Recent posts

#11

Off Topic / Re: The Brassgoggles Model Mak...

Last post by The Bullet - December 03, 2023, 12:50:05 PM

A flat pack stable?

Or a scale fowler engine? Either a traction engine or steamroller.

No steamroller, no traction engine.....but it has a blower valve and a horse.

#12

Off Topic / Re: The Brassgoggles Model Mak...

Last post by Madasasteamfish - December 03, 2023, 11:11:40 AM

A flat pack stable?

Or a scale fowler engine? Either a traction engine or steamroller.

#13

Tactile / Re: New work

Last post by selectedgrub - December 03, 2023, 07:16:58 AM

Super happy I didn't waste my time with all the WIP photo's now           

#14

Photography / Re: Abandoned

Last post by selectedgrub - December 03, 2023, 07:15:02 AM

#15

Photography / Re: IMPORTANT: Potential Image...

Last post by selectedgrub - December 03, 2023, 07:14:12 AM

Sad news indeed.
Reality is in 5 years no one will be looking at them anyway.

#16

Off Topic / Re: The Brassgoggles Model Mak...

Last post by The Bullet - December 02, 2023, 09:22:11 PM

Yesterday, the postman brought a big heavy box:


Except for James who already knows, guess what was inside.
BTW I have never seen a blower valve handwheel made from a Penny before...


One hint about the content:


I guess I need a new horse. This one has lost its tail.

#17

Tactile / Re: That 'big project' I've be...

Last post by James Harrison - December 02, 2023, 06:30:01 PM

The plans for 2023...

There's the front garden, which needs new paving.  I did actually start this this Summer just gone but had to stop because I ran out of room to store the spoil.  That's now been disposed of but it took so long to get rid of it that the weather has turned.  I can think of more pleasant ways to spend freezing cold, wet days than breaking up inch-thick mass concrete.  So that's a job for the Spring through Autumn.

Well.... that got done. 

Before:



And after:

Then there's the hallway and staircase.  You're probably thinking there can't possibly be anything left to do here- it's been replastered, repainted, I've sanded the staircase down, taken up the new tiles to expose the original floor.... and you'd be right, but also wrong.  So working from the top down there's some plastering and repainting needed on the ceiling, then it really needs a coving fitting for the joint between wall and ceiling.  Then the floorboards need replacing.  The railings around the staircase I might repaint (they're stained at the moment) just to lighten upstairs a bit.  I think there's an argument to be made for cleaning up the stairtreads a bit more, and then I want to fit a stair runner and stair rods.  Then there are some cracked and broken quarry tiles that need replacing, and if that isn't enough to be getting on with I also want to replace the radiator. 

This got progressed, somewhat.  It's still not finished but as it's the main throughfare through the house it's probably best left as the last job to do. 

Some work got done there this year though;

Before:



And after:



And in fact actually the new boards have been stained now too.

The project that I'm really looking forward to though is completing the sitting room.  This is the room that I fitted out with bookshelves in the few weeks between moving in and shutting down for plague, and then painted the first Summer I was here.  So the room really is already a couple of years old and although I still think the dark blue is just right for it... it has got a little tired.  It attracts fingermarks, it's got covered in brickdust in places which just hasn't washed away, there's a small white salt (?) patch in one corner that just keeps on coming through... it just needs I think cleaning down and maybe another coat.  I've also decided that the picture moulding in the dining room worked really well, so I'm going to do something similar in this room.  Not all the way around though.  It's going to be at the same level as the top of the architrave (which coincidentally is also the top of the bookshelves) and it's going to run from the bay window to the fireplace.  It's going to avoid the fireplace and it's going to start up again in the opposite inglenook before running into more bookshelves.  Then it's just going to run straight along the back wall and back to the window.  I'm going to paint the walls above this in a pale cream, so the room's going to have a dark blue/ pale cream paint scheme.  The fireplce wall is going to stay dark blue from floor to ceiling, but I've found a nice William Morris wallpaper pattern that I'm going to recreate with paint.  I might have a go at actually block printing this rather than stencilling.  All of the skirting boards are going to be taken down and stripped back to wood, then stained.  Whilst they're down I'm going to take the vinyl floor up and replace it with real wood flooring- the same as I did in the dining room.  This might uncover a couple of areas of the floor that are structurally suspect....

This got done, happily not revealing any structural problems.

Before:



And after:

So if I can get all this done, by next December I should have the main downstairs living rooms and the hallway finished, and at that point I think it would be fair to say the project's probably about half finished.

Hahaha, not by a long shot.  I've got two rooms that are going to need completely gutting and refitting, two rooms that 'just' need redecorating, the paddock, the main facade, the back and side walls....

[dig]

#18

Off Topic / Re: GAAAAAHHHHHH Mk.VI: The Re...

Last post by LukeHogbin - December 02, 2023, 07:32:27 AM

My really amazing $38/hr Software Engineer job offer revealed itself to be a scam. There were a number of red flags which I noticed prior to yesterday's M$ Teams chat, such as the rather perfunctory nature of the telephone interview, the bugs in a web site developer's web site, the lack of a phone number on the site, and the fact that dig revealed that the domain name of a company in business since 2019 was only registered in October.

The kicker came when they texted me a photograph of a cheque and asked me to use my Mobile Banking app to deposit it so I could purchase my computer equipment from their preferred vendor. When I insisted on an e-transfer instead, they vanished and I have not heard from them since.

For the record, the company is Echo Perficient Solutions of Toronto ON.

Fortunately, my current employer were more than willing to allow me to withdraw my resignation.

The old adage comes to mind, if it looks too good to be true, it is.

And yeah, that deal with the resignation might come back to bite you in the butt...

But I wish you all the best!

#19

Meta-Clubs / Re: The Queer Geer Mk. II: A c...

Last post by J. Wilhelm - December 02, 2023, 05:04:18 AM

had a grumpy old rainbow moment the other day.

saw somebody posting about how asexuals can get horny, want to engage in sex, and enjoy sex, and people shouldn't question their asexuality...

I'm sorry but I'm having a hard time seeing how someone can want sex, have it frequently, and enjoy it... and then claim to be asexual. I get that asexual is not the same as celibate, and my little ace brain supports you having and enjoying a healthy and safe sex life, and supports those whose creative expressions involve your sexual expression too... but my experience of asexuality, and even my understanding of it, is that having sex just isn't that interesting to us. rather like some people can be uninterested in playing sports, watching it, or otherwise having sports in their lives, without hating sports or thinking poorly of those who enjoy it. one can even 'humor' somebody else who seeks to engage with them in sporting. It's not traumatic or negative, it's just not something that they would engage in when not doing it for somebody else they care about...

seems a bit at odds with this redefining of the term to mean ... whatever a horny, sexually active and loving it, asexual is.

kids these days. harumph.

Excellent analogy, as an asportive myself that makes total sense.

And I totally agree with you, the label and the behaviour do seem at odds with each other - do they describe different aspects of a person's character these days? Being asocial makes it hard to keep up with evolving social mores.

The problem from my perspective is that this is as much a revolution in the sense of biological and psychological self acceptance, as much as it is an ideological social revolution.  Time Magazine pinned it best by calling it "a Gender Revolution." The nomenclature keeps changing, and because younger generations always perceive the passage of time differently and seek to develop their own language, now you have a disconnect between older and younger generations in the queer community as a whole.

My gen-divide moment came earlier this month when a prospective landlord out of the blue* asked me if "I was gay." You see without me inquiring about it he volunteered that he was an older gentleman looking for a tenant who wouldn't have a problem with him being gay. When I told him I was "gender fluid, you're safe with me," he swiftly replied "I don't know what that is. Are you asexual?". Needless to say it needed a long, difficult explanation that he didn't even have the time to hear. I didn't get the room. It didn't help that he was technologically illiterate (he was using a FAX machine that couldn't receive my smartphone ID, so he wouldn't answer my calls). But the thing that struck me is that he'd be so wary.

*(I'm not effeminate in my speech and there's no way he would suspect anything about me over the phone, so he asked the question as a filter for prospective tenants). In modern times you no longer ask that question. It's not polite, and no one should have a problem with other' gender/sex issues - unless you're are one of the newfangled political "time travelers" as I call them).

In contrast, I've lived for 9 years in a house with two perfectly cisgender males who didn't ask and never cared that I was gender fluid. They found out  and just took it for granted and only asked a few questions and at nopoint  were they bothered by it.  Naturally, it was crucial that they be liberal minded, but other than that they're just two regular blokes treating me like another with just the caveat that I bend the gender.

For most younger people it's not a big deal, but in contrast, one of the same roommates in mid 50s, one year younger than me, had a very hard time not offending a younger transgender co-worker in their 20s, because my roommate  didn't understand the correct nomenclature and protocols (pronouns, etc.). My roommate, being very liberal minded and open was deeply hurt that he was being pegged as "intolerant" when in fact it was just "lost in the translation."

Many of the classifications for the LGBTQ+ are ad-hoc social science concepts that easily vary from one decade to the next. The concepts are an expansion over the science developed in the mid century by the likes of Kinsey (gender spectrum), but psychology and I dare say medicine all struggle to keep up with the social changes. There are no (as far as I can see) universal scientific standards for the nomenclature, unless you have a PhD on the subject and you can correct me, and those who seek to express their sex and gender identities are left to interpret it themselves as they can. This can backfire, and arguably has already in a very severe way backfired on the LGBTQ+ community in various countries.

Literally it's lack of standards and generational miscommunication.

[dig]

#20

Off Topic / Re: GAAAAAHHHHHH Mk.VI: The Re...

Last post by J. Wilhelm - December 02, 2023, 02:24:54 AM

My really amazing $38/hr Software Engineer job offer revealed itself to be a scam. There were a number of red flags which I noticed prior to yesterday's M$ Teams chat, such as the rather perfunctory nature of the telephone interview, the bugs in a web site developer's web site, the lack of a phone number on the site, and the fact that dig revealed that the domain name of a company in business since 2019 was only registered in October.

The kicker came when they texted me a photograph of a cheque and asked me to use my Mobile Banking app to deposit it so I could purchase my computer equipment from their preferred vendor. When I insisted on an e-transfer instead, they vanished and I have not heard from them since.

For the record, the company is Echo Perficient Solutions of Toronto ON.

Fortunately, my current employer were more than willing to allow me to withdraw my resignation.

Sorry to hear that.  The fact that you actually put your resignation on your biss' desk is inflicted damage already.