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I had a minor problem in the car this morning. I had left a soft drink can in one of the cup holders. With temperatures overnight of about minus 12C, the can had frozen and then burst. Fortunately the overflow had frozen in the cup holder and it was pretty easy to clean up. A real ‘pop’ can!

Humans here have changed the natural behaviour of hummingbirds. These tiny birds migrate each year between the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the US in the north, and Central America and Mexico in the south. In summer here, people hang up hummingbird feeders, filled with sugar solution, which attract the birds - the birds hovering as they feed from these is intriguing to watch. With the availability of feeders, the birds can feed here for longer than would be natural, since they can stay on after flowers have withered in the fall. Over time, they have gradually stayed later and later in the year. There are some that now do not migrate, but stay here over winter. They absolutely depend on people leaving feeders out year round. So we now have two feeders which we swap in and out in this weather (minus 8C at the moment), thawing one while the other is outside.

The runway was originally extended over the railway line during WW2, to enable Coastal Command Liberators to operate from there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Ballykelly Here’s a not very good picture of a Liberator and train: https://www.facebook.com/556745367857030/posts/raf-ballykellyliberator-fl930-lining-up-on-the-runway-ballykelly-when-a-train-pa/1165904100274484/ One of my uncles was a flight engineer on Liberators flying from there.

Well, winter has definitely arrived. Snow started about noon and stopped about seven hours later. First shovelling of the drive for the year has been accomplished. We went out in the car this afternoon with a list of five shops to visit. After doing the first one, and seeing the state of the roads, and of the driving, we thought “Enough, we’re going back home.” Aaaand - we’ve just had a power interruption. Only for 30 seconds, but enough to set all the mains electric clocks and appliances to flashing 12:00. Bah humbug!

Or before people get angry about it all and it becomes a tirade war?

My sister-in-law and her husband don’t have a cat. It doesn’t sleep in their back porch.

A squish? (Or squiche in French cooking?)

In a place I worked at in the UK, the resident electrical and electronic ‘wizard’ was Bert, a Lithuanian DP (displaced person - someone from a European country which had come under Russian occupation after WW2 and who had left in a hurry). A brilliant technician, but a very difficult personality. In a previous job, he had been assigned an assistant to ‘learn what Bert was doing for the company”. Bert immediately realized this person was intended to be his replacement, especially after he found him reading his (Bert’s) work notebook. So he started keeping all his entries in the notebook in Lithuanian, quickly found another job (the one I knew him in) and waved goodbye.

Agree about the plans and diagrams, and also the pictures of locations and buildings. However … IMO the captions on some of the locomotive pictures, especially of G&SWR ones are (shall we say) open to discussion.

Don’t try to be a brave Bob! Get out in front of the possible pain and take “pain relief” before there’s pain to relieve. It’s easier to prevent it than to suppress it once it’s started. I was sent home from a hernia op with those instructions and separate anti-inflammatories and painkillers (on different timetables).

Added emphasis can be given by splitting one swear word to insert another - each of the three parts to be pronounced distinctly. Commonest example: Bas-*******-tard. (I worked on a few Scottish building sites one year.)

Probably “The Beachcombers”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beachcombers Check for those various characters in that Wiki entry.

His “The Little Railways of South-West Scotland” could also be useful to you.

Do you need a programme to keep track of all the players?

Real tail-chaser: https://www.railpictures.net/photo/848634/

And not just combustion air - there is a big requirement for cooling air, which is why tunnel motors draw air from low down in the tunnel, where it’s presumably cooler.

Completely agree. There’s also the problem that some users, especially if they are the ones paying for maintenance, can’t understand that it is statistically inevitable that there will be bugs in any system containing more than 10 lines of code. I’ve had one such user make the accusation that we deliberately included bugs in any new code we wrote for the system in order to provide ourselves with a source of future income. The “10 lines of code” came from an article I read claiming that 1 line of code in 10 was in error. That doesn’t mean it will cause the program to fall over but that, in some particular circumstance, it will not do correctly what it was intended to do. Working on maintenance of a system containing several hundred thousand lines of code, that could be quite a depressing thought.

How do you feel about “different than”?

Was it on its holidays as well?

My paint collection isn’t bad. I think most of them are colours still on active display somewhere in or on the house. Timber and wood is a different matter. A lot of it is being kept “just in case” and my wife thinks that could be dumped. The problem is that “just in case” does sometimes happen. For example, today, at my wife’s request, I am going to use one foot length of a 6x4 timber, which has been kept for at least two years. When (if?) we downsize, a lot of stuff is going to the tip. In the meantime …

I believe 7 out of the 9 units on that train are tunnel motors, the first of which were built in 1972. The design was a structural attempt to solve the problem of locomotives overheating in tunnels, adopted because: “Before the introduction of microprocessor technology, locomotives didn’t have the ability to self-govern and would quickly overheat and fail in these conditions.” I would assume locomotive technology at the time was also not up to controlling fuel input based on exhaust temperature. You certainly don’t see smoke displays like that from well-maintained modern locomotives. (Though, apparently, some of the fairly recent EMD products could produce fireballs from the exhaust stacks under certain conditions. I can’t find the reference to that at the moment.)

EMDs will smoke as well, given appropriate conditions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpTRpn_fuQ&pp=ygUXT2lsIGNhbiB0cmFpbiB0ZWhhY2hhcGk%3D wait for the mid-train helpers at about 1:50.

This joke loses a bit with the convention of squad numbers for football teams. However … Q. What wears a shirt with “7” on the back, carries a rifle, and gives milk? A. A right-wing military coo.

Alternative subject - a bovine that has eaten cannabis.

Can I just say that, based on personal experience of medics in training, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and just leave it at that? Our first family doctor here in Canada has been retired for quite a few years. I still see him occasionally around town, and we will sometimes chat for a few minutes. Many times (I must bore him with it) I have thanked him for the fact that he is responsible for me being able to still walk properly, never mind still play soccer at the age I am. Thirty years ago, I went to him with an ankle injury I’d got the day before. He diagnosed it as probably a badly-strained, perhaps torn, muscle and that it would heal with rest and maybe some strapping. Then he said “But just wait there” and went off to consult a book (pre internet days). That’s the bit I really thank him for - acknowledging that he maybe didn’t know everything he needed to know. He came back, asked me to do a couple of foot movements, which I couldn’t do. He said “You’ve torn your Achilles tendon. Get yourself straight down to xxx hospital. You have about six hours to get it fixed. I’ll phone ahead and tell them you’re coming.” Two hours later, I was in the operating theatre and I don’t even limp now.