ejstubbs

Remind me again how many F1 race wins his father achieved? The sprint race is a load of nonsense IMO. Way back in the day F1 was supposed to be a sprint formula (as opposed to an endurance formula). It seems someone has decided that a two-hour race is too much to ask of the attention span of the modern audience (at least, that part of it from which money can easily be wrung), especially when the rules and technology combine to ensure that, all to often, nothing much happens in that time. The addition of a shorter race in which even less happens hardly seems like a solution. Bear in mind, too, that millions of people are more than happy to watch 90+ minutes of football, and NFL games can last over four hours - and that's the most lucrative sports franchise in the world. The sprint races strike me as being the wrong solution to a fundamental problem which seems to being more and more baked-in to the structure of F1 as it stands at the moment.

I'm pretty sure that the developers of this site in Edinburgh knew damn well that there was a four track mainline railway fairly close beneath their feet: ISTR that when they were drilling & driving the piles (in pre-Covid days - construction work was stalled for a long time when the pandemic hit) they provided a neat outline of the tunnel's route. Which is why I'm pretty sure that they knew where it was. I'm actually thinking that, when it's completed, the view over the wall from outside Starbucks might look a tad improbable in respect of tunnel roof depth at that point vs size of buildings plonked on top. (That wall is actually just too tall for even a six-footer like me to get a good view over it, but you can stand on the stone plinths at each end of the bicycle racks to get a better look!)

Far be it from me to query a thread started by one of the actual Mods, but isn't this topic just a variant of the long-running - and still running - Prototype for Everything Corner thread?

I'd love to have heard what Hi-Viz Man said to her...

Don't bank on it. A few years ago a young man (around mid-20s) wrote off his Merc - and our friend's front garden wall - doing heaven knows what speed along what was then a 30mph limit and is now a 20mph limit road in Edinburgh. Said friend wasn't at home at the time but neighbours reported hearing an almighty bang, and the wreckage of the car did not look like it had been "just slightly over the limit, officer". He turned up at her door the next day to apologise, and to make sure that she had the necessary details for insurance purposes (so yes, he had insurance). Apparently he was very nice about it, but she couldn't help noticing that he had arrived in what looked a like brand new, even more expensive car...

Interesting - looks like there are still allotments in Finsbury Square.

Another take on a similar theme: The joy of mediocrity: we need hobbies, even if we’re bad at them, to free us from perfection

If you live in Scotland you can get an interest-free loan for solar panels and a battery, up to £12K. Loan periods vary according to the size of the loan, up to 12 years for £12K. I've heard it said that if you want a system bigger then the G98 3.68kW limit, best get in quick because it's becoming increasingly difficult to accommodate higher export powers in the existing infrastructure. (You need the G98 certificate - or G99 if you system is bigger than 3.68kW - in order to get the SEG payments.)

Which is one good reason to get it done before that becomes an issue. Unless you're the sort of person who regards making a will as being akin to buying a advance ticket to the great beyond (here's a thing: you got given a ticket at birth) then it seems easier to think about such things when you can tell yourself that it's years away yet. Even if you're a fit and sprightly younger person, bad stuff can still happen that could leave you reliant on other people to look after your health, welfare and financial affairs. It's not only galloping senility or dementia you need to worry about (though granted the risks of such things happening earlier in life are lower). Having both a will and PoAs in place is, as much as anything, a kindness to the people who will be left looking after your affairs when you are no longer capable of doing so yourself, for whatever reason.

In 1994 I was working for an IT company that took in a couple of sandwich students each year. The worldwide web was in the early days of becoming a "thing" back then* and one day I was poking around having a looksie at what I could find when I stumbled across NASA's web site - which at the time was full of fascinating stuff marking the 25th anniversary of the first Moon landing. I pointed this out to the student working** at the desk next to me, and she said: "What, people have landed on the Moon?" I was momentarily stunned, having never really considered before that real-life walking, talking, intelligent adults might not even have been around when what I thought were pretty monumental happenings were, er...happening pretty much right in front of me (well, on our TV, anyway). Or to put it another way: simply by staying alive I had become a witness to history 😱 i.e. stuff that some other folks only knew about through books, films or TV - if they even knew about it at all. * I think it was at least a year later that I first saw an advert on a bus that included a URL. ** I was working too, not wasting time on the Internet, honest boss...

Hmm. 437mm and 505mm are Setrack radii (R2 and R3). To me the photo looks very like a unifrog version of the Setrack curved turnout, including the straight part at the beginning of the 'outer' route through the turnout. I wonder whether Hattons have got the part number slightly wrong, and it should be ST rather than SL? The quoted angle is one more usually associated with Setrack, too, although in this case it looks to me like a misinterpretation/misrepresentation of the fact that the outer route curves through 22.5° and the inner one curves through 33.75°, like the current Setrack curved turnout - see the curved crossover in the lower right of this diagram, and note the use of the ST-227 11.25° R2 curves to get it to work: That said, many people have reported problems with the Setrack curved turnouts, so maybe re-working them as Unifrog might end up with something a bit more reliable. But if that turnout geometry is the solution to a particular layout planning issue then you could consider using the current Setrack version to begin with, and replace it with the Unifrog version as and when it becomes available. I have to say that the Streamline curved turnouts don't seem to me to be very useful for saving space in compact layouts: they're the same length as the Streamline long turnout - about 10", which is a lot on a 7ftx4ft baseboard where you're going to be constrained to Setrack R4 at the very maximum for the main curves. Even the inner route on the Streamline turnout is significantly larger than that - indeed, it's noticeably larger than the radius of the normal Streamline short turnouts. I did use a Setrack curved turnout in my defunct variant on the Bredon idea, though it was in the non-scenic area rather than the station throat, which was all done with normal turnouts like the original (excepting a few short Y turnouts in the yard area). That was in 8ft x 4ft. And to be honest, I never had any problems running trains over it. I've probably still got a plan of it somewhere in AnyRail...ah, found something:

Surprise announcement: yet another new F1 street circuit

Plenty listed on eBay. Mainly branded ones for specific titles but also plain. If the magazines that you want to file are an unusual size then you might do worse than including the name of the magazine in an eBay search. If the publisher ever sold binders for it, someone might have some listed.

Er, the OP's layout will be DCC...

Further to my earlier post: it appears that Russell Lewis has stated that the conductor of the choir at Blenheim was not him. Shame, because it seemed to make sense (and certainly more sense than the rather puzzling 'russian roulette' scene).

I've just checked: Morse took a live round from his jacket pocket and placed it in the empty cylinder, closed the gun and spun the cylinder a la Russian roulette. I suppose it might have been that Thursday just gave him the one live round and he wanted to get rid of it, or maybe Thursday handed the gun over empty and Morse 'just happened' to have the round in his pocket (why?), but I'm sure an intelligent chap like him could have come up with a better and safer way to dispose of an unwanted live round than that e.g. handing it in at his workplace as something he found by chance while walking alongside the river. I also don't see why he would have spun the cylinder if he actually intended to fire the round. If he had put the round in intending to play Russian roulette, but then changed his mind, he could just have ejected the round - no need to fire it. An explanation that makes a bit more sense for me (though still not a lot) is that he wasn't intending to play true Russian roulette, but he wanted to know whether, if he had been pointing the gun at his own head, it would have been fatal. I still struggle to come up with a reason for that, though. I do wonder whether it might have been intended to be a call-back to an episode earlier in the series: either a round going missing, or someone (George Fancy?) being shot and Morse feeling it would/could/might have been intended for himself. All in all I found it, and still find it, a disappointingly unsatisfactory scene in what was otherwise an excellent final episode. (I even liked the fantasy scene with Joan at the wedding, which a lot of other commenters don't seem to have done.) I don't recall Morse having access to a revolver during the original series with John Thaw. Come to think, I'm not sure recall him carrying a gun at any time during Endeavour, apart from at the shoot-out at the end of series 6. and I don't believe he actually fired it even then (contrary to what it says in Wikipedia, it was obviously DCI Box* who shot DS Jago - every other online source seems to agree, and in the close-up on Morse immediately after the shorts are fired you can clearly see that the hammer on his gun is still in the cocked position, so it hadn't been fired). So maybe he just wanted to find out how it felt to fire a gun - but that still wouldn't explain spinning the cylinder first. * That Wiki article also gets his rank wrong 🙄

That 15p per kWh is easy enough to get by switching to Octopus and choosing their Outgoing Octopus tariff. Get on their Flux tariff and you can get even more if you sell the electricity back during the evening peak period. I'm in the final stages of agreeing a 12-panel system with 5kW hybrid inverter and 9.5kWh battery. Looks like the longest wait is likely to be Scottish Power Networks granting the G99 certificate, which is required for the higher power inverter. I've been told that it's better to get that certification as soon as possible, as capacity to support single-phase exporters running at more than the G98 16A limit is likely to become increasingly scarce.

Er, isn't the entire point of DRS to "secure an artificial overtaking assist"?

How fussy is the glue about the UV wavelength? It might be easier if you could you use an ordinary AA-powered UV torch such as this one* to do the job. * I use for checking UV fluorescent security markings, in case you were wondering. We don't have a dog...

If you want to try another show written by Russell Lewis, series 3 of Grace with John Simm is starting on ITV/STV this coming Sunday. I'd agree that the current series of Unforgotten is a harder watch than the first four - as in: not as cosy & 'fluffy', due to WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT; select the following text to reveal: the termination of Nicola Walker's character at the end of series four*, plus the fact that Sunny (and most of the rest of the team, apart it seems from gravelly-voiced Murray) can't stand the newly-introduced character. If neither of those float your boat you could try The Bay on ITV on Wednesday nights - the first two episodes of the current series are available on catchup. IMO it's never been quite the same since Morven Christie moved on, but I think the DI is still reasonable value, and the rest of the team are decent enough. I believe there is another series of the revived Van der Valk due sometime this year as well. Again, not to everyone's taste but I quite enjoy it. There's also a fair choice of ITV detective dramas such as Vera, Rebus and Grantchester to stream for free on the STV Player and maybe ITVX (although the more "premium" series on ITVX tend to be behind their paywall, unless they're still within the 'catchup viewing' window). UKTVPlay has a few mostly BBC-originated series such as George Gently, New Tricks, Sherlock and the 1980's Miss Marples with Joan Hickson, plus a few renegades from STV/ITV such as Taggart and The Last Detective. If Scandi Noir and other foreign crime dramas are your thing then there are a good few available to stream for free on All4 under the World Drama/Walter Presents categories - Rebecka Martinsson: Arctic Murders is quite good (though switching the lead actress between series one and series two was a bit odd!) and I would have suggested Thou Shalt Not Kill but it's not there any more. The Killing is still available on iPlayer, although The Bridge seems to have gone. No Wallander, though ☹️ or Follow the Money ☹️ but if grumpy DIs are your thing then all of Shetland is currently there. None of which is any help, of course, if you're allergic to repeats, or to giving a small amount of personal data to the streaming sites. One might wonder why there is such a preponderance of detective/crime drama on TV. There seems to be as much of it as there is of all the other drama genres combined. I've no answer to that. * I realise that the actor in question is not to everyone's taste.

Sara Vickers was able to use her native accent in series 2 of Guilt: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009qm4 We're pretty sure that she had baby #2 on the way during the filming of the final series of Endeavour (she missed all of series 7 as she was heavily pregant with her first during the filming). It was generally pretty well concealed, but we both thought she looked a bit 'chunkier' from when she first turned up again towards the end of series 3 episode 1, and some of the side-on shots of her in the wedding dress in the final episode seemed to confirm it.

Not according to IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118401/releaseinfo/?ref_=tt_dt_aka#akas However, it definitely was in Italy (I know because I've watched it there!) and France and Germany. It's allegedly why, when John Nettles decided to pack it in, the replacement's character turned out to be a close relation with the same surname. Presumably it was thought that "doing a Taggart" would be too confusing for our continental cousins.

Do you have a link to that? There is quite a good review of Exeunt on Den of Geek (contains spoilers), as well as a lot of other Endeavour-related stuff (and indeed stuff relating to all sorts of TV series, both popular and more niche/cult).

It's available to stream on ITVX, and on STV Player - the latter being preferable IMO since they don't bother with adverts during the programmes.

I have a feeling that the conductor of the choir at the end was Russell Lewis. Which would make sense of the brief exchange between him and Endeavour, in a "breaking the fourth wall" kind of way: Russell Lewis on Mubi: