PupCam

Morning all. I've had to invoke the "Pupper's Patented 'ppointment Procuring Procedure" with the GP for the 4th time in recent weeks this morning. I'm pleased to say it worked again although the 10 minutes on hold when I did get through did have me twitching! I was feeling quite reasonable when I awoke this morning but it's all gone downhill since playing the Appointment Lottery but I won't bore you with the details of my afflictions. Anyway, whilst awaiting the telephone call from the doctor (wouldn't a face to face appointment and examination be good for a change!) I feel I may have a crack at downloading and building the code for the DCC++ EX system as it basically involves sitting in my chair and barely moving. I can also do the mods to the hardware which looks to be the removal of the two jumpers which were part of the original hardware configuration whilst sitting on my rear. Enjoy your day folks!

Well due to my current circumstances I find myself doing (an enforced) "3/5ths of Not A Lot" so that might just be a very good idea. That's two new projects I've picked up today: 1) Having a play around with the new DCC ++ EX malarkey 2) Having a go at making home-made Boston Baked Beans What with musing over the possibility of rustling up an Inglenook Shunting Puzzle Layout as a DCC++ Test Track it's a good job I don't have to go to work!

Whilst they may not be the best possible connector (I spent my entire working life in an industry that used very expensive "best possible connectors") the phono socket in this case has a number of advantages: a) It's perfectly adequate b) It is tight and won't come adrift without a bit of a fight c) It's perfectly capable of operating at the current levels demanded by my loco d) (and most importantly) I had a matching set in my bits box .....

Puff pastry for me I think but leaving the black pudding out of course As for the beans; I think the addition of some suitably drained baked beans would work nicely. I agree that you need to get rid of 98% of the "bean juice" because a) it's over-rated and b) it would indeed lead to Soggy Pie Syndrome.

That sounds good! I will have to investigate. Alan

In general, the one thing Pupper's uneducated palate cannot abide is offal and why anyone would want to consume kidneys (in particular) is beyond me but there we are. However, I do remember many years ago having a meal in a restaurant in Paris after a particularly tedious work meeting where I plumped for a steak for the main course. It was served with bone marrow (the short length of up-ended bone made a natty container for the marrow) and was absolutely delicious. The only draw back when eating it seemed to be that it gave the impression of being 100% semi-liquid cholesterol and you could almost hear ones veins and arteries shouting for mercy. Oh no! (Again!)

Ah, good old Marsh. You'll have to update me on his progress sometime Brian.

Forgetting the pork pies is a very serious picnic problem!

Would they have been PICNIC problems I wonder?

As a relative newcomer to ER, all the contributors seems good here to me, well maybe excluding that Puppers bloke. Can't say I agree with every opinion on every single subject but what a dull place if everyone's views were a perfect match! Hmm that would make it the Stepford Early Risers wouldn't it? I think there's a big difference between the "differing perspectives" of contributors and the typical contributions from Mr B and Mr H whether they be related to fishing, stamp collecting or a current embarrassment with British rolling stock. If we might touch on that last subject but briefly, I seem to recall that there might have been some structural problems with the bogies of my beloved Deltics when they were first introduced and didn't some of Mr Gresley's beautiful locomotives (I might have given away my railway allegiance here ) suffer from cracked frames? Nothing new under the sun ....

Welcome to the internet I find, in the most part, internet forums fascinating things. As you all may have noticed I (along with probably everybody else) have a wide range of interests and hence use a number of forums. I've noticed that it doesn't matter what the subject is, you see the same types of users on each. Sometimes it's very easy to confuse "Mr Bellend" from the fishing forum (not that I fish) with Mr Richard Head from the stamp collecting forum (not that I collect stamps, but you get the idea). However I normally find it quite easy to dismiss both Mr Bellend's and Mr Head's contributions and concentrate on the useful, informative and/or interesting contributions from the more sensible members. Mr B & Mr H do at least provide some amusement at times although if the timing is just right (maybe that should be wrong?) it can result in unfortunate accidents with the Coffee / Mouth interface with disastrous results for the keyboard and monitor ...

Now there is a concept! Full English Pie! (leave the Black Pudding out of mine please) I have to say, I am rather missing my Sunday morning rides on an old motorcycle and stopping off somewhere for a Full English and to put the world to rights with similarly worn out old bikers friends. Still it would appear that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I have to say, this made me chuckle !

Nail well and truly hit on the head there Chris I have to say that I've never had a particularly high opinion of politicians of whatever flavour (and I certainly have no wish to do party politics here!) but over the last year or so the fact that there is in fact a far lower form of life has been brought into sharp focus for me. I give you the journalists & interviewers. What has become crystal clear is all they want to do is make a noise under the misguided illusion that they are "teasing out the answers" from our "public servants" that the public want to know whereas IMVHO all they are trying to do is to make a name for themselves and justify their mostly disgusting salaries (Check out the BBC salaries website ...!!!) Often they ask questions which clearly cannot be answered eg "Can you guarantee all lockdown restrictions will be lifted a week on Saturday?" - No you stupid person! Of course they can't guarantee anything and it really is of little or no consequence as to who the question is aimed at. The questions they should have been asking were those that would actually give the public some insight into why decisions were taken and the rational behind their actions. The population would then have some "facts" (well, wishful thinking I know) on which to make informed decisions. I blame 24 Hour News coverage .........

I don't know the rules but the rear (well all) of the oven will be heavily insulated so the outermost, rear surface will not get that hot.

And how very sensible that is given the current world situation!

Oh thanks that would be excellent! As you can see, I managed by dint of cunning and persistence, to work round it but if the home page can be fixed I'm sure that would be of use to others in the future. It certainly looks like very useful information and I'm lining up the wherewithal to have a go. Just for "Debug" purposes this is what I see when I attempt to open the home page. When you do subsequently open it none of the links work as they are referenced to the local copy of the page on the hard driver where, of course, they don't exist.

"The travel industry has called the government’s green list, 'overly cautious'” - Well it would wouldn't it! "No word on overseas travel for devolved nations" .............. "Northern Ireland, Health Minister Robin Swann said he believed foreign travel should be ruled out this year. Scottish government has previously warned international travel may not resume for some time, Wales, foreign travel is still not allowed without a reasonable excuse." - Am I missing something here? There seems to be at least some clue here. "Italy ‘confident’ England’s travel rules will change." - Wishful thinking probably, it depends entirely on how things go and previous experience doesn't exactly endear a sense of confidence Sorry, but doesn't the whole dreadful situation in which we have all been immersed for the last 15 months or so thrive on the mobility and interaction of humans? Fundamentally, the further we go, the more frequently we go and the more interactions we have elsewhere the greater the chance of introducing new mutations to the UK and us going back to Square One. There are, IMVHO, far more important lower risk steps on the road back in the direction of normality to be taken before jetting off to Torremolinos to fry on a beach for a couple of weeks. Clearly the aviation and foreign holiday companies are keen to resume their activities as soon as possible (not to give the punters a lovely holiday but to fill the gapping hole in their finances) but surely that cannot and must not be done at the expense of all the other efforts and sacrifices made by the population at large during this time. Perhaps we ought to be content and concentrate our efforts and help get the UK back on its feet (by spending our money locally) whilst reducing unnecessary contact beyond our borders for the time being? I don't know, perhaps it's me?

I'm sure I could manage a nice air-cooled RD though. Wouldn't be a problem ...... ...... would it?

Everyone now Tony!

What a thing of beauty. Rather too big for this vertically challenged motorcyclist!

Apologies for my lack of clarity in my first post, I'll consider myself told off and I'll try harder next time not to waste your time next time. Many thanks to Nigel, that is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to know and with a bit of persistence I've managed to access the relevant material Thanks also to WIM for taking the trouble of providing your suggestion even though it wasn't quite the solution I was after. The fact that I will have to build the decoders myself is not a problem and is indeed quite appealing (I've already built the DCC++ unit and will be working on my own style of User Interface at some point) and the investment in a cheap PIC programmer will be just that, an investment. I wouldn't want to "waste" all the functionality in a full spec. loco decoder if for no other reason than the high unit cost if I ultimately end up needing 30 or 40 decoders. Thanks once again for all your constructive comments. Alan

As it's an old site presumably things have moved on and it is no longer supported. But ....... Go in one level down and the website can be navigated and useful stuff "got at" https://dccdiy.org.uk/function.html Looks very interesting, I feel yet another little project coming on.

Do you have a working link to a page/website with all the necessary info. My Googling only leads me to the defunct page http://dccdiy.org.uk/ which is a bit of a tease! Although his forum still seems to work .... https://diydecoder.proboards.com/ Thanks

Thanks, I did have a quick squint with the aid of Mr Google but ~£10 for each module is (ideally) beyond the desired unit cost - what a cheapskate I am!