Picalilli shinpads

[hirez]

Who needs Joy Division oven gloves when you have an engraved Joy Division slate?

Elsewhere, I wandered off round the scrubland where the blackberries live. The brambles are vast and the berries most tasty.

Last year, during the Beer with Billy event, pnh was playing the gravedigger. ("Do you dig graves?" "Yeah, they're alright..") While I was wandering in search of blackberries it struck me that his playing of the part didn't stop because the action was focussed somewhere else.

(This revelation brought to you by the committee for saying "Oh FFS, H-R, you really are a muppet sometimes!" in quite loud voices.)

Comments

[dedbutdrmng.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this post. Even though deadlines have scoured my brain to the point of not quite understanding the post.

It still made me happy.

All the words are taking on double meanings today. Time to back away from the word processor.

[zotz]

I went to see young Curtis' memorial stone once, you know. There were flowers, and little notes, and pictures, and for some reason an eight-inch plastic Batman. I'd have left an eight-inch plastic Robin, obviously, but it was Sunday and the toyshops were closed.

I should scan the photo, really.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I think if the Batman is eight-inch, the Robin should only be seven and a half.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Batman is standing further away and Robin is close but out of focus in the Kevin Cummins style. Which would be appropriate given the subject matter.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I trust you are scratched and stung appropriately? My hands look like I've been fighting cats, but I have a _lot_ of blackberries to show for it.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I fear not. There's a wide path of hardcore in front of the fence which is now entirely bramble. It's all terribly civilised and more or less impossible to get at, so really rather unspoiled.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Was that the part where Diana and I were giggling like adolescent boys who had gotten their horny little hands on an old issue of Playboy??

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Oh.

Brambleporn.

[drumiller.livejournal.com]

oh!

That's what they were all teen girly about. Now knowing Terri and Diana a bit better, Brambleporn makes a ton more sense than sleep deprivation.

/hides

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I blame sarah_mum.

She reminded me of the odd seventies artifact that was Brambleporn - rain-damaged copies of Mayfair or Penthouse found in hedges when looking for clay pigeons or spent shotgun cartridges. Or whatever other reason small boys had for exploring hedgerows.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Glad it survived the trip. More related tomfoolery thus:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jarkman/CamBamCNC

How deep did his excavation get ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

!!

Gaffering up the plasm was an obvious move in hindsight. Well played.

We were underground to begin with. If there'd been any more digging, the island would have sprung a leak and sunk.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Ta. As you can imagine, many enticing possibilities have ocurred to us for a machine of that nature.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oh, please try to imagine the depth of my surprise... :D

I wonder if you can get the thing to deal with Truetype fonts?

(And if a hand-built CNC-plasm isn't bOing^2 material, the world's a terrible place filled with bollocks and poor excuses.)

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention fonts. That skull started life as a letter N in WingDings. Andy's app will read TT directly. Got anything particular in mind ?

There's a vast world of homebrew CNC out there. Forums, companies selling bits, people making guitars and motorbike parts and just noodling away. Most impressive.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Not anything particular, no. Well, other than plate-mail t-shirts for re-enactors with "You're going home in the Duke of Gloucester's handcart" cut into them. Or particularly impressive, if structurally worrying Banksy-ish graffiti.

I'm surprised, but then not. It seemed to me that the (C)NC stuff on display/sale at the model engineer show was more or less High Priest kit. You needed real duffer points to be able to afford/use it.

Homebrew CNC is a bunch of hackers going "Fuck it. How hard can it be?"

Although I'm probably wrong.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

No, you're not wrong.

A lot of the electronics-geek stuff is now taken care of by nice packaged modules - stepper drivers that plug into parallel ports & so on.

And the geometrical problems are all managed by free apps like Andy's, so the work that remains for the hacker is putting the physical machine together.

After that, it's just having a go to learn the mechanics of cutting stuff.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

So when do the complicated bits for yours turn up?

(You may imagine mater's glee when I mentioned pushbike sidecars. I'm sure they'd both prefer it if I got a proper job rather than messing about with computers.)

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

I'm in an indecision:
(1) Get cheap minimill, fit with CNC. Good for jewellery, no use for plasma.
(2) Build big x-y style as per Andy. Less good for small stuff, good for plasma & wood.
(3) Ignore the whole fandango till I think of something I want to make with it.

So, are we brazing you up a sidecar ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

(2) seems the most obvious. (3) will at that point resolve itself and will end up as useful practice for (1).

Sidecar. Yes. I vaguely have in mind one that can be unbolted and that has some form of parallelogram linkage to aid cornering. There was a similarly suspended tiny sidecar sold to the credible when learny-learny bikes had to be 125cc instead of 250cc.

How hard can it be?

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

The trouble with (2) is mostly that it uses up a big chunk of shed space with an immovable mass. Whereas (1) can be Put Away when the space is required for other duties (and as you know, it often is).

Where does it attach ? Has to stay out the way of the pedals, I suppose, and also the legs.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Such references as I can find seem to be lashups that weld an ugly frame to an otherwise harmless bike:

http://www.johnnypayphone.net/cargo/
http://bikerodnkustom4.homestead.com/sidecar.html

Apart from the Proper Chap's sidecar made by Watsonian pictured about two-thirds down the second page and described here: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pattle/nacc/arc0010.htm

So I guess like that.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Of course I mentioned the bicycle sidecar idea to pater when I was installing his new printer over the weekend.

"Oh, yes" he said. "Watsonian used to make bicycle sidecars..."

What it is to have parents that Know Everything.

(Which leads to speculation that things like computers aren't worth knowing about. Hm.)

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Well, they may not be worth *him* knowing about. But it wasn't him fixing the printer, right ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Exactly so.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

What? They have JD oven gloves! oooOOOooh.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

http://www.leytonorient2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=153153

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

What a cracking piece of rock!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The video of it being made (URL above) is somewhat dentist-like, but still worth a view.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I never stopped.

[tails-redux.livejournal.com]

The Bristol/Bath cyclepath is right good for blackberries ... got a good crop a few weeks back and made a nice crumble.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

PNH is moonlighting as a gravedigger!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Hey, if it's good enough for Dave Vanian...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

From where did you pick your blackberries? I tend not to be able to find any that aren't right on a main road, and I don't want that many exhaust fumes in my diet thanks.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Work, tediously enough.