JohnDMJ

Good Evening and Happy Easter weekend! An interesting technique, Flavio: Presumably, the floor added some extra flavour?

(Mods: please relocate this to any more appropriate threads if necessary!) I'm looking at the idea of offering a consultancy service aimed, initially, at Roco Z21 & Multimaus as well as Marklin Central & Mobile Station users. Before I embark down this route, can anyone out there advise me, please, on what sort of insurance policies I need to consider? The main nature of the work is software based, usually involving updates to existing versions but may also involve complete reconfiguration of some WiFi Hub equipment. Thanks in advance!

Good Evening all! Me neither! As I understand it, all these dates are a relatively recent concoction aimed at aiding shelf stock rotation by one major UK supermarket. However, if I may, I will start with a quote (with apologies and implicit acknowledgement to whom ever originally posted this; it is so poignant): “ An Obituary printed in the London Times... Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: - Knowing when to come in out of the rain; - Why the early bird gets the worm; - Life isn't always fair; - And maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death, -by his parents, Truth and Trust, -by his wife, Discretion, -by his daughter, Responsibility, -and by his son, Reason. He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers; - I Know My Rights - I Want It Now - Someone Else Is To Blame - I'm A Victim - Pay me for Doing Nothing Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing. ” With respect, take a gun, aim it at foot and pull trigger! I would suggest that both are irrelevant! OK, if you buy celery bagged in a supermarket, there are the (now) requisite dates. However, if you buy it wrapped but not sealed from, say, a market stall, where are the dates? As it ages, as you suggest, its uses may have to be adjusted. So let’s consider, for example: Stilton cheese. During its processing, mostly exposed to the ambient conditions (i.e. the crust is much like the skin on a (English) custard, thus edible!), it is injected with mould to create the blue veins. It is then often allowed to mature for years (rather than days or months) but then attracts a ‘use by’ date, relatively speaking, of tomorrow?! A former colleague once said that a good Stilton should be drunk from a spoon! The sealing in glass containers is only as good as the vacuum which is formed in that container during packaging. Whilst most jams, pickles and other similar products are packed, heated and sealed so that a vacuum is achieved within the container, this is often overkill! The content of sugar, vinegar, etc. is sufficient to preserve the product on their own. Recall your student days; in what were the specimens you saw preserved? Almost certainly it didn’t have a pop-up jar lid! Domestic fridges! How did the ancients manage without them? Yes, the larder was one compromise. I recall visiting both my friends in France and the British idea of a French market. All the cheeses were stored in plain air, AKA at ambient. Not refrigerated. Why? Because the process of making cheese is an age old method of preservation. The longer they are allowed to mature, the better their flavour; recall Stilton above? Matured for 5 years, use by date = tomorrow!? Properly matured cheeses, wines, hams, Prosciutto, pickles, mustards, corned products (beef, cod, et alia), even frozen can cope without the synthetic preservative chemistry cocktail and have so done for centuries! (Frozen – check ice vaults!) Whilst I respect that there may be a life expectancy imposed on a product by its container (plastic water bottles spring to mind!), if the late, lamented Common Sense is to prevail, we should merely acknowledge the whatever dates set by the supermarkets looking for a fast turnover and make our own judgement! Anyone heard of the Fifty Year Old Egg?

You share a boiler with your neighbours?

With respect, the 'use by' date is somewhat arbitrary. To quote Andrew Zimmern on the Food Network channel, "if it looks good, eat it!" IIRC, the 'use by' and 'sell by' dates were a concoction of J. Sainsbury's to assist in stock rotation. In effect, they have become so worshipped as to have knocked good old common sense into a cocked hat! (and caused a lot of food wastage to boot!) Legend has it that if a bit of mould had not been seen on a slice of bread, we would not have found penicillin! Ask yourself, cheese, pickling, corning (as in corned beef), tinning, salting, jam making, et alia are all ways developed by our forebears for preserving foods. What is the relevance on these products to the aforementioned dates? IMHO, NONE!! I speak from the experience of having consumed 8 year old* jam and 7 year old* mustard, to give but a couple of examples. (* i.e. years after their printed dates!) Question: why does the original recyclable product, water, have a use-by date? IMHO, I detect excrement of the bovine species here! <rant over>!

I'd certainly be interested in 313 123 (Network Rail Engineers' livery), 313 201in Heritage Blue livery and 313 2xx * in Coastway West livery! I see all 3 from both work and home! * 313 202 would be perfect as in February this year, it rescued the 313 123, towing it from Three Bridges to Eastleigh, IIRC!

Given that selfies tend to be mirror images of the subject, is it the beer can or the shirt that's the wrong way round?

Will the puppetry string be strong enough?

So now two vacancies in the Pilot force then?!

That'll only make things worse! WR-40 is a Water Dispersant (not a lubricant!); here, it seems, you need all the water you can get!

Are ships required to have a Pilot on board to navigate the canal?

No, Kato only issue the one extension pack format. As you rightly state, you need four packs for the correct consist. When I set my original Eurostars up by buying four extension sets, I put the surplus residual sets, comprising two seconds and two buffets on eBay, but clearly marking them as such.

And, possibly, there is a vacancy for a Pilot for the canal!

Judging by previous comments, there could be a run on it!

Good Morning, May I offer an alternative definition for the realist?

Perhaps a moot point: Unless it is flown from the Jack Staff on a ship, is it not the Union FLAG?

It's also a reason why their catalogue is only in Japanese! Their UK market is relatively so small it does not warrant the cost of a translation.

Good morning, for it is still thus! Chris: were you a born pessimist or is it a skill that you have developed over the years?

Good Afternoon, for, as I write, it is 12:03! Just been catching up on recent events. It seems we have been lamenting its demise for longer than it was available! Nor is a pessimist! True story about recycling; I once had my bin rejected at time of collection so, as the cart had to come back past my house (I lived in a cul-de-sac at the time), I fagged it down and asked why. The response be@@@@ed belief: "It's got garden waste in it", the driver said, indicating an empty 5l container of a lawn feed! Despite the face that it had the "2 in a triangle" recycling mark moulded into the base, the driver stood his ground! I emptied the entire contents of the bin into a refuse (that's refffuse rather than reeefuse!) bag and took it to the local tip as household waste. Given the tip was run by Viridor, I guess they probably sorted the stuff anyway!

Good evening and long time no see! Catching up has been a little curtailed but I think I have the gist. Back in 2006, Mum and I were going through our records after Dad's passing and discovered that he had learned French as a General Studies topic whilst at University; He'd never let on! We also found a school report from 1967 indicating that's that was when I started to learn French. Gaining an O Level in French a year early so that I could also take German, I went on to work for a company based in London which had an office just outside of Paris; the nearest railway station was Marne la Vallee Chessy, AKA Eurodisney. As you can guess, the standing joke was that I went from one Mickey Mouse outfit to another via a third! Working there alongside a French Boss, Spanish Engineer and English Secretary, my French improved somewhat. Later in life, I worked for a company that made machines to make tea bags; some of their machines made the Tchai brand bags at a plant based near Marseilles. A colleague asked me, because of my technical knowledge of the process and the control system, to assist him in advising an engineer on their site how to do something. His plan was that I would tell him and he would translate. Having told me what was required, I just sat down at his keyboard and wrote the email! He and I are still in contact more than 20 years later! More recently, whilst I often am teased about my pronunciations of makes like Fleischmann, Viessmann, Marklin, Preiser, what really gets to me is that when I occasionally have to deal with a native French speaker (often, they try to use English), all I hear in my other ear is background chatter about the fact that I'm using French. It can be very off-putting! As for the German, it sort of fell by the wayside when I left school but through regular visits to Switzerland, some of it is coming back. (My first purchase in Switzerland was for some handcream. I found the Apotheker and started with 'Schprechen sie Englisch"? No came the reply so i said franzoesisch and the sale continued from there and I obtained exactly what I needed! All of this reminds me of two mice being stared down by a cat; one mouse says to the other "I'm scared" to which his mate replies "don't worry!". The mate then stares the cat in the eyes and says 'meow'; the cat rushes off into the distance and the mouse turns to his scared pal saying "it pays to have a second language". Hat, coat, where's the door?

So how did we manage before Ted Heath took us into this debacle in the early 70s?

There's always heljanuk@gaugemaster.co.uk

DCC89 just does the motor and both head and tail lights. There is no electrical connection between coaches so yes, you will need 5 of FR11 decoders if you need to control the coach lights.

Good Evening, just passing through! Starting work at 06:00 is playing havoc with the rhythms of life! A quick scan picked up these: I still have my Commodore Pet which I used to program quite happily in machine code and have fond memories of Hexadecimal nomenclature. For the likes of BarryO, in the mid to late 80's, I wrote a cricket scoring program in BASIC with 8088 machine code for some routines; it ran very well on an Amstrad PPC640 and recorded several cricket matches (including ball vector diagrams)! In machine code, the function keys could be mapped to normal, +Alt, +SHIFT and +CTRL giving some 40 options (IIRC there were only ten F-keys!) I first saw this post but then was copied in on another part of the same topic: Now, it all makes sense, even if you do have to paws for thought! (Hat, Coat, etc.)

SABRE - ever come across Rebate (another ATE language)? 6502 - ah, memories; still have a Commodore PET around! Z80, 6809, 8088, Fortran IV all have served my purposes over the years!