mightychurch.com

Dave Lankshear - 19 January 2009 01:57 PM

Do you think the template here is a bit wide? I love it, but I have a 23 inch Mac monitor.

Dave!  That’s bigger than my TV!!  Is it to fit all the peak oil blogs on?

you have no idea! ;-)

5 to 10 years till the next “Greater Depression” if it hasn’t started already….
....if you wanted to fly somewhere for a holiday, do it sooner rather than later. ;-)

@Adam & everyone, the ‘Latest posts’ block in the right hand column is back! I had some reservations about doing this, as it kind of makes the distinctions between the different forums fairly meaningless (everyone just follows the latest discussions regardless), but I was missing this too, and hopefully the coloured labels I’ve introduced (which are also links) help a bit.

Dave L: Email me your EE q’s if you’re keen, and I’ll add a small code guide next to the fast reply box, but you can still click the ‘Post Reply’ button below to get the full screen reply experience :) I just like to strip things right back, and then add them in as needed.

I’m had an interesting afternoon .....working with three lads under 13 (one being my grandson) building the “pew” as we have named it that is to be down the centre of our local kids float in the Bendigo Easter Parade.

Seats 20x kids back to back and is the centre piece down the middle of the float ......my wife is sketching out an outline of the city so I can cut it out with a jigsaw.
It goes to my wifes Afterschool Activities Group of primary kids and I won’t see it again until it’s painted and decorated by the kids starting monday night.
City Skyline being draw
The Pew .....just the skyline to cut out.
Looks simple but I can assure everyone it has a hundred weight of tech screws in it.

This is just to seat the kids safely in the middle of the trailer ...Kids float is to honour the town for the way it handled the recent fires ....suitable amount of time as it’s in easter ....and the kids can educate themselves about the services they will be representing.  Firemen/ambos/nurses/police/media/locals themselves/mums with prams/etc
Local firebrigade is lending engine to tow with and we are having yet to be determined air blown ribbons and blowups represennting flames around the edges of the trailer (which is a big flat top car trailer)

Doing a crash course in ramming air through different apparatii and orifices and seeing how the ribbons look with this pressure and that pressure…...early days and we can see a blowup fabric perimeter around the trailer ......need a bigger electric snailfaced blower than we have but early days…....(fire trucks got a 5kva genie to run all this ......bargain! ;) )

Don’t really know if any of you guys are interested in these community projects but took up most of my day so I decided you have to know about it ......regardless heheheheee

Looks crap at the moment but I can assure you it will look the part on the day :)  ......just a damn shame it ended up looking like a pew. .......be it chipboard .
I should go dig up the movie of the float the kids built last year and annoy you with that ........was a beauty and they even had a song to go with it…...nothing like the enthusiasm of youngster to make something work.

Heh looks like it will be a great float Mike!

Looks crap at the moment but I can assure you it will look the part on the day :)  ......just a damn shame it ended up looking like a pew. .......be it chipboard

Sounds awesome!

Full of it you two hehehheee ....that’s just the seat for these kids to sit on…..I understand it’s over engineered ......but needs to be bulletproof if it’s to pass health & safety ......and still the kids will wreck it.

About to be loaded on the trailer .......and is going to the Afterschool Kids group tomorrow arvo.
ThePew .......have cut out the skyline in readiness for the paint job.
............thought it best that the little people don’t get hold of the jigsaw.

Visited the tip shop this morn and no luck with the snail faced blower .....but noticed while I was shopping that there is a perfect sized one on the back of some ducting on Safeway Golden Square.
I’ll keep it in mind if I can’t find anything else to inflate these blowups the kids are apparently making ........‘sewing up material shapes and sealing them with goop’  .......was how it was explained to me.

A carpet dryer (as seen in godfreys for $300) was suggested as the best non commercial blower I could get for this job .......a blowup advertising bloke who sells blowers himself pointed me at the carpet dryers ......said they are the right volume/pressure mix for raising a fair bit of cloth ......we will experiment yet…...and perfect our skills ;)

Just by coincident my older daughter has a small commercial cleaning business and I’m trying to convince her she needs a carpet dryer to go with her youbeaut carpet scrubber/shampooer that she already has.  She argues she doesn’t need one…..Dad argues she does. :)

“Safeway Golden Square.”

Stop it, you’re killing me. That’s where my wife and brother in law used to work when they were teenagers!

Safeways safe for the moment ......we have a breakthrough
And who said this forum doesn’t reach a multitude.  Ian Lawther, my good buddy friend mate from Healesville just spotted the post and rang my wife to say “his mate’.....has just sold his jumping castle and has three blowers in the shed I can choose from. 

I’m thinking full size poppet head on this easter float.

( Speaking of my blind mate Ian….he’s having some difficulty logging on here Luke and he asked me to mention it to you…....look out for the guy please.)

The children made a start on their Easter float this arvo .....and I had the name wrong and I have been corrected. ‘The Afterschool Art and Craft Group’ .....so a 6 year old informed me .
Good to see this next generation is on top of their media from the outset.  heheheee!
getting a feel for what we are up too ......the kids checking out the seating arrangements and getting familiar with something you normally wouldn’t be doing .....riding on a trailer (be it 3 mph)
Getting started on the undercoat
More undercoat
Won’t bore you with too much more but wondered who else had a community or group thing / activity whatever going on.

Ask nicely and you shall receive what you are after my mum used to say.

Contacted the ABC radio and asked for a background tape for the kids float .....it’s about Honouring Our Community Spirit which was most evident in the recent fires.

The lads at the ABC sent me this to play over the PA on the firetruck pulling the float. ABC montage of the radio on the day  .....is 1.1meg mp3 (I’ll only leave it up for a day or two as I have little space)

I’m gunna rip that ABC montage down off my site tomorrow ....Tis a bit big and it’s starting to block my server :(

the air blower problem has been solved since someone smarter than myself pointed out that a woodworking dust extractor fan would be ideal for blowing up the air bags on the float.

......and I know where there is heaps of them ;)

So what measures have we introduced as parents and grandparent to get our kids bums away from PS2s & XBoxes to offset carpal tunnel thumbs.

My kids buy their kids things to amuse them as my wife and I did ourselves. But I’m finding the kids want you not the toy.  I watch the kids across the road (one’s in my lounge doing his homework on my computer at the moment…we could do it at home but he prefers the noise and distraction of a family around him .....his dads asleep with his sleep in morning as he works from 4am all week so he can be home when his kids get home from school (is his mission ) Sundays his catchup )
Mum walked out when the youngest was 6 mths ......Dads handled it since and the youngest is 12 now.
Dad claims nothing from Mum as she has her own problems as a sexual assault victim of the local cops here in Maryborough over many years (yes! that’s what I said Cops!) .....offenders went to jail of recent years.  Mums a mess and Dad still looks after her financially a little at a distance .....she’s in queenland.

Dad struggles along with no DSE support as he doesn’t want the dept hastling the boys mother .......what a mess.
I’ll delete some of this out of respect for my neighbour but people need to know what goes on.

I look at my kids and grandkids and think how lucky they are.

Cuddles and attention is what I reckon all these kids need .....not crap just some old fashion eye contact is a start.
crapped on enough ......neighbours youngest lad will be launching his own build RC plane as soon as his Dad gets up to see it today.  he’s a bit nervous as the winds come up a little but i know he can handle it better than most.
He’s built One of these Electric Foamies .......he’s at the bus stop watching in the video…...while I’m trying to get the thing on the deck while listening to the school bus approaching .......and explains why I ditched her where I did.
It’s a boring video but shows off the planes abilities pretty well considering I had two cameras on board at once…....was a bit heavy.
I’ll vid the boys flight and try and post it here later.
here’s another that I made earlier of the same plane ......two in fact.  this is how you teach the kids some maths on the white board ......prop calcs based on power ........amazing how they get interested in Maths after you thrash their arse in a drag race ......same engine same battery ......different prop ;)
I think the loop at the end was rubbing it in a little too much….... the opposition had already given up and just turned off the climb and all he wanted to do was go back over those prop calcs .

Can I say my biggest failure I feel is my nephew ....wifes sisters boy.  He was raised in Scotland of my wifes sister and her hubby who is strangley an anglican choir master and elder (I think he’s known as) He was a surgeon/doctor but retired to this life with the church.
Simon the lad came and spent a big chunk of his gap year here in australia ....and a lot of time with me travelling the back blocks camping and generally meeting lots of our aboriginal community ...Simons great interest was seeing all these different cultures. He was down for astronomy, maths, history at Uni and i couldn’t figure it out….he did all this and then went and studied the middle east after 4 years of uni studying science ???????? ...he’s always been fascinated with the east early knowledge of astronomy which lead him to the culture I think.
The opportunity that I would have killed for and he just threw away was his astronomy career.  He was interested but when he was offered a position/cadetship/whatever with the Goddard centre in the states he just turned it down flat. the opportunity came out of his years at uni that saw him on a team playing with some big telescopes as an intern I think they call it….but he apparently was never that interested.
opportunity lost ...past members list ‘Simon’
I fell over when he turned the chance down :( .....his mother fell over also .......years on and we all still wonder what happened.
He’s got a good job at home teaching but still I wonder what could have been.
Maybe not having been there my image of a job like that isn’t what it appears. Maybe Simon knows more than me. All he ever says about it is “it wasn’t for me!”

Towed our local kids float into Bendigo for the Torch Light Parade that my wifes AfterSchool Activities Group of local kids entered again this year.
Half way through the build earlier in the year I instigated a change of focus and theme for the float as bendigo suffered a fire storm in the burbs and I thought all the kids dressed as SES and CFA and Cops and Mr & Mrs Average, .......to honour the community spirit etc.
Anyway was a perfect choice as the Torch Light Parade was used to honour all the SES and CFA with heaps of trucks in the procession.
Our choice of the Murphys Creek 4x4 CFA slip-on to tow the float was perfect ......and I think we have another grant to do it again next year.
This money allows my wife to buy all the materials that her after school activities group uses and most ends up on the float anyway .....was $500 last year ....hear they are offering her $1500 this year.
She had 19 kids this year and charges $1 for biscuit money ‘just to keep the mums thinking’ she says.  The grant moneys essential as nothing else is available so we thank Greater Bendigo as it ain’t even our shire.  (don’t tell ‘em .....i don’t think they realise heheheeee)
.......I didn’t see it myself .....I set up the float for the kids and hooked it on the FireTruck at the start of the parade and parked my 4x4 at the end of the parade for my wife to drive home (CFA brass wouldn’t let us tow the float on the road behind a CFA veh. ....insurance etc….but we got around it as the Parade had it’s own insurance ...and the CFA allowed us to put it on for the parade alone) .....then I grabbed my wifes little car and shot off to my sons in Cranbourne for a visit .......200kms to the other side of melb and barely a car on the road all the way.  I don’t go to these kids functions as a few may feel my interest is unhealthy.
I never mix with these kids and barely know all their names ......I fetch and carry and general dogsbody and rarely get involved.
here’s a story on the TorchLight in the Bendigo Addy ........this is pretty big in bendigo as Easter is when the Chinese Dragons come out and the people come from far and wide for the parades over Easter here.
http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/a-parade-of-thanks/1484570.aspx

I’d post a few pics but am out of server space :(  ...it was on the news though ;)

and I think these stories voice why I like bendigo ....local rag and all ;)
http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/its-all-the-same-in-the-culture-of-difference/1485105.aspx
http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/sun-loong-awakens/1484561.aspx
http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/city-goes-crackers/1484555.aspx

Dave started off the thread about software and who’s using what.
Well I play with none of it if I can help it but am the bunny in the household who gets to sort the crashed computer.  I’ve got two here at the moment of neighbours kids that have both suffered segment failure in their old drives.  (both old P3s trying to run XP on small H/Ds >10gig)

anyway, not why I dropped in.
I wanted to compare Solitaire %s.  I run at 19 % until I get lazy and fall to 18% .....then takes me a week to fight my way back heheheheeee!
But was wondering if anyone was in the 20% game .....I’ve been trying to see a 20% (I’ll screenshot it if I ever do :) ) on this stupid Solitaire game for years heheheheeeee and was wondering if anybody was there already??

ps….. I know you all play it!  :D