zarniwhoop

I'd completely forgotten about the clocks - normally I notice something in the newspaper, but I guess I'm reading much less of it with the current state of the world.

Up to around 2-ish playing down the rabbit hole of fonts (so, not late), looked at my librelink app to check  the blood sugar reading, noticed an odd blue clock logo on the history. Changed the times on the oven and the lounge clock, still got to do the heating/water timer - but if the on/off tmes were adequate yesterday then it'll be ok today. Also got to do the car clock - normally takes me several goes to get to the right place in the options and to then adjust the time rather than  move to the next option.

For those who keep regular hours, I think Simone Lia's cartoon in today's observer probably summed it up.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ng-interactive/2023/oct/29/simone-lia-light-cartoon

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

You’re absolutely right.

 

It’s merely in an area known for prime cross-country skiing.

 

An interesting bit of Swiss Alpine trivia: all the very very expensive ski resorts which attract the Hooray Henrys, the nouveau riche and the occasional passing oligarch are for down-hill skiing.

 

According to Mrs ID, cross country skiing (or Langlauf) tends not to attract the flashy nouveau riche, Hooray Henrys and those idiots with more money than good taste; but rather Langlauf resorts attract the more serious, thoughtful, nature loving and mature cross country skiers. Not that there isn’t serious money about, it’s just very, very discreet and very, very low-key.

In the 1990s I knew of a guy who had the time and money to do masters' XC skiing (age-related) - I suspect he worked as a contractor - and who did some of the World Loppet. He reckoned Davos was a good place to go for early-season training

To us Brits, Davos is usually associated with expensive alpine skiing, but there is proper stuff as well (and trains ;-)

6 hours ago, DaveF said:

I will post fewer photos on here and flickr, it is't just the time to post them but the time taken to sort them out and make sure that the captions are reasonably accurate which is the problem.

Ah, the joys of editorial activities (I was going to say editorial work, but since we don't get paid for it that would be misleading).

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..............................

I'm sure that the bear would not wish anyone to break the law by moving a caught live grey squirrel to a different location. But if caught, they must be killed humanely.

5 hours ago, Tony_S said:

One of the French or  Italian majority areas? It would be something like Giftkuchen in a German speaking area…

I came upon that item on wikipedia some months ago when I was looking at pages related to the Valais/Wallis and thinking about sourdough. But no interest in the other questions., so did not attempt to answer earlier.

49 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

We also  don't have a Grimsby,  a Scunthorpe, any Sloughs  or a Milton On Keynes.

 

The last one possibly because we don't have a Keynes for the Milton to be on. I assume it is  a river or something.

According to wikipedia, the name of the Milton Keynes new town was "a reuse of the name of one of the original historic villages in the designated area, now more generally known as 'Milton Keynes Village' to distinguish it from the modern settlement."

And there was me thinking it was named in honour of John Milton and John Maynard Keynes - I suspect somebody pulled my leg when I was at school.

10 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

My No. 2 son lives in Surrey and many of his friends think that Watford is 'oop north'.

 

Dave

From down here, Hatfield is in the norff - they sign it on the road out of london: A1M, The NORTH, Hatfield.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_and_the_North#/media/File:A1(M)_sign_at_junction_1,_South_Mimms.jpg

Therefore anything beyond that is also north. 😄

When you originally said it failed "check for updates" I assumed that meant no updates were available, but "failed to check for updates" sounds as if it has a certificate problem (expired, or incorrect/obsolete TLS method - that would be why you were being referred to the settings option you cannot find).

From using firefox through its regular UI changes I know that things move around and can be hidden. I would try using the 'hamburger' menu (three lines), try to enable both the toolbar and menu if not already visible. Then search all options in Tools, Edit -> Preferences, and again the hamburger menu, to see if you can find 'Account Settings'. If you can, the Authentication Settings, Security Settings should show how it is set. Typically, SSL/TLS or else Starttls (starts as plain, switches to TLS) but for some mail servers you need other things (e.g. oauth for google).

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

I've just downloaded that version and it failed "check for updates".☹️

Is 'check for updates' not looking for a newer version ? If so, 115.3.0 is the latest, released earlier this week, and nothing to do with retrieving mails.

A quick google at a mozilla page suggests there is no fix for a failed secure connection. That implies, to me, that either the site you are tryingto connect to has expired, or its certificate has become invalid (rather than out of date).

Is there a related web page you can try to connect to in a browser ?

25 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

For some reason I thought of @polybear when I read this in The Times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chip-ration-is-the-drill-for-overweight-oilrig-workers-jmjc8mq2p
 

Not the overweight bit (I’ve met PB and he’s far from spherical) but the chip rationing bit.

 

From his detailed dinner menu reports, I’m not sure PB could go a week without chips…

Paywalled.

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

This becomes a bit of a rabbit hole and it is up to you how far you want to go down it, but the Vortigern/Gwytheryn - Hengist/Horsa stories contain enough parallels to be very probably based on actual events.  Gildas claims to be born in the same year as the Battle of Mt, Badon (possibly Bath), where according to Geoffrey 'Arthur slew thirty-nine Saxon warriors, he and none but he alone'. 

Such tales always make me smile, so very much on-thread :) where I come from, the view is that Hengist and Horsa were alternative names for the animals that the saxon warriors rode (according to wikipedia, Stallion and Horse).

And anyway, I'm more likely to believe that the first saxon mercenaries were a bit earlier, and here in Sussex where they eventually slew the native British (hence the place names from the Ouse and a little further East to perhaps as far as, or beyond, the Adur - e.g. Beddingham, Erringham where the ham in that context is said to mean a bend on a river). Sorry, that is getting a bit off-thread.

13 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I concur that once you get to languages using different alphabets (like Cyrillic), some level of Anglicization (or equivalent) is necessary. My point was more related to towns/provinces/countries that are relatively easily pronounced using a Roman alphabet - like Roma, Milano, Napoli, etc. Germany starts to get harder where towns like München are more difficult to interpret with an English language mindset. Yet there's no real 'need' to turn Braunschweig into Brunswick and is Bayern really too hard that we need to invent Bavaria?

Sometimes, there are reasons why names differ. In the case of Bavaria I searched for the etymology: quoting https://www.etymonline.com/word/bavaria "German Bayern, Medieval Latin Boiaria, named for the Boii, the ancient Celtic people who once lived there"

So it was the upper classes somewhere, who spoke mediaeval latin - maybe the church - wot named it.

And according to Wikipedia (so maybe untrue) "Braunschweig from Low German Brunswiek, local dialect: Bronswiek [ˈbrɔˑnsviːk])" - dialect variations across german-speaking areas are still very pronounced, but to me Brunswick sounds like a reasonable English attempt at the real name.

OTOH, I still remember my surprise at village names in Slovenia when I made a couple of day trips from Austria - looked as if there was a shortage of vowels, e.g. they call the city which is now in Italy but was part of the Habsburg empire 'Trst'.

Just catching up - somewhere over the weekend (possibly in the Observer, possibly the Grauniad, possibly online news on my phone) there were comments that RB had softer rear suspension to cope with how last year's track had been and they had to set the ride height higher to avoid too much wear on whatever that thing is called that can be measured for clearance after the race - I think it might have been a comment from Valteri Bottas saying they had a similar setup problem.

Difficulty rating some posts. Get well soon, Baz.

well, it might have been cooler outside this week, but indoors it has remained warm and humid (my house is on the side of the hill, very little possibility of breeze from the back). Tonight there has been some breeze coming in from the front. I likei t!

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

As a bonus they make the glass less likely to shatter if smashed because they hold the window together, and thus can add a measure of security.

 

https://www.solargard.com/au/blog-au/architectural-window-film/myth-buster-does-window-film-need-to-be-dark-to-work/

 

 

As if the deadly animules in Oz were not enough, now you're telling us you have scrotes as well ?

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

After I finish typing this, I am off to pack my suitcase ready for the flight down to Nice tomorrow morning.

 

One of the things in Bordeaux that caught my interest was the tram system. When they are on the tram only routes in the suburbs they pick up power using a conventional pantograph from overhead catenary.

 

However in the streets where there is no overhead collection, there are rails in the middle of the track which provide the power.  Obviously it is more cunning than having the power on full time which could and would cause electrocutions.

 

The system is called APS surface powered trams.

 

My tablet will not allow me to put a link in.

 

Packing beckons.

 

 

 

 

Here's a link: https://www.alstom.com/solutions/infrastructure/aps-service-proven-catenary-free-tramway-operations

12 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Anecdotes of hot weather in the UK are interesting. Here we have had delightful weather where the hottest day in the last week was 21°C.

 

Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer at 30°C.

 

In the US, hot weather after Labor Day (usually around the first Monday of September) was often referred to as "Indian Summer" a folkloric term with unclear origins. The American Meteorological Society is discouraging the use of this term as either being pejorative, or at the very least misplaced. 

It is a common phrase in the UK.  According to The Evening Standard  the Met Office’s Meteorological Glossary, published in 1916, defined an Indian summer as “a warm, calm spell of weather occurring in autumn, especially in October and November” and goes on to say it was from American usage (1778, by a frenchman describing the Mohawk nation)

In common usage here, any warm spell in September can be described as an Indian summer.

Belated Happy Birthday to @Erichill16

I assume the maroon lines indicate some form of elevation, but I could not work it out. From the background track, running anticlockwise I assume that by the front it passes above a double track after climbing for perhaps 5ft in old money, perhaps a bit more (I'm guessing the length of the climb. I read it as staying at that height until it has crossed the line to the engine shed, and then descends. Gradients, particularly smoothing out the ends so that trains don't uncouple, can be a problem - and the more space you use for the transitions, the steeper the rest of the gradient. And then the gradients are on curves, which add resistance. An interesting and possibly discouraging learning experience, if I have interpreted the plan correctly.

I'm also not quite sure about the logic of the two (?) lines on the level part for up and down running (if two, there is a point hidden by the elevated line crossing it at the end of the station.

But I assume that you have worked out, to your own satisfaction, how and where the trains will run.

The circular black area looks like it is for access - if so, rather small, but it makes me ask: will you have access all around the layout for when trains stall or derail ?  Or is that black area the scenery ?

Reading your initial post again, I only see one station (island platform, and another platform leading to the engine shed, but all in the same station).

No idea about 'freetrackplans', but many plans in British magazines have been "somewhat ambitious for the space".