JohnDMJ

Good Evening Awl, for anything could happen to make it so!

Having been informed of an appointment for a check-up followed by a covid test 3 days later, my suspicions were aroused. Today, I received three letters, two confirming the aforementioned whilst the third invited me to the Day Surgery Unit on a particular afternoon, presumably for an operation I am expecting. However, there is no indication of for how long the latter will affect me and, if it is the operation which I am expecting, I want it under general anaesthetic, not local! 'Phone calls will be made tomorrow. My circumstances dictate that I will need post anaesthesia care which I am unable to provide at home! Meanwhile, this is planned for the Tuesday after which I return from two weeks' leave and for which I already have a morning appointment with another hospital department (curiously, under a different hospital trust!)! Interesting times!

However, in the words of the song, "La vie continue malgré tout"!

Elsewhere:

13 hours ago, chrisf said:

My suspicious nature kicked in and I marked it as Spam.

Others hereon may advise differently but, as your previous signature used to wisely proclaim: "An expert is someone who disagrees with other Experts!"

I believe you can do much more than simply marking it as spam. My own take is to select the message then hold the SHIFT key down whilst I press the DELETE key. This, as I understand it, bypasses the Deleted folder, the Spam folder and just obliterates the message as best your operating system can whilst rendering it irretrievable.

The same trick also works in (I'm guessing you're tarred with windoze) in Explorer and will remove a file permanently without troubling your recycle bin (waste bin?).

I can never understand why people want to colour perfectly good-looking timber!

6 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

This is the colour it has come out

 

It originally looked cream its only had one coat

At my last house, three similar properties on the estate were of similar design to mine. All had a flat roof at the front supported by Sapele timber posts. One house stained them green. Another clad them in uPVC. For the 42 years my father and I were owners of the house, we coated ours in yacht varnish! This brought out the natural colour of the wood whilst giving protection. If we asked a decorator to quote for a repaint of the house and they mentioned staining the posts, forget it, you ain't got the job!

I shudder (but no longer care) what the new owners of the house have done with said posts or the staircase which was also varnished Sapele.

Often, woods have their own characteristics which are worth accentuating rather than hiding!

6 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

For a hobby that is obsessed with numbers and facts I do find that very strange.

 

Diff'rent Strokes I suppose. 

 

But I couldn't have a loco with even the wrong shedplate on it, or a wagon with the wrong number. If I wanted a King that was blue then I would find one that was blue and model that rather than just paint a random one blue. These things are known and set in stone as far as I'm concerned.

 

Research is probably one of the most interesting parts of the hobby.

 

It's not that we haven't got millions of photographs of the things and thousands of books. Or about a dozen manufacturers making transfers and plates.

 

 

 

Jason

That is just one facet of a very multi-faceted hobby!

For some people, it's the research; for some it's getting it 'right'; for some it's timetable precision operation, for some, it's just being in control of the layout! The list is endless!

I'm a firm believer in "Rule 1"!

Look at the weathering on this:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.railcolor.net%2Findex.php%3Fnav%3D1410936%26lang%3D1&psig=AOvVaw1grwjo_XUfr3qil8efA3nf&ust=1629394898959000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjRxqFwoTCJDBjpyPu_ICFQAAAAAdAAAAABAV

23 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

I am now required to dig holes for things to be inserted into soil.  I wonder what will happen if I ask her to return the favour and strip wires for me before I insert them into choc-block joiners

Work on the adage that there's no harm in asking! However, be prepared for swift evasion procedures or, possibly, the clearing up of a nasty mess if not fast enough once asked!

Good afternoon Awl; it may yet turn out thus!

Shopping shopped; came back via a different route (traffic on the A27 solid, bumper to bumper!) 'for a change'; surprised how many new housing developments are springing up.

Elsewhere:

2 hours ago, chrisf said:

The current one [car] has done barely 7,000 miles in two years because for most of that time I have had nowhere to go thanks to that ruddy virus. 

Whereas mine doesn't know what's hit it ("thanks to that ruddy virus")! 57 reg (second half 2007), 2018 MoT = 43338 miles, 2019 MoT = 44021 miles, 2020 MoT = 46563 miles and now just about to break through the 50000 miles based on a daily use of less than 20 miles!

Thanks, Tony:

3 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I just tried playing with the results on mine that the device had transferred to my phone. You can then use or email a csv file. I emailed it to myself and office365 version of Excel on my iPad had no problem opening it. 

Just what I'm looking for!

40 minutes ago, PupCam said:

 

I've been using an Omron M7 Intelli IT which is very good and I understand you can pair with a Smartphone although I've never done that - I just record the results in the spreadsheet as I take them (Until this week it was 3 sets of obs/day but I've been able to cut it right back now ).   I've been doing blood pressure, pulse rate (in my case a very "interesting" and dramatic factor at one point!) and O2 level.  

 

https://medaval.ie/docs/manuals/Omron-HEM-7322T-E-Manual.pdf

 

HTH

 

Alan

39 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I have a  “Braun ExactFit 5 Connect Smart Blood Pressure Monitor “. The previous quite old Lloyds Pharmacy model we had was ok but for high blood pressure was a bit severe when pumping!The Braun model can transfer readings by Bluetooth. After I bought it my readings had been lowered considerably due to medication and wasn’t required to monitor much. I had a pulse oximeter too. After stenting and medication my results are much more “normal”. 

Thanks for the info, guys. Research is on-going!

Good evening, as it seems to be!

A question and request for advice, if I may, please:

I have recently been referred to Cardiology at my local hospital and I seek a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure measurer!) which I can use to record the necessary parameters before transferring them to a spreadsheet for the consultants.

I currently have a Boots branded one which, whilst storing some 60 results, is unable to export them by means other than pen and paper!

Does anyone know of a device which will record the parameters and allow them to be electronically transferred, please?

Any advice very much appreciated; health is (slightly) important!

Thanks in advance!

Hedge height reduced. Tried to apply for a garden refuse bin but was refused since  they are not taking new applications this month!

38 minutes ago, TheQ said:

The house is 1906, the sheets of ply are supplied 8ft by 4ft  all made in imperial. So I measure in imperial.  If the house had been made in metric measurements, I would probably have used that.

However, generally,  if it's below a foot I might use mm, if it's below an inch I almost always use mm.

Bet you don't!! If you model in 00 gauge, you're either using Code 100 or Code 75 rail; Code 100 = 100 / 1000 of an inch high (100 thou), Code 75 = 75 / 1000 inch (75 thou)!

Good Afternoon Awl, for it has the makings of being thus, even though I am contemplating reducing one or two front hedges to a reasonable height.

However, the photo in this post amuses me!

21 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I haven't been out in the car today so that is one less Range Rover to increase anyone's blood pressure. 

I have been working at what would be considerable altitude in parts of Essex. 

I would have expected the felt to be started from the lower edge thus preventing the joints acting as water traps.

However, reviewing the photo, perhaps the 'width' of the roof is less than the width of the roofing felt, in which case, the felt from the left side will equally overlap that on the right!!

Hat, coat, Taxi.....

6 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

I recall reading or being told - can't remember which, that hold ups on motorways are often not the result of crashes. It is in actual fact due to vehicles traveling too close together and there numbers. This means that when one applies the breaks they all have too but by the time it reaches the 'end' it results in that car having to come to a stop. Of course by then the car that initially braked will have continued its journey leaving no sign of what may have caused it to break.

The so-called caterpillar effect!

Routinely on my way home in the evening, I try to judge how far in front of me this effect is happening as we approach the roundabout. I then engage first gear and, with a large gap in front of me, just propel the car on idle until waiting on the handbrake is required. Sometimes, I have even been known to get into second gear whilst still idling along!

3 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

If I remember correctly d the Skoda brand was a well established heavy engineering company in Czechoslovakia and may even have existed prior to WW I. I do recall that they manufactured armoured vehicles prior to WW II as there designs etc were stolen/acquired by the Germans and used as a basis for some of their tanks. It was only the lack of investment and poor management that left them in a frail position in the post war period.

They are a major name in the manufacture of (12":1ft Scale) railway equipment!

Morning Awl, for I do not yet know if it will be good or not!

Tried again to complete watching Secrets of London Underground last evening but again fell asleep before the end.

However,

5 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Surely it depends on what the software is to be used for ?

Why?

5 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Meanwhile I dream of an automated layout for the forbidden subject, but every time I look at that, all I see is the potential problems and my lack of space. Maybe one day.

Try RocRail!

16 minutes ago, pH said:

Yes, JohnDMJ, overall I agree with you, and we followed the process you've laid out - requirements refined with the users, design and specifications developed then reviewed by higher-level staff. We did not develop test plans at that point.  Once coding was completed, the programmers had to test the new/modified programs and record test conditions and results. Those would be reviewed by higher-level staff who would also create their own test plans and execute those. Then the new/modified programs and processes would be given to a group of expert users for them to run tests as they felt necessary. If these were satisfactory, permission was given to implement the modifications.

 

The major component of the system I worked on contained several tens of thousands of lines of code. It was basically the automated form of a thick book of the organisation's policies and procedures for estimating costs of providing a certain type of service to customers. When we implemented an enterprise system bought from an outside vendor, we had to rewrite this main process ourselves, as the bought system was absolutely incapable of performing the necessary calculations. The test plan that I developed for the new process contained several hundred test cases. Our expert users also (to use a technical term) tested the carp out of it before implementation. The process ran several hundred times a day. I retired 5 years after the rewritten version was implemented. Apparently, about two years after that it did encounter, for the first time, a combination of requirements that had not been anticipated.  

 

But, as I said in an earlier post, despite such testing, there are always more and more obscure errors still lurking in programs. We had a batch process fail with an error we had not seen in the more than a decade for which the process had been running every weekday night. That was the night it encountered a data combination that we could show had a 1 in 64K chance of occurring.  

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men!

Not everything can be anticipated and the occasional combination of events may cause an unforeseen issue. It happens in all branches of Engineering, not just software! However, a local 'fix' may then cause repercussions elsewhere in the system; the "that part failed, so strengthen it" often leads to another, possibly but not necessarily related, part failing elsewhere.

Good Evening Awl after what has been a relatively interesting day!

Last week, I put in a repeat prescription request for my usual medication, intending to collect on Saturday. Only 1/3rd of the request was available for collection, despite the repeat part of the paperwork saying that all 6 had been issued! Counter boy said he'd chase it up and, true to his word, I collected the remaining 4 potions yesterday.

Meantime, consultant had telephoned on Moanday to discuss my new treatment and advised me to contact my surgery to follow up the letter about my recent examination; I did so and was told that a senior pharmacist would 'phone me Wednesday, which he did. We discussed the report and he wrote me up for a new drug and confirmed that I would like it to be dispensed by my usual pharmacy.

So last evening, I collected the missing meds and, not expecting the new one to be ready, overlooked it. I rang the pharmacy today and they told me it could have been collected yesterday as well, however, the above-mentioned counter boy recalled me from Saturday and had not realised that there was a second script there for me, so I collected it this evening. It is fortunate that I pass the pharmacy on my usual route home!

Elsewhere:

13 hours ago, pH said:

I guess that shows the difference between engineering and programming. Part of program ‘maintenance’ is fixing the bugs contained in the system as implemented i.e. getting it to work ‘right’. Any computer program or system contains errors; it’s just that, as time goes on, the ones left are more obscure.  Analysis showed, on average, 1 line of computer code in every 10 is in error. (Things may have got better since that analysis was done.) That doesn’t mean that the program will fail every time that line is executed. What it does mean is that there is a possible set of circumstances in which that instruction will not do correctly what it was meant to do. 

9 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

I tend to disagree here, when we programmed a robot or other PLC driven equipment we made sure that the program was right first time by soak testing it first, failure to do so could result in huge damage or even serious injury to the human operatives close by. It seems to me that some software writers are too cavalier in their approach to the job in hand, most would last about a week in industry before being escorted off the premises. I was told when beginning a job with a large car manufacturer that when the production line stopped, it was £6k a minute lost(over 20 years ago), if the line stopped for more than 3 minutes, the managing director would be on his way to see why it had stopped and what was being done to correct the problem, it might be a good training ground for a few other trades to help focus their minds on the consequences of lax practices.

I take the view that a piece of software is no different to a mechanical machine; it should be fully specified (requirements, design, test, et alia) then designed (i.e. the mechanical 'Drawing Stage') before the first letter of code is even typed. Only once the 'drawings' have been signed off can the coding commence.

Not for the first time in my life, I am currently (for an extension to our database) (again) going through this process but am still very much at the design phase with a few prototypes running to check practicalities of the design principles. I am not touching the target database!

OK, you may miss a few issues during the process but the specified testing phase should help point these out.

Good Morning Awl, for it has the potential so to be! (As yet, only the potential!)

I see another episode of history repeating itself:

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Not for nothing is Afghanistan known as the "graveyard of empires", which the British, Soviets and Americans have each learned the hard way in their turn.

 

Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, (at various times, Governor-General of India, Foreign Secretary and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) dismissed what he regarded as a wild expedition into a distant region of "rocks, sands, desert, ice and snow" as an "act of infatuation". His little brother, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (formerly Prime Minister of the UK), wisely anticipated that "The consequences of crossing the Indus once, to settle a government in Afghanistan, will be a perennial march into that country". 

 

Another quote by the Iron Duke, that I recall seeing, but cannot verify on "the internet" except here is:

 

There were 4,700 British and colonial casualties in the First Anglo-Afghan war and 9,850 fatalities* in the Second Anglo-Afghan war.

 

* Mostly by disease.

 

"Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." W.S. Churchill paraphrasing George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

 

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Good morning all,

 

Up very early again: once again my slowly decomposing body has been a bit painful around the articulations –  as unpleasant as this may be, it is still preferable to the alternative……

 

Some very relevant and interesting points made about Afghanistan to which I would add this quote from von Bismarck about the Balkans: The Balkans aren't worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Both Afghanistan and the Balkans have been sources of geopolitical problems for centuries, outsiders have intervened in their internal politics and affairs many, many times - always ending in failure. Sometimes. I think that the best thing would be to let them get on with it. I think that it could be argued that no really successful change in a society has been imposed from outside, but has always come from the efforts of the country’s own population.

 

But, if we let countries sort out their own internal affairs without “our“ intervention (puts on Captain Cynical outfit) what would all the employees of the various NGOs that distribute the generous largesse of the Western World do if they could no longer ride around in their big SUVs, handing out charity crumbs before returning to their servant stocked villas to count their incredibly generous salaries (takes off Captain Cynical outfit).

 

iD

ISTR that Rory BREMNER, John BIRD AND John FORTUNE (capitalised form the name of the series they did on TV a few years back) spent a whole hour looking at Gulf War 1 and comparing it to the events of Gulf War 2 after the British had waded gung-ho into the latter with (almost) complete disregard for the lessons which should have been learned from GW1.

6 minutes ago, pH said:

I guess that shows the difference between engineering and programming. Part of program ‘maintenance’ is fixing the bugs contained in the system as implemented i.e. getting it to work ‘right’. Any computer program or system contains errors; it’s just that, as time goes on, the ones left are more obscure.  Analysis showed, on average, 1 line of computer code in every 10 is in error. (Things may have got better since that analysis was done.) That doesn’t mean that the program will fail every time that line is executed. What it does mean is that there is a possible set of circumstances in which that instruction will not do correctly what it was meant to do. 

Don't even get me started! I used to design and write control and monitoring software and compare the average developer's approach to debugging somewhat like Western Medicine! Oriental medicine is based on a holistic approach, looking at the body as a whole; Western just fixes the local bit then wonders why that bit over there goes bang! (Application to join Captain Cynical's team has been sent off!)

3 hours ago, pH said:

My work experience in IT suggested almost the opposite. Internal users paying for new systems or major extensions to existing ones were happy to pay (within reason, of course!) to be seen as the “owners” of these new and shiny things. But trying to get a reasonable maintenance budget out of anyone was something else.   Owners seemed to expect systems to be flawless once implemented (we certainly didn’t!) and to have anticipated any and all future business changes which would impact on the functions of those systems.

I wasn't talking about maintenance, more getting the new system right in the first place! Maintaining it was a different kettle of fish!

Good Evening Awl, for it has been thus far!

Dry and reasonably warm Autumn day was had albeit interspersed with one of @polybear's recent humorous cartoons!

Elsewhere, the state of edjukashun seems to be taking a (justified) battering!

15 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Interesting the various posts made about exam results (something I have not really had to worry about for about 30 years or so) 

 

I have noted a significant change in the University Graduates that I have interviewed over the years for a position in my particular industry. 

 

I usually was given the very pleasant task of taking a candidate to the Director’s Restaurant for a slap up lunch and a probing interview (the “Director’s Restaurant“ could be used by any staff member through a reservation system for a good reason [such as an interview, or a team celebration]) but only directors could just walk in and have lunch. The restaurant had “silver service“ and the food was no better than what we got in the general canteen – which meant it was really bloody good).

 

Anyway, what I noticed over the years was that there was a decrease in general erudition amongst the candidates: which is to say although they were very, very knowledgeable about their speciality (medicine, cell biology, pharmacology etc), their knowledge of, and ability to converse about, non-specialty subjects seemed to decrease over the decades. When I started interviewing candidates (early 90s), the over lunch interview would range widely from discussing their specialty to other non-directly related topics such as books, music, ethics, hobbies, pastimes et cetera. When I last interviewed candidates over lunch (about 2010), many had difficulty in discussing any topic that was not directly related to their specialty. Leading me to conclude that many of that crop of university graduates were “well trained, but not well educated“. I wouldn’t imagine that the current crop of university graduates are any better, given the current insane insistence on exam results above all else.

 

Of course, some may argue that this is/was an unfair evaluation, but when you work in a multinational, multicultural and multilingual environment you need to get a good sense of how well rounded the candidate is - which would affect how they integrate into such an environment.

 

I tended to recommend those candidates who were able to show that they had interests (and a life?) outside of their specialty, with (admittedly) a certain bias towards those who had hobbies and interests that required either manual dexterity or provided intellectual stimulation (Needless to say, by the time they got to be interviewed by me their qualifications/ability for actually doing the job from a specialty/technical perspective was already established).

 

Apparently, according to people I had interviewed who joined the company and became colleagues, they considered my lunch-time interview both very demanding and very nerve wracking (one colleague who I interviewed and recommended and who became a good colleague, told me he felt that he had failed to impress me!).

 

Perhaps I am very old-fashioned, but my view is that university education has to go beyond “training you for the job“ (i.e. learning all you need to know to practice medicine, law or do experiments and analysis) and  teach you how to how to ask intelligent questions and how to understand the answers and (if appropriate) act on the information in those answers. It should also expose you to those things you don’t like and which make you uncomfortable and make you deal with this dislike/discomfort (real life does not come with “safe spaces“ or “trigger warnings“)

 

Long live the Renaissance man (or woman), say I!

 

iD

11 hours ago, AndyB said:

I remember my PhD supervisor telling me that fellow academics at Cambridge were quiting through boredom in the mid 1990s.

The reason being that what they were being expected to teach undergraduates for the first year was effectively what they expected to be covered at A level. 

 

I seem to remember similar comments from my father who was a senior lecturer at a London poly.

 

Thinking about iD's point about fully rounded graduates one option is to take either a joint, major/minor or "with" degree. The idea of the "with" being to expose the student to thinking from a vastly  different subject area, e.g. geography with astrophysics. 

 

There are also study abroad and year in industry formats as well to broaden horizons and add real-world skills. 

 

My own industrial year was with the RAF and set me up for life. Others in my year did placements in various other medical research labs and now either head up swathes of big pharmacy giants. Or in one case created one herself! 

2 hours ago, laurenceb said:

It seems to me that today's young people are taught how to pass exams not how to live

All of the above (sorry for not snipping but most seems relevant) reminds me of the Millennium Bridge across the Thames. Designed using CAD but the designers not, apparently, able to interpret the results it gave them!

As a corollary, ISTR the first Space Shuttle launch was aborted because one of the computers disagreed with the other three (all with a computing power less than a mobile 'phone today!) Turned out that the one was right and the other three were wrong!

It used to be the case that, in GCE Math exams, if you showed your route to the result, even if you reached the wrong result, you would score higher than someone who hadn't. Of course, you should always check your work!

On the subject of self-checking, all to often I see x, c, v, b, n, m & , representing the space bar as the poster has (probably) not checked what they have typed!

I recall an old Engineering adage that suggests: "there is never enough resource to satisfy the success of a project but there is more than enough to put it right afterwards!"

31 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

The street lights aren't turned off here but they are in the area Jamie is currently staying around midnight if I remember correctly from.seeing the roadsigns 

 

Our street lights go off at about 00:45 and come on again (if needed) around 06:00. No signs advertising this but it seems to be only in the side streets.

6 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

If school days are supposed to be the best of your life then consider these:-

 

The Latin master who cheerfully clobbered you with not one but a pile of text-books.  Vertically downwards on the head;  

The Games master who gleefully slippered you (bared-cheeks) for any tiny infringement of correct spotless kit or his own house rules;

The Maths master who threw dividers / compasses across the room at you and in at least one case managed to impale a boy's hand to the desk;

The Metalwork master who threw rivets at you - or a lump of mild steel if no rivets were handy;

The Woodwork master who took clamped your hands in the vice and filed your nails with a large b*****d-cut tool for talking or otherwise misbehaving;

The French master who would never give anyone a credit but happily gave you a "fail" which automatically required a detention for achieving a poor mark - namely anything below 10/10;

The Art master - see earlier post;

The Biology master who would pull you up by your ears if he thought you hadn't heard something he said;

And the R.E. master who was so paranoid (and/or short of budget) that items would go missing that every single thing was padlocked away, including text-books, and would only be released class-by-class on payment of 10p "to charity".  

 

And yet here I am with school and university certificates to show I achieved something and a half-century down the track have found much happier days in very different places.  

 

Ironically amid all of that bullying and - without doubt at times - wanton abuse the one teacher I found truly inspiring was our Head of Geology who sadly passed away from the Big C only weeks after I had passed my A-level and before I was able to thank him and acknowledge the extent to which he inspired me to persist and overcome.  

 

 

Don't forget the flying board rubber!!

2 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

I have just had to do a double take Channel 4 have just advertised that they are bringing Changing Rooms back with Lawrence Llewellyn Bowes 

 

We are going back in time it would seem

Let's do the Time Warp again!!

Good Morning Awl, and incorporating a post which I'm sure should have appeared last evening!

"Good Evening, for it may still be thus somewhere!

A much drier day was accepted and processes dealt with in spite of some adversity!

Elsewhere:

8 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Hmmm, we've had two athletes who've won 9 Olympic medals, and no knighthoods for them, but she's meant to be Queen of Australia too.

I know she is because I remember standing out in the playground each morning covered in flies singing God Save The Queen until we chose a different anthem that no one knows the words to.

And what about the rugby? England beats Australia in the world cup and the queen has all the players round to tea and hands out  OBEs like they are Tim Tams - for beating some of her other subjects. And whats an OBE anyway - Order of the  British Empire or whatever? The Empire bit is us - the bit the English  players just beat - getting awarded that just doesnt even make sense..

 

Yet do we ever get anything from our queen when we beat England?  Wheres Shane Warnes knighthood, I ask you!  What about his first test match ball he bowled when he got that fat bloke out - the ball of the century or whatever, he should have been made Duke Of Claridge or something if the queen was consistent with all her loyal subjects  but no,  nothing.  No Sir Shane for us.

 

And yes I know Australia ditched the UK honours system a while back and has its own now which doles out the prizes to us but this is online where truth doesn't get in the way of a baseless rant, If you want facts, go start your own internet.

I will leave it to @chrisf to enlighten awl on the process of deciding the honours; AFAIA, HMTQ only bestows them; she does not 'decide' them per se."

In more recent news, dry here and looks to be a good day, weather-wise!

In comment:

41 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Leading me to conclude that many of that crop of university graduates were “well trained, but not well educated“.

I well recall my Training School's second in charge relating, about Engineering:

1st, 2/1: Good academic ability, not practical

3rd: Good practical ability, not good academically

2/2: Good balance of academic and practical abilities.

1 hour ago, Zomboid said:

I basically wrecked a £250 locomotive attempting to weather it.

 

Not doing that again, thanks. They can stay how the factory sent them.

 

I don't get too worried about "but 29854 wasn't in Missmarpleshire in 1962" issues anyway.

Ah! Another aficionado of the ubiquitous Rule One!

Good Evening awl, for it has stopped deluging and there seems to be some foreign yellow object to the West.

An interesting drive to work this morning; much of the route flooded across the whole carriageway. Pity I don't (yet) have dash and rear-view cameras! I noticed a CockW0mble catch me up in one of the better sections (only half way across) then we descended into a hollow; I slowed right down and let an oncoming car turn across my path into his destination. With the road ahead clear of oncoming traffic, I pulled out to the crown of the road and proceeded cautiously through the flood. I further kept my speed well below the road's signed limit and observed that said CW seemed to have come to his senses; he was no longer riding my tail bumper and was almost a sensible distance behind!

Generally, a normal Moanday, although my lunch was interrupted by a 'phone call from a Cardiology Nurse to discuss the results of the recent investigations. Apparently, Beta Blockers are being lined up as is an appointment with a consultant and also an MRI scan.

However, life continues and it seems things are also happening elsewhere:

29 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Private Eye, which has been consistently right about such matters over the decades, refers to the appropriate regulatory and policing bodies as the “Department of Timidity and Inaction” and “The Serious Farce Office”

They may have a point.

Which begs the question as to how many of the DTI and SFO are 'in the pay' of such parasites and mimic Admiral Horatio 1st Viscount Nelson's "I see no ships" approach.

Good Afternoon Awl, for it may yet develop into such!

Plans to try and get my front hedge under control scuppered by too much precipitation; ain't wielding a 240V 50Hz hedge trimmer in the wet!!

Equally, plans for shopping trip postponed until afternoon and then very nearly cancelled. However, managed to achieve the mission and now ave a choice of things for later and one or two things for tomorrow's lunch.

Elsewhere:

3 hours ago, Adam88 said:

 

WINDOWS:   Please enter your new password word

 

USER:   cabbage

 

WINDOWS:  Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.

 

USER:   boiled cabbage

 

WINDOWS:  Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.

 

USER:   1 boiled cabbage

 

WINDOWS:   Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.

 

USER:   50bloodyboiledcabbages

 

WINDOWS:  Sorry, the password must contain at least one uppercase character.

 

USER:   50BLOODYboiledcabbages

 

WINDOWS:  Sorry, the password cannot use more than one uppercase character consecutively.

 

USER:  50BloodyBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon'tGiveMeAccessNow!

 

WINDOWS:   Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.

 

USER:  ReallyPissedOff50BloodyBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow

 

WINDOWS:   Sorry, that password is already in use.

Respectfully suggest that BoiledCabbages be replaced with RawPineapples!

1 hour ago, Andrew P said:

1966 World Cup?

 

What year was that?

Wasn't that the year it got Pickled?

They thought it was all over; sadly, it lingers on, and on, and on ....

Interestingly, I'm having problems with Zimo pin lengths but on MTC21! None of my favoured decoders of this format make contact with their MXTAPV Test Board. If anyone can recommend a test board which is switchable between logic levels and full voltage levels with MTC21 and ensure rigid contact with the decoder, please tell me! 

On 04/08/2021 at 19:04, bluedepot said:

hi everyone 

 

can someone suggest a plux22 decoder with long pins please? 

 

i have a dc ree models sncf bb 67400.  it has a plux 22 socket in it. i bought a zimo plux22 decoder (mx637) however the pins are too short! 

 

the blanking plug has pins approx 0.5cm long.  the zimo pins are shorter and so dont make good contact with the socket and the result is that power is fleeting. 

 

any suggestions for a suitable decoder to buy would be much appreciated! 

 

many thanks 

 

 

tim

nem658_en_2015.pdf governs the PluX specification.

6 hours ago, Nigelcliffe said:

There is no specification for decoder size for the 6-pin (or 8-pin) decoders.

Wrong.

Try

nem651_en_2017.pdf

and

nem652_en_2017.pdf

1 hour ago, newbryford said:

Reading the various threads on new release models and promised variants, there seems to be an increasingly long wishlist of "I hope they produce XXYYY", where XXYYY is the number that they want in the livery that they want

 

Very little of "I hope they produce a Class XX with the correct details [*] so I can repaint/renumber it to XXYYY".

 

Am I the only one thinking this?

 

[*] And let's not forget adding/altering details.

 

 

Kato's Class 800s illustrate this well! "Will they be doing xyz livery?" for example. Answer = NOT LIKELY!

What is not realised is that the UK is a very specialised market and insignificant in the global field. For example, only about 10% of Kato's Class 800s were distributed to the UK. One enterprising business has already produced vinyls to transform them to other liveries, however.

The vast majority of Kato's models have a Japanese connection; Class 800 - Hitachi; Swiss RhB, Eurostar, TGV - souvenirs of a trip to Europe.

In general, Kato's Japanese market accounts for about 80% of its production; one reason why their catalogue is only available in Japanese!

Sorry to harp on about Kato, but they are typical of the global industry of railway modelling.

With respect, Britain tends to be very insular ("Fog in the Channel, Europe cut off") and only model what can be seen. Consequently, we get the comments of the type above, "why can't they make loco xx yyy"? Would you spend £250,000.00 for a specific loco to justify making the tooling, manufacturing costs and finishing costs for ONE loco?

Let's try and get (yes, my experience tells me it's impossible!) some perspective here!

Compared to the global model railway market, the UK is just plankton in the ocean!

1 hour ago, Davexoc said:

 

Agreed, if it was built for wheeled access, but as it is steps and clearly only for legged use, they might aswell have gone up in a straight flight.......

Major design fault?

Perfectly logical!

On 02/08/2021 at 21:42, big jim said:

Some from today, bescot to east mids gateway and back to crewe 

 

bescot 

 

East Midlands gateway 

 

as I had a bit of time to kill I went for a walk along the footpath and bridle way that runs around the perimeter of the site 

 

first bit is a bit daunting though! 

On 02/08/2021 at 22:04, Davexoc said:

 

In these days of Access for All and PRM compliance, I'm amazed that they built it like that.

Gave the handrail fitters a job I suppose, even if it was a repetitive job (Apprentice phase test anyone?)....

By zig-zagging across the slope, you make the gradient much less severe. The Swiss demonstrate this frequently with their adhesion railways! Basic principle of physics!

4 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

For colour I wonder if my Grandad's old method would work. He spent a couple of years on the painting gang in the days when they mixed their own from linseed oil and white lead. He always put a bit of blue into the white paint to give a better finish. Just like your Granny putting Reckitt's Blue in the white washing to make it look brighter. 

Anyone remember Daz washing powder's "Blue Whiteness"?