Member postings for Bill Davies 2

I fully agree, Hopper. I think it was Thatcher (and Reagan) that kicked off the privatisation thing. The UK suffers with near-monoplies dominating various services, plus the inability of these separate units working together. Our railways are a prime example. Our public sector is by no means perfect, and significants cuts has caused much harm, but private sector firms hide behind secrecy (commercial confidence) and use their wealth to sway governments from providing for the greater good. But this another rabbit hole for us to chase down.

Well, Hopper, I don't claim we were there first, but the Dinorwig pumped storage power station opened in North Wales in 1984:

Dinorwig

21% of the UK's renewable energy is from hydroelectric (appropriate for such a wet part of the world), which is 4.2% of total total electrical generation.

But I was impressed by all the rooftop water heaters that I saw in WA in 2004.

Bill

Very good comment, Neil.

I remember my economics lecturer reminding us of Keynes' comment about 'the long run' (i.e., extrapolation into the far future): 'in the long run, we are all dead.'

For me, I have seen the climate change over my lifetime, my mother said much the same thing being brought up in London and rembering the Thames freezing over. And I find human causes more compelling than 'natural' ones (technically, of course, we are part of nature). One way or another, and for whatever reason, we need to change course. I recall an OU course that I did in 1981 that pointed out the finite fuel resources and the growing human population in less developed parts of the world that would expect a western standard of living. Quelle surprise, here we are.

Bill

Electricity from fuel involves conversion costs, which is why it is always about three times dearer than gas, for an equivalent unit of energy. (BTU/hr, anyone?). Without a huge increase in renewable energy, which the current government do not seem to support, or an increase in nuclear, how are we to power homes (and I guess, industry, too) and vehicles?

Not to mention the need to massively increase in the capacity of the Grid, and vehicle charging points. Bill Gates' recent comment about the time taken to charge is an important factor, too.

Looking forward to seeing more battery powered steam engines...

Bill

Not tension, but... years ago, the company I worked for produced a small hobbing machine, which was being for producing gears for a brand of power drill. There was some chatter which the designers couldn't cure, so they brought in some engineers from a nearby university. They determined the resonant frequency and put a thin shaft up the bore of the hob spindle, with a mass on the end to vibrate in antiphase. It worked.

Bill

It seem like there are lots of Toshiba laptops available, but the company has vacillated on producing laptops for several years, and seem to have sold the business to Sharp, at least in the US. I recently replaced the hard disc and memory in my Asus with new components (SSD) and full amount of memory, and hope to get a few more years from it. A 'traditional' laptop with reasonable performance and memory looked too expensive for a not-huge improvement. Time will tell whether that was a mistake.

Bill

I've also got rheumatism in the left thumb, it now clicks! I'm right handed, so would have expected that one to wear out first. Painful at certain positions, most painful removing a glove!? A colleague had steroid injections, which she said helped. I expect I will need that, so Nigel's comment is of interest or concern.

Bill

Dave, at the risk of being labelled a pedant, 32768 is a power of two.

Bill

Hi, Bandersnatch.

No, I meant with an external drive or memory stick. It's family important things like photos and videos that I use to take care to store on several drives. Even on hard disks there seems to be a gradual loss due to periodic unreadable files. And of course all those pdfs that we store, in the hope that we will read them.

Or do manuals even exist any more, Neil? The extenal drive I bought yesterday, to backup my files, doesn't seem to come with support, go and talk to 'the community.' But I suppose you can argue our community is the same, i.e., the repository of relevant knowledge.

Bill

Welcome, Steven.

Good luck watchmaking on a shaper! But they are very satisfying machines. I wish I had room for one.

Bill

Bore da, Mike, welcome to the forum. I'm somewhere south of you, in Cardiff.

Bill

Thanks Dave, that's very helpful. It's the usual thing with a PC that you've had for a while; full of bought but also free software that may no longer exist or run in the later OS.

Bandersnatch, I have an old Vista laptop that has a dead battery but will run (well, it did last time...) that perhaps I should retrieve files from. On the other hand, it's like the stuff in the loft - can you remember what it is, and would you miss it if it just diisappeared one day?

Bill

I've attempted to upgrade Win 7 to Win 10 on an Asus laptop. I was not able to perform an install or download an ISO image, both failed on the license key. The laptop came with Windows pre-installed, so it has an OEM key. MS has previously indicated it was a 'legal' version.

I'm considering buying Win 10, but I'm not sure whether I can preserve my existing programs or would end up with a clean OS installed but no applications. In which case, a new machine would be the better option.

I hope these might help anyone considering a last-ditch free update to Windows 10. It's past the Jan 14th deadline but many sites 'suggest that it's still possible.

Bill

I moved a Britannia 14 with the bed across the back seat of a car, not an estate. The legs headstock and tailstock are pretty light, but the bed is heavy. I did it on my own, but that was 30 years ago!

Bill

My tee-slots in a Warco GH mill (RF-45 clone) was the same. Tee nuts would not slide freely. I made a tee slot scraper from some sheet steel, and the single layer of brittle black paint came away fairly easily. As Howard suggests, a nee nut slid along the slots removes any remaining paint.

Bill

And I fell for a 'UK' company selling replacement camera batteries and chargers, a couple of weeks ago; I had received no email to say it had been dispatched, and on enquiring, no reply to my emails querying that.

Ordered again from a company based in Milton Keynes yesterday (I checked more carefully, especially reviews), goods have already arrived today.

Not a lot of choice, but: take a look at:

Knobs

http://www.wdsltd.co.uk/product/3654/fixed-grip-wds-138/

Bill

Thank you, Michael. I had to revise a little French in the section referring to end and line standards. Erudite chaps in those days!

Bill

RRMBK mentions Workshop Practice book no. 6, but I have a copy of soldering and brazing, no. 9. No. 6 is measuring and marking metals.

I remember, in my eng science studies of years ago, of calculating friction of drive belts depending on the angle of wrap. I'm not a yachtsman, so I suppose windlasses operate on the same principle, so that a smaller friction stops the belt from slipping when the windlass is rotated, and provides the much larger force to pull the rope. Or is there a fancy arrangement to hold the belt, reversing the loose end's direction?

Bill