On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 14:40:57 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:32 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> > I gave my mordan short 80W speakers, twop old dysons, and quite a bit of other stuff to the british heart foundation , they didn;t want my old computers
>> >> > as it'd take them too long to erase discs, finding pucka sotfware and get them working.
>> >> I used to know a postgrad student how did that as a hobby, he took old computers and did them up to give to charity. He used to come to me for a few spare parts to complete them. I gave him stuff for free that was too old for any research use.
>> >
>> > A friend did that bought cheap items tested them on his Macs and if they worked he then sold them on ebay as working on Mac OS
>> > He made a bit of money but he just lovered doing it for a year or so then got bored.
>> At the school I found a cupboard full of antique stuff, including two Domesday machines I got working and loads of Mac Classics. My predecessor shoved them in there to avoid the £20 per item disposal fee. I put everything on Ebay at an average of £50 an item and made a couple of grand. I got to keep the money, the school was happy to get an empty cupboard and not pay the disposal fee.
>
> That's how I got my SE-30 as the SIMM holders went brittle and snapped so you could have any more than 4MB installed.
>
> That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.

There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.

> I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
> I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
> Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.

I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.

> 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.

Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.

> 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
>
> We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
> We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera

20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.

> this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
> Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
> Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.

Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.

> I have a ledger book with some things listed
> 125uF 3.5KV capacitor £35 in may 1964 in todays money that's about £700 !
> Model 7 AVO £16 june 1957 in todays money that's about £400 !
>
>> >> >> > No problem for me, even the night bus is every 15mins, 30-45 mins from the club,
>> >> >> > don;t have to worry about drinking to much either.
>> >> >> Doesn't the bus driver refuse to let you on when you keep falling over?
>> >> >
>> >> > Which I don't. Getting out in the iopen air sort of sobers me up enough to be able to walk the few 100 metres to teh bus stop.
>> >> I'm very good at being drunk. I can be 5 times over the legal limit and the police don't even notice. Once I was completely stoned too, all I got was a fine for not wearing a seatbelt. Stupid fuckers.
>> >
>> > One thing I've always wondered about is how far over the legal limit I'd be but I've never been tested.
>> > From being a bit merry to telling crap jokes to falling over and ending up comatosed on the floor and not being able to get to bed.
>> I don't get that drunk, but I do consume a very large amount, since I use it all the time and have got used to it. Even as a teenager, the first time I ever had drink, my friend got utterly pissed and couldn't stand up and I could hardly feel it having had the same amount. His girlfriend though it was funny when he started a fight with me and planted his face into the ground when I stepped to one side.
>
> People do have differnt tolerancies alsot deoends on speed of drinking and whether you've had anything to eat.

I think my body classes ethanol as a fuel.

>> It's daft they go by blood alcohol percentage, when the same number can affect people by different amounts. It's also been shown that being tired has precisely the same effect on driving as being drunk, but you don't lose your license for that.
>
> Yeah or looking in the mirror to do makeup.

I once followed two women in separate cars on a 2 lane motorway. They were in 1 lane each, with the windows down, shouting across to each other having a discussion about something. After a couple of minutes they noticed I wanted past, waved in apology, and let me through. Having a conversation between cars didn't bother me, but only going 70, WTF?

> I used to drive better at caremggedon after a few drinks back from the pub ......

Indeed, a small amount of drink increases brain activity. Health too. You have to drink more than 4 times the government recommended amount to start having a detrimental effect on your health.

Did you get the splat pack?

I did like killing the old grannies shouting "I was in the war!"

>> Anyway I drive better when drunk because I know I'm drunk and pay more attention.
>
> Would like to be able to myself in such circumstances.

So now you want to drive? Thought you didn't see the point?

On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:10:07 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, 9 July 2022 at 14:52:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:34:39 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 22:29:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:17:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Every single thing, I did some random tests to check. Just think of a few things, find them on both. Ebay is always a lot less.
>> >> >
>> >> > OK, here's a couple of things I'm looking to buy.
>> >> >
>> >> > 4 of these "Make: Electronics, 3e: Learning by Discovery: A Hands-On Primer for the New Electronics Enthusiast."
>> >> >
>> >> > If supervisor likes them as they have in previous years will be ordering 100-200 depending on how many students sign up for the course in september.
>> >> £21 paperback Amazon and Ebay. Ebay has about 10 in stock, I couldn't work out how to see the stock level in Amazon as their web page is an unintuitive piece of shit.
>> >well 30 as that's how far you could scroll down , when ordering before I;ve notice that's how they do things.
>> What are you talking about "as far as you can scroll down"?
>
> When you click on the number yuo can scroll down to enter the number yuo want to order it went to 30 and stopped.

No, I was opening each one to see how many each guy had in stock.

>> >> > I need to make up better leads for the DMMs, the path of least hassle for me is to buy sets of these :-
>> >> > Sealey Jumper Test Lead Set 5 Pairs (or similar) cut in half so 20 per pack
>> >> Ugh, I've got those, don't try to put more than an amp through them or they melt.
>> >
>> > Well for DMMs we don't need much current we try to aviod using them to measure current.
>> I often measure current. An amp or so. Difficult to get leads that like that, especially without dropping many volts.
>
> Yes that's the disadvantage of measuring amps.
> Most things run on volts, which is why I hope they'll teach students about current limits on our PSU.
> Most things they do run on less that 1amp.

I deal with stuff well over that. An amp clamp is nice though, especially for a car where I can't be bothered disconnecting stuff in awkward places.

>> > We buy quite a bit of Elegoo stuff
>> > we are going to try these even cheaper as we really only want just black and red (maybe green if we had to) to encourage the students to colour code.
>> > (most DMM probes come in red and black)
>> > https://www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-524603-pk-of-20-croc-leads-10-red-10-black-460mm-52-4603
>> > £5.63 and free P&P
>> > if we order today they'll be here on Monday
>> Yes I used Rapid and CPC/Farnell a lot, much cheaper than RS. I just used RS for difficult to get things. I got mains plugs from CPC for 20p each!
>
> Mains plugs who buys them

Me. Things have to be plugged in.

> I've over 200 IEC leads and if we put a plug on anything college says it needs a PAT test cert which is £1.39

So don't tell them you did it.

> but have to wait until someone comes and does the test, it;s been 4 years since the last tests

Fuck that, I did that PAT testing myself. £80 for a PAT test machine. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it, less if you just put the sticker on it and assume it's fine.

On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:52:32 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 14:42:35 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:48:29 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 19:20:18 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:08:43 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 15:36:56 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 01:41:25 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail..com> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> Perhaps your finance department wasn't so corrupt. Universities are more privatised (therefore accountable) than schools.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > I guess so, there's lines of responsibility as the cost of anything goes up you have to get supervisor approval and then it goes to the course organiser , then head of school then head of department, then to the principle for things like the laser PCB maker which is £250k.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I'm sure my council had backhanders. There was a "study" that showed inkjet printers cost 14p a page to print in colour, so we were told to use the rented Xerox colour photocopier at 6p a page. I pointed out we were using Brother printers with fake ink at 1p a page. Then I find out the study was conducted by..... Xerox! And using HP (the most expensive shite) with genuine (WTF?) cartridges. Never got them to back down, but they turned a blind eye to my Brother printer and ink purchases on Ebay. The staff certainly preferred not having to walk right across the building to fetch printouts. I even made a stack of them (we got some square ones with scanners on top), I piled 6 high and plugged them into the same machine, got them all running at once to do big jobs of thousands of pages like the school calender. Wonderful things, an LED came on on anything that ran out of paper or ink and I just slotted a new cartridge in the front.
>> >> >
>> >> > We're using HP printers they are pretty good quality prints , good enough for most photos , cost about ~12p per page 3p for monochrome.
>> >> Try Brother or Epson and get cheap fake cartridges, or better yet an official or unofficial continuous ink supply system. At home I get the equivalent of 13p a cartridge!
>> >
>> > Nothing to do with me or even the department , we just print and that's it. It's a college wide system.
>> Your department doesn't have it's own printers?
>
> No why would we.

When I worked in a uni there were about 50 printers in use in one department. I'd probably change a toner or ink cartridge 8 times a day. How the hell do your staff get buy without printing?

> Only research, if they need a specific printer for a specific reason, such as one inkjet that was specailly desgined for using with conductive ink.
> and the few poster printers we have. They just replace the printers after 2-3 years
> Presently a Pagewide Managed color MFP E77660 and a Pagewide Managed color MFP E58650.
> All controlled by college IT services , they keep counts of how many prints the students do , students can use a card to pay for credits to print more.
> But they don;t print much, course work is mainly emailed in as PDF instructions and labsheets sent to them as PDFs.
> We sometimes print out help sheets and some basic labs sheets.
> Why would we need our own printers ?

So in a lecture they're all at a computer are they? Nothing is on paper?

>> >> > Calcucting costs is difficult but when printing almost full page colour it does use more ink, I did the calcualtions years ago and in the days when we used inkjet it cost about 25p per A4 page for photos or graphs which had more than 75%
>> >> > of the area coloured in.
>> >> > We use access cards to print and so do all students and members off staff we don;t send our prints to a printer they go to a server and I can go almost anywhere on campus and use almost any printer.
>> >> > So if a printer is out of action or consumables just go to another one.
>> >> > I never have to fill them with paper or toner as that's included, the printer just sends a message to someone and within a day they come and replace or fill them.
>> >> > A3 and A4 500 sheet capacity I keep a ream or 2 of paper for emergencies though plus some photo quality paper.
>> >> I've never used a printer where the ink costs more than the paper.
>> >
>> > Well the cheap stadard papper is OK for most things. But if you want a print to last you need better paper. We have a few large format printers for posters and stuff, up to A0 I think.
>> I thought it was the ink that mattered for longevity. Immunity to UV for example.
>
> No it;s the paper too how much ink it soaks up, glossy matt, pearl stipple depending on effect.
> differnt papper abosrb diffenert amounts of ink and sometimes the cheap inks aren;t colourfast.
> If you want the best you don't use standard ink anyway you use dye sublimation ink

I find stuff in sunlight fades, but surely that's only down to the ink, not the paper. I'm not going to put fancy expensive ink in just for the odd time I need it colourfast.

I'm thinking of changing my inkjet to a colour laser anyway, I'm sick of the ink clogging up if I don't use it for a while. Cheapest colour inkjet is £60 new. 2nd hand ones are already fucked. Cheapest 2nd hand colour laser (which will work fine as they never break) is £80, and toner can't dry up.

>> >> >> >> >> >> > we bought 50 of these Bench Top Linear Power Supply, 0-30V 5A with Twin Outputs.
>> >> >> >> >> >> These? Did you drop a link?
>> >> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> >> > was from onecall but the site was down for maintenance, seemed more expensive on ebay when we looked and only had a couple and weighing about 5-6KG each P&P was expensive .
>> >> >> >> >> Occasionally it's cheaper elsewhere, but I always start with Ebay, and if the price looks too much I have a search elsewhere. And absolutely never used overpriced Amazon. That's just Ebay with less choices and more cost.
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > That's not my experience , the dd thing is cheaper on ebay but not by much.
>> >> >> >> Every single thing, I did some random tests to check. Just think of a few things, find them on both. Ebay is always a lot less.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > I'll let you know the next thing(s) we are looking for.
>> >> >> If it's something specialist you might find it's cheaper on CPC etc, but Ebay is always less than Amazon. It's because the seller fees are much higher (double!) on Amazon.
>> >> >
>> >> > Well I believe it when I see it.
>> >> > ebays trick is not to include P&P in the price, amazon always include P&P as long as you spend more than £20.
>> >> Other way round. On Ebay the results clearly show postage, and if you sort by price it includes the postage in the calculation. Amazon is all over the place with postage.
>> >
>> > Never seems to be a problem when we order.
>>
>> Every time I look at Amazon I can't tell what the postage will be.
>
> I guess it depends on what you order but we've never seem to have a problem as we don;t have prime either.
> The only time we don;t know is if teh total is below £20 then it says at the top add £xxxx for free P&P.
> Even when we had £19.99 it said £0.01p for free P&P

Ebay is very simple, the postage is shown in the search list.

> I find ebay more confusing as you don;t know which carrier they'll be using.
> tried to order 300 2N3904 on ebay what a pain first supllier only had 140 in stock, another only had 200,
> and non seem to be cheaper than rapid .

Ebay is best for ordering the odd thing. Bulk is cheapest from big suppliers. I bought a pack of 10 fuses the other day, getting that from Rapid would have cost more in postage than the fuses.

>> >> I have to almost buy each product to find out the postage.
>> >> >> >> > Some sort of fast propulsion drive for probes to other planets he claimed it was faster than anything NASA had, he wanted to prove it. Not sure we could do that in a lab.
>> >> >> >> > Can you image the problems using a 5KV pulse generator to ignite high octane fuel :-0
>> >> >> >> I assume you have some outdoor areas?
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Not really and you'd need people there in case of any accidents and to take responsibility
>> >> >> > something like that needs a serious risk assessment.
>> >> >> Get to fuck. Why can't people take responsibility for themselves? This isn't fucking America. We're better than that.
>> >> >
>> >> > Yep give any loon a gun, that's works out well doesn;t it.
>> >> > God protects them from covid but they still need a gun because God won;t prodect them from fellow americans.
>> >> > fucking idiots.
>> >> At least they can shoot the police.
>> > Like on jan 6th good idea.
>> Armor piercing bullets is the answer, called "cop killers". Don't let them control us.
>
> Ours don't control us.

They bloody do, there's 150,000 laws you're meant to follow, I doubt you know what they all are.

>> >> > You claimed to have been on a beach with a liffe guard why are they needed if you can't swim you shouldn't go in the water.
>> >> I can swim and there shouldn't be life guards.
>> > couldn;t care less myself.
>> I do when one tells me off for swimming outside his precious little zone.
>
> That's what happened to an idiot who died after swimming in a quarry.
> and some before him.

Why would you die swimming in a quarry? It's just water.

>> >> >> > After the last incident a couple of years ago when someone was working after 6pm flushed some chemicals down the sink and there was an explosion took out quite a few windows and wreck the room the police turned up with the bomb squad before anyone really knew what happened.
>> >> >> > Lots of questions on why the student wasn't being supervised, he got quite badly burnt from what I heard.
>> >> >> Which is entirely the student's fault and nobody is to blame but him. He's not a child.
>> >> >
>> >> > He obviously didn't know which chemicals shouldn;t be mixed that's why there's safety rules and notices and training given.
>> >> That's fucking pathetic. People are such pansies nowadays, they think tiny risks are important.
>> >
>> > That's how yuo leanr the problem comes when yuo're standing close to some idiot and you get injured.
>> Too unlikely to happen for me to care.
>
> How do you know that.

46 years of experience.

>> >> > He should even been putting them down the sink in the first place.
>> >> > Maybe he couldn't read, maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe he though it wasn't his reposonsibity to lok aafter the equipment he's been given.
>> >> > All very basic stuff but for most things if yuo are doing something that could be dangerous to have someone around that can help.
>> >> >
>> >> > But who's paying for the costs of the rebuild and his hospital costs, yes you the tax payer.
>> >> He should. You see the trouble with your way is someone higher up takes responsibility for "not teaching him" or "not supervising him". Just blame the person that did it.
>> >If it'd been my lab he wouldn't be allowed in there after 5pm.
>> > Would you allow someone to drive your car that couldn't drive,
>> Yes of course.
>
> How do you know they'll bring it back in one piece if at all.

Not my problem.

>> > I'm guess you would and if he crashed it and died you'd lose the car, but who would you blame.
>> Him, he crashed it. I'd expect money from his assets.
>
> What makes you think he'd have assets if he had to borrow your car.
> He could be homeless mentally ill or a psycho.
> he might not even pay for the pertrol used.

I tend to lend things to people I know.

>> > Great idea but sometimes they end up dead who do you blame then.
>> > Like the footballer in the light aircraft .
>> This?
>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46966424
>>
>> "even the most fit person would only survive for a few hours in the water." - Bullshit, fit people can swim for more than a few hours. Even I'm happy at 3 hours.
>
> That depends on the water.

Well apart form highly acidic water next to a volcano, there isn't much that would kill you off.

>> So what was this about? I don't watch the news.
>
> Who should be blamed and how does it help.

Nobody should be blamed. The person flying the plane crashed it. Can't blame anyone else.

> you said you've driven in paris how did you get across the water , did you swim.

Paris isn't full of water.

On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:21:34 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:55:50 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:27 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:07:59 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> > A friend of a frind had an 8.5" but when he got a hard on he got a bad nose bleed which didn;t exacly
> >> >> > turnn his lady friend on, felt quite sorry for him but couldnt; resist laughing when he told me ,
> >> >> > and everytime I saw him chat a girl up.
> >> >> ROTFPMSL! Why on earth would a stiffy be connected with nosebleeds? Nosebleeds are usually high blood pressure, maybe the pressure goes up when excited and is enough to burst the blood vessels in his nose.
> >> >
> >> > Yes that's exactly what happens , and why when people get angry their blood pressure goes up and they go red.
> >> > Blood vessels can burst too which adds to the effect.
> >> I went to school with a girl who could make her whole face go bright red at will. Didn't seem too wise to me.
> >
> > Maybe it was a 'special' school for unwise kids ;-)
> Her brother took karate. Somehow he got into a fight with 10 of his classmates and lost.

why should that suprise me.
doing karate doesn't mean you can win a fight, well only in crap films.

> >> >> >> >> > Know anyone that wants to buy a 4x CD RW SCSI, a SCSI flatbed scanner , a G3 tower , Macplus, mac SE/30, LC475. 2 zip drives. I can;t be bothered making sure they all work , then taking photos etc...
> >> >> >> >> Sounds like a bunch of old junk, just list the whole lot and shove it on freecycle.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > One day, I'd like to get them all working in a room but haven't got the space.
> >> >> >> I've got addicted to that. I have a total of 3 smartphones, 9 CPUs, and 13 graphics cards running 24/7 doing a lot of science research. Alzheimers today. They're studying a certain protein that makes some people completely immune to it. I have a couple of neighbours with it so I'm doing my bit.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > That's good but how effienct is the old kit for number crunching, is it really worth the cost of the electricity.
> >> >> It heats the house anyway. And yeah I could buy new stuff to use less power, but newer stuff is very expensive at the moment. I also like running stuff into the ground. I don't give a shit if my car gets fuck all mpg for example, it's still going after 20 years.
> >> >
> >> > So is my mac still like to play the odd game of starcraft on it.
> >> I just repaired a 17 year old monitor. Just needed three capacitors. I put some low ESR ones in, they should last longer than 17 years :-)
> >
> > Is it top of the range SVGA ;-)
> 17" 1280*1024 LCD. Got it for free a few years ago.

Still got my Apple 17" studio display ADC in the loft .
£20 on ebay hardly worth the cost of shipping let alone anything else.

On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:28:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 14:40:57 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:32 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> > I gave my mordan short 80W speakers, twop old dysons, and quite a bit of other stuff to the british heart foundation , they didn;t want my old computers
> >> >> > as it'd take them too long to erase discs, finding pucka sotfware and get them working.
> >> >> I used to know a postgrad student how did that as a hobby, he took old computers and did them up to give to charity. He used to come to me for a few spare parts to complete them. I gave him stuff for free that was too old for any research use.
> >> >
> >> > A friend did that bought cheap items tested them on his Macs and if they worked he then sold them on ebay as working on Mac OS
> >> > He made a bit of money but he just lovered doing it for a year or so then got bored.
> >> At the school I found a cupboard full of antique stuff, including two Domesday machines I got working and loads of Mac Classics. My predecessor shoved them in there to avoid the £20 per item disposal fee. I put everything on Ebay at an average of £50 an item and made a couple of grand.. I got to keep the money, the school was happy to get an empty cupboard and not pay the disposal fee.
> >
> > That's how I got my SE-30 as the SIMM holders went brittle and snapped so you could have any more than 4MB installed.
> >
> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.

Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.

> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.

I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.

> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.
> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
Not recently did a few years back.

> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
> >
> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.

Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
I think it needed a major service.

> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.

Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.

> > I have a ledger book with some things listed
> > 125uF 3.5KV capacitor £35 in may 1964 in todays money that's about £700 !
> > Model 7 AVO £16 june 1957 in todays money that's about £400 !
> >
> >> >> >> > No problem for me, even the night bus is every 15mins, 30-45 mins from the club,
> >> >> >> > don;t have to worry about drinking to much either.
> >> >> >> Doesn't the bus driver refuse to let you on when you keep falling over?
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Which I don't. Getting out in the iopen air sort of sobers me up enough to be able to walk the few 100 metres to teh bus stop.
> >> >> I'm very good at being drunk. I can be 5 times over the legal limit and the police don't even notice. Once I was completely stoned too, all I got was a fine for not wearing a seatbelt. Stupid fuckers.
> >> >
> >> > One thing I've always wondered about is how far over the legal limit I'd be but I've never been tested.
> >> > From being a bit merry to telling crap jokes to falling over and ending up comatosed on the floor and not being able to get to bed.
> >> I don't get that drunk, but I do consume a very large amount, since I use it all the time and have got used to it. Even as a teenager, the first time I ever had drink, my friend got utterly pissed and couldn't stand up and I could hardly feel it having had the same amount. His girlfriend though it was funny when he started a fight with me and planted his face into the ground when I stepped to one side.
> >
> > People do have differnt tolerancies alsot deoends on speed of drinking and whether you've had anything to eat.
> I think my body classes ethanol as a fuel.

I think when that happens it's alcohlism the body uses aclchol and doesn;t use 'food' as efficiently and that's why you just can;t go cold turkey and be 'cured' like you cxan to tobacco or herion/cocaine etc...

> >> It's daft they go by blood alcohol percentage, when the same number can affect people by different amounts. It's also been shown that being tired has precisely the same effect on driving as being drunk, but you don't lose your license for that.
> >
> > Yeah or looking in the mirror to do makeup.
> I once followed two women in separate cars on a 2 lane motorway. They were in 1 lane each, with the windows down, shouting across to each other having a discussion about something. After a couple of minutes they noticed I wanted past, waved in apology, and let me through. Having a conversation between cars didn't bother me, but only going 70, WTF?

Some people can react faster than others.

> > I used to drive better at caremggedon after a few drinks back from the pub ......
> Indeed, a small amount of drink increases brain activity. Health too. You have to drink more than 4 times the government recommended amount to start having a detrimental effect on your health.
>
> Did you get the splat pack?

Yes.

>
> I did like killing the old grannies shouting "I was in the war!"
> >> Anyway I drive better when drunk because I know I'm drunk and pay more attention.
> >
> > Would like to be able to myself in such circumstances.
> So now you want to drive? Thought you didn't see the point?

Well I mean drive a real car, a formula 1 and formula E in various states of drunkness
then plot a grphs of times against blood alcohol and any over axis.
Always find it interesting how in the US they get people to walk a straight line and touch their nose.

Flying a plane too , but as a fun thing to try, don;t really want to spend the time and money to get qualified
or buy a plane, well not until I win the lottery, well I did a could of weeks ago but as usually I spent the lot on a can
in the club £5.50 !, almost double my euro millions £2.40 win.

Was wathcing a bit of the grande prix sunday after about 10 seconds I realised I recognised the red bull track from a game I play.

On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:48:16 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:52:32 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 14:42:35 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:48:29 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 19:20:18 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:08:43 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 15:36:56 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 01:41:25 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >> Perhaps your finance department wasn't so corrupt. Universities are more privatised (therefore accountable) than schools.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > I guess so, there's lines of responsibility as the cost of anything goes up you have to get supervisor approval and then it goes to the course organiser , then head of school then head of department, then to the principle for things like the laser PCB maker which is £250k.
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> I'm sure my council had backhanders. There was a "study" that showed inkjet printers cost 14p a page to print in colour, so we were told to use the rented Xerox colour photocopier at 6p a page. I pointed out we were using Brother printers with fake ink at 1p a page. Then I find out the study was conducted by..... Xerox! And using HP (the most expensive shite) with genuine (WTF?) cartridges. Never got them to back down, but they turned a blind eye to my Brother printer and ink purchases on Ebay. The staff certainly preferred not having to walk right across the building to fetch printouts. I even made a stack of them (we got some square ones with scanners on top), I piled 6 high and plugged them into the same machine, got them all running at once to do big jobs of thousands of pages like the school calender. Wonderful things, an LED came on on anything that ran out of paper or ink and I just slotted a new cartridge in the front.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > We're using HP printers they are pretty good quality prints , good enough for most photos , cost about ~12p per page 3p for monochrome.
> >> >> Try Brother or Epson and get cheap fake cartridges, or better yet an official or unofficial continuous ink supply system. At home I get the equivalent of 13p a cartridge!
> >> >
> >> > Nothing to do with me or even the department , we just print and that's it. It's a college wide system.
> >> Your department doesn't have it's own printers?
> >
> > No why would we.
> When I worked in a uni there were about 50 printers in use in one department. I'd probably change a toner or ink cartridge 8 times a day. How the hell do your staff get buy without printing?

printing is so 20th century, why do we need to print should be the question..
even if we use ebay we don't have to send them a gross of sheep in exchange for products.
There's a printer in most labs and perhaps a couple in the main shared offices.
If an acadmic wants a printer they can order one from their grant money and they;'ll have to fill it and replace the ink.
we have done the same with bins especailly since covid not every office has 2 bins that the cleaners have to collect from.
There are bins in corridors and shared offices, I don;t have a bin, I jusrt use the
All the student labsheets are on-line as PDF, all the order forms students use are in google-docs.
Had one pHd student come to me yesterday asking for soldering board , I handed him some 'veroboard he said not that type,
then he showed me an image of martix board on his phone so I gave him that instead I said we don't use really use this much.
He wanted a 3 pin lead no idea what type again showed me what he wanted on the phone it was a female to female 3 pin JST lead 2.54mm pitch.
he was pleased because I had one in stock , but he he said that means they don't need ordering so don;t have to go on the ordering form, wait till he sees I've added them
He didn't know any of that he just wanted a lead with 3 pins, he was lucky he could show me a a picture there an then otherwise I;d have given him a IEC lead,
and said this has 3 pins.

> > Only research, if they need a specific printer for a specific reason, such as one inkjet that was specailly desgined for using with conductive ink..
> > and the few poster printers we have. They just replace the printers after 2-3 years
> > Presently a Pagewide Managed color MFP E77660 and a Pagewide Managed color MFP E58650.
> > All controlled by college IT services , they keep counts of how many prints the students do , students can use a card to pay for credits to print more.
> > But they don;t print much, course work is mainly emailed in as PDF instructions and labsheets sent to them as PDFs.
> > We sometimes print out help sheets and some basic labs sheets.
> > Why would we need our own printers ?
> So in a lecture they're all at a computer are they? Nothing is on paper?
> >> >> > Calcucting costs is difficult but when printing almost full page colour it does use more ink, I did the calcualtions years ago and in the days when we used inkjet it cost about 25p per A4 page for photos or graphs which had more than 75%
> >> >> > of the area coloured in.
> >> >> > We use access cards to print and so do all students and members off staff we don;t send our prints to a printer they go to a server and I can go almost anywhere on campus and use almost any printer.
> >> >> > So if a printer is out of action or consumables just go to another one.
> >> >> > I never have to fill them with paper or toner as that's included, the printer just sends a message to someone and within a day they come and replace or fill them.
> >> >> > A3 and A4 500 sheet capacity I keep a ream or 2 of paper for emergencies though plus some photo quality paper.
> >> >> I've never used a printer where the ink costs more than the paper.
> >> >
> >> > Well the cheap stadard papper is OK for most things. But if you want a print to last you need better paper. We have a few large format printers for posters and stuff, up to A0 I think.
> >> I thought it was the ink that mattered for longevity. Immunity to UV for example.
> >
> > No it;s the paper too how much ink it soaks up, glossy matt, pearl stipple depending on effect.
> > differnt papper abosrb diffenert amounts of ink and sometimes the cheap inks aren;t colourfast.
> > If you want the best you don't use standard ink anyway you use dye sublimation ink
> I find stuff in sunlight fades, but surely that's only down to the ink, not the paper. I'm not going to put fancy expensive ink in just for the odd time I need it colourfast.
>
> I'm thinking of changing my inkjet to a colour laser anyway, I'm sick of the ink clogging up if I don't use it for a while. Cheapest colour inkjet is £60 new. 2nd hand ones are already fucked. Cheapest 2nd hand colour laser (which will work fine as they never break) is £80, and toner can't dry up.
> >> >> >> >> >> >> > we bought 50 of these Bench Top Linear Power Supply, 0-30V 5A with Twin Outputs.
> >> >> >> >> >> >> These? Did you drop a link?
> >> >> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >> >> > was from onecall but the site was down for maintenance, seemed more expensive on ebay when we looked and only had a couple and weighing about 5-6KG each P&P was expensive .
> >> >> >> >> >> Occasionally it's cheaper elsewhere, but I always start with Ebay, and if the price looks too much I have a search elsewhere. And absolutely never used overpriced Amazon. That's just Ebay with less choices and more cost.
> >> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >> > That's not my experience , the dd thing is cheaper on ebay but not by much.
> >> >> >> >> Every single thing, I did some random tests to check. Just think of a few things, find them on both. Ebay is always a lot less.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > I'll let you know the next thing(s) we are looking for.
> >> >> >> If it's something specialist you might find it's cheaper on CPC etc, but Ebay is always less than Amazon. It's because the seller fees are much higher (double!) on Amazon.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Well I believe it when I see it.
> >> >> > ebays trick is not to include P&P in the price, amazon always include P&P as long as you spend more than £20.
> >> >> Other way round. On Ebay the results clearly show postage, and if you sort by price it includes the postage in the calculation. Amazon is all over the place with postage.
> >> >
> >> > Never seems to be a problem when we order.
> >>
> >> Every time I look at Amazon I can't tell what the postage will be.
> >
> > I guess it depends on what you order but we've never seem to have a problem as we don;t have prime either.
> > The only time we don;t know is if teh total is below £20 then it says at the top add £xxxx for free P&P.
> > Even when we had £19.99 it said £0.01p for free P&P
> Ebay is very simple, the postage is shown in the search list.
> > I find ebay more confusing as you don;t know which carrier they'll be using.
> > tried to order 300 2N3904 on ebay what a pain first supllier only had 140 in stock, another only had 200,
> > and non seem to be cheaper than rapid .
> Ebay is best for ordering the odd thing. Bulk is cheapest from big suppliers. I bought a pack of 10 fuses the other day, getting that from Rapid would have cost more in postage than the fuses.

On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:40:19 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:10:07 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Saturday, 9 July 2022 at 14:52:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:34:39 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 22:29:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:17:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> >
> >> >> >> Every single thing, I did some random tests to check. Just think of a few things, find them on both. Ebay is always a lot less.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > OK, here's a couple of things I'm looking to buy.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > 4 of these "Make: Electronics, 3e: Learning by Discovery: A Hands-On Primer for the New Electronics Enthusiast."
> >> >> >
> >> >> > If supervisor likes them as they have in previous years will be ordering 100-200 depending on how many students sign up for the course in september.
> >> >> £21 paperback Amazon and Ebay. Ebay has about 10 in stock, I couldn't work out how to see the stock level in Amazon as their web page is an unintuitive piece of shit.
> >> >well 30 as that's how far you could scroll down , when ordering before I;ve notice that's how they do things.
> >> What are you talking about "as far as you can scroll down"?
> >
> > When you click on the number yuo can scroll down to enter the number yuo want to order it went to 30 and stopped.
> No, I was opening each one to see how many each guy had in stock.

Well I know how many they have from the site.

> >> >> > I need to make up better leads for the DMMs, the path of least hassle for me is to buy sets of these :-
> >> >> > Sealey Jumper Test Lead Set 5 Pairs (or similar) cut in half so 20 per pack
> >> >> Ugh, I've got those, don't try to put more than an amp through them or they melt.
> >> >
> >> > Well for DMMs we don't need much current we try to aviod using them to measure current.
> >> I often measure current. An amp or so. Difficult to get leads that like that, especially without dropping many volts.
> >
> > Yes that's the disadvantage of measuring amps.
> > Most things run on volts, which is why I hope they'll teach students about current limits on our PSU.
> > Most things they do run on less that 1amp.
> I deal with stuff well over that. An amp clamp is nice though, especially for a car where I can't be bothered disconnecting stuff in awkward places.

yes we have one of those but we won;t be having 100 students working on a car in the lab.
They'll be using 6V 60ma bulds to start with then I'll move them on to LEDs .

> >> > We buy quite a bit of Elegoo stuff
> >> > we are going to try these even cheaper as we really only want just black and red (maybe green if we had to) to encourage the students to colour code.
> >> > (most DMM probes come in red and black)
> >> > https://www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-524603-pk-of-20-croc-leads-10-red-10-black-460mm-52-4603
> >> > £5.63 and free P&P
> >> > if we order today they'll be here on Monday
> >> Yes I used Rapid and CPC/Farnell a lot, much cheaper than RS. I just used RS for difficult to get things. I got mains plugs from CPC for 20p each!
> >
> > Mains plugs who buys them
> Me. Things have to be plugged in.

Everything we buy comes with a moulded IEC plug, and a Euro plug too, which we recyle .
Well the FGs, PSUs, scopes and anything else we buy from our supplies does.
I've not put a plug on a lead for over 6 years now, not even at home.

> > I've over 200 IEC leads and if we put a plug on anything college says it needs a PAT test cert which is £1.39
> So don't tell them you did it.

What about the pass/fail stickers the sig on the lable and the date of next test ?

> > but have to wait until someone comes and does the test, it;s been 4 years since the last tests
> Fuck that, I did that PAT testing myself. £80 for a PAT test machine.. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it, less if you just put the sticker on it and assume it's fine.

Wanna come and do my lab with over 4500 and that's just what's on my oldish stock list.
Wanna remove all the from pan;es from under the desks to get to the plugs and scokets , and you won't get paid for doing these you have to do them in your spare time.
Plus your name will go on as the resposible person if something goes wrong you'll need to prove it.
One tech. said they'd only do equipment they or their students make , provided the dept buy the tester. Well that was before covid .
Not heard anything since then.

I suggested the college should employ a PAT tester full time , we used to give someone 1 day a week to do just our department
and it wasn't enough time as they wanted everything tested every year.
So it's been a fuck you regarding us PAT testing.

On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:48:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> I have to almost buy each product to find out the postage.
> >> >> >> >> > Some sort of fast propulsion drive for probes to other planets he claimed it was faster than anything NASA had, he wanted to prove it. Not sure we could do that in a lab.
> >> >> >> >> > Can you image the problems using a 5KV pulse generator to ignite high octane fuel :-0
> >> >> >> >> I assume you have some outdoor areas?
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > Not really and you'd need people there in case of any accidents and to take responsibility
> >> >> >> > something like that needs a serious risk assessment.
> >> >> >> Get to fuck. Why can't people take responsibility for themselves? This isn't fucking America. We're better than that.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Yep give any loon a gun, that's works out well doesn;t it.
> >> >> > God protects them from covid but they still need a gun because God won;t prodect them from fellow americans.
> >> >> > fucking idiots.
> >> >> At least they can shoot the police.
> >> > Like on jan 6th good idea.
> >> Armor piercing bullets is the answer, called "cop killers". Don't let them control us.
> >
> > Ours don't control us.
> They bloody do, there's 150,000 laws you're meant to follow, I doubt you know what they all are.

I don't need to. Only need to know the ones that affect me.

> >> >> > You claimed to have been on a beach with a liffe guard why are they needed if you can't swim you shouldn't go in the water.
> >> >> I can swim and there shouldn't be life guards.
> >> > couldn;t care less myself.
> >> I do when one tells me off for swimming outside his precious little zone.
> >
> > That's what happened to an idiot who died after swimming in a quarry.
> > and some before him.
> Why would you die swimming in a quarry? It's just water.

Very deep water and he got into difficulties whatever that means.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11000531/Boy-16-dies-getting-difficulty-swimming-abandoned-Wigan-quarry.html

maybe he was drunk, or something else.

> >> >> >> > After the last incident a couple of years ago when someone was working after 6pm flushed some chemicals down the sink and there was an explosion took out quite a few windows and wreck the room the police turned up with the bomb squad before anyone really knew what happened.
> >> >> >> > Lots of questions on why the student wasn't being supervised, he got quite badly burnt from what I heard.
> >> >> >> Which is entirely the student's fault and nobody is to blame but him. He's not a child.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > He obviously didn't know which chemicals shouldn;t be mixed that's why there's safety rules and notices and training given.
> >> >> That's fucking pathetic. People are such pansies nowadays, they think tiny risks are important.
> >> >
> >> > That's how yuo leanr the problem comes when yuo're standing close to some idiot and you get injured.
> >> Too unlikely to happen for me to care.
> >
> > How do you know that.
> 46 years of experience.

So pretty meaningless.
You always know exactly what someone in the same room is doing .

> >> >> > He should even been putting them down the sink in the first place..
> >> >> > Maybe he couldn't read, maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe he though it wasn't his reposonsibity to lok aafter the equipment he's been given..
> >> >> > All very basic stuff but for most things if yuo are doing something that could be dangerous to have someone around that can help.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > But who's paying for the costs of the rebuild and his hospital costs, yes you the tax payer.
> >> >> He should. You see the trouble with your way is someone higher up takes responsibility for "not teaching him" or "not supervising him". Just blame the person that did it.
> >> >If it'd been my lab he wouldn't be allowed in there after 5pm.
> >> > Would you allow someone to drive your car that couldn't drive,
> >> Yes of course.
> >
> > How do you know they'll bring it back in one piece if at all.
> Not my problem.

So if you lend a car to someone and they don;t bring it back it;s not yuor problem ?
Who's problem is it and how is it solved.

> >> > I'm guess you would and if he crashed it and died you'd lose the car, but who would you blame.
> >> Him, he crashed it. I'd expect money from his assets.
> >
> > What makes you think he'd have assets if he had to borrow your car.
> > He could be homeless mentally ill or a psycho.
> > he might not even pay for the pertrol used.
> I tend to lend things to people I know.

What differnce does that make ?

> >> > Great idea but sometimes they end up dead who do you blame then.
> >> > Like the footballer in the light aircraft .
> >> This?
> >> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46966424
> >>
> >> "even the most fit person would only survive for a few hours in the water." - Bullshit, fit people can swim for more than a few hours. Even I'm happy at 3 hours.
> >
> > That depends on the water.
> Well apart form highly acidic water next to a volcano, there isn't much that would kill you off.

How about those on the Titanic.

> >> So what was this about? I don't watch the news.
> >
> > Who should be blamed and how does it help.
> Nobody should be blamed. The person flying the plane crashed it. Can't blame anyone else.

Did someone pay him to crash it, should it have been flying was it in a safe condition.

which is back to PAT testing why bother with such a thing ?

> > you said you've driven in paris how did you get across the water , did you swim.
> Paris isn't full of water.

but thre is thsi bit of water bewteen the UK and france surely you've noticed that.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:34:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:21:34 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:55:50 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:27 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:07:59 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >> > A friend of a frind had an 8.5" but when he got a hard on he got a bad nose bleed which didn;t exacly
>> >> >> > turnn his lady friend on, felt quite sorry for him but couldnt; resist laughing when he told me ,
>> >> >> > and everytime I saw him chat a girl up.
>> >> >> ROTFPMSL! Why on earth would a stiffy be connected with nosebleeds? Nosebleeds are usually high blood pressure, maybe the pressure goes up when excited and is enough to burst the blood vessels in his nose.
>> >> >
>> >> > Yes that's exactly what happens , and why when people get angry their blood pressure goes up and they go red.
>> >> > Blood vessels can burst too which adds to the effect.
>> >> I went to school with a girl who could make her whole face go bright red at will. Didn't seem too wise to me.
>> >
>> > Maybe it was a 'special' school for unwise kids ;-)
>> Her brother took karate. Somehow he got into a fight with 10 of his classmates and lost.
>
> why should that suprise me.
> doing karate doesn't mean you can win a fight, well only in crap films..

He could have won against one or three, but not ten. I wasn't involved, I was playing Airwolf on the BBC B computer.

>> >> >> >> >> > Know anyone that wants to buy a 4x CD RW SCSI, a SCSI flatbed scanner , a G3 tower , Macplus, mac SE/30, LC475. 2 zip drives. I can;t be bothered making sure they all work , then taking photos etc...
>> >> >> >> >> Sounds like a bunch of old junk, just list the whole lot and shove it on freecycle.
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > One day, I'd like to get them all working in a room but haven't got the space.
>> >> >> >> I've got addicted to that. I have a total of 3 smartphones, 9 CPUs, and 13 graphics cards running 24/7 doing a lot of science research. Alzheimers today. They're studying a certain protein that makes some people completely immune to it. I have a couple of neighbours with it so I'm doing my bit.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > That's good but how effienct is the old kit for number crunching, is it really worth the cost of the electricity.
>> >> >> It heats the house anyway. And yeah I could buy new stuff to use less power, but newer stuff is very expensive at the moment. I also like running stuff into the ground. I don't give a shit if my car gets fuck all mpg for example, it's still going after 20 years.
>> >> >
>> >> > So is my mac still like to play the odd game of starcraft on it.
>> >> I just repaired a 17 year old monitor. Just needed three capacitors. I put some low ESR ones in, they should last longer than 17 years :-)
>> >
>> > Is it top of the range SVGA ;-)
>> 17" 1280*1024 LCD. Got it for free a few years ago.
>
> Still got my Apple 17" studio display ADC in the loft .

I hope you reinforced the loft. I take it it's a CRT? Careful carrying that down a ladder.

I once carried a 34" CRT TVfrom one end of the school to the other, walked into the middle of a class and swapped it with a busted one. I think the teacher expected me to use a trolley.

Another time a boy appeared and asked if I had a spare TV for whatever lesson he was in. He was only 14 but three times my size, so I took him to a store cupboard and pointed to a huge CRT at least 40" that was constantly in my way, and he walked off with it!

> £20 on ebay hardly worth the cost of shipping let alone anything else.

Somebody on freecycle will take it. Saves you driving to the skip and it means it'll get some use.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:59:17 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:28:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 14:40:57 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:32 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> > I gave my mordan short 80W speakers, twop old dysons, and quite a bit of other stuff to the british heart foundation , they didn;t want my old computers
>> >> >> > as it'd take them too long to erase discs, finding pucka sotfware and get them working.
>> >> >> I used to know a postgrad student how did that as a hobby, he took old computers and did them up to give to charity. He used to come to me for a few spare parts to complete them. I gave him stuff for free that was too old for any research use.
>> >> >
>> >> > A friend did that bought cheap items tested them on his Macs and if they worked he then sold them on ebay as working on Mac OS
>> >> > He made a bit of money but he just lovered doing it for a year or so then got bored.
>> >> At the school I found a cupboard full of antique stuff, including two Domesday machines I got working and loads of Mac Classics. My predecessor shoved them in there to avoid the £20 per item disposal fee. I put everything on Ebay at an average of £50 an item and made a couple of grand. I got to keep the money, the school was happy to get an empty cupboard and not pay the disposal fee.
>> >
>> > That's how I got my SE-30 as the SIMM holders went brittle and snapped so you could have any more than 4MB installed.
>> >
>> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
>> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.
>
> Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
> Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.

The pigs aren't so mean around here. They do have an obsession with seatbelts though.

>> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
>> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
>> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
>> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.
>
> I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
> Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.
>
>> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.
>> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
> Not recently did a few years back.

He's back, and has made more videos. Or for more serious things, Big Clive.

>> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
>> >
>> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
>> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
>> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.
>
> Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
> made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
> I think it needed a major service.

For high speed filming, see The Slow Mo Guys. I think they have a Phantom camera that does a million FPS.

>> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
>> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
>> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
>> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.
>
> Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.

When I was in high school our physics teacher set up a simulation of the national grid divided by 100, so 2.4V at the "houses" with an xmas tree light. There were actually very high voltage bare wires across the room and at once point she freaked out as another teacher walked in and straight towards the "pylons" spanned across between two desks.

>> > I have a ledger book with some things listed
>> > 125uF 3.5KV capacitor £35 in may 1964 in todays money that's about £700 !
>> > Model 7 AVO £16 june 1957 in todays money that's about £400 !
>> >
>> >> >> >> > No problem for me, even the night bus is every 15mins, 30-45 mins from the club,
>> >> >> >> > don;t have to worry about drinking to much either.
>> >> >> >> Doesn't the bus driver refuse to let you on when you keep falling over?
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Which I don't. Getting out in the iopen air sort of sobers me up enough to be able to walk the few 100 metres to teh bus stop.
>> >> >> I'm very good at being drunk. I can be 5 times over the legal limit and the police don't even notice. Once I was completely stoned too, all I got was a fine for not wearing a seatbelt. Stupid fuckers.
>> >> >
>> >> > One thing I've always wondered about is how far over the legal limit I'd be but I've never been tested.
>> >> > From being a bit merry to telling crap jokes to falling over and ending up comatosed on the floor and not being able to get to bed.
>> >> I don't get that drunk, but I do consume a very large amount, since I use it all the time and have got used to it. Even as a teenager, the first time I ever had drink, my friend got utterly pissed and couldn't stand up and I could hardly feel it having had the same amount. His girlfriend though it was funny when he started a fight with me and planted his face into the ground when I stepped to one side.
>> >
>> > People do have differnt tolerancies alsot deoends on speed of drinking and whether you've had anything to eat.
>> I think my body classes ethanol as a fuel.
>
> I think when that happens it's alcohlism the body uses aclchol and doesn;t use 'food' as efficiently and that's why you just can;t go cold turkey and be 'cured' like you cxan to tobacco or herion/cocaine etc...

If I didn't use food efficiently I wouldn't be fat.

>> >> It's daft they go by blood alcohol percentage, when the same number can affect people by different amounts. It's also been shown that being tired has precisely the same effect on driving as being drunk, but you don't lose your license for that.
>> >
>> > Yeah or looking in the mirror to do makeup.
>> I once followed two women in separate cars on a 2 lane motorway. They were in 1 lane each, with the windows down, shouting across to each other having a discussion about something. After a couple of minutes they noticed I wanted past, waved in apology, and let me through. Having a conversation between cars didn't bother me, but only going 70, WTF?
>
> Some people can react faster than others.

I tested my reaction speed once, it was three times faster than the highway code says it should be.

>> > I used to drive better at caremggedon after a few drinks back from the pub ......
>> Indeed, a small amount of drink increases brain activity. Health too. You have to drink more than 4 times the government recommended amount to start having a detrimental effect on your health.
>>
>> Did you get the splat pack?
>
> Yes.
>
>> I did like killing the old grannies shouting "I was in the war!"
>> >> Anyway I drive better when drunk because I know I'm drunk and pay more attention.
>> >
>> > Would like to be able to myself in such circumstances.
>> So now you want to drive? Thought you didn't see the point?
>
> Well I mean drive a real car, a formula 1 and formula E in various states of drunkness
> then plot a grphs of times against blood alcohol and any over axis.

Sounds fun, count me in.

> Always find it interesting how in the US they get people to walk a straight line and touch their nose.

That's more sensible, it measures ability rather than just a number.

> Flying a plane too , but as a fun thing to try, don;t really want to spend the time and money to get qualified
> or buy a plane,

I've been in a plane three times. Once was a Boeing 737 to Wales to buy a car off my girlfriend's husband, the other two were Cessnas I jumped out of.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:19:42 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:48:16 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:52:32 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 14:42:35 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:48:29 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 19:20:18 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:08:43 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail..com> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 15:36:56 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 01:41:25 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> >> Perhaps your finance department wasn't so corrupt. Universities are more privatised (therefore accountable) than schools.
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > I guess so, there's lines of responsibility as the cost of anything goes up you have to get supervisor approval and then it goes to the course organiser , then head of school then head of department, then to the principle for things like the laser PCB maker which is £250k..
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> I'm sure my council had backhanders. There was a "study" that showed inkjet printers cost 14p a page to print in colour, so we were told to use the rented Xerox colour photocopier at 6p a page. I pointed out we were using Brother printers with fake ink at 1p a page. Then I find out the study was conducted by..... Xerox! And using HP (the most expensive shite) with genuine (WTF?) cartridges. Never got them to back down, but they turned a blind eye to my Brother printer and ink purchases on Ebay. The staff certainly preferred not having to walk right across the building to fetch printouts. I even made a stack of them (we got some square ones with scanners on top), I piled 6 high and plugged them into the same machine, got them all running at once to do big jobs of thousands of pages like the school calender. Wonderful things, an LED came on on anything that ran out of paper or ink and I just slotted a new cartridge in the front.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > We're using HP printers they are pretty good quality prints , good enough for most photos , cost about ~12p per page 3p for monochrome.
>> >> >> Try Brother or Epson and get cheap fake cartridges, or better yet an official or unofficial continuous ink supply system. At home I get the equivalent of 13p a cartridge!
>> >> >
>> >> > Nothing to do with me or even the department , we just print and that's it. It's a college wide system.
>> >> Your department doesn't have it's own printers?
>> >
>> > No why would we.
>> When I worked in a uni there were about 50 printers in use in one department. I'd probably change a toner or ink cartridge 8 times a day. How the hell do your staff get buy without printing?
>
> printing is so 20th century, why do we need to print should be the question.

Oh don't start with the treehugger paperless society, it's inconvenient. Plus I wonder how much electricity people use to power the devices they now read things on. And the materials used to create those electronics.

> even if we use ebay we don't have to send them a gross of sheep in exchange for products.
> There's a printer in most labs and perhaps a couple in the main shared offices.
> If an acadmic wants a printer they can order one from their grant money and they;'ll have to fill it and replace the ink.
> we have done the same with bins especailly since covid not every office has 2 bins that the cleaners have to collect from.
> There are bins in corridors and shared offices, I don;t have a bin, I jusrt use the

WTF, there should be bins in every room.

> All the student labsheets are on-line as PDF, all the order forms students use are in google-docs.

So when they want to study they all have to sit at a computer, how ridiculous.

> Had one pHd student come to me yesterday asking for soldering board , I handed him some 'veroboard he said not that type,
> then he showed me an image of martix board on his phone so I gave him that instead I said we don't use really use this much.
> He wanted a 3 pin lead no idea what type again showed me what he wanted on the phone it was a female to female 3 pin JST lead 2.54mm pitch.

Yeah showing people pictures can be useful. When I was repairing my mother's door handle, we went to B&Q after I took a photo of her holding a ruler against the old one, saved me measuring every part of it.

> he was pleased because I had one in stock , but he he said that means they don't need ordering so don;t have to go on the ordering form, wait till he sees I've added them
> He didn't know any of that he just wanted a lead with 3 pins, he was lucky he could show me a a picture there an then otherwise I;d have given him a IEC lead,
> and said this has 3 pins.

I was once asked for a figure of 8 lead, we eventually worked out she meant a taperecorder lead. She didn't know what a taperecorder was.

Same student asked me for a cloverleaf lead, I'd never though about naming that but I guess it's a sensible name.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:39:40 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:40:19 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:10:07 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Saturday, 9 July 2022 at 14:52:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:34:39 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 22:29:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> On Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:17:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail..com> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > On Wednesday, 6 July 2022 at 14:20:49 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> Every single thing, I did some random tests to check. Just think of a few things, find them on both. Ebay is always a lot less.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > OK, here's a couple of things I'm looking to buy.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > 4 of these "Make: Electronics, 3e: Learning by Discovery: A Hands-On Primer for the New Electronics Enthusiast."
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > If supervisor likes them as they have in previous years will be ordering 100-200 depending on how many students sign up for the course in september.
>> >> >> £21 paperback Amazon and Ebay. Ebay has about 10 in stock, I couldn't work out how to see the stock level in Amazon as their web page is an unintuitive piece of shit.
>> >> >well 30 as that's how far you could scroll down , when ordering before I;ve notice that's how they do things.
>> >> What are you talking about "as far as you can scroll down"?
>> >
>> > When you click on the number yuo can scroll down to enter the number yuo want to order it went to 30 and stopped.
>> No, I was opening each one to see how many each guy had in stock.
>
> Well I know how many they have from the site.

I would have to open each one.

>> >> >> > I need to make up better leads for the DMMs, the path of least hassle for me is to buy sets of these :-
>> >> >> > Sealey Jumper Test Lead Set 5 Pairs (or similar) cut in half so 20 per pack
>> >> >> Ugh, I've got those, don't try to put more than an amp through them or they melt.
>> >> >
>> >> > Well for DMMs we don't need much current we try to aviod using them to measure current.
>> >> I often measure current. An amp or so. Difficult to get leads that like that, especially without dropping many volts.
>> >
>> > Yes that's the disadvantage of measuring amps.
>> > Most things run on volts, which is why I hope they'll teach students about current limits on our PSU.
>> > Most things they do run on less that 1amp.
>> I deal with stuff well over that. An amp clamp is nice though, especially for a car where I can't be bothered disconnecting stuff in awkward places.
>
> yes we have one of those but we won;t be having 100 students working on a car in the lab.
> They'll be using 6V 60ma bulds to start with then I'll move them on to LEDs .

I thought it was a uni you worked in not a primary school. What research are they doing?

>> >> > We buy quite a bit of Elegoo stuff
>> >> > we are going to try these even cheaper as we really only want just black and red (maybe green if we had to) to encourage the students to colour code.
>> >> > (most DMM probes come in red and black)
>> >> > https://www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-524603-pk-of-20-croc-leads-10-red-10-black-460mm-52-4603
>> >> > £5.63 and free P&P
>> >> > if we order today they'll be here on Monday
>> >> Yes I used Rapid and CPC/Farnell a lot, much cheaper than RS. I just used RS for difficult to get things. I got mains plugs from CPC for 20p each!
>> >
>> > Mains plugs who buys them
>> Me. Things have to be plugged in.
>
> Everything we buy comes with a moulded IEC plug,

Until it breaks, or you want to make your own stuff or modify something.

> and a Euro plug too, which we recyle .

I wasn't aware you can recycle plugs.

We had German students who brought a load of kit with euro plugs. I asked if they needed adapters but they said if you stick a screwdriver in the earth hole you can get a euro plug to fit in a UK socket.

> Well the FGs, PSUs, scopes and anything else we buy from our supplies does.
> I've not put a plug on a lead for over 6 years now, not even at home.

I put one on my hair trimmer the other day, a parrot had got hold of it and chewed the wire, which I replaced. Moulded plugs are stupid, you can't move them to another wire.

>> > I've over 200 IEC leads and if we put a plug on anything college says it needs a PAT test cert which is £1.39
>> So don't tell them you did it.
>
> What about the pass/fail stickers the sig on the lable and the date of next test ?

Eh? They come round every x years, if something doesn't have a label they test it, what's the problem?

>> > but have to wait until someone comes and does the test, it;s been 4 years since the last tests
>> Fuck that, I did that PAT testing myself. £80 for a PAT test machine. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it, less if you just put the sticker on it and assume it's fine.
>
> Wanna come and do my lab with over 4500 and that's just what's on my oldish stock list.

I'll do it for a lot less than them.

> Wanna remove all the from pan;es from under the desks to get to the plugs and scokets , and you won't get paid for doing these you have to do them in your spare time.
> Plus your name will go on as the resposible person if something goes wrong you'll need to prove it.

Never happens.

> One tech. said they'd only do equipment they or their students make , provided the dept buy the tester. Well that was before covid .
> Not heard anything since then.

Seriously, you actually bother testing home made stuff?

> I suggested the college should employ a PAT tester full time , we used to give someone 1 day a week to do just our department
> and it wasn't enough time as they wanted everything tested every year.
> So it's been a fuck you regarding us PAT testing.

Every year? Where the fuck did that come from? We did 4 years. And new stuff didn't need testing since the manufacturer has tested it. Like a new car doesn't need a MOT for 3 years.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:49:49 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 17:48:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> I have to almost buy each product to find out the postage.
>> >> >> >> >> > Some sort of fast propulsion drive for probes to other planets he claimed it was faster than anything NASA had, he wanted to prove it. Not sure we could do that in a lab.
>> >> >> >> >> > Can you image the problems using a 5KV pulse generator to ignite high octane fuel :-0
>> >> >> >> >> I assume you have some outdoor areas?
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > Not really and you'd need people there in case of any accidents and to take responsibility
>> >> >> >> > something like that needs a serious risk assessment.
>> >> >> >> Get to fuck. Why can't people take responsibility for themselves? This isn't fucking America. We're better than that.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Yep give any loon a gun, that's works out well doesn;t it.
>> >> >> > God protects them from covid but they still need a gun because God won;t prodect them from fellow americans.
>> >> >> > fucking idiots.
>> >> >> At least they can shoot the police.
>> >> > Like on jan 6th good idea.
>> >> Armor piercing bullets is the answer, called "cop killers". Don't let them control us.
>> >
>> > Ours don't control us.
>> They bloody do, there's 150,000 laws you're meant to follow, I doubt you know what they all are.
>
> I don't need to. Only need to know the ones that affect me.

But you won't know what ones would affect you without going through them all, and who does that?

>> >> >> > You claimed to have been on a beach with a liffe guard why are they needed if you can't swim you shouldn't go in the water.
>> >> >> I can swim and there shouldn't be life guards.
>> >> > couldn;t care less myself.
>> >> I do when one tells me off for swimming outside his precious little zone.
>> >
>> > That's what happened to an idiot who died after swimming in a quarry.
>> > and some before him.
>> Why would you die swimming in a quarry? It's just water.
>
> Very deep water and he got into difficulties whatever that means.
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11000531/Boy-16-dies-getting-difficulty-swimming-abandoned-Wigan-quarry.html
>
> maybe he was drunk, or something else.

Must have been. It's not like quarries have fast moving water or huge waves.

Actually, I've swum while pissed out of my head, it's fine.

>> >> >> >> > After the last incident a couple of years ago when someone was working after 6pm flushed some chemicals down the sink and there was an explosion took out quite a few windows and wreck the room the police turned up with the bomb squad before anyone really knew what happened.
>> >> >> >> > Lots of questions on why the student wasn't being supervised, he got quite badly burnt from what I heard.
>> >> >> >> Which is entirely the student's fault and nobody is to blame but him. He's not a child.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > He obviously didn't know which chemicals shouldn;t be mixed that's why there's safety rules and notices and training given.
>> >> >> That's fucking pathetic. People are such pansies nowadays, they think tiny risks are important.
>> >> >
>> >> > That's how yuo leanr the problem comes when yuo're standing close to some idiot and you get injured.
>> >> Too unlikely to happen for me to care.
>> >
>> > How do you know that.
>> 46 years of experience.
>
> So pretty meaningless.
> You always know exactly what someone in the same room is doing .

For 46 years nobody has harmed me through negligence. Good enough odds for me.

>> >> >> > He should even been putting them down the sink in the first place.
>> >> >> > Maybe he couldn't read, maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe he though it wasn't his reposonsibity to lok aafter the equipment he's been given.
>> >> >> > All very basic stuff but for most things if yuo are doing something that could be dangerous to have someone around that can help.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > But who's paying for the costs of the rebuild and his hospital costs, yes you the tax payer.
>> >> >> He should. You see the trouble with your way is someone higher up takes responsibility for "not teaching him" or "not supervising him". Just blame the person that did it.
>> >> >If it'd been my lab he wouldn't be allowed in there after 5pm.
>> >> > Would you allow someone to drive your car that couldn't drive,
>> >> Yes of course.
>> >
>> > How do you know they'll bring it back in one piece if at all.
>> Not my problem.
>
> So if you lend a car to someone and they don;t bring it back it;s not yuor problem ?
> Who's problem is it and how is it solved.

Their problem they pay for it.

>> >> > I'm guess you would and if he crashed it and died you'd lose the car, but who would you blame.
>> >> Him, he crashed it. I'd expect money from his assets.
>> >
>> > What makes you think he'd have assets if he had to borrow your car.
>> > He could be homeless mentally ill or a psycho.
>> > he might not even pay for the pertrol used.
>> I tend to lend things to people I know.
>
> What differnce does that make ?
>
>> >> > Great idea but sometimes they end up dead who do you blame then.
>> >> > Like the footballer in the light aircraft .
>> >> This?
>> >> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46966424
>> >>
>> >> "even the most fit person would only survive for a few hours in the water." - Bullshit, fit people can swim for more than a few hours. Even I'm happy at 3 hours.
>> >
>> > That depends on the water.
>> Well apart form highly acidic water next to a volcano, there isn't much that would kill you off.
>
> How about those on the Titanic.

Pussies.

>> >> So what was this about? I don't watch the news.
>> >
>> > Who should be blamed and how does it help.
>> Nobody should be blamed. The person flying the plane crashed it. Can't blame anyone else.
>
> Did someone pay him to crash it, should it have been flying was it in a safe condition.

Who cares if it was safe? What's this obsession with safety? Why has everyone turned into a girl?

> which is back to PAT testing why bother with such a thing ?

I didn't, once I realised nobody was checking I did it. Nobody PAT tests stuff in their own house, so why make a workplace more safe than a house?

>> > you said you've driven in paris how did you get across the water , did you swim.
>> Paris isn't full of water.
>
> but thre is thsi bit of water bewteen the UK and france surely you've noticed that.

There's a tunnel and loads of ferries, what was your point?

On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:12:53 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:34:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:21:34 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:55:50 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:27 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:07:59 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> >> > A friend of a frind had an 8.5" but when he got a hard on he got a bad nose bleed which didn;t exacly
> >> >> >> > turnn his lady friend on, felt quite sorry for him but couldnt; resist laughing when he told me ,
> >> >> >> > and everytime I saw him chat a girl up.
> >> >> >> ROTFPMSL! Why on earth would a stiffy be connected with nosebleeds? Nosebleeds are usually high blood pressure, maybe the pressure goes up when excited and is enough to burst the blood vessels in his nose.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Yes that's exactly what happens , and why when people get angry their blood pressure goes up and they go red.
> >> >> > Blood vessels can burst too which adds to the effect.
> >> >> I went to school with a girl who could make her whole face go bright red at will. Didn't seem too wise to me.
> >> >
> >> > Maybe it was a 'special' school for unwise kids ;-)
> >> Her brother took karate. Somehow he got into a fight with 10 of his classmates and lost.
> >
> > why should that suprise me.
> > doing karate doesn't mean you can win a fight, well only in crap films.
> He could have won against one or three, but not ten. I wasn't involved, I was playing Airwolf on the BBC B computer.

A far more civilised thing to be doing , my favourite BBC games were revs, repton and elite.

> >> >> >> >> >> > Know anyone that wants to buy a 4x CD RW SCSI, a SCSI flatbed scanner , a G3 tower , Macplus, mac SE/30, LC475. 2 zip drives. I can;t be bothered making sure they all work , then taking photos etc...
> >> >> >> >> >> Sounds like a bunch of old junk, just list the whole lot and shove it on freecycle.
> >> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >> > One day, I'd like to get them all working in a room but haven't got the space.
> >> >> >> >> I've got addicted to that. I have a total of 3 smartphones, 9 CPUs, and 13 graphics cards running 24/7 doing a lot of science research. Alzheimers today. They're studying a certain protein that makes some people completely immune to it. I have a couple of neighbours with it so I'm doing my bit.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > That's good but how effienct is the old kit for number crunching, is it really worth the cost of the electricity.
> >> >> >> It heats the house anyway. And yeah I could buy new stuff to use less power, but newer stuff is very expensive at the moment. I also like running stuff into the ground. I don't give a shit if my car gets fuck all mpg for example, it's still going after 20 years.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > So is my mac still like to play the odd game of starcraft on it.
> >> >> I just repaired a 17 year old monitor. Just needed three capacitors.. I put some low ESR ones in, they should last longer than 17 years :-)
> >> >
> >> > Is it top of the range SVGA ;-)
> >> 17" 1280*1024 LCD. Got it for free a few years ago.
> >
> > Still got my Apple 17" studio display ADC in the loft .
> I hope you reinforced the loft. I take it it's a CRT? Careful carrying that down a ladder.

No LCD.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204030120920?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338268676&toolid=10044&customid=CjwKCAjw5s6WBhA4EiwACGncZfKKv7e7qDUzM36_UVXgGemIPoMOSn-apN4nPOu6y-SOEJ686kUCDhoC8VUQAvD_BwE
I did have a
https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/applevision_colorsync/specs/applevision_1710av.html

reminded me of marvin the paranoid android from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy .

>
> I once carried a 34" CRT TVfrom one end of the school to the other, walked into the middle of a class and swapped it with a busted one. I think the teacher expected me to use a trolley.

I had a sony 27inc CRT TV that was bloody heavy

>
> Another time a boy appeared and asked if I had a spare TV for whatever lesson he was in. He was only 14 but three times my size, so I took him to a store cupboard and pointed to a huge CRT at least 40" that was constantly in my way, and he walked off with it!
> > £20 on ebay hardly worth the cost of shipping let alone anything else.
> Somebody on freecycle will take it. Saves you driving to the skip and it means it'll get some use.
It has a dedicated connector that carries the 28V PSU from a graphics card or need a special adapter.
I think the top backlight is faulty too. Again something I was tempted to fix but then the LCD G5 iMacs came out.

On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 01:52:22 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:12:53 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:34:14 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Monday, 11 July 2022 at 16:21:34 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:55:50 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On Friday, 8 July 2022 at 22:50:27 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> >> On Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:07:59 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail..com> wrote:
>> >> >> >> > A friend of a frind had an 8.5" but when he got a hard on he got a bad nose bleed which didn;t exacly
>> >> >> >> > turnn his lady friend on, felt quite sorry for him but couldnt; resist laughing when he told me ,
>> >> >> >> > and everytime I saw him chat a girl up.
>> >> >> >> ROTFPMSL! Why on earth would a stiffy be connected with nosebleeds? Nosebleeds are usually high blood pressure, maybe the pressure goes up when excited and is enough to burst the blood vessels in his nose..
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Yes that's exactly what happens , and why when people get angry their blood pressure goes up and they go red.
>> >> >> > Blood vessels can burst too which adds to the effect.
>> >> >> I went to school with a girl who could make her whole face go bright red at will. Didn't seem too wise to me.
>> >> >
>> >> > Maybe it was a 'special' school for unwise kids ;-)
>> >> Her brother took karate. Somehow he got into a fight with 10 of his classmates and lost.
>> >
>> > why should that suprise me.
>> > doing karate doesn't mean you can win a fight, well only in crap films.
>> He could have won against one or three, but not ten. I wasn't involved, I was playing Airwolf on the BBC B computer.
>
> A far more civilised thing to be doing , my favourite BBC games were revs, repton and elite.

I rewired the circuit breaker when the teacher wasn't looking. Stupid thing tripped when anyone touched the CUB monitor since a lot of current leaked to earth when we gave each other static shocks.

>> >> >> >> >> >> > Know anyone that wants to buy a 4x CD RW SCSI, a SCSI flatbed scanner , a G3 tower , Macplus, mac SE/30, LC475. 2 zip drives.. I can;t be bothered making sure they all work , then taking photos etc....
>> >> >> >> >> >> Sounds like a bunch of old junk, just list the whole lot and shove it on freecycle.
>> >> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> >> > One day, I'd like to get them all working in a room but haven't got the space.
>> >> >> >> >> I've got addicted to that. I have a total of 3 smartphones, 9 CPUs, and 13 graphics cards running 24/7 doing a lot of science research. Alzheimers today. They're studying a certain protein that makes some people completely immune to it. I have a couple of neighbours with it so I'm doing my bit.
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > That's good but how effienct is the old kit for number crunching, is it really worth the cost of the electricity.
>> >> >> >> It heats the house anyway. And yeah I could buy new stuff to use less power, but newer stuff is very expensive at the moment. I also like running stuff into the ground. I don't give a shit if my car gets fuck all mpg for example, it's still going after 20 years.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > So is my mac still like to play the odd game of starcraft on it.
>> >> >> I just repaired a 17 year old monitor. Just needed three capacitors. I put some low ESR ones in, they should last longer than 17 years :-)
>> >> >
>> >> > Is it top of the range SVGA ;-)
>> >> 17" 1280*1024 LCD. Got it for free a few years ago.
>> >
>> > Still got my Apple 17" studio display ADC in the loft .
>> I hope you reinforced the loft. I take it it's a CRT? Careful carrying that down a ladder.
>
> No LCD.
> https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204030120920?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338268676&toolid=10044&customid=CjwKCAjw5s6WBhA4EiwACGncZfKKv7e7qDUzM36_UVXgGemIPoMOSn-apN4nPOu6y-SOEJ686kUCDhoC8VUQAvD_BwE
> I did have a
> https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/applevision_colorsync/specs/applevision_1710av.html
>
> reminded me of marvin the paranoid android from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy .
>
>>
>> I once carried a 34" CRT TVfrom one end of the school to the other, walked into the middle of a class and swapped it with a busted one. I think the teacher expected me to use a trolley.
>
> I had a sony 27inc CRT TV that was bloody heavy

The Sony Trinitron I think were heavier for some reason, thicker glass?

>> Another time a boy appeared and asked if I had a spare TV for whatever lesson he was in. He was only 14 but three times my size, so I took him to a store cupboard and pointed to a huge CRT at least 40" that was constantly in my way, and he walked off with it!
>> > £20 on ebay hardly worth the cost of shipping let alone anything else.
>> Somebody on freecycle will take it. Saves you driving to the skip and it means it'll get some use.
> It has a dedicated connector that carries the 28V PSU from a graphics card or need a special adapter.
> I think the top backlight is faulty too. Again something I was tempted to fix but then the LCD G5 iMacs came out.

Somebody took a monitor from me which only 2/3rds of it displayed anything. I guess something had blown that fed one third of the dots. I dunno if he fixed it or just used the other part for a server or something.

On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:21:36 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:59:17 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> >> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
> >> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.
> >
> > Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
> > Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.
> The pigs aren't so mean around here. They do have an obsession with seatbelts though.

well he used to block part of Mile End road which is normally very busy .

> >> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now..
> >> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
> >> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
> >> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.
> >
> > I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
> > Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.
> >
> >> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels..
> >> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
> > Not recently did a few years back.
> He's back, and has made more videos. Or for more serious things, Big Clive.

Yes I've watch big clive taking apart some of the dodgy chinese stuff from ebay.
> >> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
> >> >
> >> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
> >> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
> >> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.
> >
> > Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
> > made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
> > I think it needed a major service.
> For high speed filming, see The Slow Mo Guys. I think they have a Phantom camera that does a million FPS.

See that of similar filming light traveling through a bottle of water, think it uses rotating mirrors .
> >> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
> >> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
> >> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
> >> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.
> >
> > Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.
> When I was in high school our physics teacher set up a simulation of the national grid divided by 100, so 2.4V at the "houses" with an xmas tree light. There were actually very high voltage bare wires across the room and at once point she freaked out as another teacher walked in and straight towards the "pylons" spanned across between two desks.

I remember my physics teacher dipping his hands in mercury to upturn tubes to measure air pressure and stuff,
he didn;t have much hair or many teeth , a good teacher.
> >> > I have a ledger book with some things listed
> >> > 125uF 3.5KV capacitor £35 in may 1964 in todays money that's about £700 !
> >> > Model 7 AVO £16 june 1957 in todays money that's about £400 !

> I've been in a plane three times. Once was a Boeing 737 to Wales to buy a car off my girlfriend's husband, the other two were Cessnas I jumped out of.

I've been in a Cessna think that what it was on a 10min joy ride around yarmouth.
been on a couple of commercial flights sweden, greece & spain.
Never jumped out of any though,

> > well not until I win the lottery, well I did a could of weeks ago but as usually I spent the lot on a can
> > in the club £5.50 !
> FFS, my home brew is a lot cheaper.

Local pub is £4.35 for a nice pint of adnams .

> > almost double my euro millions £2.40 win.
> You can actually win as little as £2.40?

Yeah won £30 a couple of times over the years.

> > Was wathcing a bit of the grande prix sunday after about 10 seconds I realised I recognised the red bull track from a game I play.
> ROFL!

On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 22:24:57 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:19:42 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > printing is so 20th century, why do we need to print should be the question.
> Oh don't start with the treehugger paperless society, it's inconvenient. Plus I wonder how much electricity people use to power the devices they now read things on. And the materials used to create those electronics.

They have their phones laptops etc.. why carry around text books that cost from £30 to £100 when they can read the PDF on the phone.
Most coursework is uploaded via email and automatically checked for plagiarism, if yuo have a class of 600 students checking their work hasn't been copied from a book is a pain and takes to long.

> > even if we use ebay we don't have to send them a gross of sheep in exchange for products.
> > There's a printer in most labs and perhaps a couple in the main shared offices.
> > If an acadmic wants a printer they can order one from their grant money and they;'ll have to fill it and replace the ink.
> > we have done the same with bins especailly since covid not every office has 2 bins that the cleaners have to collect from.
> > There are bins in corridors and shared offices, I don;t have a bin, I jusrt use the
> WTF, there should be bins in every room.

Why we have 100s of offices the multi use rooms will have a bin or two we have about 6 in our lab, we don;t need 2 each in our 3 offices.

> > All the student labsheets are on-line as PDF, all the order forms students use are in google-docs.
> So when they want to study they all have to sit at a computer, how ridiculous.

Most have laptops or phones or tablets now. If they want they can print stuff out it;s up to them.
Far easier to search through text on a computer than have bookmarks .
Quite a few don;t even carry a pen or pencil as they borrow from me quite often .

> > Had one pHd student come to me yesterday asking for soldering board , I handed him some 'veroboard he said not that type,
> > then he showed me an image of martix board on his phone so I gave him that instead I said we don't use really use this much.
> > He wanted a 3 pin lead no idea what type again showed me what he wanted on the phone it was a female to female 3 pin JST lead 2.54mm pitch.
> Yeah showing people pictures can be useful. When I was repairing my mother's door handle, we went to B&Q after I took a photo of her holding a ruler against the old one, saved me measuring every part of it.
> > he was pleased because I had one in stock , but he he said that means they don't need ordering so don;t have to go on the ordering form, wait till he sees I've added them
> > He didn't know any of that he just wanted a lead with 3 pins, he was lucky he could show me a a picture there an then otherwise I;d have given him a IEC lead,
> > and said this has 3 pins.
> I was once asked for a figure of 8 lead, we eventually worked out she meant a taperecorder lead. She didn't know what a taperecorder was.
I have a selection of leads it;s annoying but most of our stuff use IEC.

>
> Same student asked me for a cloverleaf lead, I'd never though about naming that but I guess it's a sensible name.

On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 23:14:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:39:40 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> >> I deal with stuff well over that. An amp clamp is nice though, especially for a car where I can't be bothered disconnecting stuff in awkward places.
> >
> > yes we have one of those but we won;t be having 100 students working on a car in the lab.
> > They'll be using 6V 60ma bulds to start with then I'll move them on to LEDs .
> I thought it was a uni you worked in not a primary school. What research are they doing?

Quite highend stuff whos titles I don;t even understand lots to do with big data deepmind computing , we were researching how to contructing an invisibility cloak a grant of $5 million bewteen us and two other universities.

> >> >> > We buy quite a bit of Elegoo stuff
> >> >> > we are going to try these even cheaper as we really only want just black and red (maybe green if we had to) to encourage the students to colour code.
> >> >> > (most DMM probes come in red and black)
> >> >> > https://www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-524603-pk-of-20-croc-leads-10-red-10-black-460mm-52-4603
> >> >> > £5.63 and free P&P
> >> >> > if we order today they'll be here on Monday
> >> >> Yes I used Rapid and CPC/Farnell a lot, much cheaper than RS. I just used RS for difficult to get things. I got mains plugs from CPC for 20p each!
> >> >
> >> > Mains plugs who buys them
> >> Me. Things have to be plugged in.
> >
> > Everything we buy comes with a moulded IEC plug,
> Until it breaks, or you want to make your own stuff or modify something.

We don't need to do that, I have over 200 IEC leads spare one breaks just replace it.
> > and a Euro plug too, which we recyle .
> I wasn't aware you can recycle plugs.

Not sure what happens they get put into a electrical equipment recycle bin or cage and collected .

>
> We had German students who brought a load of kit with euro plugs. I asked if they needed adapters but they said if you stick a screwdriver in the earth hole you can get a euro plug to fit in a UK socket.

Our £144k euro kit came with IEC brick PSUs .

> > Well the FGs, PSUs, scopes and anything else we buy from our supplies does.
> > I've not put a plug on a lead for over 6 years now, not even at home.
> I put one on my hair trimmer the other day, a parrot had got hold of it and chewed the wire, which I replaced. Moulded plugs are stupid, you can't move them to another wire.

Never really needed to do that.

> >> > I've over 200 IEC leads and if we put a plug on anything college says it needs a PAT test cert which is £1.39
> >> So don't tell them you did it.
> >
> > What about the pass/fail stickers the sig on the lable and the date of next test ?
> Eh? They come round every x years, if something doesn't have a label they test it, what's the problem?

Cost £7k last time they came to check our department.
They only found about 6 they failed mostly in admin offices.

> >> > but have to wait until someone comes and does the test, it;s been 4 years since the last tests
> >> Fuck that, I did that PAT testing myself. £80 for a PAT test machine. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it, less if you just put the sticker on it and assume it's fine.
> >
> > Wanna come and do my lab with over 4500 and that's just what's on my oldish stock list.
> I'll do it for a lot less than them.

They do it out of hours so start about 6pm.
We use them because they takes responsibility and have insurance so no-one in the college does should something go wrong.

> > Wanna remove all the from pan;es from under the desks to get to the plugs and scokets , and you won't get paid for doing these you have to do them in your spare time.
> > Plus your name will go on as the resposible person if something goes wrong you'll need to prove it.
> Never happens.
> > One tech. said they'd only do equipment they or their students make , provided the dept buy the tester. Well that was before covid .
> > Not heard anything since then.
> Seriously, you actually bother testing home made stuff?

yes and student made stuff.

> > I suggested the college should employ a PAT tester full time , we used to give someone 1 day a week to do just our department
> > and it wasn't enough time as they wanted everything tested every year.
> > So it's been a fuck you regarding us PAT testing.
> Every year? Where the fuck did that come from? We did 4 years. And new stuff didn't need testing since the manufacturer has tested it. Like a new car doesn't need a MOT for 3 years.

I know but they wanted it that way, I did explain it to them think that's why it was stopped so they now have to decide what to do about PAT testing. Previously the college paid now each department has to pay from their own funds.

On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:15:56 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:21:36 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:59:17 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
>> >> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.
>> >
>> > Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
>> > Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.
>> The pigs aren't so mean around here. They do have an obsession with seatbelts though.
>
> well he used to block part of Mile End road which is normally very busy .

Block?

>> >> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
>> >> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
>> >> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
>> >> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.
>> >
>> > I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
>> > Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.
>> >
>> >> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.
>> >> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
>> > Not recently did a few years back.
>> He's back, and has made more videos. Or for more serious things, Big Clive.
>
> Yes I've watch big clive taking apart some of the dodgy chinese stuff from ebay.

I like dodgy Chinese stuff, cheap and simple. Like the shower head with a live heating coil in it. I'm not a girl, I'm not scared of dangerous stuff.

>> >> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
>> >> >
>> >> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
>> >> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
>> >> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.
>> >
>> > Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
>> > made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
>> > I think it needed a major service.
>> For high speed filming, see The Slow Mo Guys. I think they have a Phantom camera that does a million FPS.
>
> See that of similar filming light traveling through a bottle of water, think it uses rotating mirrors .

Ah, several CCDs? I wondered why it made a noise.

>> >> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
>> >> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
>> >> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
>> >> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.
>> >
>> > Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.
>> When I was in high school our physics teacher set up a simulation of the national grid divided by 100, so 2.4V at the "houses" with an xmas tree light. There were actually very high voltage bare wires across the room and at once point she freaked out as another teacher walked in and straight towards the "pylons" spanned across between two desks.
>
> I remember my physics teacher dipping his hands in mercury to upturn tubes to measure air pressure and stuff,
> he didn;t have much hair or many teeth , a good teacher.

My chemistry teacher asked if anyone had a genuine gold ring. My friend did. It was dipped in nitric acid, which meant it was gold.

>> I've been in a plane three times. Once was a Boeing 737 to Wales to buy a car off my girlfriend's husband, the other two were Cessnas I jumped out of.
>
> I've been in a Cessna think that what it was on a 10min joy ride around yarmouth.
> been on a couple of commercial flights sweden, greece & spain.
> Never jumped out of any though,

It's a lot more fun than you'd think, you can steer it.

>> > well not until I win the lottery, well I did a could of weeks ago but as usually I spent the lot on a can
>> > in the club £5.50 !
>> FFS, my home brew is a lot cheaper.
>
> Local pub is £4.35 for a nice pint of adnams .

Far too expensive. For £20 I can make 50 litres of 23% alcohol.

>> > almost double my euro millions £2.40 win.
>> You can actually win as little as £2.40?
>
> Yeah won £30 a couple of times over the years.

And how much did you spend on tickets to achieve that?

On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:32:24 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 22:24:57 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:19:42 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > printing is so 20th century, why do we need to print should be the question.
>> Oh don't start with the treehugger paperless society, it's inconvenient. Plus I wonder how much electricity people use to power the devices they now read things on. And the materials used to create those electronics.
>
> They have their phones laptops etc.. why carry around text books that cost from £30 to £100 when they can read the PDF on the phone.

Not sure why those books cost that much. Presumably most is the research cost, not the paper cost, so why don't the PDF copies cost that much? Or are you pirating it?

> Most coursework is uploaded via email and automatically checked for plagiarism, if yuo have a class of 600 students checking their work hasn't been copied from a book is a pain and takes to long.

Pretty easy to reword an article to avoid that.

>> > even if we use ebay we don't have to send them a gross of sheep in exchange for products.
>> > There's a printer in most labs and perhaps a couple in the main shared offices.
>> > If an acadmic wants a printer they can order one from their grant money and they;'ll have to fill it and replace the ink.
>> > we have done the same with bins especailly since covid not every office has 2 bins that the cleaners have to collect from.
>> > There are bins in corridors and shared offices, I don;t have a bin, I jusrt use the
>> WTF, there should be bins in every room.
>
> Why we have 100s of offices the multi use rooms will have a bin or two we have about 6 in our lab, we don;t need 2 each in our 3 offices.

I always did, there's always stuff people are throwing away.

>> > All the student labsheets are on-line as PDF, all the order forms students use are in google-docs.
>> So when they want to study they all have to sit at a computer, how ridiculous.
>
> Most have laptops or phones or tablets now. If they want they can print stuff out it;s up to them.
> Far easier to search through text on a computer than have bookmarks .
> Quite a few don;t even carry a pen or pencil as they borrow from me quite often .

Do they take notes on a phone?!

>> > Had one pHd student come to me yesterday asking for soldering board , I handed him some 'veroboard he said not that type,
>> > then he showed me an image of martix board on his phone so I gave him that instead I said we don't use really use this much.
>> > He wanted a 3 pin lead no idea what type again showed me what he wanted on the phone it was a female to female 3 pin JST lead 2.54mm pitch.
>> Yeah showing people pictures can be useful. When I was repairing my mother's door handle, we went to B&Q after I took a photo of her holding a ruler against the old one, saved me measuring every part of it.
>> > he was pleased because I had one in stock , but he he said that means they don't need ordering so don;t have to go on the ordering form, wait till he sees I've added them
>> > He didn't know any of that he just wanted a lead with 3 pins, he was lucky he could show me a a picture there an then otherwise I;d have given him a IEC lead,
>> > and said this has 3 pins.
>> I was once asked for a figure of 8 lead, we eventually worked out she meant a taperecorder lead. She didn't know what a taperecorder was.
> I have a selection of leads it;s annoying but most of our stuff use IEC.

USB is the worst. There must be 15 connector types.

On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 03:03:37 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 23:14:20 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:39:40 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> I deal with stuff well over that. An amp clamp is nice though, especially for a car where I can't be bothered disconnecting stuff in awkward places.
>> >
>> > yes we have one of those but we won;t be having 100 students working on a car in the lab.
>> > They'll be using 6V 60ma bulds to start with then I'll move them on to LEDs .
>> I thought it was a uni you worked in not a primary school. What research are they doing?
>
> Quite highend stuff whos titles I don;t even understand lots to do with big data deepmind computing , we were researching how to contructing an invisibility cloak a grant of $5 million bewteen us and two other universities.

And yet you speak of 6V 60mA and LEDs.

>> >> >> > We buy quite a bit of Elegoo stuff
>> >> >> > we are going to try these even cheaper as we really only want just black and red (maybe green if we had to) to encourage the students to colour code.
>> >> >> > (most DMM probes come in red and black)
>> >> >> > https://www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-524603-pk-of-20-croc-leads-10-red-10-black-460mm-52-4603
>> >> >> > £5.63 and free P&P
>> >> >> > if we order today they'll be here on Monday
>> >> >> Yes I used Rapid and CPC/Farnell a lot, much cheaper than RS. I just used RS for difficult to get things. I got mains plugs from CPC for 20p each!
>> >> >
>> >> > Mains plugs who buys them
>> >> Me. Things have to be plugged in.
>> >
>> > Everything we buy comes with a moulded IEC plug,
>> Until it breaks, or you want to make your own stuff or modify something.
>
> We don't need to do that, I have over 200 IEC leads spare one breaks just replace it.

Wow. A throw away society. I used to replace the microswitches in mice!

>> > and a Euro plug too, which we recyle .
>> I wasn't aware you can recycle plugs.
>
> Not sure what happens they get put into a electrical equipment recycle bin or cage and collected .

Copper and other metals extraction would be the main thing I think. I guess there's a fair bit in the plug prongs. It amazes me it's worth recycling a circuit board.

>> We had German students who brought a load of kit with euro plugs. I asked if they needed adapters but they said if you stick a screwdriver in the earth hole you can get a euro plug to fit in a UK socket.
>
> Our £144k euro kit came with IEC brick PSUs .

What?

>> > Well the FGs, PSUs, scopes and anything else we buy from our supplies does.
>> > I've not put a plug on a lead for over 6 years now, not even at home.
>> I put one on my hair trimmer the other day, a parrot had got hold of it and chewed the wire, which I replaced. Moulded plugs are stupid, you can't move them to another wire.
>
> Never really needed to do that.

Nobody has ever melted a wire with a soldering iron?

>> >> > I've over 200 IEC leads and if we put a plug on anything college says it needs a PAT test cert which is £1.39
>> >> So don't tell them you did it.
>> >
>> > What about the pass/fail stickers the sig on the lable and the date of next test ?
>> Eh? They come round every x years, if something doesn't have a label they test it, what's the problem?
>
> Cost £7k last time they came to check our department.
> They only found about 6 they failed mostly in admin offices.

Wow, just do it yourself.

Some twat did our place once. Failed a PSU I had which had bare wires, at FIVE VOLTS! I just pulled the red sticker off and kept using it.

>> >> > but have to wait until someone comes and does the test, it;s been 4 years since the last tests
>> >> Fuck that, I did that PAT testing myself. £80 for a PAT test machine. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it, less if you just put the sticker on it and assume it's fine.
>> >
>> > Wanna come and do my lab with over 4500 and that's just what's on my oldish stock list.
>> I'll do it for a lot less than them.
>
> They do it out of hours so start about 6pm.
> We use them because they takes responsibility and have insurance so no-one in the college does should something go wrong.

Fuck responsibility, just make it work. A colleague used an overhead projector (before digital, the acetate ones) where the bulb kept blowing for some unknown reason. He attached a big resistor inline with the power cord without even taping it up. It worked fine. If anyone was stupid enough to touch bare ires that's heir problem.

>> > Wanna remove all the from pan;es from under the desks to get to the plugs and scokets , and you won't get paid for doing these you have to do them in your spare time.
>> > Plus your name will go on as the resposible person if something goes wrong you'll need to prove it.
>> Never happens.
>> > One tech. said they'd only do equipment they or their students make , provided the dept buy the tester. Well that was before covid .
>> > Not heard anything since then.
>> Seriously, you actually bother testing home made stuff?
>
> yes and student made stuff.

Why?! Do you have severe OCD?

>> > I suggested the college should employ a PAT tester full time , we used to give someone 1 day a week to do just our department
>> > and it wasn't enough time as they wanted everything tested every year.
>> > So it's been a fuck you regarding us PAT testing.
>> Every year? Where the fuck did that come from? We did 4 years. And new stuff didn't need testing since the manufacturer has tested it. Like a new car doesn't need a MOT for 3 years.
>
> I know but they wanted it that way, I did explain it to them think that's why it was stopped so they now have to decide what to do about PAT testing. Previously the college paid now each department has to pay from their own funds.

Which is why in my department I just did it myself. £80 for a 2nd hand PAT tester off Ebay, and fuck all for a roll of pass stickers. I never used fail stickers.

On Monday, 18 July 2022 at 03:38:22 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:15:56 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:21:36 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:59:17 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
> >> >> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.
> >> >
> >> > Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
> >> > Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.
> >> The pigs aren't so mean around here. They do have an obsession with seatbelts though.
> >
> > well he used to block part of Mile End road which is normally very busy .
> Block?

Yes one lane couldn't be used until it was towed away.

> >> >> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
> >> >> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
> >> >> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
> >> >> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.
> >> >
> >> > I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
> >> > Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.
> >> >
> >> >> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.
> >> >> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
> >> > Not recently did a few years back.
> >> He's back, and has made more videos. Or for more serious things, Big Clive.
> >
> > Yes I've watch big clive taking apart some of the dodgy chinese stuff from ebay.
> I like dodgy Chinese stuff, cheap and simple. Like the shower head with a live heating coil in it. I'm not a girl, I'm not scared of dangerous stuff..

OK when you know it's dangerous that's what warning labels are for.
> >> >> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
> >> >> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
> >> >> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.
> >> >
> >> > Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
> >> > made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
> >> > I think it needed a major service.
> >> For high speed filming, see The Slow Mo Guys. I think they have a Phantom camera that does a million FPS.
> >
> > See that of similar filming light traveling through a bottle of water, think it uses rotating mirrors .
> Ah, several CCDs? I wondered why it made a noise.
> >> >> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
> >> >> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
> >> >> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
> >> >> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.
> >> >
> >> > Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.
> >> When I was in high school our physics teacher set up a simulation of the national grid divided by 100, so 2.4V at the "houses" with an xmas tree light. There were actually very high voltage bare wires across the room and at once point she freaked out as another teacher walked in and straight towards the "pylons" spanned across between two desks.
> >
> > I remember my physics teacher dipping his hands in mercury to upturn tubes to measure air pressure and stuff,
> > he didn;t have much hair or many teeth , a good teacher.
> My chemistry teacher asked if anyone had a genuine gold ring. My friend did. It was dipped in nitric acid, which meant it was gold.

Yes that was the old way of testing gold now they use fancy spectral analyses and can tell exactly what something is made from.

> >> I've been in a plane three times. Once was a Boeing 737 to Wales to buy a car off my girlfriend's husband, the other two were Cessnas I jumped out of.
> >
> > I've been in a Cessna think that what it was on a 10min joy ride around yarmouth.
> > been on a couple of commercial flights sweden, greece & spain.
> > Never jumped out of any though,
> It's a lot more fun than you'd think, you can steer it.

I'll stick with simulators :-)

> >> > well not until I win the lottery, well I did a could of weeks ago but as usually I spent the lot on a can
> >> > in the club £5.50 !
> >> FFS, my home brew is a lot cheaper.
> >
> > Local pub is £4.35 for a nice pint of adnams .
> Far too expensive. For £20 I can make 50 litres of 23% alcohol.

Well if it tastes OK but I;ve tried others home brew even the local pub and that's quite rough hardly worth drinking.

> >> > almost double my euro millions £2.40 win.
> >> You can actually win as little as £2.40?
> >
> > Yeah won £30 a couple of times over the years.
> And how much did you spend on tickets to achieve that?

No idea but IO don;t buy coffees from shops as some do everyday on their way to work,
so I guess I spend up to about £50 a month via online tickets.
Depends how I feel and how much I've spent, so don;t really miss the money.

On Monday, 18 July 2022 at 19:28:11 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:32:24 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 22:24:57 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
> >> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:19:42 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > printing is so 20th century, why do we need to print should be the question.
> >> Oh don't start with the treehugger paperless society, it's inconvenient. Plus I wonder how much electricity people use to power the devices they now read things on. And the materials used to create those electronics.
> >
> > They have their phones laptops etc.. why carry around text books that cost from £30 to £100 when they can read the PDF on the phone.
> Not sure why those books cost that much. Presumably most is the research cost, not the paper cost, so why don't the PDF copies cost that much? Or are you pirating it?

No educational discounts check out kindle for book prices.
Stocking distribution etc are the main costs I think.

> > Most coursework is uploaded via email and automatically checked for plagiarism, if yuo have a class of 600 students checking their work hasn't been copied from a book is a pain and takes to long.
> Pretty easy to reword an article to avoid that.

Not really that easy , when it flags something you can then check manually.

It's done with music too all done via AI etc.

> >> > even if we use ebay we don't have to send them a gross of sheep in exchange for products.
> >> > There's a printer in most labs and perhaps a couple in the main shared offices.
> >> > If an acadmic wants a printer they can order one from their grant money and they;'ll have to fill it and replace the ink.
> >> > we have done the same with bins especailly since covid not every office has 2 bins that the cleaners have to collect from.
> >> > There are bins in corridors and shared offices, I don;t have a bin, I jusrt use the
> >> WTF, there should be bins in every room.
> >
> > Why we have 100s of offices the multi use rooms will have a bin or two we have about 6 in our lab, we don;t need 2 each in our 3 offices.
> I always did, there's always stuff people are throwing away.

Packaging mostly.

> >> > All the student labsheets are on-line as PDF, all the order forms students use are in google-docs.
> >> So when they want to study they all have to sit at a computer, how ridiculous.
> >
> > Most have laptops or phones or tablets now. If they want they can print stuff out it;s up to them.
> > Far easier to search through text on a computer than have bookmarks .
> > Quite a few don;t even carry a pen or pencil as they borrow from me quite often .
> Do they take notes on a phone?!

well all the lectures are recorded and posted online they can make notes either by typing or writing, it';s up to them.
Most people can type faster than they can write on a laptop and most have them.

> >> > Had one pHd student come to me yesterday asking for soldering board , I handed him some 'veroboard he said not that type,
> >> > then he showed me an image of martix board on his phone so I gave him that instead I said we don't use really use this much.
> >> > He wanted a 3 pin lead no idea what type again showed me what he wanted on the phone it was a female to female 3 pin JST lead 2.54mm pitch.
> >> Yeah showing people pictures can be useful. When I was repairing my mother's door handle, we went to B&Q after I took a photo of her holding a ruler against the old one, saved me measuring every part of it.
> >> > he was pleased because I had one in stock , but he he said that means they don't need ordering so don;t have to go on the ordering form, wait till he sees I've added them
> >> > He didn't know any of that he just wanted a lead with 3 pins, he was lucky he could show me a a picture there an then otherwise I;d have given him a IEC lead,
> >> > and said this has 3 pins.
> >> I was once asked for a figure of 8 lead, we eventually worked out she meant a taperecorder lead. She didn't know what a taperecorder was.
> > I have a selection of leads it;s annoying but most of our stuff use IEC..
> USB is the worst. There must be 15 connector types.

the pi4s use a 5.1V PSU which is annoying

On Tue, 19 Jul 2022 02:33:54 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisky.dave@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 18 July 2022 at 03:38:22 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:15:56 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 21:21:36 UTC+1, Commander Kinsey wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:59:17 +0100, Whisky-dave <whisk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> > That's handy we used to have someone an any old iron bloke called Tom the Tutt he used to collect all our scape stuff.
>> >> >> There's a van round here with a megaphone that shouts "any old scrap metal?" He doesn't even have a recording, as he changes what he says if he spots someone. He took a chest freezer off me.
>> >> >
>> >> > Ours disapeared years ago he kept getting tiuckets for his unsafe lorry loads , he seemd to over load it and broke down many times in the main road.
>> >> > Maybe the police got his licence revoked or something, he sort of disapeard one day couldnt; contact him or anything.
>> >> The pigs aren't so mean around here. They do have an obsession with seatbelts though.
>> >
>> > well he used to block part of Mile End road which is normally very busy .
>> Block?
>
> Yes one lane couldn't be used until it was towed away.

Ours just drives about, he doesn't park.

>> >> >> > I wished we'd kept some of that stuff would be worth quite a bit now.
>> >> >> > I wanted to keep the jabobs ladder that was lent out to the film set for young frankiestien the one that sting was in.
>> >> >> > Loads of old meters dating from the 60s in bakolite cases.
>> >> >> I got a few old meters dating back to 1930 form Ebay, for as little as £15. One is electrostatic.
>> >> >
>> >> > I did take a standard vairac and something else that I don;t know exacly what it is I just like the look of of.
>> >> > Think it test HV transformers , somewhere in my loft now along with a couple of AVOs.
>> >> >
>> >> >> > 3 phases varaics with control wheels the size of car stearing wheels.
>> >> >> Have you ever watched the Youtube channel from photonic induction? He loves to play with stuff like that.
>> >> > Not recently did a few years back.
>> >> He's back, and has made more videos. Or for more serious things, Big Clive.
>> >
>> > Yes I've watch big clive taking apart some of the dodgy chinese stuff from ebay.
>> I like dodgy Chinese stuff, cheap and simple. Like the shower head with a live heating coil in it. I'm not a girl, I'm not scared of dangerous stuff.
>
> OK when you know it's dangerous that's what warning labels are for.

No that's what common sense is for.

>> >> >> > 1.5 KW loads although those were the size of a washing macine and had asbestos panels in them.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > We had 6.6MV van der graff and a 10ft diameter fly wheel that was used to keep it going.
>> >> >> > We used to to test for lightning strikes on the concorde fuselage and filmed it using a 20 FPS camera
>> >> >> 20 FPS camera doesn't sound unusual.
>> >> >
>> >> > Sorry forgot the K so 20k FPS it had a large cinima type real like an old cine film camera 12" in diameter
>> >> > made a hell of a racket when it started up. I never got to see it in action though, well not actually doing any filming.
>> >> > I think it needed a major service.
>> >> For high speed filming, see The Slow Mo Guys. I think they have a Phantom camera that does a million FPS.
>> >
>> > See that of similar filming light traveling through a bottle of water, think it uses rotating mirrors .
>> Ah, several CCDs? I wondered why it made a noise.
>> >> >> > this was just before my time here think it was ealry 70s.
>> >> >> > Also had lots of high power high voltage stuff
>> >> >> > Large oil filed transformers. Lots of interesting bits and pieces but all thrown out.
>> >> >> Are substations still oil filled? Those make a nice big fire when they get shorted.
>> >> >
>> >> > Don;t really know we're starting teaching power stuff again but using tesktop versions.
>> >> When I was in high school our physics teacher set up a simulation of the national grid divided by 100, so 2.4V at the "houses" with an xmas tree light. There were actually very high voltage bare wires across the room and at once point she freaked out as another teacher walked in and straight towards the "pylons" spanned across between two desks.
>> >
>> > I remember my physics teacher dipping his hands in mercury to upturn tubes to measure air pressure and stuff,
>> > he didn;t have much hair or many teeth , a good teacher.
>> My chemistry teacher asked if anyone had a genuine gold ring. My friend did. It was dipped in nitric acid, which meant it was gold.
>
> Yes that was the old way of testing gold now they use fancy spectral analyses and can tell exactly what something is made from.

You mean you aren't meant to bite it?

>> >> I've been in a plane three times. Once was a Boeing 737 to Wales to buy a car off my girlfriend's husband, the other two were Cessnas I jumped out of.
>> >
>> > I've been in a Cessna think that what it was on a 10min joy ride around yarmouth.
>> > been on a couple of commercial flights sweden, greece & spain.
>> > Never jumped out of any though,
>> It's a lot more fun than you'd think, you can steer it.
>
> I'll stick with simulators :-)

Oh come on. I've done it twice. My friend broke her ankle one time, and I got my lines tangled up one time. No big deal.

>> >> > well not until I win the lottery, well I did a could of weeks ago but as usually I spent the lot on a can
>> >> > in the club £5.50 !
>> >> FFS, my home brew is a lot cheaper.
>> >
>> > Local pub is £4.35 for a nice pint of adnams .
>> Far too expensive. For £20 I can make 50 litres of 23% alcohol.
>
> Well if it tastes OK but I;ve tried others home brew even the local pub and that's quite rough hardly worth drinking.

I just brew ethanol. I add the flavouring afterwards. You can brew it by feeding it apples, whatever, I just feed it sugar. And you don't need expensive brewing sugar either. Tate and Lyle from Tesco works fine.

>> >> > almost double my euro millions £2.40 win.
>> >> You can actually win as little as £2.40?
>> >
>> > Yeah won £30 a couple of times over the years.
>> And how much did you spend on tickets to achieve that?
>
> No idea but IO don;t buy coffees from shops as some do everyday on their way to work,
> so I guess I spend up to about £50 a month via online tickets.
> Depends how I feel and how much I've spent, so don;t really miss the money.

What a waste.