What is it? See below.

We are living in an age of magic, an age of engineering and scientific marvels. What is this? It’s the surface of a comet! It’s the comet Gerasimov from only 6.5Km away, roughly. No-one in history has ever seen anything like this before. We used to think comets were just balls of dirty ice which got partly melted with each sun pass. But this European Space Agency spacecraft has shown that this comet, at least, is much more than just dirty ice. This is history being made!

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We’re going to spend $22 billion to obtain 12 submarines. At the same time, we have a huge budget deficit which will require drastic measures to correct.

Well, how about this? There is an alternative. Forget building submarines altogether. Why do we need them? Where’s the justification? They will never fire a shot in anger. They will never be needed, just as the six Collins Class subs have never been blooded.

Submarines are 20th century. There are so many alternatives to kill ships by stealth now. Even if the justification is intelligence gathering, it’s a hugely expensive way to get it. UAV (drone) technology is taking over. Besides, it is very, very difficult to get submarine crews. Very few can tolerate the long periods submerged in such tight living conditions.

If we have $22bn to spend, spend it on 21st century technology such as the US Fast Littoral Combat Ships (built right here in WA by Austal) or small stealthy, but deadly, patrol craft (ditto). For $22bn we could have a hundred of them or more. They could overwhelm an enemy like ants attacking a large prey. Cruise missiles. Forget subs!

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I was talking about the wave power experiment in Cockburn Sound yesterday. Well, shazzam, it went on-line today. The pilot installation has been connected to Garden Island and is supplying 720KW to the RAN base there, plus desalinated water. All from only three generator buoys.

I thought the generators were in the buoys, but no, the buoys generate sea water at high pressure which is piped ashore to drive turbines. The desalination is a byproduct, presumably by reverse osmosis.

If only three buoys can generate that much power, imagine what 100 could do.

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I had an attack of GAS today. GAS is Gear Acquisition Syndrome, the need to buy one more piece of photographic gear. But I resisted …

I was reading a piece about a new Tamron 150-600mm zoom telephoto lens and getting all gooey about it. Wow, what a lens, I thought. Sigma makes one of the same range in Pentax mount which I could use. $1,497. Ugh.

Then while browsing the lens lists, it suddenly hit me – I’ve got the Olympus 75-300mm lens for micro 4/3rds. That’s equivalent to 150-600mm in full frame. So I’ve already got a lens of that type!! The attack of GAS went away.

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In tonight’s Guardian, they show that the lead lawyer for the government in the Trade Union Royal Commission is being paid $3.6 million for less than two years’ work. The government is willigly paying that amount of money in the hope of getting even with trade unions.

At the same time, they’re suggesting we might have to forego the census next year as we can’t afford it.

I think that shows this execrable, disgusting government’s priorities.

Peter Dowding in the West points out that in 1986 the WA Labor government’s move to abolish capital punishment (government sanctioned killing) went close to defeat because nearly all the conservative side (Liberals and Nationals) voted to keep hanging people. If hanging had been kept, John Button and Daryl Beamish, two entirely innocent men, would almost certainly be dead.

And don’t forget it’s the conservatives who want royal honours restored (so they can give each other knighthoods again). Disgusting, revolting people.

Pollution free energy. Don’t be a galah. (I took this shot in 1987 on the Exmouth Peninsula.) © PJ Croft 1987, 2015

I’m a financial member of GetUp, the small organisation that tries to influence events by getting people to speak up. They asked us to email our local MP yesterday about the RET, the Renewable Energy Target, the legislated target to have “20:20” – 20% of our energy generated from renewable resources by 2020. This damnable Liberal government has abandoned any target.

This is what I sent to Christian Porter MP, my local member.
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I’m 68, and I’m old enough to remember what WA’s climate USED to be like.

There’s no question that our rainfall in WA has dropped dramatically and temperatures have risen noticeably. I used to have to rug up at night. No more. Winter nights are now mild. Summer temperatures are noticeably higher and heat waves ( > 3 days @ > 30C ) last longer, as long as a month.

This is plain evidence that WA’s climate has changed. This IS climate change. I have to use much more air conditioning now, at great cost, both to me and to our environment.

For goodness sake, look at the cost/benefit analysis of acting, or doing nothing. To me it’s clear.

You believe climate change is crap ( I say this because you stand shoulder to shoulder with your leader who says that, and you say nothing to the contrary).

I believe climate change is not only scientifically proven, it’s real. I can feel it. And when more than 1,000 scientists around the world, with full rigorous, peer reviewed research and the qualifications to do so, speak unequivocally, I listen and believe.

I could be wrong, and we could spend billions of dollars combating climate change without halting or reversing the change. But look where and how those billions would be spent.

We’d invest in renewable energy, and I include both nuclear power stations (fission) and fusion power (see the Lockheed Martin announcement about small sized fusion reactors within 5 years). Geo thermal power – why aren’t we developing it, for goodness sake? Solar power. Wave power – it’s happening right now in Cockburn Sound in tests by the Carnegie company, with no government help! Virtually cost free power with desalinated water as a by-product. Why not do it?

All these things are money makers and jobs creators. Australia is good at doing this and could become a major exporter.

The result would be cleaner air, fewer waste products, less degradation of the land by open cut coal mines, cleaner oceans, no damage to coral reefs, and JOBS. Technical, engineering jobs, just what we need. Manufacturing jobs.

I could be wrong and this may not halt climate change, but the money we spend is not wasted! It would have huge benefits, even if the climate continued to change.

Or, we follow Tony Abbott’s path and do nothing. We place great reliance on coal. We continue to allow large scale coal mining, when the economic case is no longer there – we don’t need massive coal any more. All we’re doing is shipping it to India to cause massive pollution and environmental damage, and causing great damage to our own environment in the process, all to enrich an Indian billionaire. This is just one example. We continue to see our manufacturing base disappear. We wring our hands and try to think of solutions, and watch our jobs disappear overseas to Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and China.

You COULD be wrong. And if you are, the damage would be incalculable.

So if we follow your path, what are you going to say in 40, 50 years’ time? Ooops, sorry? The Monty Python apology?

If you are wrong, how are you going to fix the consequences of your opposition to a RET or a carbon (dioxide) emissions tax, or a resources rent tax?

If I’m wrong, I can’t see that I’ll need to apologise, because the consequences of my error will be terrific even so. We will see new jobs, cleaner air, cleaner and more efficient power generation and new technology. Patents, royalties. Revenue from the levies and taxes flowing to the government.

For goodness sake, THINK.
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Why aren’t we developing geothermal power? According to my reading, a particular spot in South Australia (near Woomera, I think) has the ability to provide enough power, free of charge, free of pollution, to supply the whole of the eastern states forever!

It seems to be the cost of building the power transmission lines from the site to link into the SA power grid. Huh? Surely even a cost of $500 million would not be out of the question?

Here in WA we have a major geothermal hotspot near Dongara, again able to supply massive heat. And another one just over the Darling Scarp near Perth. Why aren’t we developing it? I don’t understand it.

My reference to wave power is the Carnegie Energy project in Cockburn Sound http://www.carnegiewave.com/ . Big weights anchoring buoys to the ocean floor (about 20m down?). As the waves pass, the buoys rise and fall and drive a generator in the buoy. This generates power which is fed to the shore by electric cables under the water. Each buoy is fairly small but you have a large number of them (100, I think), in a grid.

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Interesting sights yesterday. Sitting in a cafe on the coast and first, a RAAF Lockheed Martin C-130 Super Hercules four engined prop plane flew past, low and slow.

C-130 Hercules

It was followed 10 mins later by a C-17 Globemaster, a massive four-jet engined transport plane flying low.

C-17 Globemaster transport.

Both were only 200 ft or so above the ocean, north to south.

Then an hour later, they came back again flying south to north, right above the coast line. Phew!

Then I went to Joondalup shopping centre and there was an army Military Police vehicle there, and inside the centre, sipping milkshakes, three MPs with their red badges.

What’s going on? Has Indonesia invaded?

My first loco arrived last week. It’s a Japanese Kato brand. It’s only DC at the moment (i.e. it runs on a 9V battery or whatever), but I’ve ordered a drop-in DCC decoder to make it run on 16V ac digital power. Although it’s USA livery, I’ll repaint it to a more WA colour scheme. I’m pretty sure similar locos are used here.

First, I read a brilliant little piece the other day:

A rich man, a poor man and a workman are sitting at a table. There’s a plate of a dozen biscuits in the centre. The rich man grabs eleven of them and says to the workman, “The poor man needs your biscuit.”

Exactly. Precisely. This is confirmed by the Australian employer groups always trying to apply moral pressure to unions in Minimum Wage pay case negotiations every year, saying that any increase in wages may lead to job losses. This applies at any time, whether the economy and business conditions are going great or not. Even when the ACTU and unions are only trying to get another $10 a week on the minimum wage, the employers try to deny it. This is sheer cold blooded selfishness.

It’s also confirmed by the latest news: by next year, 49% of the entire world’s wealth will be in the hands of the richest 1%. But that’s not enough. They still want more and more, and they’ll do anything to get it, including tax avoidance (which is legal but immoral), tax evasion (which is illegal and even more immoral), hidden bank accounts, using hidden offshore tax free banks and any other means they can think of. And they flaunt it.

I know two people: one practices tax avaiodance and boasted to me in January 2011 that “I paid no tax last year, it all goes therough the (family) trust.” He is so captured by the belief that he’s a finance guru that he expected me to applaud him.

Well, he also flies to Bali about once a month to “do maintenance” on a villa there which he hides in a tax sheltered scheme. He drives on the roads, he flies from the airport, he goes through Customs and Immigration, he relies on the air traffic control and the weather prediction service, he relies on the Dept of Health to guard against diseases and epidemics … the list is endless. All these are taxpayer funded! But he doesn’t believe he should have to pay any tax! He thinks it’s clever to avoid tax. I kept a straight face in order to keep the peace, but I fume.

I was speaking to another guy recently, a retired business owner. He resented the 9% employee super levy and all forms of government regulation. He implied that he has problems with the ATO over his tax. I wonder why. His whole speech was a tirade against authority – how he was only trying to be successful, i.e. make money for himself, and everyone was putting obstacles in his way. I told him we have no common ground and I didn’t want to talk to him again.

Read about Thomas Piketty. He has exposed the huge shift of wealth in this society from the poor to the rich over the last century, and the pace is accelerating. It is actually true, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. It’s being pushed to the fore by the last budget of this awful Liberal government in Canberra. All the burden is falling on the less well off and the rich were untouched.

I truly believe that the message, that you will not get away with evading tax, will not get through without the practitioners having to live in fear. Nothing else works. The super rich must be made to fear their attempts to avoid paying their way. Nothing else we have ever tried has worked. Vive la Revolution.

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I’m going to have to have the gastric bypass operation. I can’t go on like this. I can’t do anything any more. Even walking around the shopping centre is an ordeal. I tire so quickly. I can’t enjoy walking any more. I used to.

It’ll cost $6,500 nett, after HBF but no Medicare for this. It’s considered cosmetic surgery. It’s not optional to me.

That means I’ve wasted another year, after chickening out last year. Damn.

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However, the incentive is that I want to do another trip to the UK to visit Croft Castle, while I still can. I had a vague plan to make a re-run of the 2008 trip in Setember and October this year. But an ad has caught my eye this morning.

The cruise ship Astor makes regular cruises between Fremantle and London but the route going there is via South Africa and the west coast of Africa. No thanks, not for me. I will never go near Africa. No interest.

But this morning I find they’re advertising the return trip: London back to Fremantle but around the other side, via the Caribbean, Panama Canal, the Pacific Islands, Auckland, then Sydney and Fremantle. That’s more attractive to me. It’s 53 days, a long trip, but with 11 stops, not too bad. And the Astor is a small ship, only 850 passengers vs the 2,800 of the last two I’ve been on. I’ve heard good reports about it.

They’re advertising cabins with “2nd person free”, meaning one price for a two berth cabin, no single supplement (that’s my reading of it, anyway). If I could find a travel partner to share …  Something to think about, anyway.

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Another new plan out of a magazine:

Although this is drawn as a square, the bottom left coner is actually open. Therefore the three sides can be opened out and bent around my L-shaped boards, I think. Waverly on one leg and King’s Cross on the other, with Doncaster in between. I actually travelled this route in 2008 on a high speed train, so I know the stations.

Waverly Station, Edinburgh. That’s a road bridge across the top. I’ve driven across it several times (‘cos I was lost!)

The more time I spend on this model railway, the more I realise I need to learn and plan before I commit to sticking down track. The good thing is that the more I read, the more it makes sense. I’ve been re-reading torn out articles from months ago and although they seemed to be fairly straightforward then, they make even more sense now that I’ve read other theory articles. It is very complex. This is a multi year project, something you never finish. The electronics alone is formidable, but that’s what I like, of course.

I think my plan up to now is going to be abandoned once again. It’s aimless. I’ve found another plan (above) in a magazine. Although it doesn’t go around an L-bend as shown, it’s much more interesting and is a going concern. It actually includes Waverly Station in Edinburgh, where I spent a good few hours in 2008 – the hire car depot was on the platform. (You have to drive down, off the bridge onto the platform. This had me bamboozled at first. I had to stop the car on the bridge and phone the hire company for instructions.) I’ve seen a couple of articles about modelling it and it looks fantastic. Having sen and experienced it makes it all the better. I know what it looks like with my own eyes.

It would also solve my problem of what country to model. I wanted to model Australia, of course, preferably Perth and/or the NW iron trains, but there’s almost nothing available in N-gauge for Australian models. The overwhelming majority (>95%) are UK or USA. It seems wrong to be modelling the UK out here, but there’s not much choice.

I think I’m also going to have to buy one of these:

That’s a touch screen display, with motor driven speed wheels on the sides (ie they rotate to show what speed the loco is going). Made in Germany. And this:

That’s a wireless touch screen remote about the size of a mobile phone. I want it!

But there are many, many more hours of planning to be done. I’d just be bored otherwise.

Hmmm. When designing a model railway, it’s not as simple as it seems. I’ve realised that the layout I’ve been working on is aimless. Tracks lead to other tracks simply because they can. I don’t have a plan of operations, i.e. this train picks up here and delivers here etc.

So I’m having a rethink. First, I’m dividing the two legs of the baseboard so that I can start small and work up. Next, I found a plan in a magazine a few days ago:

This is what they call a “tail chaser”, i.e. round and round it goes, but with plenty of sidings and goods yards etc. So I’m thinking I’ll adapt it to be one leg of my L shape as so:

This is still at a primitive stage on the up and down legs, as you can see. The branches go off to the horizontal part of the L baseboard, to be added and connected later. I’ve retained my central station as so much work went into it. I received some plastic platform kits last week and shazzam, the platform width is exactly the width I allowed in the drawing, so no track shifting needed, thank goodness.

Boy, I’m coming to realise how vital it is to spend as long as it takes on planning, because once you start laying track, cutting away the underlay, pinning it all down and ballasting (spreading finely ground granite chips on the track, glued in place), it would be very hard to change. I foresee many weeks or months of planning in front of me before I commit to permanent track laying. This is a project that will take years. These things are never finished, that’s the beauty of it. There’s always something to be done.

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Damn. I’ve just changed an ink tank in my Canon printer, only to discover that it’s a wrong type. I need type 526, but I accidentally bought a 521. I can’t take it back, I’ve opened it. So that’s $22.95 down the drain, literally into the rubbish bin. Bugger. And my printer don’t go until I buy another cartridge.

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I’m very happy that Tony Abbott is to stay on as PM. He’s such an idiot that he’ll be an easybeat at the next election. Turnbull + Bishop would have been much harder to beat. Yay, Tones! What next, an Australian Pope? A House of Lords? An Order of the Garter for Lord Downer? I can’t wait for the next bungle. Let’s make this a one-term federal government, like Victoria and Queensland.

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Twice more in the past week I’ve woken with a start after midnight to what sounds like three hard raps on my front door. I lie there, in the knowledge that if there was anyone there, they’ll knock again (or push the doorbell). This happened several times after I moved here in 2013 and I thought it was local kids up to mischief.

Do I have a poltergeist, or is this some subconscious dream that someone wants to come in?

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And the heat goes on. For my interstate and foreign readers, day after day, week after week of over 30degC maxima. It was 40degC yesterday, and a cool day is forecast today, only 32degC. With aircon it’s OK in the house, but it discourages going out.

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I’m having a lot of trouble booting my computer up. It takes ages to get past the Gigabyte motherboard logo, then it displays the RAID dialogue even though I never chose to implement RAID, then it dispays a strange enumeration of just two of the SATA disks, (sometimes in 640×480 text, sometimes in 320×240 CGA!). Then after a long (>10 secs) delay it goes back to the Gigabyte logo, then after an even longer delay (up to 60 secs), it goes on but fails to boot because it won’t remember the boot order. All this can take 2-3 mins.

So I have to try to get into the BIOS to change the boot drive order, but that takes ages of pressing the DEL key, the RAID and two more Gigabyte logo displays before I get there. I find the C crive has moved itself to about number 6 in the boot order. I change it to number 2 and then have to go through all this delay again. Finally, it will usually boot into Windows after that. This happens every time. It will not remember the SATA boot order.

I’ve reset the BIOS to default parameters many times, both in the BIOS and by shorting the motherboard pins, to no avail. I do notice that if I disconnect one or more of the SATA drives, it improves, but it’s not clear cut.

Do I have a faulty motherboard? Or an overloaded power supply? To find out, the only way is to change to a different motherboard or P/S, but that means buying a new one at around $150 and all the work of dismantling and rebuilding. At least half a day’s work, more. Or buy a new power supply on the off chance, much easier to swap, but another $150. Damn.

So I’m being careful to never power the computer down, only putting it into sleep mode overnight. Then Microsoft does its software patch downloads overnight at the beginning of each month, trying to reboot in the process while I’m asleep, and I turn the monitor on in the morning to find it hung up. Bugger!!

This highlights why I’ve never been keen to get into computer servicing, even for friends. Just imagine if I had this problem with someone I didn’t know, telling them I’d have to spend $150 and around three hours of my time at $100 an hour, with no guarantee it will fix it. A client being suspicious that you know what you’re doing, reluctant to agree to spending this big amount when they could buy a brand new computer for the same amount. No thanks. Fixing computers, especially when the client has no backup and a chaotic hard disk with documents all over the place, is hard work.

Retina? What is it?

Yesterday was the third visit to SCGH for eye tests. The verdict? Can’t see any problems, come back and see us in six months. Well, that’s very reassuring but it doesn’t answer my questions – why am I seeing, very intermittently, a curved line in the lower field of my left eye? They had no answer. And why am I being troubled so much by glare? No answer.

The doctor yesterday was frustratingly brief and vague. He didn’t go into any detail, just said my field (peripheral vision) test was pretty good with just a small area of concern, but didn’t properly show me the printouts. My intra-ocular pressure is marginal but OK, but he didn’t tell me the readings. I came away reassured, but a bit frustrated.

Each time in these three visits, I had different doctors who were very nice, but they always introduced themselves with just their first name, so I wasn’t sure who I was seeing or even if they were a medical doctor or just a technician. If I was asked who I saw, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Oh well, as I said it was all reassuring, so that’s OK then.

But three visits! Each time it was nearly 90 mins to get there and park. And another hour to get home, of course. It’s more than 70Km each way and the traffic was heavy yesterday. Luckily the parking in that new parking building off Thomas St is easy. But expensive! For my roughly three hours, $9.60. Bloody hell, it’s enough to make you sick.

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From The Guardian:  “The most obvious piece of “bad” infrastructure is the NBN, too closely identified with Kevin Rudd to be anything but anathema [to this Liberal government]. Unsurprisingly, the government has commissioned a hatchet job on the project, based on the unsurprising premise that, if we don’t discover any new uses for the Internet, our existing infrastructure, with a modest upgrade will suffice to meet our needs.”

Malcolm Turnbull – the man who crippled Australia’s fibre optic network. This Liberal government – the government that is crippling Australia’s scientific base.

I spit.

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Aha, two boxes have just arrived from the UK, with my $850 parts order of model rail gear. That’s exactly a week to arrive. Not bad! Crumbs, they’re much smaller boxes than I expected, but it’s all there. It’s N gauge, that’s why it’s so small.

So now I’ve got all the track and points (ie turnouts, switches), and therefore, when I’ve got the plan done, I can make a start laying the track. I’ve got five folding tables to put the baseboards on, and one sheet of 2400 x 1200 x 9mm MDF, cut into three pieces. I’ll build the baseboards in 1200 x 1200mm sections so that I can lift them and store them away if necessary, and I’ll bolt them together to make the larger pieces.

I also bought a roll of 3mm thick black rubber sheeting, 1200mm wide by 4000mm long. It’s made from ground up car tyres, to make a fairly soft and porous sheet. I figure it looks much like black coal or very dark granite chipped surfaces. It’s meant to be a base to lay the track on. But it pongs of rubber. I’m wondering whether I might take it back (Bunnings) and buy the cork sheeting that’s the normal underlay. The rubber was $69.95 for the roll, so it’s not cheap. I don’t know what cork would cost. A mix of both would probably be appropriate.

I’ve got one loco on order from a Gold Coast shop and I think it’s talking longer for the order to come by Australia Post from Brisbane than the order from the UK took to arrive!. That lonely loco will allow me to test things. But before I can do that, I have to spend another $800 approx. on a power supply and controller. Ouch. I’ll buy these locally from that Naval Base shop I mentioned as they are quite heavy items.

So I’m on the way. No going back now. But I’m still working on the design on the computer. I’ve realised I’d better build it in two halves that can be operated independently, as, in my typical style, I’ve designed a very large layout, probably too big at the start. I’ll begin with one half of it.

Lucky there’s no woman telling me what I can and can’t do with my lounge area!

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I mentioned being very sensitive. A couple of days ago I met up with a local retired couple I know at the big shopping centre. They were sitting at a cafe so I sat down for a chat. The guy asked if I would like a coffee. I hesitated, but said OK and pulled out my wallet to give hime some, money, but he said no, his buy.

I assumed they were ordering for themselves, but my cup arrived and that was all. After a few minutes, they said they had to go. So I was left drinking my coffee on my own when I didn’t really want coffee – I hadn’t eaten yet.

I was embarrassed by this. Yes, it was generous of the guy to buy me a coffee, but I think he should have thought ahead and said, “We have to go in a minute but I’ll buy you a coffee if you’d like one.” Small thing, but …

Not so small was the occasion many years ago when I offered my two brothers their choice of a framed print of any of my photos. By any standard, I think many of my images are pretty damned good and they seemed to have nice things to say occasionally. so I thought this offer was OK.

But both of them just said, “No thanks.”

Bloody hell!!!!! I didn’t show my feelings but I was hurt and embarrassed. I was offering a framed print, free and gratis. What would it have hurt to accept my offer, even if they didn’t intend to put it up on a wall? I was angry and I still feel the hurt. It told me that their weak praise had been insincere, that they really didn’t care for my photography. Thanks a lot.

Other examples: one Christmas, I received a gift of one place mat. Not a set, just one cloth place mat, of a completely boring design. What??!!

Then there was the gift, another Christmas, of a DVD of a couple of episodes of Little Britain. But not a boxed set that you buy in the shops, it was a bare DVD of the programs recorded off the air with the title scrawled on the front in felt tipped pen. No box, just a plastic sleeve. Cost? About 50c and an hour of time. Gee, don’t got to any trouble, will you?

Another Xmas, as I always do, trying to make things easy for people to buy for me, I asked for wooden coat hangers. I specifically said I was sick of the cheap bendy plastic ones, and would like a few higher quality wooden ones.

What did I get? A set of 10 K-Mart plastic ones. The direct thing I said I didn’t want. Yeah, don’t put yourself to any trouble, will you?

As all the Christmases went by, when we exchanged Xmas gift lists of suggestions, I gave up suggesting things I really wanted and only suggested things I knew were easy to get. I learnt over many years that I was wasting my time asking for anything that couldn’t be found at the local shopping mall. Or anything that required any efort. I knew I’d never get it. Too much trouble.

By contrast, I went out of my way to buy gifts of as much variety and quality as I could find. I would buy things during the year if I came across something exotic or particularly beautiful or interesting. I would travel fairly far afield. But it was never reciprocated.

In recent years I’ve been trying to do what Dad used to do, give gifts that I’ve made myself. To me, they mean more than shop bought items. So about a year ago I gave a group of friends copies of the Scotland DVD (made to a professional standard, showing vision of the school friend in Scotland they all used to know), and a Blu-Ray copy of my short Venice/Vivaldi disc. Again professionally made with full printed label and fully printed slip-case.

Not one of the five has ever said thanks, or given any feedback on whether they’ve watched them or liked them. Except for one. A few weeks later, she handed them back to me and said, “I’ve watched the Scotland one thanks, but I’ve seen it now, and I won’t need it again You can have it back. And this one (she meant the Blu-Ray), I can’t play it and I can’t see myself ever being able to, so you may as well have it back.”

Bloody hell!!!!!!!!  I was hurt and angry. These were GIFTS! This is not the first time I’ve had gifts ignored or handed back to me, not wanted. I didn’t show my feelings, of course, but I’m hurt by things like this and I can’t forget.

These are just a few of the hundreds of stories I have to tell. I think I’m allergic to people.

Queensland sees the light! © PJ Croft 2015

What a good weekend.

It seems Queensland voters saw the light, saw the LNP government for what it was, a government of lies, harshness, cronyism, interference in judicial matters, carelessness about the environment and taking the state on a fast track back to the days of Joh’s utterly corrupt LNP. When someone of the stature of Tony Fitzgerald QC feels the need to come out of retirement to warn about the Newman LNP government’s moves in the direction of corruption, people should have taken notice, and it seems they did, thank goodness.

This result, along with the Victorian result a couple of months ago, should show that it is possible and OK to turf out bad governments after just one term. There’s no need to give them the benefit of the doubt, when the doubt is so clear. Now for this harsh, deceitful, law-breaking LNP federal government, led by an utter incompetent. By September next year, out with them!

Second, although I’m by no means a soccer follower, I was happy to see the Aussies win on Saturday night. It’s a big boost. Soccer is the world’s football game. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be just as prominent in Australia.

Finally, the release of Peter Greste from Egypt was bloody good news. Now it can be said: what a crap country is Egypt! What a nest of incompetent, lying, corrupt, evil bastards. I will never go near the place, or any of those terrible Arab countries. If they want tourists, they know the answer.

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Rain! It rained steadily from about 6.30pm until around 11pm last night. Not heavy, but easily enough to soak the lawns and garden bed. Plenty of lightning to go with it. Wow. More please.

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Ever since 3D printing came on the scene, I’ve wondered what the hell it’s for. Why would I want to make plastic cups or toys? Well, I’ve bought my first 3D printed products:

This is a set of items clipped to a base, those rods at the bottom. There are six items of different purpose.

The black one below is a duplicate of one of the set above. What are they?

They’re designed for a wooden ruler to slip through the gap. See the notches at the bottom? They are spaced at 9mm, the spacing of N-gauge model railway tracks.

You slip the ruler between the uprights and use a lackey band over the top to apply pressure to hold it in place on the ruler. You slide the gauge along the ruler to the curve radius you want (about 500mm for my layout), and fix one end of the ruler at the pivot point (hmmm, it’s not clear how). Then you place the gauge on the track, in the grooves, and rotate the ruler/gauge to produce the curved track.

In the white set, the first one with the cylindrical thing at the top is a pencil holder, so that you can draw curves at your desired radius. The next five are different kinds of gauges, I’m not clear what but I’ll find out when they arrive in the next couple of weeks in the mail from the US.

The thing is, they are produced to order. I see it on the web, place my order and pay, they do the 3D print and send it to me.

It’s not cheap. The single black item was US$10 and the white set of six was US$45, plus US$15 for postage for the lot. That’s US$70, and with our dollar so low it came to about AU$90.

I can see that 3D printing would be useful to produce models and scenic items for a model railway, but at $1500 for a printer, I don’t feel the need.

But ther’s something no-one mentions – to make 3D printed models, you have to have a 3D plan or drawing in software. You don’t just see a picture on your screen and press “Print” and expect to see a 3D result. You have to have the proper plan in software to feed the printer. That’s not as easy as it seems.

I try to stay calm!

This item is triggered by something that happened today. I’ve been told that I’m too sensitive, hypersensitive, in fact. I notice slights, insults, ill mannered actions, bad manners, tactless remarks and so on. Nineteen times out of twenty I say nothing, let it slide, keep my happy face on. But I rarely forget. Nine out of ten people will never know I’m upset. But I notice the insults and stupidities.

Today I’ve been assembling my LARGE order for my model railway parts. About midday I phoned a company called DCC Concepts who are quite big in model trains, both manufacturing and in sales. Amazingly, they’re in Naval Base, about an hour down the road from here. Yay, a WA company. I spent some time on their web site. But I couldn’t find anything for N-gauge (2mm:1ft) on their site.

So I phoned and asked. “No mate, we find N-gauge is too hard on our eyes.” That is, they don’t like it because it’s too small.

Well, I take this to mean that if you want N-gauge, you must be (a) weird, (b) a toy railway maker, or (c) not worth their time or attention. I was offended! This is what I mean about Australian retailers. It’s near impossible to deal with Australian firms. Stanbridges have been the pre-eminent model train place in Perth for decades, but their web site is useless. No pictures, no idea of stock levels, many missing prices. Don’t waste my time, please.

So, the result was that I placed an $850 order with a UK retailer today. Stupid, stupid, stupid. They lost my business. It’s cheaper and easier to order from the UK than it is to drive down the road in Perth.

This is the time to bring up another incident that happened many months ago. A visitor needed to use the toilet while he was here and before I could direct him to the second bathroom toilet, he walked in to my en-suite bathroom and used the toilet there. No problem for me, so far.

But when he came out, he made a comment (I can’t remember the exact words) that it needed cleaning and asked if I’ve considered getting a cleaning lady.

What!! How bloody rude! I would NEVER make a comment on the cleanliness of someone’s bathroom or toilet.

I was offended. And this same guy about half an hour earlier had told me I’m too sensitive. Yeah, right.

On another occasion several years ago, with a friend who’s a bit of a wine buff, who demonstrates wine and likes to buy good stuff, I offered to share my bottle of 1971 Grange, a $1,000 touch by now. I suggested we make it worthwhile by going to a really good restaurant, Clarke’s of North Beach, a highly rated local restaurant.

He was keen, naturally, but in talking about, it he said he’d have to bring his girlfriend, and “it’s non-negotiable.”

Well mate, that cut you out of that wine tasting. I’m not going to be told who I share my wine with! Non-negotiable?!

On another occasion, when I was preparing to move to Bali, a friend said, “You’d better learn to control your temper in a Muslim country.” Oh how tactful. It’s not a Muslim country, mate. Get your facts right and learn a bit of tact and politeness. I’m not the one who needs to learn how to behave in a foreign country. He’s never been to Bali, by the way, knows nothing about it, yet he wanted to give me gratuitous advice..

On another occasion, I asked if I could borrow a friend’s digital camera because I waas thinking of buying that model and wanted a feel of it. He said, “Oh, we’ve made it a policy not to lend cameras because of damage that’s happened in the past. I hope you won’t be offended.” Of course I was offended! He was suggesting I would damage his camera. I was bloody offended and upset. We got through it, but he still never lent me the camera.

These are just four examples of the hundreds of insults and ill mannered comments I have to endure. For 95% of the time, I endure it with a smile and don’t let my feelings show. But eventually, occasionally, things build up and I blow my stack. It happens rarely! No more than three or four times in the past 15 years.

But because of my final angry outbursts, I’m seen as too hard to get along with. Well, I can’t see any way past this. I don’t know any other way. I try my hardest to put up with it, but some people just break through my politeness.

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As I said, I placed an $850 order with Hatton’s of the UK today. The VAT was GBP44, which comes off the total, and the freight to my door is GBP34, so I pay 10 pounds less than someone in the UK pays! Delivery is 2-3 working days after completion of order, they say, so next week.

This is pretty amazing stuff. Here am I sitting in my room talking to computers in the UK at about 4am their time, able to browse their entire catalogue of thousands of items, all with pictures, prices, measurements, stock levels and weights. I make my order, pay for it by credit card on line, get a one-off Netcode security SMS number from the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney on my mobile phone, enter my address with only a few clicks because the web site knows all about Butler WA, click accept and get a confirmatory email withing seconds. All done. Bloody amazing.

Electronics does this, ladies and gentlemen. Electronic engineers and technicians. Let’s hear it for them!

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I bought two more blow-mould tables today, to support my baseboards. These are 1200 x 2400mm tables that fold up in the middle like a sandwich, so they’re quite small to carry and store away. $38 each. I’ve got four now, so that’s all I need. Maybe one more, I’ll see.

Tomorrow another sheet of 9mm MDF, but it’s too hot to go out! We’ve had a week of 37s and 38s, only 33 today but another 38 forecast for tomorrow. It’s too hot to go out for me.

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I also had a guy in to completely clean out and re-grout my main (en-suite) shower recess today. It looks a bit grotty at the moment because it’s covered in dusty dry residue that I have to leave for another 24 hours before I ket it get wet, but he’s sprayed all the tiling with a sealant, so I hope no more mould. Not that there was much, but the previous owners had tried to reseal it with liquid gunk and it looked terrible. I hope the natural look of the stone tile feature strip will show through now.

Cane Toad. © PJ Croft 2015

Hey, close female relative of mine. Here’s your chance to find yourself a new husband. You and Tony Abbott would make a great couple. You both believe you don’t need to ask anyone or talk to anyone before taking action. Tony awards knighthoods, you throw bombs. You’re both supremely arrogant. You’re both ultra-conservative. You both deny the truth. You’re a man hater, he’s a woman hater. You’d complement each other. Great match.

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I made the first steps to starting to build the model railway yesterday. I bought two “blow mould” folding tables to rest the baseboards on, and a 2400mm x 1200mm sheet of 9mm thick MDF, plus some dressed pine to be the stiffeners.

The large sheet of MDF was far too big and heavy for me to handle and I was thinking of buying smaller sheets to join up, at a substantially greater cost, but the guy at Bunnings said, “Save money, I can cut it [the big sheet] for you.” So he cut it into three 1200mm x 800mm sheets in no time flat, about 5 minutes. Cost – $24.75 versus about $36 for three separate sheets. No charge for the cutting. I didn’t see him do it but he must have a large table saw there. Brilliant.

I’ve started to realise just how big this layout will be. Baseboards 2.4m long are big enough, but I plan to have two of them joined end to end, totalling 4.8m! Add 1.2m where they form the L shape and the length grows to 6m. That’s big. In my lounge room! I do have the space, but it’s going to be hard to handle. I’ll be making the baseboards in 1200mm x 1200mm sections bolted together so that it can be moved out, if I have to.

I need to do some precision cutting and I think this finally justifies buying one of those small diameter hand power saws, even a battery operated one. I’ve been admiring them for several years but (showing great restraint!), couldn’t justify it. Now I can.

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Time now to start ordering some track and rolling stock. About $330 for 63m of flexible track, plus 23 sets of points at avg. GBP9.75 ea = $345. That’s $675 for track alone. Add a loco at about $150 and a controller at about $600 and we’re talking serious beer money. Oh well, I’d just waste it on books and CDs otherwise.

I’ve seriously tried to find a good source of these components locally in Perth or within Australia, and I’ve given up. There’s one source called DCC Concepts in Naval Base WA, of all places, and they even manufacture and export items. But they don’t cater much for N gauge and they are seriously more expensive than ordering on the internet from the UK. The traditional place is Stanbridge’s in Mt Lawley, been there for decades, but their web site is useless and I’m not going to just drive there only to find they have no stock or don’t stock things. Australian model railway retailers are bloody hopeless. Complete amateurs. It’s far easier to order from a big UK retailer who will send stuff here with no problems.

One good thing is also that we overseas customers don’t have to pay the UK’s VAT, so that’s 20% off their advertised prices. Nice. That more than pays for the freight.

A couple of days’ progress. I must say I’m finding this design process almost as much fun as actually building it, which I haven’t got anywhere near starting yet. I start each day as a new copy of the drawing so that I can go back if I mess it up, and I can make changes to my heart’s content.

Another view showing how I’ve copied and modified the magazine article. The red and green lines at bottom left will be at a higher level than the red and blue at baseboard level. I must admit this plan is ad hoc. I’m not sure of the operations, I’m just making it up as I go along.

My priority is to have wide smooth curves and long stretches like real railways. Carriages going around tight curves and sticking out as a result are not realistic. I think I’ll hide the half circle curves in tunnels or cuttings. I’ll have to measure up some trains and carriages and place them in the drawing to try to judge the scale. I have no idea if it’ll be realistic at the moment.

I intend to print this plan out at full size, i.e. baseboards 1.2m wide x 4.8m high in the vertical, and 5.0m wide on the horizontal leg. That’s HUGE. Then I’ll lightly paste the printout to the craftwood base sheets and use the drawing to lay tracks.

I did a trial print this morning and it uses 96 sheets of A3+ !! No, I didn’t use actual paper – I print to PDF and I can see each A3+ sheet on the screen. I could print just a few sheets to do a trial. I’ll be using the cheapest paper I can find, of course, when I do the actual printing, as the paper will be torn away after the track is laid. Hmmm, photocopier paper only comes in A3, so that means smaller pages and more of them. Another trial print coming up.

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Another checkout error at IGA yesterday. I watched the screen as closely as I could while the guy was scanning my items and nearly, nearly, walked out without checking the docket. But I did stop to check, and my kilo of peaches at $3.99/Kg had been rung up as nectarines at $6.99/Kg. Grrrrr!

I immediately went back to the checkout aisle but the guy, the boy, made me wait while every other customer went through. I said, “I’m going to start shouting for the manager if you don’t pay me attention soon. YOU have made a mistake.” He still asked me to wait, then called a more senior woman over. It still took more than 3 mins for her to sort things out but at least she refunded the whole cost of the item.

I’m going to have to write them a letter of complaint. I literally cannot get through that shop without there being an error of some kind, and it’s always in their favour! My advice is to always take your docket and always check it, in any shop. There are so many scanning and pricing errors, and it’s always against you and me.

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I needed a new car battery last Tuesday, and the RAC were here within 20 mins, and it was all done 10 minutes later. EFTPOS payment by wireless. Amazing. The old battery had lasted since around July 2009, so pretty good. The new battery is the same brand and has a three year warranty!

Then on Friday I called a pergola man about fixing a loose Alsynite sheet on my patio that was banging in the wind. He was here within 90 mins and job done in 15 mins. $70 cash. Fast work.

I’ve got a grouting man coming this Thursday for my bedroom 1 shower, which is looking very mouldy and grotty. The previous owners have attempted a reseal, but it’s a very poor, unsightly job. He doesn’t need to look, he says, it’s a flat fee of $400 no matter what, and he replaces ALL the grouting, even if it looks OK.

Fast service these days, in other words. And as I write, on Sunday of the Australia Day long weekend, the builders are still working on the new townhouses across the roundabout from me. All the shops are open on Sunday these days, as well. Amazing. Times have changed.

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My Solid State Drive (SSD) failed last October and I’ve just got around to finding out how to claim on warranty for it. I found OCZ’s web site and submitted a request.

They asked me to do a test but it did no good, so the next step is that they’ve given me an RMA number, a Return Materials Authorisation. But I have to send it at my own expense via DHL, or one of those shipping firms, to Taiwan!

They’ve asked me to do a survey, so I’ve told them I think I should be able to return it to the place I bought it (Osborne Park) for replacement, or at least, only have to send it to an address in Australia. Not happy about this.

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I’ve mentioned before about being a fan of the Chinese TV show If You Are the One on SBS2 at 7.30pm every night. It’s 24 girls, women, looking for a husband, and guys are wheeled out one by one as love candidates.

I’m very impressed by some of these guys. There seems to be a culture of giving to the community in China. Many guys are volunteers or work for low wages in remote villages as teachers or child carers. (Of course, they are the type of guy who hasn’t found a wife so far.)

But I’m also very unimpressed at how easily many guys are rejected by the women, often for trivial reasons. One woman in particular is 29, overweight (chubby, as they call it) and has an eight year old son from a previous marriage. She’s not ideal, in other words, but she has a bubbly personality and says many times that she’s looking for an older guy, but almost any guy who can accept her will do. She gets very excited sometimes but is usually rejected as too old and because she has the son.

So a couple of nights ago, there was a 32 year old guy who not only chose her as his favourite, the first time I can recall that happening, but explicitly said he could accept a child as his own. He seemed like a really good guy. Perfect match.

So what happens? She rejected him! Why? Because he’s a reformed drinker and doesn’t drink any more. She wants a partner who she can drink with. Bloody hell. He was crestfallen and she was upset when she realised what she’d done, but it made me wonder if she really knows what she wants. She’s still on offer in the lineup, but I hope this one-in-a-million guy gets a chance to try again behind the scenes. This was a big chance for both of them.

Another very cute and bubbly regular girl seemed to take an instant liking to a guy who was a childcare worker, as she is. She even came out on the catwalk and made a balloon toy with him – something like that never happens. She kept her light on to the end, but when it came to the crunch, she rejected him! Why? Because he was one year younger than her! What the hell … ? I think many of these women either don’t know what they want or are too afraid to commit. I feel very sorry for many of the guys. It’s very hard on them. I’m also rapidly losing sympathy for many of the women. They too easily reject guys for all the wrong reasons. A good female candidate is quite rare.

I must say that this program, and my recent visit, have changed my view of China. The cities are quite attractive and the standard of living seems pretty high. There’s a huge emphasis on higher education. Most of the women are either PhDs or have Masters degrees, or are in senior positions, and many of the guys have completed a uni degree of some kind. China comes across in a very good light. As usual, individual people are nice. It’s just the power elite who spoil a country.

There are some interesting things the girls look for, or not –

• “chubbiness” is no handicap. Quite the opposite, thin guys are criticised for it and asked if they can put on some weight.
• each guy has to choose his favourite girl right at the start, and I’m amazed how often the plainest, quietest girls are picked. The bright, bubbly, glamourous ones are not chosen as favourites. Hmmm.
• parental approval is extremely important, and the idea of living with parents is often canvassed. Some will, some won’t.
• double eyelids! The girls want eyelids with folds like we Westerners have, not the blank grooveless eyelids of Chinese. Crazy! How stupidly trivial.
• many of the girls think it’s OK to spend all their money on makeup, clothes, handbags and shoes. One, last night, even went so far as to say it’s women’s right, because they work harder than men. She is a sour looking woman and was sort of howled down. Served her right.

Good show.

A few days’ work on the model railway plan. I realised I need to compress the horizontal (East – West) arm as it was 6m wide! I coud fit it, but it would dominate the width of my lounge. I’ve cut 1m out of it without losing anything.

So now I have a through main line (red) and a branch line (blue) going through the lower station complex, which I’ll call Sydney for the moment. The yellow lines are a terminus station which I’ll call Perth. I’ll choose more imaginative names later.

The next step is to work out sensible routes so that I have meaningful operations. There’s no point just having a train chasing its tail around one route all day. That will almost certainly mean more changes. This is good stuff.

Here’s a closer look at the level of detail the software gives:

It’s taken a week to get this far and I’m nowhere near finished. It keeps me off the streets.

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Wow! Last year I got a flyer through the mail from iiNet offering fibre optic internet. But when I checked the government’s NBN installation plan, it shows this area as not connected and no date for when it will be. Disappointed, I didn’t take it any further. I have ADSL at 1.3Mb/s but I can’t get ADSL2+. Still, after all those years at Trigg with wireless broadband at not much more than dialup speed (56Kb/s !), my present connection is not bad.

But this morning I got another email from iiNet asking me to sign up for fibre. Huh? So I had a chat with them and it turns out that this whole Butler Brighton Estate is fibre connected, via a private company called Opticomm Fibre. It must have been done ten years ago when the whole area was established.

So it appears I can have fibre after all, 25Mb/s with a 200GB per month plan for $64.95/month. Bloody hell, I wish I’d known this in April 2013 when I moved in. Maybe now I’ll be able to watch video clips without them jerking and stopping.

As well, I saw a friend’s new Sony TV last week. It’s a latest model 4K (4x Full High Def, i.e. 3840 x 2160 pixels). I wasn’t really interested in this before, as there’s no material available for it.

But when I saw it I just about fell over backwards at the quality. Then when saw the internet TV services available on it, I changed my ideas. If I had fibre, so as to be able to access these on-line channels, that changes everything. The new US distribution channel Netflix starts up in March, and they do offer 4K material. Hmmm. So firstly, I’m going to sign up for fibre asap. I’ll think about a new TV later. Price? For a Sony 50″ 4K internet TV, $1795 approx.

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Another thing I’m thinking of – I’m driven mad by paper clutter. I have piles of articles, magazine pages, bills, receipts, notes, etc etc. I have four filing boxes full of documents.

Fuji Xerox makes a device called the ScanSnap iX500. This is a double sided top feed paper scanner which scans both sides of a sheet in one pass and saves it to an editable PDF file.

Hmmm. I do wonder if I need all these papers, but I prune regularly and I’ve still got piles left that I feel I need to keep.

The scanner costs $519 plus freight. I could drive it from the laptop next to my table, so that it’s always right there at my elbow. Hmmm.

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Amazing stuff these days. In planning this model railway, I want platforms and buildings at N-scale 1:178 or 2mm = 1ft. A UK company called ScaleScenes sells extremely detailed designs in a web site at this scale or other scales.

You just choose your design on the web, pay on-line for it by PayPal, then within seconds you have an emailed link to download your detailed PDF file. You print this (on your high res inkjet printer) and you have paper parts that you cut out and glue to stiff card. Assemble them with glue and you have your building. Cost? Average $8.50 per building. Add more detailing if you want to make it more realistic, e.g. window and door frames or film plastic windows.

Then today, I walked past a shop at Clarkson that I’ve walked past and ignored many times before. Then I realised it’s a craft shop. I went in, and they sell all the modelling things I need! Sheets of heavy card, balsa wood, modelling clay in many different colours, paints, cutters, lengths of wire of all kinds, and so on. I don’t need them yet, but there they are, only 5Km away. Nice.

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I bought another 9 CDs today to add to the 12 I bought last week. Huh? Well, when they are 3 for $10, it’s pretty good value. These are classical music, all the back catalogues of Decca, DGG, Philips, Archiv and Lyre Bird. They are 70s and ’80s recordings, but that’s OK. I already have the music of some of them, but not these specific recordings.

One on offer today was a boxed set of Handel’s works for the same price – 3 for $10, with this entire 10 disc box being counted as one disc! I didn’t buy it today, but I’ll probably go back and get it. One good thing about having tastes like mine (classical recordings and obscure books and DVDs) is that things tend to be there when I go back.

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Obscure things?The local newsagent just down the street keeps a semi-monthly magazine for me, BBC Music. It comes with a CD of classical music on the front, all for $16.95. She only sells one copy each month in this area, one to me and maybe one more.

Then I bought an 11 disc CD set of Samuel Pepys’s diaries last week. It’s a BBC Radio production, more than 11 hours of old Sam’s diaries dramatised and voiced. Excellent. “And so to bed.”