tops, I seem to remember seeing a load of book sculptures. It's beautiful up there.

Been up on top a couple of times - first it was blowing a gale and wet - so we sat in the car, ate a picnic and gazed at the moors/hills.  Second time was this one, still windy, so despite a lovely sun shining it was flipping cold so I remained on the wrong side of the peak to look down onto Haworth and see the railway.  I could see the home signal for Oakworth and a short stretch of track from one location but nothing moved whilst I was watching - they waited till I moved.

In previous years Haworth has held a 1940s weekend which can be good fun.  The shops are bedecked in suitable decorations with many visitors wearing appropriate fashions and uniforms for the period.

This years event planned for mid-May has, understandably, been cancelled but next years event all being well should be held on 21-22 May if you and Mrs W are interested.

http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/events/haworth-events/more.asp?event=Haworth 1940s Weekend