forteh

Today has progressed onto standing up and pedaling, still only clockwise mind edit: boris's announcement today has made her all excited because I'll be able to take her out on her bike properly

Persephone (just turned 5) has been making the most of lockdown, she's taught herself to ride her bike (islabike cnoc16 handed down from her older brother). Unfortunately our garden has an area about 10' square in which to cycle. This week she discovered that if she paddled round in circles she could manage to get some good speed up, then she put her outside foot on the pedal and scooted round in faster 10' circles. At some point on thursday morning there was much squeaking of excitement from the back garden, she had progressed from scooting to full blown pedalling in circles. As of today she has mastered the feet up and start from a standstill, circles of various radii, circles at high speed, circles at less than walking pace, emergency stops when Aneurin (now 14 months) runs in front of her and endos. She likes doing endos Only problem is, she can only go in clockwise circles, if she tries anticlock she crashes into a wall

Don't take the bushes out, just rotate them so the offset is perpendicular to the shock axis to return to factory geometry our back the other way to effectively length the eye to eye length on the shock

It's life as normal for me, except my commute has turned from a 5 minute drive to a 5 second walk across the room

Prepare to be bored! Im a casual PC sim gamer, I've never had the time to fully dedicate to learning an indepth sim (I can take off in an A10C, navigate, shoot things and land but sorely need more time in the office) but even so I like to dip in and out every so often. Because I'm something of a tool tart I will always want the very best equipment I can get my hands on (for as little money as possible). Roll back around 15 years, I bought my first proper joystick off ebay, a then 20 year old thrustmaster FLCS, TQS & RCS (Flight Control System, Throttle Quadrant System & Rudder Control System), it was a replica of the F16 fighting falcon stick and throttle and was a revelation in how to fly. Being a HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) means you can control the core plane systems without needing to remove your hands from the controls and hunt for keyboard buttons. However come the advent of windows 7, microsoft made the old gameport standard (which the thrustmaster kit was tied to) obsolete and there was no way of making the hardware work. As the flying was somewhat dead in the water I tried my hand at rallying with Richard Burns Rally, unfortunately the cheapy steering wheel setup I had was a bit crap with no ffb (forcefeedback) and general crapness; a colleague at work kindly gave me his old logitech ffb wheel setup (he got it for gran tourismo on the ps3) and that worked admirably unlike my rally driving skills, RBR was completely uncompromising though and would not allow for any mistakes. I soon gave it up as too much effort and the wheel got put away as it was taking up a load of space. Fast forward to 2012ish and I get interested in flight sims again, the DCS A10C sim was out (being my favourite combat plane of all time) so out of curiosity I looked at suitable hardware to use with it, thrustmaster being the obvious primary choice; lo and behold they have produced a replica of the A10 stick and throttle (down to the throw weight of the switches) for an eye watering 375 quid! Somehow I found one locally on ebay for 175 and it came bundled with the A10 sim as a bonus. In use it was magical, very heavy but so precise and comfortable. Unfortunately the lack of rudder pedals (my old RCS setup required plugging into the gameport FLCS joystick) really bugged me so I started thinking about how to convert them to USB so as to work in modern versions of windows. Come back to the logitech steering wheel I had shelved. It got cut to pieces, the motherboard and potentiometers harvested and with a bit of linkage fiddling I converted the RCS chassis to USB and all was good in the world again; ok so I was down a wheel but meh, the rudder pedals were getting more use. Fast forward to 2015ish and dirt rally has been released and being the natural successor to colin macrae rally (which I dedicated many days to at uni) and suddenly I want to drive rally sims, unfortunately having been spoilt rotten by the A10 stick and throttle there was no way I would drive it without a decent spec FFB wheel. Back onto ebay and again a thrustmaster wheel kit being sold locally as spares and repairs for 50 quid, essentially he had bought it, suffered from calibration issues (which are easily resolved if you plug it onto a PC rather than an xbox) and never bothed with it since. Got it home, replaced a noisy fan, recalibrated it and got a 300 quid setup for peanuts. Unfortunately the volume of the FFB motors was enough to keep the wife awake with the new baby so the wheel has been largely unused, just waiting dormant for the last 4 years or so. I acquire elite dangerous and a VR headset and suddenly manage to spend 400 hours getting lost in the milkway but the immersion is mind blowing, I'm still there flying through the black on a regular basis, but only in VR, 2D just isn't the same. Fast forward to 2020, now I'm set up with VR I get the hankering to skid cars down a dirt track again (but in glorious 3D), dirt rally2 had been released but I reckon that perhaps instead of just the FFB wheel and the two pedals I should go the whole hog and get a clutch and handbrake setup sorted out as well. Remember the logitech wheel I cannibilised to convert the rudder pedals? Well I used the main steering axis potentiometer for the pedals but retained the rest of the circuits so I could potentially use them in the future. Last week involved taking the old pedal base, cutting it in half and using one of the pedals as a clutch, making a block of wood so I could screw it to the wall in the right place and hey presto a working clutch pedal. This week has been converting the last spare pedal and potentiometer to make a functional rally handbrake with the addition of a little woodwork. Total cost of the sim equipment setup (joystick/throttle/rudders/wheel/pedals/clutch/handbrake) is around 230 quid. Retail cost to buy a similar setup would be in the region of over 1100, I love being an engineering nerd TL:DR I'm crap at playing sims but I like making stuff on the cheap

With 20mm wide slick tyres Mental amount of skill considering what he's riding.

We're planning on doing the nc500 over a couple of weeks once we've got the camper up and running and liveable

The album is really good at getting under your skin, all of the ghosts albums are damn good but VI:locusts has been on repeat a lot whilst whittling away at solidworks

It works for me! Worst bit is the kids love playing with it* To be fair, she only stitched the cover together, I id the strapping and the joystick plug and socket *something about pretending to fly planes you filthy pervert

I've got an IKEA chair that's similar to the flintan but without arm rests and with an adjustable spring lay back mechanism and a different base. Doesn't appear to be available now but was about 90 quid when I got it 5 years ago. https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/flintan-nominell-office-chair-with-armrests-black-s59208197/ Mesh back is great but I found the seat base got uncomfortable quite quickly and was getting a numb arse after a couple of hours. Mrs wife made me a tapered foam bolster (foam from an old comfy armchair lumbar cushion) with a sheepskin top which I strapped to the seat with ratchet straps sewn to the underside of the bolster. It's cut and shaped like a fighter jet seat cushion so it fits my joystick which attaches to the front of the seat base with a home brew bracket. Chair is super comfy now and I can do 8 hours straight without any pain at all edit: it's cut out like the fronts of these seats and the joystick sits in the perfect position between my thighs. Consider getting yourself a sheepskin to sit on, it's awesome.

Yesterday, Aneurin decided that he would try walking downstairs, tentatively he took one step, panicked a bit and went back to the top to re-evaluate; he made it down holding onto the bannister spindles and my hand. Today he's not been off the stairs if he can wrangle it, climbing stood up and coming down holding onto the spindles on his own, somewhat frustrated that he can't get the stairgates to open not matter how hard he lifts them or fiddles with the catch mechanism! He's 13 months old next week

Well most of our staff have been furloughed, 4 of us left to work full time and keep the company afloat. I'm doing 100% of the design and drawings for about 1.5millions worth of work over the next couple of weeks. Doing it all from home but might need to go out to site a couple of times to do surveys. Would be nice to be able to stay home and work on the van conversion more but on the other hand I'm still on full pay Persephone is 5 on tuesday, today I taught her how to use an electric drill to screw screws, maybe next week I'll get her on the chopsaw

Works for me, I'm quite enjoying working from home. We're not social people, don't go to the pub and don't really visit many people, we homeschool anyways so apart from having to stay in the house a bit more it's life as normal

Or we clear out 99%, the virus mutates, reinfects again and the cycle repeats

Any lasting side effects yet Mike?

Might it be to do with quality assurance? For the medical might they need to be proven to be stored in a certain way, for example to meet audit requirements. Some of it might also be down to the suppliers, we can skf, fag and timken bearings with around 70% discount from retail because we deal direct, go through another stockist and we're paying additional markup.

We're manning the office one man a day on a rota (today is my day) to keep phone calls and stuff sorted, the factory is still fully open for anyone under 60 (the old f**kers got sent home last monday) and we've been designated as key workers for both severn trent water and thames water so unlikely to close down completely. Everyone else is remote working so things are still going ahead, just a little slower. On site installation work is petering out though, I was supposed to be surveying for thames tomorrow, that has been cancelled, a grit plant was supposed to be installed at Hull next week, again cancelled. Hotels closing causes a massive headache for the site installation teams as they would have to commute to site every morning which would be upwards of three hours each way traffic notwithstanding.

Thankfully we finally locked down! Stay safe people

Scotchland or wherever he parks the campervan I think

@Ali C can she not apply for one of the interest free government business loans to tide her over during the quiet period?

Interest rate down to 0.1%! My miniscule tracker mortgages just got even smaller Not that it will make a massive difference to us but it's a handy bonus.

Yup, all the water authorities are still working on site and demanding their new equipment to be installed! You're largely lone working aren't you as a jetter driver?

Who are you, you new around here?

Mrs wife has had it on her radar for the last three months and has surreptitiously stockpiled all the stuff we need already since the beginning on the year, freezers are full, pasta and rice buckets are full and we're stocked with instant noodles should shit come to bust Potatoes and carrots are going to be planted in the garden shortly, sourdough cultures will be developed for bread making (mainly because our yeast is expired and it's hard to find right now) so should be largely set. Nappies are all reuseable and we also use washable nappy wipe cloths so we can even use those in place of toilet roll. I'm still working in the office but anyone over 60 has been sent home (about 50% of the office staff) but I've set them all up with RDP access so should be able to work from home. Also managed to get the solidworks vaults working nicely over the vpn so the cad workstations can always be taken home to be used (SW doesn't play nice with RDP), infact one of the draughtsman is in isolation right now because he's over 60, compromised imune system and his son has picked it up - I delivered his computer to his drive this afternoon! We homeschool 75% of the kids and adding another one to the list isn't too much hassle so we're very fortunate that I can work (from the office, home and with full sick pay for the duration) and we're not going to incur any additional costs. The uncertainty is a bit of an arse but we're about as sorted as we could be so just got to wait it out and hope we don't lose too many on the way through.

Homeschooling is f**king wonderful when the shit hits the fan like now!