Broithe

19 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

I had a French teacher at school when I was about 13/14, who was notoriously absent minded. He lived sufficiently close to the school to walk, albeit a long enough walk, but normally drove. One day he walked to school, taught all day, and at home time noticed his green Triumph Herald was not in the staff car park. 

He reported it stolen to the local constabulary…..

We had an obnoxious teacher who had a white Mini, with that white paint that quickly established a matt finish. One of the lads was convinced that it would be possible to lift it, with enough of us around it, and move it from 'his personal spot' in the school car park.

This proved to be true, and we shifted it quite a way to the other side of the car park.

Then, someone suggested that some water-based poster paint would be a good way to even further disguise it - so, it was quickly painted a nice red colour.

At the time, I had a job after school, setting out stuff for the science classes for the next day. This meant that I was leaving and walking across the car park, just as he was discussing his stolen car with the two coppers that had turned up.

He was standing with his back to the car, as he was looking at the vacant space where it had been, but the copper taking notes was facing in the opposite direction. He had just written down the registration number when he looked up and said, as I was 'innocently' walking past, "Would that be your car over there, Sir?"

Between holding my breath and clenching my teeth, it's a wonder I didn't do lasting damage as I tried to vacate the scene without giving myself away...

2 hours ago, Tullygrainey said:

Reading through this thread, I'm amazed any of us can find our own way home unaccompanied. Should we not have carers?

Years ago, I had a pickup with a fibreglass top over the rear bed - very handy, but it made reversing on a turn very awkward. It was necessary to reverse into my drive, so I could emerge into the main road with much better visibility when driving back out.

At the time, a girl two doors away had a boyfriend with a red Cortina, he always parked in the same place in the road and, if I pulled up right behind him, then a full left-lock would get me reliably into the entrance of my drive.

This was very handy and I came to rely on it over the months that the romance lasted.

Until one night when I pulled up, reversed in and got out of the driver's door - only to find myself ensnared in a very vicious rose bush that I haven't got.

Extricating myself from the rose bush, I could see that I was actually in the front garden of a house about a hundred yards from mine.

The car that I had pulled up behind was at least red, but it was an Alfa Romeo.

I paid a bit more attention to fully establishing landmarks for a while after that...

I used to park my Honda in the same place on a Saturday, on my weekly venture into town, back in the 70s, when we still did stuff like that. There was a handy gap in the wall that created a useful short-cut from 'my spot'.

The 400/4 was not a hugely secure vehicle and I arrived back there one day to find that it was absent.

I was annoyed, but not greatly surprised, there had been at least two attempts at stealing it before.

At that time, the town's cop shop was only about 200 yards away and was still open most of the time, so I went off to report the event.

There were a few people in front of me at the desk - this turned out to be useful, as it meant that, by the time I was standing in front of the sergeant at the counter, I was able to say "Ah, I remember where it is now!", and leave him to deal with other more serious matters.

I had arrived to find that there was no space for me that morning and had parked it about a quarter of a mile away, on the site of the demolished fire station...

 

At the factory where I worked, we had a manager who was a constant source of amusement - every few days, he would perform some bizarre, but interesting, 'theatre'.

One day, it was lashing down when lunch hour arrived, so he drove to the canteen in his company car. At the end of the day, when he went to go home, the car was nowhere to be seen - so, he called the police, who eventually arrived and questioned him about the event.

"When did you last see your car, Sir?"

"I drove to the canteen at lunch time."

"Mmm, and did you drive it back here, Sir?"

At this point, Malcolm realised that it had stopped raining as he ate his dinner and he had walked back to the office in the nice, warm sunshine...

And the process in between...

Enniscorthy.

During the flood event - and after a good clean-up.

17 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

There's a lot of blue in those white LEDs....

The cops'll pull you for that.

And the insecure, unstrapped load.

And, I'll bet there's no working tacho...

2 hours ago, Darius43 said:

It  also makes the layout room quite fragrant for an hour or so.

Because you're worth it.

I lived in digs in the mid-70s. The landlord had a yellow Mk1 Escort - his pride and joy. The landlady really only went in it at the weekend, always shopping on a Saturday morning. They habitually parked on some waste ground, the result of a famous fire in the 60s. One day, they came back and loaded up the car, setting off or home with the week's supplies.

About a mile into the journey, she started to notice that the car was not as pristine as he usually kept it - sweet wrappers in the ashtray, fingerprints on the windows, etc.

"You've let this car get into a bit of a state!"

Suddenly, he could see what she had seen, and that the mileage was a lot higher suddenly.

Realising what had happened they turned round and went back, the space the car had been in had been occupied again in their absence, so they parked as near to their own car as they could and emptied the boot as quickly as possible, keeping an eye out for the real owner. He appeared just after that had cleared the scene, looking mystified that his car was not where he thought he'd parked it and, looking round, he saw it off in the distance.

He got in and started it, driving off past them. as they were still loading up their real car.

He probably never knew, but might have wondered why the car was already warm...

My other forum used to be in the same position, showing the five or ten real users online, plus a few hundred guests, mostly harvesting robots. For some reason unknown to me, this stopped a couple of months ago and it now just shows real users plus some automated spam accounts that have never fully completed the 'entry process' and so can't post. 

8 minutes ago, murrayec said:

Is it not a combine harvester?

Eoin

Or just a threshing machine?

9 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

Broithe, get yourself to the optician! Been there and done that.

It is being watched - from inside and outside...

2 hours ago, Flying Snail said:

I didn't mean to suggest otherwise - there's lots of different genetic conditions that impact how we perceive the world around us: and not just sight, but taste and the other senses too

Indeed, there are all sorts of odd individual perception issues - I even see slightly different colours in each eye, most noticeable with pale creams, etc - probably due to the start of a cataract.
 

Trust nobody - not even yourself.

An odd one that I accidentally found, when trying to fix a disaster at work once, is that your vision doesn't all operate in the same time-frame. The centre is processed faster, as it is more likely to be important, I suppose.

I  needed to illuminate an object down a small, long hole - this meant having the torch right next to my eye - when I turned it on, the object lit up just before the torch did, apparently. The processing delay is short, only just perceptible, but it was very obvious when it happens 'in the wrong order'

1 hour ago, Flying Snail said:

I like your scientific approach! Its also good point that we may all perceive colour a little differently but I'm not sure you really need to coerce any female friends here (and I'm definitely not going to step on to the male vs female colour perception landmine, save to say I learned years ago not to have a strong opinion on what colour 'we' choose to paint the walls at home ). For me, I think you have a reasonable reference point with A42 (the lads will have done a fair bit of homework on the colour matching)  - so once you have a colour that matches it to your eyes then I think you're done. Taking into account the sheen off plastic surfaces, your eyes should be pretty consistent in how they view the greens when comparing shades to A42. 

I'd try to get to a colour that matches A42 reasonably well and then use that as my base colour - lightening it before application a little for a more sun bleached look,  or applying it as-is before going to town with dark washes if wanted to lather on a bit of grime. That approach should result in a nice bit of variation within the spectrum of CIE green

There is a genuine issue about females whose fathers have Daltonism - red/green colour blindness - they often have enhanced perception of reds and browns.

1 hour ago, DJ Dangerous said:

No speed issues last night nor this morning.

 

Actually, I think it's a bit too fast now.

Could it be slowed?

Just a little bit...

3 hours ago, BosKonay said:

So we’re now migrated. 

Let me know!

We are all migrants.

That could upset a few.

All very rapid here.

8 minutes ago, BosKonay said:

Thanks for that. I’ve been running extensive testing myself too and it does indeed appear that the underlying physical server hosting us is having issues. I’m currently making arrangements to shift the resources up a gear and move the instance to a more modern and capable server. I’ll update posts when we need to stop the forum for a few hours to facilitate. 

16 hours ago, Patrick Davey said:

I've had zero issues at all.

Happy New Year everyone!

Favouritism!

11 hours ago, BosKonay said:

Am monitoring and can’t see any issues?

Until yesterday, it had been as fast as usual for a good few days - then it went very slow, to the point of timing out before it connected at all.

Now, all is normal again.


Well, as normal as it ever is here...

Not railway-related, but an impressive example of the possibilities.

This is printed in one articulated piece, not clicked together afterwards, but a full, interlinked chain.

Each joint is a vertical ring with a horizontal ring around it. The bottom of the vertical ring is printed, then the horizontal ring is printed around it, and the top of the vertical ring follows, to close the joint.

Somebody spent more than twenty minutes making the file for this...
 

The cat was reasonably impressed, but would have preferred some meat on the bones.

On that subject, I did once see something which suggested that it was possible to use foetal scan images and produce, using minced beef, a life-sized burger in the form of your heir-apparent...

After a few slow days, it's back to normal for me at the moment.

But, I have just been reminded that any emails alerting me to an incoming PM on here are being popped into Spam by my Gmail account, despite me always confirming them to be 'Not spam'.

22 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

We used to live in NW Hants between Basingstoke and Fleet.

We were at Odiham in 1967 & 8.

90% of the time, it's normal for me, but it occasionally almost stops - just over the last few days.

I can detect no obvious pattern to the "slow times".

It was also happening for me, but seems back to normal now.

It's possibly an "Amorce Cap" device - a 4.7" naval gun by Britains - Boer War era.

The caps can still be got. Licensing discussions could be entertaining.

I came up with a system to make these, glass and lead. I made a couple of hundred in the 90s.

This is the original prototype that I made for myself, around 1990, as I didn't fancy this getting full of dust.

That's a 1/48th, so the case is about 210 x 180 x 90mm.