Awesome train set is *awesome*
What, geeks like trains? Huh. Who knew?
It rained like a bastard all day today and we did exactly Jack and Shit, so have some more trains, Poindexters.
This here is from the Romney Marsh Model Engineering Society, which we visited last year and I somehow never got around to writing about. It is huge. They have six permanent tracks in three gauges.
On the day we visited, they were running about five of these little steam engines and one electric. Plus a bunch of tiny models on the track in the center.
The tracks are huge. Did I mention huge? Here’s a screencap from Google maps. I’m pretty sure those houses at the bottom are semi-detached (what we would call duplexes).
I was going to call it the awesomest train set ever, but this being England, undoubtedly…no.
August 25, 2010 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 20
WOOoooooWOOOO!
We went and rode the puffer-trains today!
There are “heritage railways” all over Britain. This one is the Kent and East Sussex, which runs ten whole miles, from the lovely old town of Tenterden to the lovely old castle of Bodiam.
A long drive to a short train ride — which somehow abuses the very notion of transportation — but this one is a lovely run across open fields. And we had sammiches and tea and sunnenshine and…it was very nice.
Most of the things we do for fun here are almost entirely run by volunteers. From the steam lines to the old country houses, most of the work — including the really back-breaking work — is done by armies of unpaid staff.
I wonder if that’s taken into account when they tally up which countries give most to charity.
August 24, 2010 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 29
Just trying to get some of that sweet, sweet image search traffic
Y’all know what you’re looking at here, right? Thanks to Pablo for the suggestion.
Speaking of nicking pictures off the internet (you don’t think I keep surplus day-old chicks in the kitchen, do you?), they set Shepard Fairey‘s trial date today.
He’s the dude who created the HOPE poster that went viral during the Obama campaign. Problem is, he pinched his photo reference from AP.
There’s much about this case I don’t get. Fairey sued AP first, to establish himself as the author of the work — why would he do that? — so this is the AP countersuit. In the initial case, Fairey claimed it was some other photo he used — but that also belonged to AP, so I don’t get why a) he used that as a defense and b) the fact he was wrong is a legal problem for him.
Incidentally, illustrators nick photos all the time to use as reference (and Photoshoppists live to nick photos). In the days before Google, most professional illustrators kept a clip file — thousands of book and magazine photos cut out and filed away for future reference.
I inherited the kernel of mine from the RISD library, which was clearing out some of its gigantic room-sized clipfile. Mine filled four filing cabinets in its final glory, and it hurt like a bastiche to throw it away.
You’re only supposed to refresh your memory from a file photo, though. If the resemblance of your final illo is recognizably close to the reference, the original owner has a case against you. I don’t think there’s ever been much actual suin’ going on, but it’s a sort of squidgy area of law.
Me, I cheerfully nick photos for blog posts, but never, EVER for something I’m going to sell. That’s not actual legal advice — unless you’re covered under parody or something, it’s equally illegal whether you make money or not — but I figure: no moneys, no incentive.
My general sympathies might be with Fairey on this one — and not just because we went to the same art school — but it turns out he’s a real asshole when other people copy HIS stuff. So I hope he gets his pansy ass kicked.
Final question: with a name like Shepard Fairey, did this guy pretty much have to go to art school?
August 23, 2010 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 23
Hey, they never let me take home medical waste before
Poor monkey. Now she’s down to two teeth.
See how there’s really no root there at all? That’s down to the dental resorption problem she’s had for years. The vet said it was the easiest dental procedure he’s ever done. Pop.
So they sent her home with antibiotics and instructions to let her rest for a bit. Said she’d be groggy and probably not hungry until tonight.
Sure enough, she was a bit unsteady on her feet when she got out of the carrier, but she did cry to go out, so we let her. Half an hour later, Uncle B sticks his head in the door and says, “you won’t believe this — she’s at the back door with a big fat mouse in her mouth.”
So the answer is yes — she can kill and eat mice with just two fangs. While bombed out of her skull on kitty smack.
Incidentally, August 20 is World Mosquito Day. Sir Ronald Ross of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine discovered the role of the Anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria on this day in 1897.
Not so long ago, malaria was endemic in our little corner of England and in the rural South of the US, where I was born. My grandfather lived with the malaria he caught in New Orleans in the 20th Century.
Worth remembering that the Third World really does have legitimate grievances against us in the Industrialized West, one of which is we won’t let them use some fucking DDT just until they can get their malaria problem under control. You know, like we did. In my lifetime.
I’m guessing if the dreaded dengue fever continues to turn up in Florida, it’ll be “second look at DDT” before you can say “Western hypocrisy.”
August 20, 2010 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 36
Ringling Brothers’ amazing weasel-stretching lady
Just kidding! Ferret hotel.
And speaking of goofy animals, my cat Charlotte broke one of her last four teeth some time between last night and this morning. It’s poking out of her face at a stupid angle.
“You just want to grab it and give it a…you know?” the ridiculously young vet said to me, making a yoinking gesture.
Not funny, though. It clearly hurts something fierce, because she’s drooling in lieu of eating. First thing in the morning, I have to bundle her off to the vet for a bit of hack ‘n’ slice. How on earth she’s been down a mouse a day with only four teeth, I’ll never know.
Now we’ll see if she can do it with three.
August 19, 2010 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 25
Forgiving.
Yeah, that bent pin? Apparently, it’s been that way for eighteen months. Yes, it’s been taking a few tries to boot all the way, but once it got up and running it was perfectly stable. (When I unpacked my desktop machine after the big move, the CPU was just rattling around in the case, so I popped it into the socket. I must have bent the pin then).
Computers are more forgiving than we have any right to expect. I bought myself a new motherboard and CPU for Christmas one year — I believe the chip was a 486-SX and the motherboard would also take a full 486. At any rate, there were more holes in the m’board than pins on the chip and — but of course — I plugged the chip into the wrong holes.
Christmas morning, watched in horror as I flipped the switch and solder hissed and bubbled out of the smoking socket. But I killed it, let it cool and got it plugged in the right way around and it lived a long and happy life. For a 486SX.
This one is finally kaput, though. I got the pin straightened and re-reseated, but I broke the thingie that holds the heat sink in place, so it overheats before it even finishes booting.
Eh. Six years. Time it crossed the rainbow bridge to live with Grandma.
Now comes the tedious business of looking at barebones systems and Googling all the components to figure out what the hell I’m looking at.
Do all motherboards come with on-board graphics now? Is the AGP graphics card socket a dead standard? Are there wifi cards for desktops, or do they assume wired LAN? And this dual/quad core thing — does software need to be written specially to take advantage of that? I mean, is any of my funky old software (particularly Photoshop) going to benefit from it?
God, I hate learning new stuff.
August 18, 2010 — 11:13 pm
Comments: 48
No, that getup doesn’t make your point stupid at all
At first, nicking Sarah Palin’s “mama grizzly” imagery to make a contrary point seems like standard political repartee.
But…ummm…Emily’s List is a single-issue pro-abortion pressure group.
Mothers who fiercely protect their young. Women who demand the unrestricted right to abort babies. See, these two ideas are just not happy together. It’s what the ladies in the Human Resources department at my old company would call a “job mismatch” — HR-speak for, “wow, you really suck at this.”
It explains the costumes, anyhow. These girls have a much better chance being mistaken for bears than protective mothers.
Exit question: why is it when lefties really, really want to persuade the rest of us, they always dress up, strip naked or use puppets?
August 17, 2010 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 31
‘Nuff said
I think our trainee president has really put his foot in it this time.
August 16, 2010 — 11:30 pm
Comments: 13
Quick! Poke him in the tummy…!
I have never seen such a display of political incompetence — accelerating political incompetence — than the Obama administration is treating us to at the moment. It’s like they’re fucking up logarithmically now.
The golfing, the vacationing, the lavish entertaining — all in the teeth of an electorate that is broke, scared and spitting mad, on the eve of a crucial election that is looking historically awful for Democrats.
And then Gibbs goes and takes a swipe at his own base.
I honestly don’t know what we’re looking at here.
I don’t know what to call this.
So I’m going with “epic incompetence,” because I can’t quite wrap my head around “death wish.”
The Gibbs-as-Pillsbury-Doughboy idea has been floating around HotAir for a while, incidentally (I’d give credit if I knew who to). It doesn’t speak to his personality at all, but it perfectly describes his huge, pale, doughy melon.
August 13, 2010 — 10:39 pm
Comments: 34
Cram school! Yay!
My books arrived today! And no, they weren’t free!
I’m coming up on two years in the UK — time to prepare for the next (and final) visa. To clear that hurdle, I’ll have to pass an exam called the Life in the UK Test. This delicious morsel was whipped up by Labour in 2007 in the hope it would convince the wider British public that honest to god we haven’t just thrown open the doors and walked away.
Didn’t they, fuck.
Anyhow, the joke is, most Brits would have a hard time passing this thing. Free sample:
True or false: you should not ask questions in an interview.
True or false: half of all young people in the UK have taken part in fundraising or collecting money for charity.
Since 1979 the number of refugees from South East Asia who have been allowed to settle in the UK is: a) less than 2,500 b) between 2,501 and 10,000 c) between 10,001 and 25,000 or d) more than 25,000
And on and on. There are a stupidly large number of questions about Scotland (the last government had an inordinate number of Scots) and about school (honestly, I am never going to need to know at what age to take which exams) and about how to apply for various kinds of benefits (what every new citizen needs to know). Still, I suppose I’m learning stuff.
Did you know the head of the Church of Scotland is called the Moderator? Makes the church sound like a gameshow or an online discussion forum.
¡Noticia! tonight is the peak of the Perseid meteor showers. Look to the Northeast between midnight and dawn.
August 12, 2010 — 11:07 pm
Comments: 19