Author Topic: A random thread for small things that don't really warrant a thread of their own  (Read 2998315 times)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
For all the women and indeed men of YACF who have ever complained about the lack of pockets in their clothing, here's Flann O'Brien:
"By the hokey I do not understand how you can manage without the convenience of a pocket. The pocket was the first instinct of humanity and was used long years before the human race had a trousers between them – the quiver for arrows is one example and the pouch of the kangaroo is another."
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
A Twitter thread by someone who doesn't know when to stop trying to please their cat
https://twitter.com/philbrwn/status/1079552233451089920?s=19
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
A Twitter thread by someone who doesn't know when to stop trying to please their cat
https://twitter.com/philbrwn/status/1079552233451089920?s=19

Anyone who has ever ownedco-habited with a cat could see the punchline coming a mile off!

Love that modular furniture.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

On another thread there is mention of a Teasmaid; googling said appliance brought me to the UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum, which is full of good stuff. There are some excellent thread titles:

Quote
Any other plug collectors out there?
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=156495

That photos on that thread brought back strong memories of my Belfast grannie’s house. And I’m pretty sure I can remember plugs with round pins and a transition to rectangular pins.

(Can someone remind me how to embed a link properly on here again?)

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
The old BS546 round-pin plug is alive and well (molished with modern materials and safety standards) in specialist applications.  Typically the 5A one is used for plug-in lamps fed via a switch from a lighting circuit (so you don't plug anything else in by mistake), and the 15A one is common for indoor[1] stage lighting applications, where it's safer not to have to be up a ladder when mucking about with fuses.  I believe they are also used in in ABROAD, where the FOREIGNS come from.

I've probably got one kicking around somewhere, but it's more an inadvertent accumulation than a deliberate collection...

(I recently chucked a few BS1363 plugs and adaptors on the basis they didn't have shrouded pins.)


[1] Outdoors they tend to use 16A Ceeform, for obvious reasons.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Round pin plugs are the standard design in India, though I wouldn't swear that they're the same as ye olde Britishe ones. It seems likely they are though.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
That plug thread would seem to be the safe for work equivalent of the notorious Rule 34. If it exists, someone collects it.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
On another thread there is mention of a Teasmaid; googling said appliance brought me to the UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum, which is full of good stuff. There are some excellent thread titles:

Quote
Any other plug collectors out there?
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=156495

That photos on that thread brought back strong memories of my Belfast grannie’s house. And I’m pretty sure I can remember plugs with round pins and a transition to rectangular pins.

(Can someone remind me how to embed a link properly on here again?)

Our house in Belfast had round-pin sockets. It was built in 1950.  IIRC we had a single 15a socket in each of the downstairs rooms and 5a upstairs in the bedrooms. We also had just one 15s/5a adaptor. No fused plugs, of course: the fuse-box lived above the kitchen door and used different gauges of wire.

Seems incredible now.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

When the C family moved in 1964, the wiring in our 'new' house was as described by T42.
Within a couple of weeks, whist cooking dinner on our electric stove, all the power went. We had blown the 'board' fuse, the big one on the supply side of the fuse box.
This was in a house with three children under five and a half and number four on the way, with an electric washing machine as well as the cooker. We'd moved from a brand new ('59) build. Dad managed to get the engineers out that afternoon (he worked for the CEGB so was a bit vague about which electricity board he worked for when he phoned up.
They agreed to put a bigger fuse in (I think the main fuse was only 30A, may have been 15A, but it was a long time ago) but we had to get the whole place rewired, which on top of a maxed out mortgage was not what my parents needed.
"No matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch."

We moved across the road 44 years ago to our current house, built in the 1920s.

It was an executors' sale, so unoccupied. The estate agent gave me the keys for measuring up, so I rewired the house before moving in. The wiring was cloth covered, in lead, with 5A and 15A plugs (not very many!).

Apart from an additional kitchen ring main and feeds to the garage and an extension, plus a new consumer unit at some stage, it's still as I wired it.

I also have the original bakelite phone (not in use!).

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Went to Lidl on the way home from our appoved walk. It was dead. They had pasta! And strong bread flour!
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Same here in West London yesterday afternoon. Saw a long queue for Sainsburys, so went on to Lidl, almost empty. Plenty of stock.

Well the sky above us has been much quieter than normal - we’re under the westerly approach to Luton, plus the north/south corridor for Heathrow. Today, however, there was in unusual sight for hereabouts. It wasn’t on Flightradar24 but I think it was a C5 Galaxy, heading in a South-westerly direction as it passed overhead Aston Clinton at what I would estimate to be 4000ft.  It was certainly a 4-jet engined wide bodied military (matt grey) transport of some kind, the engine nacelles projected markedly forward of the wing leading edge on their pylons.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Plenty Of Fish have apparently introduced video dating.  So that'll be like Chatroulette then, with lots of guys wanking  ;D
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Well the sky above us has been much quieter than normal - we’re under the westerly approach to Luton, plus the north/south corridor for Heathrow. Today, however, there was in unusual sight for hereabouts. It wasn’t on Flightradar24 but I think it was a C5 Galaxy, heading in a South-westerly direction as it passed overhead Aston Clinton at what I would estimate to be 4000ft.  It was certainly a 4-jet engined wide bodied military (matt grey) transport of some kind, the engine nacelles projected markedly forward of the wing leading edge on their pylons.
I saw that flying near slough this evening   :)
the slower you go the more you see

fuzzy

Well the sky above us has been much quieter than normal - we’re under the westerly approach to Luton, plus the north/south corridor for Heathrow. Today, however, there was in unusual sight for hereabouts. It wasn’t on Flightradar24 but I think it was a C5 Galaxy, heading in a South-westerly direction as it passed overhead Aston Clinton at what I would estimate to be 4000ft.  It was certainly a 4-jet engined wide bodied military (matt grey) transport of some kind, the engine nacelles projected markedly forward of the wing leading edge on their pylons.
Probably Boeing C17 which the RAF fly out of Brize-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III

Ah, thanks for that, although I'm surprised we've not seen them before, we're only 40 miles due east. But it was low for that far out.

ETA: It was indeed Brize’s C-17, and they’d been doing practice landings at Luton, seeing as how it’s virtually unused atm.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Well the sky above us has been much quieter than normal - we’re under the westerly approach to Luton, plus the north/south corridor for Heathrow. Today, however, there was in unusual sight for hereabouts. It wasn’t on Flightradar24 but I think it was a C5 Galaxy, heading in a South-westerly direction as it passed overhead Aston Clinton at what I would estimate to be 4000ft.  It was certainly a 4-jet engined wide bodied military (matt grey) transport of some kind, the engine nacelles projected markedly forward of the wing leading edge on their pylons.
Probably Boeing C17 which the RAF fly out of Brize-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III

Short video on the relevant local section of the Beeb's web shite of it fannying about at Luton airport.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Very pleasant woman on the Lidl checkout desk last night: You had no need to apologise when implementing the 'four of each item only' rule to the gentlemen who were trying to purchase an entire dairysworth of UHT milk. They were sheepishly OK about it and clearly knew they'd been taking the piss. When I thanked you for putting yourself in the front line, you positively beamed.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

network.ned

The bin lorry outside my window has a really noisy hydraulic pump.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk


T42

  • Apprentice geezer
The bin lorry outside my window has a really noisy hydraulic pump.

My heart bleeds. For the last week the kids (well, under-20s)  next door have been demolishing a brick wall with a sledgehammer and hurling the bricks into a sheet-metal trailer.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

network.ned



I also have the original bakelite phone (not in use!).

If you can rewire a house, rewiring the phone should be easy! I've got our old GPO746 rewired, plugged in and working fine. You can't beat the sound of a proper telephone bell.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
You can't beat the sound of a proper telephone bell.
Except, of course, for the sound of a bicycle bell.  :D
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Those familiar with Passover may find this amusing, the rest of you may be slightly perplexed*.

The Torah Speaks of Four Kinds of People Who Use Zoom:
The Wise
The Wicked
The Simple
The One Who Does Not Know How to “Mute”
The Wise Person says: “I’ll handle the Admin Feature Controls and Chat Rooms, and forward the Cloud Recording Transcript after the call.”
The Wicked Person says: “Since I have unlimited duration, I scheduled the meeting for six hours—as it says in the Haggadah, whoever prolongs the telling of the story, harei zeh meshubach, is praiseworthy.”
The Simple Person says: “Hello? Am I on? I can hear you but I can’t see you.”
The One Who Does Not Know How to Mute says: “How should I know where you put the keys? I’m stuck on this stupid Zoom call with these idiots.”
To the Wise Person you should offer all of the Zoom Pro Optional Add-On Plans.
To the Wicked Person you should say: “Had you been in charge, we would still be in Egypt.”
To the Simple Person you should say: “Try the call-in number instead.”
To the One Who Does Not Know How to Mute you should say: “Why should this night be different from all other nights?”

*The Passover ceremony ("Seder", lit. order) is held at home, with a meal as a centerpiece. The order of the proceedings is part of the fun, with lots in to help keep kids interest. The four characters: The wise, wicked, simple and too stupid to ask, come in early in the proceedings, and the text here includes a mash up of several segments. And how to run a conference.

Ham, that is excellent.