Flyby PC

http://www.stenhousestonemasonry.co.uk/ This thread isn't turning out the way I thought. I wanted to see other nutters doing OFF stuff at work.

They are two mullions for our own workshop. With sustainability being a big issue these days we're trying to get structural stonework back on the menu for new build, so we're pushing the boat out a little bit on our own workshop. Just trying to show off basically, hoping that somebody filthy rich will be walking past our yard one day. Tough doing a DR1 in stone, but an SE5 in stained glass is another matter. Needs more work yet to make a good photo. Tougher than I thought it would be.... Oh go on then.... I was tempted to do a red DR1, but red glass is muchos poundos. I'm not very good with the glass yet, but you have to start somewhere. Once I get better at it.....

Bet they watched Tom and Jerry when they were kids. It clearly never did them any harm.

I can make you jealous Lou. I know where there is a mint condition original MG which has been dry stored in a garage since it was built, and the only mileage it has was the delivery distance from the showroom to his garage. The only thing non-standard will be the kerbside weight, which is probably double what it should be with all the polish it's had over the years. I agree about motor design. Look at MG's, Spitfires, Healy Sprites, Triumph Stag, even the mini, and you know they were built for fun. Then of course you have your Ferraris, Jaguars, and my favourite, the AC Cobra. Absolutely beautiful, but often lacking the tyres, brakes, and suspension technology they needed to keep them on the road. Special mention for the 1929 Bentley Blower, in British Racing green of course... yum, yum, I want one of them to scare the neighbours. Modern car design is definitely lacking that 'something', but you can't argue modern cars are in a different league when it comes to performance and safety. It must be difficult however to get a designer with that 'edge' and originality through all the mundane training and engineering criteria a design must take account of, and when he finally gets to the design office, he has all those fantastic 'classics' which he cannot crib. In many ways the car industry isn't doing too badly. Progress is improving it. When you look at other industries, house building and tool making, are two I come into contact with, then progress in the last 50 years has not in my opinion been making things better, neither in design or durability. It's the nature of hand crafted items to need a pair of hands to craft them.

Forum doesn't make the Sim Pips. I don't fly RoF, but Sirgisbod's videos on YouTube make me want to. I have it, but my rig is borderline for flying it and it wasn't great fun as a consequence. I could never get it up to speed to really see if I liked it or not. I don't really like the way it's sold plane by plane, but business is business. Aeroplane Heaven and all the other add-on specialists build bolt on models for money, and I don't object to that. I've bought my share, some good, some rubbish, - buyer beware and all that. It's always frustrating when something is more expensive than it should be, but that's life. You want ripped off? - try buying petrol in the UK. At least with RoF you have a 'to buy or not to buy' choice to make. My attitude is that if the games creator is content to release his product in that way, then that's his perogative whether I like it or not. It's no different from a music artist and his record label. They might have 'creative differences' and hate their producers, but how long do they last when they split with their record label? OK, one or two thrive, but a lot more plunge into obscurity. I'm not saying Studio 777 is right or wrong, but nothing you say will change it, they only have eyes for the profit margin. Your most effective communication is keeping your money in your pocket. I was next going to say that aggressive forums have nothing to do with the sim itself, but I know that isn't always the case. But if you get burned a little unfairly at a forum, its an issue for the forum. In my experience, and I'm guessing yours, regular unpleasantness drives people away in their droves, boredom ensues, and every second post comes from the same person. Here we have good moderators who nip things in the bud before the water gets tainted, and we have a healthy cross section of contributers as a result. My personal opinion is that I back our moderators 110%, but I still harbour a little frustration that comparison of sims is pretty much a no go area. It doesn't matter though, not their fault, and I'm not actually losing out, because any such discussion invariably get hijacked by bad blood anyway. The moderators here have got it just right I reckon. Everybody is welcome, but misbehave, and you'll be shown to the door with whatever politeness or firmness it takes.

I agree, to a point, but do you remember the clip posted a few weeks ago about the German WW1 staffel forming up in the Howard Hugh's film? It was so clinical and well executed, if I had seen that in a modern CGI film, I would never have believed it was actually real, not in a million years.

I don't know, when you look at Tochi's CGI clips, like the famous "Merlins" clip, I reckon you could do whatever you wanted with CGI and make it convincing, and I don't think we are anywhere near the boundaries of what CGI will be able to do eventually. I think films will just get better and better, and the limiting factor will indeed be the research put into the making of it. Never mind CGI and 3D screens, I look forward to the day you can put your head right in the cockpit TrackIR style.... Regarding the prominance of He 111's, that might be a hangover from MGM's Battle of Britain, when there were 9 (I think) He111 's available for filming. These were still in service with the Spanish Air Force, and as far as I know, apart from 109's, there weren't any other German aircraft in air worthy condition. No Stukas, 110's, or Dorniers. When you see the Airfix stukas attacking the radar stations, I have to agree that they made the right decision to stick with real 111's rather than airfix substitutes. I totally agree it's nice to see things done right, but then again, if we let ourselves get upset about cannons on our grey green Spits featuring more that 303s, (and I agree, it is a niggling error), but just imagine being a WW2 armour afficianado and having to watch the Battle of the Bulge every christmas. Even Kelly's Heroes managed to find at least some Tigers. You know what I also look forward to? Big budget movies yes, but also, as CGI improves, you'll get amateur film makers having a go at their own movies. You already see some good stuff on youtube, and it's only amatter of time before there are other Tochi's putting together their own feature length CGI efforts. I also believe SIMs like this will have a big contribution to make towards realism. We already have Avatar's CGI world which looks amazing. The real test will be to make Earth in CGI and for us not to be able to tell the difference. I suspect we might be there already. If conspiracy theorists thought the Moon landings were fake, well, they just won't be able to leave the house.

Wow, now I check there are two Hobbit films? One next year and a second the year after? Hmmmmmm.... I smell a box office conspiracy to make me go twice. We shall see what emerges, but I'd rather see one good film than two turkeys. Hobbit's not a big book, but, then again, look at the War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. When I first bought that book I thought I had inadvertantly bought an abridged version. Nope, that's it, so you need to make the most of it. Come to think, I would like to see a War of the Worlds movie contemporary with the victorian period and London backdrop as it was written, not a modernised american version. That's not to offend the Americans, but just to be more faithful to the book. Go on Thunderchild! Get into them!! I still need to pinch myself that Jeff Waines classical War of the Worlds music with Richard Burton narrating isn't actually a sound track for a movie, even an animated version. It's such a classic you just want more!

Speaking of Peter Jackson, (Dambusters), isn't he also making the Hobbit? I hadn't read the Hobbit for ages, and my first thought when hearing there was to be a film was it was pretty much a kiddies book and there wasn't an awful lot in the Hobbit to make a movie about. How wrong I was. I just recently read it again however, and I reckon it'll be just fine. I'd forgotten such a lot. Massed ranks of Dwarves, Elves and Men, and goblins at war, and a dragon of course. Should be a worth a watch right enough.... should be a cracker in fact. Bring it on!

If you want to immasculate a bank, don't borrow money from it. The more you owe, the more power you give the bank. 30, 40 years ago, people had no choice but to live within their means, debt was still around, but hard to get, and debt itself was a dirty word. Nobody wanted to be in debt, and money from the welfare system was often despised as charity. Those attitudes have long gone, but we need to re-examine the attitudes. We now have an insatiable avarice to own everything we can, houses, cars, ipods, you name it, we just can't get enough. We're not content with one house, we have to make a profit from it and be on a property ladder. We have one car, then we want one each, then it's a 'good' car and a cheap runabout, it just goes on and on. We want so many things that we can't pay for, but credit has been as good as cash recently, and we've all trotted along to our banks like lambs to the slaughter. In many situations we have abandoned the concept of value for money, and governed our spending solely by the amount of credit we could get. If we can hold of the money, we can afford it. I don't think we need a revolution and blood on the streets, I just think we're an unfortunate population to be living in such times. It's a 'fate' thing, and yes we should still think of ourselves as lucky. Our fate is to live closer to poverty than we are comfortable with. Some will survive it better than others, but on the whole it's a bad experience. It's not very pleasant, but twice in living memory, the fate of the people was to leave their careers, loves and lives on hold and forfeit 5 years of their lives to a world at war. Who is the luckier? We will get through this. We will see happier times, (and in future be much better informed of the dangers of too much credit). In my own world, this manifests itself as a potential opportunity. Our housing market is saturated with overpriced timber framed properties with a 60 year design life (though some reckon 30 years is more likely), but yet I can build much better houses with a 200 year life span. I live for the day when somebody out there recognises the difference. To get there I have to survive, and the biggest threat to that survival is the debt I'm in. There are two things we need to change. Stop borrowing, and stop craving those things which make us want to borrow. I'm not a commie pinko, nor am I rampant capitalist, I'm just a normal person but it's a daily slap in the face considering the hours I work and the tax I pay to maintain a standard of living not very dissimilar to a life on benefits. These parasites on 'the sick' don't work, can afford to party until 3 am with their rent paid, money in their pockets, £25 a week to feed the dog, subsidy if they have a drink problem, and even more subsidy if they're 'depressed'. Definition of depression? Take a valium the day before your assessment so it appears in your blood test you're on medication. They get handed money to live, and live to get handed money. It's dumb f*"!ks like me who pay for it. Remember the fuel protests in the UK? That was when petrol was 89p a litre. It's now £1.40. That's £6.35 a gallon, or $10.5 per gallon. What are you paying for gas in the US these days? If you think Billie Connolly can swear .....

Hang in there Von Paulus. Things do change. I can't say too much without getting political, but take a look at the recent elections in Scotland. I pass no comments on the politics themselves , just that even the most heavily entrenched beliefs can be overturned, and things you thought you'd never see can come to pass. And between the OT politics and swearing, I'm guessing this thread is skating on thin ice already...

Here endeth the lesson. Amen. Bad Language? What Bad Bad language? Edit - Sorry, this was the clip I was really looking for......

I have a theory that if you let yourself get agitated, you must release some chemical which makes them attack you more. Best thing to do is try to relax and lower your pulse rate. I'm like BH though. I get bitten a little bit, but nothing like as much as other people. And when I do get a bite you'd hardly notice a reaction, neither midge or mosquito. I've seen some people get terrible lumps and bumps. I might be less prone to bites, but I still wouldn't fancy my chances with malaria or a scorpion though, or any of those Aussie spiders that hide in your boots or under the toilet seat. I would feel so cheated to lose my life to a bug you could squish underfoot. Thing I hate the most are ticks though. Horrendous little things. We don't get them frequently, and thankfully my dogs seem to be quite leathery in their hides. The ticks get their jaws into the skin but can't seem to burrow in to any great extent. Twist them slowly and out they usually come. We used to have a collie and when she got a tick it would burrow right in deep and all you could see was the ticks arse, and you had a hell of a job getting them out. Hateful, disgusting little things with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. The funny thing is too, (and she's the only dog I've seen do it), but for some reason she would often get a slug caught in her fur when she'd been outside in the dark. It would freak the bejesus out of her. She'd panic and freak out until you got the slug off. She was a very clever collie, but really didn't like slugs. It was one of those things you'd think was funny until you saw how upset she was.

Sounds horrific BH. Just one of natures feak occurances by the sound of things, a perfect storm for gnats. Closest I can imagine is a storm cloud of midges. We don't have a cure exactly, but feeding them a steady supply of tourists stops them hunting outside their normal territory, and most of the time they leave the rest of us alone.

Anybody here watch Tom and Jerry as a kid? We're having an argument here trying to remember which cartoon episode featues Tom taking to the air using a coffee table as an aeroplane, and flies around the room. So it is OT, but still flight related. Kind of. (The argument was what episode was the best ever Tom and Jerry). I cant remember if he shoots something as a machine gun, but I think he drops either 2 bowling ball bombs or water melon bombs, - but I just cant remember. This episode is not to be mixed up with the one where the budgie drops a bowling ball in front of Tom as he drives a train to run over Jerry. Anybody Tom and Jerry aficianados out there and happy to put us out of our misery? I've run through an episode guide, but none of them mention it. It's just niggling me now. Can't sleep at nights, don't eat, can't concentrate on anything, short tempered, .... I have to know.

It's not what you say that offends people, it's meaning to offend somebody by saying it which really hurts. I don't believe Tom and Jerry ever meant to offend anybody, nor promote violence, nor do anything other than provide 5 minutes entertainment and light relief. A lot of them are 60 years old now, I've seen them over and over, and I still laugh like a drain. Took all of 2 seconds in Triplet Trouble when Tom's got Jerry tied to the table tennis bat. And when I watch it again it will still be funny. Edit. - People go on about the teletubbies being brilliant because even though they don't speak kid's who speak Spanish get the same story as kids speaking German etc. Big deal, the Clangers were doing that in 1969, - but it was also entertaining. (But that might have been because the soup dragon was always swearing, - well seemed that way to me).

Thanks fellas. Peace of mind at last. Such a shame Tom and Jerry isn't pc these days. Quite sure it never did me any harm. Didn't matter what you were doing, but it stopped when Tom and Jerry came on TV.

I have similar curiosity about how you might explain the concept of electricity to someone who'd never seen or heard of it before, but explain it in a way that make him sure you're not talking about some supernatural godlike entity which chooses to live behind your skirting board. "Well, first of it's invisible, but you'll find a little bit of it is present in every living thing all around you. It is your friend, and your servant, but it has the power to kill you if you don't respect it properly. You can't kill it with weapons, but it has the power to move things, lift things, make things go on fire, and make metal machines come to life. If you do respect it properly, it will also provide warmth and light for you and your family whenever you like, wash your clothes, prepare your food, and let you see and speak to your friends who are thousands of miles away. You can also pop a little piece of the 'magic' into a little travelling case called a battery, and carry it's magical presence and power with you wherever you go. You can't see it, but it's all around the house, it's usually pretty friendly if you treat it correctly, but occassionally, you might see wild electricity jumping about in the sky, splitting trees and setting fire to church spires. But don't worry, trust me, it isn't a god. Just keep on making a little offering to the electric company once a month, life will be sweet and everything will be fine".

It's quite funny, but this topic has touched on two extremes of my 'wondering'. Religion, and witnessing the end of the world. I don't want to see either. I don't believe in any God, but paradoxically, I find it easier to accept that everything is pre-ordained - at least to a degree, because in real terms, it is. We are all on a path, but we each have the power to influence that path by our own judgement. I sometimes wonder whether as a species, our fate is in our own hands. While it may take millions of years to happen, (lets hope so anyway), our planet will fail one day, and if we are still confined here and nowhere else, then that's the end of us. I don't think our future is that bleak however. I think we have on this planet enough resources, and the intelligence and imagination to 'somehow' find a way to transport ourselves to other planets, so that we might continue as a species after our beloved Earth is finished. We don't have the technology yet, but 100 years ago we barely had the technology to fly and look at us now. The problem is, it's not a certainty, and the clock is forever ticking. If we squander our resources, we will fail, if we dither and bemuse ourselves with wars and indolence we will run out of time and we won't be ready before the end comes. People say we wont go back to the moon because there's no profit in it, but I think that's very short sighted. We should look upon the resources we have on planet earth and use them to optimise our survival above all else, not the abstract and unnatural concept of profit. Money has no value in nature and will count for very little if our planet is doomed by some forthcoming disaster, but by then it will be too late. We might hope for someone like Bruce Willis to blow it up and save us, but even Bruce Willis needed a space ship and a nuclear bomb - which thankfully somebody else had had the foresight to invent. In what's left of my lifetime, I'd like to see us back on the moon, finding ways to sustain life on a barren rock, and using the lesser gravity to develop vehicles designed for space exploration with a view to our long term survival. - Massive deep space exploration vehicles crewed with colonies of people resigned to generation after generation of deep space exploration and never to see Earth again, but still be content to play their part in humanities future. - That means a ship which can renew itself for millenia, and provide a lifetime of contentment and fulfilment equal or better to a life on Earth. A ship thats a mini planet in its own right. Blimey, I sound like a Trekkie.... Beam me up Scottie. That's the depressing side to it, how far we have to go, but on the up side, considering we only took to the skies and descovered electricity pretty recently, we're not doing too badly. We've already set foot on our moon, and we're looking further and further into the distance of space. We may not yet be doing all we can to get into space proper, but we know how to do it, and that is quite literally the giant leap for humanity. The good thing is, we all fit into this. Rich, poor, intelligent, stupid, we are all part of the machine. Even the unfortunate junkie squandering his life on benefits can perhaps inspire somebody else to take a different path with their life. Nature wastes nothing. For now, profit and money does matter to us because it creates aspiration and desire, and the will to better ourselves makes us try new ideas to please each other. Even military aggression is necessary, because it provokes us to excell in our technologies and accelerate research. I hope in the future we will see progress driven by the pure lust for learning, not riding piggy back on military invention or personal profit advantage. Will this all come to pass? Yes. I believe it will...someday. Have we time left to do it? I don't know, but at least we're all more aware how delicate our planet is, and I think we're making better choices now, but we've a long, long way to go. This isn't a religious faith, but I have absolute faith we will one day do this, and a lot more besides. And when our Earth fails, by accident of nature or sheer exhaustion of our sun, we'll be ready, and already have firm footholds on other planets and pioneers opening up new frontiers. We won't need time machines, but we will need spacecraft far, far, far, beyond our current technologies. Wow. I should really stop eating cheese before bed time.

On the subject of solving mysteries, I also wouldn't mind seeing how the Picts in Iron Age Scotland vitrified the walls of their hill forts. - That is around 1000BC they fused extensive areas of the stones together like glass forming vitrified walls to their forts. Nobody knows how or why they did it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort Modern archaeologists have managed to melt pieces of rock with authentic materials of the time, but nothing to the extent the picts managed to do it, and there is much more besides still not understood. It's predominantly a Scottish phenomenon which remains unexplained as far as I'm concerned. Come to think of it, there's a whole lot more I'd like to learn about the Picts. It would be a tough call to choose your two days of time travel, a really tough choice.

That's the original video, but it doesn't seem to play these days. Here's a different version which plays better. It is worth watching.... Going back to the time machine, - there's a little voice in my head shouting 'dinosaurs'. @Olham - If you wanted to make money, I expect you could sell your ticket for the time machine.

Bannockburn, 1314. ... But on the way back I'd keep my eye out the window as we passed 1815 for a quick glimpse of Waterloo, and 1944 for D-Day too... And if it wasn't just two days, I'd like to spend some time in Edinburgh between 1780 and 1850, just to speak to the stonemasons working there. The things I might learn from them, and just to see how certain things were actually done. Not the big stuff, that I reckon I understand, but the little, clever bits which nobody ever notices, special mortar mixes, storing stuff, doing things without electricity etc. You get so tired listening to so called experts who make a good living talking rubbish. It would be nice to see the real story from the mouths of the men who actually did the business. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.... Now that I think about it, I'd probably choose Edinburgh. I'd love to see the spectacle of a great battle, any battle really, but I would benefit much more by learning things from tradesmen at the pinnacle of their craft, and have them explain things which have always puzzled me.

I always find a citation for a VC to be compelling, and to get one twice is incredible. I know Crete was fierce and desperate, with the allied troops so agonisingly close to overcoming the German invasion by paratroops. - And these were the real deal German Paratroops when they were truly elite and fresh, not thinned out with lesser replacements as they were later in the war. Indeed, it was the allied soldiers on Crete who did much of the 'thinning'. Now I could be wrong here, but if I remember right, it was the Kiwis on the hill overlooking the airstrip at Maleme who stopped the Germans using it for days as I remember -(note- I remember as in I remember reading about it - I certainly wasn't there), to the point it became critical to the Germans. They were genuinely staring at defeat. It was only once the allied troops were (possibly wrongly) considered as 'spent' by higher command and had been 'strategically' ordered to withdraw inland to form a shorter front for the allies to defend that Maleme fell out of artillery range (ground and air) and Ju52's were finally able to begin landing the reinforcements which proved so decisive to the battle. If they hadn't gained the use of the airstrip when they did, the Germans would have lost the battle for Crete. As it is, casualties were so huge that such mass parachute drops were never again tried by the Germans, - and this was very good news for Malta which was next in line and desperately vulnerable to paratroops. Malta was much more important strategically that Crete, as the Germans in North Africa found out to their cost. Equally damaging to the Nazis, was the large number of Ju-52 transports lost in Crete (some 150 Ju-52 destroyed with as many again damaged, often beyond repair) which could not be replaced quickly, and which weren't available to support Barbarossa. Think of all that fuel, food and ammunition going to the Eastern Front by truck instead of aircraft. In particular, fewer were available to fly in supplies to Stalingrad via Goering's forlorn 'air bridge'. Would those numbers of extra transport aircraft have told? Who knows, ... but 150 - 300 aircraft? - it is a maybe. It just goes to show how far the actions of a few brave men can reach. All of that chain of events started with men like Charles Upham VC having the backbone to stand their ground and fight. Their actions can change everything. I reckon that's what makes a hero, and its why we have them. We need those men who hold on when all is lost, because from time to time they prove that all is not lost. It is a good read, but I have to say, (and I don't mean it to sound like a competition), but my very favourite VC remains Major Robert Henry Cain at Arnhem. It's not just the spin Jeremy Clarkson put on it on TV, (his wifes father), but the nature of what he did, what he did it with, and for his own daughter only finding out about it after he died in 197?. F___g Airborne!!!

It's very funny. - The exact roll reversal of me and my big dog. He's the one who tells me that it's my lunch which has mysteriously disappeared.

Downloading now.... What does it do UKW?