Posts by Moz
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to nzlemming,
Polly, so you can take over the government and be Queen.
I'm reminded of Russel Howard, who has a similarly surreal take on queening.
(about a minute in, video starts at the start for me)
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Earth roofs kind of appeal to me, especially if you're doing a reverse veneer, since that also gives to excess structure to support even the most over the top earth roof. But since I also demand PV and solar hot water on a small house, we're likely to run out of roof from that alone.
Reverse veneer, for the uninitiated, is having insulation on the outside and the solid stuff on the inside. That way you have a big thermal mass, but still have insulation. Normally you'll clad the insulation with weatherboard or something lightweight, but in Australia (of course) some people just paint the polystyrene insulation. Which then starts accumulating dents and chips from the minute it's painted (because Australian really is that stupid).
My partner just visited Melbourne and has returned to announce that our double brick house that drives me to despair with the numerous vents, lack of insulation and crumbling tile roof... is a lot better than the shitty wooden sieves our friends inhabit in Melbourne. I'm assured by friends in Norway that such things are just not done there, and they have expressed surprise at the standard of building we can get away with in NZ and Oz.
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Southerly: Høstens Vemod, in reply to David Haywood,
“You must be so relieved not to have another Bob”
Surely that's where the høstens vemod comes in handy "oh, but I'm going to die". No need to mention that it's likely to happen some time in the distant future.
I love the Polly-tales :) Hopefully Polly will not have the interesting side of her too tamed by the school system. I once failed a word association assignment on the grounds that the teacher didn't understand how I could connect some of the words (I fear she didn't know what some of them meant, but that's by the bye). Some teachers could use a bit of "concerned parent just wants to have a quiet word" which at times my parents were enthusiastic about providing. Which I suspect was, on balance, a useful thing.
Those bloody bob builds bits videos are likely to be expensive, though. I keep seeing tools and going "one of those would be handy". I am not sure it's a good thing that my partner also watches them and goes "ooh, that's a handy looking tool, I wonder if we have one of those". An impact driver not the least of it, I might have to switch brands because the Panasonic kit is over $500. Annoyingly, the kit with the hammer drill is cheaper than the kit with the lighter non-hammer drill, and I apparently can't just buy the impact driver with battery and charger, I have to also get a second battery and a drill. Bah, humbug!
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Hard News: Hate and guns, in reply to Joe Wylie,
strategic support to Australia's minuscule Shooters Party,
You might note that while they're still small, they have members in NSW parliament so we have allowed "recreational shooting" in state parks and there is fighting about allowing it in national parks. The restrictions are laughable, and there are problems with idiots carrying brand new rifles in using their brand new 4WDs and shooting at "things". No deaths yet AFAIK, but as in NZ it's only a matter of time.
Also, with the graphs... if you're going to count every locked-up-in-a-government-building firearm as "owned by a Swiss citizen", you really should count every single firearm held by US law enforcement and probably the military as well (although that would also dramatically increase the number of firearms in countries who have US bases, like Germany and Australia).
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Southerly: I Fell Down, in reply to ,
not looking, even for Morphine. Bad things happen when makers start playing with musical instruments. A friend who has a wee factory making carbon fibre stuff for money has starting "recreationally" making carbon fibre musical instruments. I mean, they're very nice instruments, but musicians are not notoriously a large crowd of people able to pay thousands of dollars for nicer instruments. Some of them, sure, but not a paying market worth.
Also, my musical abilities are limited to hating pianos and singing in the shower :)
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Southerly: I Fell Down, in reply to ,
I'm stuck! my layout is a rats nest
Heh. I work with someone who describes himself as "a professional connect-the-dots player" because he designs circuit boards. It can get pretty nasty when you get up past 3 layer boards with fast chips so it's all about the RF. I feel happy that my little 2 and 3 layer boards have all worked after only a couple of prototypes. I have been known to underclock and stack to test, BTW, it does work but really only helps if you're making your boards in-house (why order 3 boards that have to be stacked when that's often more expensive than a single multi-layer board)
The frustration thing is real, I have a 10x8 LED array that is utterly beyond me, I've spent the 3-4 hours debugging that I can deal with so now it's in the "too hard" bin. And I really should sell off some of the project stuff I have that I'm not ever going to use. Hmm. If Bob likes the Arduino I have a big honking array of LEDs that can be driven by one and look very pretty... if I needed that.
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I love the Bob builds a workbench episode. "screws are a bit over the top"... you don't say :) I feel better about my welded angle iron bench now, it only weighs twice (ish) what I do. That bench has to be three times his weight.
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I’ve had some discussions with Bernie Sanders fans in the past two weeks …
Ask me about raw milk. Go on. Dare ya. "no-one has ever died from drinking raw milk", there's your opening line.
With Bernie at least you can say he has tried, and to some extent succeeded in shifting the Overton Window. Unfortunately ... politics.
On the other hand, I am quite unreasonably happy with my new silly bird feet slippers. They're yellow (so very yellow), warm, and have felt "claws" on the front. Rawr!
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Have you tried the AEG tools from Bunnings?
Are you a mind reader? I have their sliding compound mitre saw in the shed, and have been eyeing off a couple of other mains tools. I bought a Panasonic 14.4V LiIon battery drill a few (maybe ten?) years ago to replace the 12V NiMH one that replaced the 12V NiCd one... I like that brand. Masters in Australia is the stockist, and also a big donation from Woolworths to tool users everywhere (they're trying to compete with Bunnings and should have bought a yacht instead).
He reckons the scariest thing he’s ever seen was a class of fine art students let loose in a carpentry workshop
I've seen similar things. One girlfriend was a College of Fine Arts student (she was a rural student on a scholarship, CoFA is a finishing school for young ladies of the eastern suburbs, darling). She got the run of all their workshops just for knowing which end of a gas torch to light. I only semi-kid, she knew enough to be scared witless by some of the other students and used to go in when it was quiet.
Also, some muppet in the Sydney Uni Architecture Faculty managed to snap the blade on their cold saw despite supposedly being under the direct supervision of a tech. Tech was livid, it was one of those "turn away for two seconds" things, student went from "work in vice, not aligned or tight" to "I'll just start the saw and drop the blade". Blade was only $500 or so, persuading the tech to allow that student back into the workshop apparently took lawyers.
Still, I do like a nice play in the workshop. Next project will be a sleepout made from coolstore panels, which we will hopefully get free in October when a friend does some demo work. I like the material, but it's rarely used in residential architecure for some reason (magic term is SIPS). I am thinking of bevelling the edges rather than using aluminium channel for all the joints, so I'm not making thermal bridges everywhere. But that means cutting 100mm thick polystyrene at 45 degrees... if they made 400mm circular saws that would work, or if I had a tablesaw that could handle 6m x 1100mm panels... but instead I shall be making one cut from each side and trying very hard to line them up :)
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The youtube stuff is strangely engaging, something about a small boy with clear diction who obviously understands what he's doing. Possibly also a bit of jealousy that he has a better workshop and better teacher than I ever did as a child.
I'm slightly involved with a local maker-space which is basically a big warehouse full of tools and stuff, with people to show you how it all works. The $50/day usage charge seems high until you start pricing even the basic gear. I was paying $250/year just for tank rental for one small tank of gas for my welder. Not having that gets me five days of almost all the tools I want. It beats buying the cheapest, crappiest tool from Bunnings and hoping it lasts through the whole job (or more usually, hoping that when it fails it doesn't injure me).
Makerspace is struggling a little to come to terms with the fact that there are some people who are not safe around tools, full stop. They don't want to do life bans, but I think they're going to have to. Not for hostile people, but for thoughtless people. The sort of person who will come over to watch, and put their cup of coffee down on the tablesaw you're using.