monkeysarefun

Not exactly... Maybe they should have used stronger fencing wire the first time around!

Its only post #327 with the enormous God like hand that gives the tiny size of this building away.. Otherwise I'd be assuming that its 4mm/ft scale at least. Having no 2mm/ft experience and having little support down here even if I wanted to, where is your brick sheet sourced from? I didn't realise that you could get embossed bricks that small, but then again I am in Australia and we don't get any of the good stuff.

Just now I found some photos from 1983 in an envelope while I was tidying up my bookcase, which had me imagining that in 34 years time I'll be tidying up my bookcase and come across an old CD or USB stick with some pictures on it, In that case I'll be hoping that I still have a CD drive or USB port in my computer or fridge or whatever that will recognise the format and be able to read the by then 34 year old tech stuff. At least our eyes can still process old photos... Anyway, ignoring all that thinking that I did, I do like this one particular photo because it has made me think that it kind of revives the original intention of this thread:: basically that Australia is perceived to be a scary place. To acknowledge that so far we've had sea mites and spiders and snakes and drop bears and blue ringed octopii and cassowarys, but so far have not had one mention of the really scary thing about here - other Australians! (apart from big Merv, as Furness Wagon just pointed out!) Anyway to fix that, here is my first example: (with photo proof) IN the early 1980's I worked for an oil company and was sent out into far western Queensland to assist with an oil exploration survey, This basically means a bulldozer clears a matrix of lines 20 or more km long, then holes are drilled 30 or so metres down along the lines at intervals of say 100 metres. An explosive shot is placed down the hole and let off and an array of geophones, - basically microphones - laid along the length of the line record the shock waves and eventually all these recordings are processed by huge computers and you end up with a graphical representation of the subsurface geological layers. Basically that is a way too detailed introduction to the photo I found, which is pretty much the aftermath of a scene with me in the passenger seat of the landcruiser shouting "No way!!!" straight after the driver spotted an exploded shot hole in the track and yelled out "Check this out!" and tried to jump it... There are very few arguments to support the opposite view, but in the interests of keeping the forum fair and balanced, I have finally found one: I'm half tempted to send the link to Kevin Andrews and Tony A just to see if they run with it.

Try searching google images for versions of "Cantilever awning", "cantilever canopy" "hotel cantilever awning" etc.

To put the mods off the scent, here are some pictures of the railway that runs between Queenstown and Strahan in Tasmania. Its rack and pinion in parts, Cut through the harshest environment back in the late 1800's to ship copper from oQueenstown. Definitely worth a ride if you are ever in the area .( Liberal candidates would still fail to tick the right boxes though)

Checking out your tiled roofs in just these few posts - you would definitely have to have an entry in the Guinness book of records for the most tiles laid by one person. I'm only going on 40 year old feeble memories here but did you have an article in the Railway Modeller about your version of a model of Constables "Haywain"? I'm sure it was you, and I do just remember rereading it many times over. I think I was in year 10 at school at the time, and I can say that I remember not very much that I was taught in that year, apart from being told to not be mean to Julie Macquen because her parents had split up.., but I DO remember that article...

Ouch! could be worse though. You could have mentioned our Cambodian solution. We rehoused 3 iranians and a Rohyngian bloke there and it only cost us $55 million A handy hint for would be illegal immigrants or valid refugees - don't come here by boat. If you have 10 grand, don't give it to a people smuggler - just buy a first class airline ticket and you'll be fine.

That is true, but is it amusing to think that this whole thing started with a liberal friendly citizen going after the greens, The two green members straight away conceded they had broken the parliamentary rules and resigned. Malcolm Turnbull in turn could have been gracious and wished them all the best etc, but instead jumped up and down and rubbed it in that they had been shoddy in filling out the form. Not very gentlemanly, So when it came back that HIS deputy prime minister hadn't done the due diligence to go and check if his Kiwi dad made him a dual citizen, then he just looks a total tool. Then there are the three or four other members of his government in the same position.. My parents were born in the UK. If I was running for office, I'd at least look into what that made me. And after about 10 seconds googling I now know - I'd be considered British by descent and would therefore renounce that before running for office . Its not that hard, unless you are an LNP member obviously. These idiots didn't go that extra step and now just bleat about how they didn't know so therefore its not their fault. The same idiots that are enforcing strict compliance on social service recipients and denying THEM the same leniency that they expect.

For me the highlight of this just finished session was Malcolm Turnbull ripping into the greens because they were obviously shoddy by not filling in their election nomination form properly, then days later the nationals get exposed too, and suddenly everything changes. I'm thinking as automation and robots take over most of our jobs, then politicaians should be the obvious ones to go because most decisions they have to make should be logical ones, or based on already considered judgements that would be scanned into the national constitutional decision making computer. Parliament 2020 should just be an app.

We have much to learn..

I googled him, he is maybe a bit like our Kevin Andrews? Former cabinet minister Kevin Andrews has said same-sex relationships were simply “affectionate relationships”, the kind he might have with the members of his cycling group. In contrast, marriage was a completely different institution that should remain between a man and a woman.

Yes, for all the snakes and crocs and spiders there are parts that mirror Georgian England, particularly Tasmania. Thats where I'm headed at retirement when my work contract finishes in three years time.. Sell Sydney real estate and live like a king in Tasmania!

I've had a few snakes in my yard over the years, Brown snakes are the most scary because they are mental, but then there was the Tiger snake that my partner would have trodden on if it hadn't seen her first and slid away, and I did have a red belly black that lived in my bird aviary in amongst the rock water feature that I'd made. Theres always some old timer with a bushy beard and a roll your own cigarette behind his ear who'll tell you that if you have a Red Belly then you won't have brown snakes because they keep them away but its still a bit disconcerting to come upon one unexpectedly. When I first saw it it was basking on a rock, so I called WIRES, which stands for something to do with wild life rescue - and 20 minutes later a girl looking like Lara Croft in a bikini with a shirt tossed over it and wearing big work boots rocked up. She had been at a pool party when she got the call. She tried to catch it but it vanished down a hole so I just put up with it until it eventually disappeared. I had quails in the aviary but weirdly, it never harmed them - I think it was just after the mice. Even the quail eggs ( which they lay all around the place like chickens do) , were not touched. Each week I'd clean out the aviary, and carefully lift each rock until I found the snake, then keep an eye on it until I'd finished. It went away after a month or so. My closest brush with danger was nearly stepping on a Death Adder in the NT. IF you are called a Death Adder then you have to live up to the hype so I knew he was serious! This was at Pine Creek, just near the historic bakery. Heres a picture of it (the bakery, not the snake) Imagine how hot that place must have got - a bakery in a tin shed in the Northern Territory! Apparently the US air force took it over and used it as their own bakery in WW2. Those guys must have wished they were anywhere else - D-Day or whatever.

G'day Allan, Different time zones means that I'm still back at your pub pictures. Just looking at 'The Fox And Goose" had me thinking that you have much better pub names than we do down here. Firstly, all our pubs are officially called hotels. So you have to tack on the word Hotel to every name. Every town here has to have a :"Royal" , and a "Crown" and one named after the town it is in. If those names are taken and you still want to open a pub then the 'Imperial' or 'Criterion" is usually chosen. Unless its near the railway station, in which case it would be called 'The Railway'. It is a bit of a shame in a country known for its colourful and unique language that we have no imaginative pub names. I'd love to drink at 'The Drongo" or "The Blue-ars*d Fly"

Straight off the laser I can see what they are saying, there is a very uniform precision to the look. However as in your picture once the finish is applied and the mortar is added they do take on what I think is a very realistic look. Additionally your corner treatment using interlocking bricks looks very good. This is 4mm/ft:

Thanks Giles, its nice to think that my Emblaser 1 will still be able to hold its own, rather than just get used for sentimental reasons! Reading Domenic's' progress update posted on Friday it looks like things are at last progressing with the European compliance stuff. It sure does seem like a whole lot of nonsense to have to go through, in the good old days when we were one happy empire, they'd have only had to screw on a different plug and ship them over by wool clipper. Weirdly, those old days are coming back to haunt us here at the moment, since some sh*t stirrer dusted off our constitution and pointed out that many Australian born politicians have parents born in the UK and elsewhere, which makes them dual citizens by descent and thus potentially ineligible to sit in our parliament. So its swings and roundabouts I guess - what you lose out on by not getting Emblaser 2 imports, we gain by getting rid of some pollies (pending High Court ruling).

Finally swapped my Emblaser 1 back to using my original parts and fitted the G7 lens, which was the original reason for fiddling around with it. It certainly does make a difference, 3mm ply in 3 passes instead of 6. Thats pretty much on par with the Emblaser 2 so is a major improvement. My only issue with it now is that the laser head slides a little too easily up and down so can drop slightly and foul the material as its moving around. A ratchet thingy would be good, similar to say the focus on a microscope.

Rock god hair, miniature religious monument, why does that picture remind me of the Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap?

Well I've had a weird saga with the Emblaser 1. I would send a file to it from Cut2dlaser but it would not make any mark on the material. The laser would be glowing, but not as brightly as expected so I thought it might be the microswitch or similar. Domenic sent a complete replacement set of everything - the two little boards on the laser unit, the ribbon cable, the laser unit and the main PCB board. Plan was to swap each one over one by one and retry untill I found the problem and then send back the surplus parts. I started with the small boards on the laser unit - no change. Then the laser unit, no change. Added the ribbon cable, no change. Finally the main PCB. At this point everything was new but still - no mark on the material... That made no sense at all, so just on the offchance I tried using the old version of Cut2D, and it worked! If I compare the two different gcode files from each version for a straight line at 100% 10mm/sec I can see the new version has set the laser power to 0. Have no idea why this happens or what made it start to do it. I DID add some extra post processor files that are needed to use cut2dlaser files with the Emblaser 2 but it was working after I added them. I guess I'll try uninstalling and re-installing cut2Dlaser (latest version). Now I've got to take my laser all apart again and send the bits back..

It'll be interesting to see the wording of the question, given the cynical way the Republic referendum question was set up to fail.. Ah, politicians.The worse they get, the more they cost us. They are planning a new fence around parliament house - in case terrorists... I don't know the exact size of the area they are fencing, but lets say 50 acres to be generous. Theres heaps of people in Australia with 50 acre properties, If I had 50 acres I'd get a couple of quotes from some blokes who'd turn up in utes with a kelpie in the back and pick the cheapest, - probably around $10000 or so for some barbed wire? Thats not how the government does it. Along with some other 'security upgrades' THIS fence is going to cost......$60 million! http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/60m-upgrade-cost-of-parliament-house-fence-kept-secret-to-deter-terrorists-20170227-gum2aq.html Thats almost half a pointless phone ballot! Remember the happy times? Even the sacking of the Whitlam government, probably the biggest most divisive political event in our history, didn't need fences and hundreds of millions of dollars of security around parliament house to hold back the intimidating vengeful hordes.. In fact we had Norman Gunston standing there with Gough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9hZ7kjgFh4 What other country would have had a comedian centre stage at such an event? Sadly, we wouldn't be able to have it now, either, because the current self important bunch would think they were getting secretly mocked or something. Which they would be!

These two turned up on my back deck on Sunday morning wanting a feed . Theres nothing like the sound of cockatoos s landing on your plasti-glass sheet roofing to make you jump out of bed.

I'm printing off a heap of those signs right now, so If there ever IS a zombie apocalypse and I am one of the early zombies I will just stick those signs up all around the place and it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel..

0 I guess its all swings and roundabouts, because without Joh we wouldn't have The Saints or the Go Betweens. or any of those angry mental Queensland bands that made going out to see a band on Friday night in 1981-2 so great Is a bit weird how the original post was about blood sucking creatures, and here we are at Pauline Hanson..

Queensland in the 70's and early 80's........ Its easy to trivialize it because 'Its Queensland" but it was basically a fascist state under Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen. There's too much to write down here, , but its just frankly amazing that what went on there just got ignored by the worlds press. If you were under 70 or something years old then you couldn't meet 2 of your friends in the street because more than two people in the same place at the same time was an illegal gathering and you would be arrested and bashed. And you would be. .In the mid 80's The Stranglers toured there They were astounded by the police state and the jerrymander and wrote a song about it - 'Nuclear Device'. They COULD have chosen tropical fish or the barrier reef or girls all sun tanned and wearing bikinis to write about, but what struck them most was the fascist mental in charge. Yet most queenslanders loved him and thought he was doing a great job? So yes, Queenslanders ARE mad people! Living through the Bjelke Petersen rule and now seeing Trump sounding like another JBP but with the nuclear codes is really scary.

Hey, that IS a real problem and its at the Irish end I reckon. Proof - I worked at an Australian army location, we had a private manning the helpdesk who was Irish. The phone would ring and he'd answer it and fix their problems over the phone. Sometimes he'd have to spell out words, and when that happenned it would be great because we'd all wait for hm to have to say the letter 'r' because it would come out "RARRRHRRRHAH' because he's Irish and apparently no Australian; can understand that, So the conversation would be ."Ok sir hit Enter. Thats the Enter key .NO its written on the key. No its the key with the letters E N T E RARRRHRRRHAH. No sir RARRRHRRRHAH. No RARRRHRRRHAH .. no sir the RARRRHRRRHAH key.. " This would go on for ages! and be hilarious. No that s H I L A RARRRHRRRHAH I O U S.