Author Archives: essiep

Down the drain

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17°C, sunny and clear.
Imy came home distraught, she’s dropped her mp3 player down the drain. It’s been missing for weeks then  today she found it again. Hours later dropped it down the drain in a moment’s clumsiness; in a hurry to get to work I suppose.
 
Below are the pictures of me trying to retrieve it. The drain is like a big pot, about 4 feet deep, with an overflow to the sewer. If it went down there it would be lost forever. So I had a go at getting it out of the accumulation of mud & decaying leaves in the bottom of the pot. The drain cover had to be removed first, which was hard at first as it was bunged up with a summer’s worth of muck. You can see from the picture how I got it levered up eventually. Then the search began.
At one moment I felt something solid while probing with the garden rake through the jelly like mud paste. Then it was gone, inverting the rake let me pull lots of mud out, I still couldn’t feel anything so back with the rake down the hole.
This went on for over ½ an hour.
Suddenly there it was in the mud on the rake, still glowing.
It was still switched on!
It’s on the radiator now- drying out, after a blow dry with the hair-dryer. I only wish we’d got a picture of its back-light showing up in the glob of dead leaves and muddy pulp.
.
This is an amusing site- thanks to Dawn_82. Online text-speech. Quite handy for finding spelling mistakes I suppose.
I popped a rib getting that cover off, don’t think it’s broken, but it definitely "popped" as I levered it up.. ouch.

Help! there are poets attacking…

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Chill north wind, and bright sunshine from the south. The balance came out as 14°C.
The comments have raised my eyebrows higher than they heve been before. So high that litttle oxygen masks have dropped automatically from the overhead luggage – a mechanism triggered by such unexpected emergencies.
Are you an arbitor of cool? Maybe if you’re a head-girl

Whitley airframe

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Another nice day (21°C) more like the day before yesterday, more wind and not as much cloud as yesterday.
Feedback from the Whitley Project group has been great.thus:
Very, very impressive!
No problem playing with broadband.
It will bring a nostalic tear to my father’s eye when he sees this. He
flew Whitleys until he had an unscheduled meeting with the North Sea
in 1941.
I look forward to your next upload.
Regards
Dave
Well, I will just have to get on with the next render then (actually I have done the first new clip, of 3 seconds long. there are still a few componants that need finishing off on the mesh. But the clips done so far have avoided showing them. After posting this note, I will continue.

3DS Max: The finish is in sight! Rear turret complete – and ready for mid & distant shots. Also it gan be exported to the Stirling mesh. Started the front turret – which must remain temporary since the technical drawings I have aren’t that clear. Finally- here is a test render using raytracing on the perspex material. Not too bad eh?

Wombles

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Another nice day. See yesterday, but more cloud.
 
The wombles are everywhere. they even get into the ceiling space- I hear the pitter-patter of little  footprints at night. The neighbours have had the pest-control in since they’d got into their house and raided the pantry. The neighbour on the other side has a cat with no tail. The cat with no tail is getting good at catching wombles but like our cats used to, doesn’t eat them. They did eat mice though, does that mean wombles taste bad or are they just too big to swallow?
 
The ladies are out there trying to stop wombling, one of them scratches at the gap in the fence while the other hopes to catch a womble as it escapes across the yard, she gives up too soon so they don’t make a great team. As far as I know they have only caught two this summer. Sometimes the mess the ladies make is as bad as the wombles.

Filmed

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Wow what a perfect summer’s day. Foggy ride to work, but unbroken sun later.
 
The Filming was ok, I left for work before they started, but Hannah looked good on the small screen- bless her little cotton socks. Despite doing my usual sunday ride today, the ride in this morning wasn’t slowed at all, legs didn’t feel tired untill after arriving home. Perhaps a short "after-ride" would be a good idea in future.
 
Feedback from the Whitley Project has been good so far, they liked my sample animated video. So worek isn’t stopping on that little project.

Film crew

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18°C, overcast ( mostly)
Cycle 56 miles, reduced milage because I’m expecting not to drive tomorrow.
 
Filming: Normally Mondays I go in the car and cycle the rest of the week, but a BBC film-crew are visiting to make a feature about people who have "ditched the car to work". Mrs D. has set this up, she’s a real sucker for this kind of thing, (  & now she’s tired of the idea too). I don’t see why this should affect me much, I didn’t normally use the car before anyway any hypothetical ditching. I’ve cycled to work for 15 years now. Before that I didn’t work full time. Oh well, all in the aid of quaint parochial local TV.
Mostly harmless.
3ds max
More work on that model, which I ‘ve sent to the Whitley Project. I did tell them it’s a work in progress! The mapping is better and more rounding of angualr bits now there is no poly limit. The exhust stacks was quick & effective- made in edit-poly then attached to the model, looks good too. the front turret is still the old one, and that’s going to be tricky to fix. The flying surfaces are now wired together as are parts of the undercarriage.

Spider new

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Warm & sticky day of passing clouds. 22°C

 
Today a new spider moved in. It’s the biggest and best we’ve had for a couple of years. It’s over 2½ cm long, tiger striped legs and rests elegantly on the drumskin web waiting for dinner to visit. We shalln’t see any of those orrid bluebottles that get trapped in the kitchen, with poop on their feet and who vom’ on food before hoovering it up. No, the spider will dutifully wrap it up in silk and then munch it late in the night. Good spider.
The worry is that it’s in a corner of the kitchen where the dogs usually jump up to the window to bark at next-door’s cat, a moment’s clumsyness could leave my spider less than it began, so let’s have no accidents ladies.
I will do my part and clear up it’s husks from the shelf underneath  so that no-one is tempted to evict my new spider.
 

Infuriation

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23°C, SW winds
Flat tyre made itself noticable on Muckley corner round-about as the back wheel slid outwards. It’s odd how soft tyres behave on cornering, a bit like severe understeer.
If proved to be the most infuriating to fix. I put the spare tueb in to inflate when it in turn went straight down. So with a nearby garage, I sought out a bucket of water to find out which tube was the best. The bubble test failed- there were no bubbles. Then the obvious thing to do is put the tube back in the rear wheel then that went immediately flat too. I really hate it a perfectly fine thing that has nothing wrong with it except it doesn’t work.
 "narked"
there was an old guy who stopped to watch at first. He stood in a coat with a dried rollie cigarette stuck to his lip. He ended up helping out a bit. His voice was unclear but meant well.
Anyway- even after fiddling about with a bucket of water and the two innertubes, no inflation. Then after changing it around it decided to co-operate in part- so I rode home with only 70psi in the rear wheel.
Oh well, rambling to a quick finish- arrived home 40′ late.
Narked to pieces.

Erratum

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Sept 4th and hot weather is still here, 29°C, threatening thunderstorms too
It was Uzbekistan not Kazakstan that had a sparsely reported massacre referred to in a recent entry.
One big Oops from me!
I’ve edited the entrynow, such is the beauty of online blogs. My points in that post remain the same though.
Here is a feature on the matter from "Green Left Weekly"
Me stuff: Had a swim in the sea off Harlech beach yesterday. It was so warm! Well, Warm for British coastal waters anyway. The waves were no more than 6" high, so that counts as dead calm,  perfect swimming conditions. Seabirds were visible diving from the air to feed. Memorable!
We also stumbled across a charming little waterfall in the hills behind Llanbedr. We will be back!

What is going on?

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The world’s richest nation is at a low ebb.
The first lootings struck gunshops,
The armed forces have been sent in with "shoot-to-kill" orders.
There is no drinking water, and the floodwaters are full of pollutants.
Armed gangs patrol while martial law has been imposed.
We have seen no stories of heroism, bravery or humility.
US oil prices have shot up, now gasolene has rocketed to nearly the price we normally pay.
thousands have drowned.
 
What is going on – they knew this was coming…