raymw

I've not seen this series, but some years ago I found this young lady's web site, well worth a look http://www.kiddofspeed.com

I've had a little Acer tablet for a couple of years- 7nch screen running windows 10. Apart from the small areas to select with big fingers, the touch screen works well, but wouldn't want it for much typing, but folk have used phones for sending text. Of course, voice recognition is pretty good these days. I'm using a keyboard less and less, not like in the old cpm days when drag and drop wasn't used. For most folk, I think they do not really need a keyboard for what they do.

https://djmodels.co.uk/news-2

AARP eye chart

The only fail-safe way of buying the sort of items we are talking about, is to see it, pick it up and pay for it*. Crowd funding, prepayment, mail order, can give problems. There are more steps in the transaction, any of which can have a problem. In most cases, the thought of any risk is overshadowed by the 'want', and often everything works out OK - until it doesn't. * yeah, you can think of situations where even that doesn't fail safe if you try really hard

Pleased to see that Beckham didn't come up with some excuse this time https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/beckham-given-driving-ban-for-using-phone-at-the-wheel/ar-AAB8pJf?OCID=ansmsnnews11

©2018 Little Loco Company Ltd. All Rights Reserved. | VAT Number: GB 225 6558 95. | Company Registration Number: 09818565. | Registered Company Office: The Old Casino, 28 Fourth Avenue, Hove, East Sussex, England, BN3 2PJ. | Correspondence Address: Little Loco Company Ltd Operations, 43 Shakespeare Street, Hove BN3 5AG.

Not many kickstarter projects are in the £100,000 range. searching on Kickstarter failure rate throws up many statistics, many of which can be misinterpreted- e.g. only 13% of the failures get refunds. LLC and DJM were not operated along kickstarter lines. I don't think kickstater releases part payments, they only release payments once the required number of subscribers is passed, and so on. In any case It would be rather awkward to comply with this for some projects https://www.kickstarter.com/rules/prototypes?ref=rules

Crowd funding works fine for buyers and sellers, if what is being sold exists already - e.g. a building, work of art, whatever. However if the item for sale does not already exist, then there is a risk that it will never exist. In particular if it is an item that requires significant work before it is completed, and if that work is carried out by sub-contractors on a different continent, then the chances of failure is most likely greater than the chances of success. However, if crowd funding did not exist, then it would be very unlikely that any individual would be prepared to risk a few hundred thousand of their own cash based merely on future customers not putting money up front and only promising to purchase, Unfortunately enthusiasm and knowledge is not enough when you depend on areas outside of your control.

If a crowd funded project is not fully subscribed, then I would expect the project not be started, and the deposits to be returned, since there has been little expenditure. However, if one uses the money from Peter to pay for Paul's work, then that is a serious problem. I'm guessing there is little written agreements - you're not mates when doing business.

DJ's press release, afaik, never directly mentioned anything specific about his list of models. In his blog, for April, he gives a list of the current situation for his N-gauge models.It seems he is way under-subscribed on the first three items N gauge APT Current orders of 118 of 400 needed. N gauge J94 current orders of 112 of 800 needed. N gauge Mogul Current orders 236 of 1000 needed. N gauge shark delivery November 19. N gauge Mermaids Delivery November 19. N gauge King minimum order number reached, tooling to commence imminently. N gauge class 92 tooling imminent. N gauge MK5 coaches licence granted. There are one or two later updates under his 'News'

Maybe all your questions answered in a week or so https://djmodels.co.uk/availability-out-of-the-office

I could pass on some advice to Dave - this is what a lecturer wrote on a report about an electrical engineering student to his employer, HM Naval Dockyard, over 50 years ago. ' I suggest he takes up light engineering, preferably gardening' It seems fairly apparent to me, that Dave is not able to operate basically as an individual entity, in this particular business. Some folk need the direction that an employer provides, and are completely unaware of the requirements of running a company. Gardening may be the answer, you deal with one customer at a time, probably get about £20.00 an hour, a small ad in the local paper wil get you plenty of work - provided you keep your word, do a good job, and don't let your customers down. (Or it may not be the answer, in this case)

A bit of confusion here. Are we talking about Dave Jones the person, or his limited liability company? If payments have been made to the company, for design work, and the design has occurred, then I guess that part of the 'contract' has been completed, If there is not enough payments for the next stage, then I expect the whole project stops, and if no work has been done on the second stage, then the payments for that stage only should be refunded. It depends on what the contract stated. If the company has part-spent money on the second stage, expecting the project to continue, and does not have the funds to refund, then the company can fold up, presumably limited to the liability mentioned when incorporated. Recently, Jlrt, or whatever it was called, stopped trading. I think some folk lost monies, even though 'the owner' was respected. A common problem with one man bands, is that they, and their customers are unable to separate the the company and its owner as two separate entities, until problems occur. No matter who you deal with, as a customer there is always a risk if you part with money before getting the goods, but not for the seller. The concept of crowdfunding is to pass the financial risks onto the customer, everyone knows that, but we forget that, when we want the carrot.

I wrote a more detailed response to this ridiculous situation, but have decided not to post. I am concerned about the hassle it could cause from the point of view of someone who thinks that the threat of litigation should prevent freedom of choice. To summarize, however, I'm thinking that similar to Coopercraft, here we have someone who is interested in model railways, but has little manufacturing business knowledge. Design work is comparatively trivial, it is a mental exercise, that's all. The logistics of manufacture, distribution and sales is the difficult part for a tiny business - hence the criticism on rmweb of some one man bands. The successful businesses know this, others never learn. And, it goes without saying, always keep your word - e,g, don't make promises you can't keep, or take money without fulfilling the order - it's far easier for your reputation to go from good to bad, than to make it go from bad to good.

A photo would help, as Simond mentioned. I've no idea of the part number, but if they are for the old coopercraft wagons, when the old ccl supplied the kits they had a small hole in the buffer shank, the spring was a length of piano wire running through both buffer shank holes and the coupling hook. Is it brass castings on a sprue, or etches on a fret that you have?

back on page 3, I mentioned about web standards for browsers. This article may or may not be of interest - the problems of progress, if you like. (how to get rid of old stuff) http://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6

hit the run,...

talking about the trs80, which I and one other mentioned. I won it in a competition. When it powered up It displayed my name , 'RAY', I thought they'd made it special. It was some time later that I realised that it booted with a 32 character display, but could also run 64 char. In 64 char, it powered up and displayed 'READY'.

W3C set standards. Some, such as I.E., did not comply, thinking everybody should do it their way. Others, such as Mozilla, tried to comply. It meant that web sites had to detect the user's browser, and behave accordingly.

54 years ago, analogue computer, Plymouth cat, does that count? Then something else, paper tape based, I know not. Then a 'big' ibm 1130 with 8k core, cost £100,000 back then, I bought it for £10 ten years later - still got the alarm and a cosole button or two. Personal/home, a couple of Nascoms, the Sinclair stuff, then won a trash 80 when Bristol Tandy business centre opened, then Kaypro and Philips luggables, cpm os, then Zenith z100, probably best PC ever, had two processors, one for dos, t'other cpm, then their ibm pc compatibles. I've still got most of this stuff, which may or may not work. The bbc messed it all up for many (1982ish?) with the dead ended processor in the bbc micro. I never touched one of them, and as for Apple....)

if you go to windows updates, advanced settings, you can pause updates for up to 35 days. So, easy enough to update within that time, when you want to. For simple backups, then this works well https://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/index.html

I was sort of trying to show Jason that the jokes could get much worse. Maybe revive the elephant/custard/mini jokes....