Chorlton Coffee Festival. A Coffee Festival in Chorlton……………… Coffee
I probably shouldn’t go to this, too much caffeine plays havoc with the ulcer.
Monthly archives: May 2013
Jubilee Films
Jubilee Films, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Video, dvd, laser disks.
Blues Disco and Fun Bar
Blues Disco and Fun Bar, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Ashton.
Granada Cleaners
Granada Cleaners, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
This place is directly opposite work and I only noticed yesterday just how
very 1970s the sign is.
Daily Blog 05/27/2013 1
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mæntʃɛstər • Manchester’s new tube map-style pub guide Boozers…
Manchester’s new tube map-style pub guide
Boozers from new Moston to Stretford are all included on the chart which uses popular roads in the place of London Underground lines.
Look at my little Chopper
I just built up one of the O gauge 3D printed chopper bikes that arrived last week. Not bad.
You can order yours from the Spinneyworld shop.
(There are also OO gauge bikes, which are even smaller and more fiddly. I’m in the process of building one of those as well.)
Buy the original art from the Sounds of Soldiers cover
New in the Spinneyworld shop is this unique piece, created for the cover image of Sounds of Soldiers. You can read about the build up here.
The diorama features 1:6th scale items on a base, depicting a makeshift soldier’s grave, in keeping with the themes of the book. It comes in a display case to keep the dust off.
You won’t get this sort of service from Kwik Fit
“Sidewalk Skiing” is, apparently, the latest stupid driving craze in Saudi Arabia.
via Jalopnik
Commission your own Skeleton Boy sketch
Skeleton Boy has had his share of adventures over the years. Now it’s your chance to own your own unique piece of Skelly memorabilia.
Just like the first Skeleton Boy drawings, your commission will be done on an art card or a postcard, signed and dated on the back. All you have to do is decide what you want Skelly to be doing* and what size you want the image to be. You’ll get the original drawing, but a scan of it will be added to the Skeleton Boy set on Flickr.
*We reserve the right to refuse to draw anything that’s deliberately offensive and refund your payment.
Envirolution, Platt Fields
Envirolution, Platt Fields, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
The elephant god (Ganesh?) is out of place amongst all the recycling and eco stalls, but it watches over them anyway.
Conspiracy Theory Collision
Variations of this have been turning up as comment spam-
Breaking News from TIME WARNER NEWS: We work for big news companies own by the Evil Jews regime in America; We betray our boss and leak this important news to you: The mass genocide terrorist organization known as the illuminati (also known as the Bilderberg Group) used the H.A.A.R.P. weather weapon machine to wipe out an Elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma because that school didn’t want to house train the little children to worship the Devil.
Not quite a full house on conspiracy theory bingo- nothing about 9/11 or birth certificates- but they sure have managed to condense the crazy, haven’t they.
B-Movie Night: Death Wish 5- The Face Of Death
By now, I’m sure you know the drill.
Kersey’s back in New York, but now he’s in witness protection for some reason. His new girlfriend’s a fashion designer, who’s ex is a mobster using her business for a wee bit of financial laundering.
The girlfriend is killed, the ex grabs his daughter and treats her like a hostage, Kersey kills a bunch of people. The end.
There are a couple of neat kills, particularly the one with the football, and it’s better than DW4, but there was really nothing left to be said by this point.
Daily Blog 05/19/2013
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Farm-to-market road – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United States, a farm-to-market road or ranch-to-market road (sometimes farm road or ranch road for short) is a state road or county road which traditionally served to connect rural or agricultural areas to market towns. These routes serve as a better quality road, usually a highway, which allows farmers and ranchers to transport their products to market towns and/or distribution centers.
Specifically, in the state of Texas, the terms Farm to Market Road and Ranch to Market Road indicate roadways that are part of the state’s system of secondary and connecting routes, built and maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). This system was established in 1949 as a project to provide access to rural areas. The system consists primarily of paved, two-lane roads. Generally, roads found west of US 281 (or Interstate 35 in some locations) are designated Ranch to Market Roads, while those located east of US 281 are designated Farm to Market Roads, though there are exceptions to this naming system, such as RM 2588 in Henderson County in East Texas or FM 1215 in Reeves County West Texas.[1] Some segments are even expressways, including a segment of FM 1764 (the Emmett F. Lowry Expressway between Interstate 45 and Texas City, Texas).
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S.A.M. #13: The Hawaii Clipper Mystery – Dieselpunks
The Hawaii Clipper, originally named Hawaiian Clipper, made her maiden flight in March 1936; in May 1936, she was officially christened by Patricia Kennedy at Pearl Harbor, using a coconut instead of traditional champagne bottle:
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The Lost Clipper | Chasing the mystery of the lost Hawaii Clipper
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Invisible Themepark | The Mystery of the Mystery of the Hawaii Clipper Disappearance
The PanAm Clippers were flying boats–passenger planes–that flew from mainland U.S. to China. Because of the Clippers’ (and all boats at that time) limited range, the Clippers hopped from island base to island base, much like a toad hopping rocks: Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, Philippines, Macao, and China mainland.
On July 28, 1938, the Hawaii Clipper took off from Guam with six passengers and nine crew. Destination: Manila.
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Abandoned Catalina seaplane: 50 years between the sea and the desert
It’s a beautiful seaplane abandoned between the sea and the desert of Saudi Arabia and it’s been left there for almost 50 years. The plane is a PBY-5A Catalina, a military American seaplane from the 1930’s. It’s is located on a beach off the Strait of Tiran on the Saudi Arabia side of the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba.
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This century-old abandoned ship now hosts a floating forest
Sydney’s Homebush Bay is home to many a broken and forgotten ship, but at least one of those derelict boats still houses a bit of life. The SS Ayrfield, long decommissioned, has a mangrove forest growing from its corpse.
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Making the facade of Miami’s Colony Hotel in 1:43 scale – #2 Windows and details
Here is the second step of this facade project. Here you can see the process of making many facade details such as cornice, moldings and windows. I used 1 and 2 mm thick grey cardboard for the facade and styrene profiles for the windows.
Gun Barrel City, Texas 1
Gun Barrel City, TX, United States – Google Maps.
How much more Texan a town name can you think of than Gun Barrel City?
Daily Blog 05/17/2013
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Here’s the news from 1991 – a vanishingly small number of peer-reviewed studies in science journals argue that humans aren’t the cause of global warming.
Here’s the news from 2013 – since 1991, less than two per cent of all peer-reviewed studies say climate change is caused by something other than human activities (that’s burning fossil fuels and digging up forests, to you and me).
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Suggestions that global warming has stalled are a “diversionary tactic” from “deniers” who want the public to be confused over climate change, according to the world’s best-known climate scientist. Prof James Hansen, who first alerted the world to climate change in 1988, said on Friday: “It is not true that the temperature has not changed in the two decades.”
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Carbon Commentary · Solar is now cheaper than nuclear. Even in the UK.
At 2013 prices, solar PV in mid-latitude countries is now cheaper than new nuclear. Put in the UK context, the proposed EdF power station at Hinkley is now more expensive per unit of electricity generated than solar farms in the south of England. The implications of this need a great deal more consideration than they are getting.
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A throwable building-mapping sphere from Bounce Imaging was recently chosen by PopSci for a 2013 Invention Award. The “throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe,” in PopSci’s words, “has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras).”
Daily Blog 05/16/2013
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‘Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills’ | Politics | The Guardian
The austerity programmes administered by western governments in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis were, of course, intended as a remedy, a tough but necessary course of treatment to relieve the symptoms of debts and deficits and to cure recession. But if, David Stuckler says, austerity had been run like a clinical trial, “It would have been discontinued. The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming.”
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Swedish Man Dies After Having Sex With Hornet’s Nest – IBTimes UK
A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet’s nest on his farm outside Ystad.
The 35-year-old, known only as Hasse, had 146 sting marks on his body, including 54 to his genitals, News Sweden said.
Daily Blog 05/15/2013
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Cycling helmet law may not reduce hospital admissions, researchers say | World news | guardian.co.uk
Introducing a law to force cyclists to wear helmets may not reduce the number of hospital admissions for cycling-related head injuries, a study has suggested.
Researchers said that while helmets reduce head injuries and should be encouraged, the decrease in hospital admissions in Canada, where the law is in place in some regions, seems to have been “minimal”.
Little pieces of plastic that make me very happy
These arrived today, and I am very pleased with them. They’re the latest test prints of my first set of modern image bikes for model railways. The larger bikes are O gauge (1:43rd), and look to be ready for market. You can order them from the Spinneyworld shop, with the first full scale print late this month or early next.
The smaller bikes are OO (1:76th). At that size, the handle bars and pedals were too fine to print (I had to fatten them up for the O gauge ones). The question is, would people buy them if they need to fashion their own handle bars? I could make them in etched brass, but that could be expensive, or make them from wire, a little labour intensive. But I’m selling to resourceful folk, maybe I can rely on them to do a bit of the work.
Modellers, what do you think?
Extreme Money
I’m reading Extreme Money at the moment. It’s slow going. For one thing it’s information heavy, jumping from idea to idea as it traces the history of the modern obsession with the market. I’m also already angry at the politicians who are destroying all the good things in our country, and this book shows up the emptiness of the ideology they’re hurting us all for.
The financial sector- the thing the Tories will kill and destroy to protect- isn’t a house built on sand. It’s an ugly and decrepit Disney castle held together by a string of lies and floating on the hot air generated by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics. The experts whose study is cited to justify austerity can’t even add up a column in Excel. If they’re incapable of the intellectual rigour required to check their sums, why on earth are we letting their ideas ruin our lives?
I like turtles
I like turtles, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
But not rice. Found on a note pad in Ikea.