Member postings for Andy Stopford

It certainly seems plausible that this is an attempt to render Cyrillic unicode (or whatever) as Roman letters, though it doesn't explain how some of the messages, such as the second one above) are divided into blocks of equal numbers of letters; of course that might be some normally-under-the-bonnet aspect of the implementation manifesting itself.

Dave suggested:

"Reading random characters, a computer spam filter won't find any words that add to the spam score, and the weirdness might intrigue a human enough to follow the link."

Maybe - it worked for me!

Howard - that's kind of the point. I was expecting an ingenious scam, and ended up with junk mail trying to sell me something I don't want. Mind you, after reading Martin's post, I checked the current Rouble price of Bitcoin. Very interesting, tovarishch.

I've recently been receiving emails to my gmail account which are either content-less, or have a series of code group-like letters/numbers in the message body, e.g.

agpbq VBFCE 7 yfkt UCHEJX 01 fetd IADOO 33 zpqh NTCUJ 0

wwbo XAZWW 35 dhawr IWFAP 0 kxsx ATDGD 44 qnsf INNVDFL 8

or:

wpPXGCQXT jzTSFCNQO ujTDJNWBP hdEYLJDPT nnSFLYGKG arXUZAFVV

There is no subject, and each email has been sent to around 10 gmail addresses. The sender's name is always different - the first above was (apparently) sent by one Tommie Ribot, the second by a Liz Kindt.

All have an xhtml attachment, with a Russian file name.

Obviously, I had to find out what the attachment was, but I didn't really care to open it on a computer which was in everyday use. Therefore I dug out my Raspberry Pi3, connected to my gmail account, and downloaded the attachment.

Rather than running it immediately, I opened it in a text editor, which left me not really any wiser, except that it did indeed appear to be an .xhtml

OK, so the next thing was to actually run the thing in a browser.

My first attempt, using the Pi's default Chromium browser, crashed - which might have been an indication of something exciting happening, but it tends to do that with Chromium anyway. I re-tried it with the Midori browser, which seems to be more within the Pi's capabilities and it connected to a website:

Aha! the mystery is solved (sort of). Its something to do with Bitcoin. Using Google Translate I find it promises I can make $2000 to $5000 a month using my smartphone automatically! Fantastic! It goes on to say:

We have posted for you a detailed review of the Bitcoin
BONUS working service! "Where can you earn your first
Bitcoin (worth more than 2,700,000) rubles using your
mobile phone !!" - We would like to say so, but in
practice it turned out less!

I'll bet it did.

Well, a somewhat tedious explanation in the end, but I'm left wondering what the mysterious code in the original emails is. Maybe they've given me a Bitcoin. I'd like to say so, but in practice I suspect it would turn out less.

Yes, I'm sure I remember trying this, and it didn't work out on the curved bits of the moulding. I'll have to dig out the mitre saw and have another go.

Looking back at the mouldings in the OPs photo, which I should have done first, then I agree with Derek's answer, even if making the doors from scratch. No need for stile and rail cutters, just mitre the mouldings and offset the mortice/tenon faces accordingly.

Well, you're actually still just scribing the moulded part, the mortice and tenon are the same as usual, but come to think of it (its a long time since I've made doors and things) you can't use a coping saw, just chisel and gouge because you're going into the moulding on the mortice side parallel to the tenon. Provided the tenon lines up with the panel then an extension on the tenon outer edge takes care of the panel slot.

As for skirting, yes that's the way I do it, the Dremel (actually one of the Parkside sub-£20 cordless ones) is just to tidy the coping sawn bit - only really necessary if the moulding's fancy, or to match an existing bit. Or if you've messed up.

By the way does anyone know how to do the same, using the mitre saw, but with a 135 degree cut, e.g. in a bay window. I've tried a couple of times, but the geometry doesn't work out.

You can also do it old-school by scribing with a coping saw and cleaning up (if necessary, and it generally is) with a gouge or, much better, with the little sanding drums in a Dremel-type tool. This is the way I do skirting boards and the like now, and its very quick and easy.

Do not even think of using the very expensive scribing jig (~£300) sold by Trend. It is total rubbish - I once bought one for a job which involved a lot of scribing, and after spending ages setting it up, cutting my finger in the process, I completed one scribe before the cutter broke. Not too surprising - the cutters are 4mm diameter, project 30 or 40mm, and are hard to feed smoothly because of stiction from the MDF sliding surfaces of the jig. And they cost £30 plus.

And you can't even use it if the joint angle isn't 90 degrees.

That's my rant-of-the-day successfully completed.

Take care when dissolving NaOH crystals in water - the reaction is strongly exothermic and the resulting solution may be hot enough to soften a plastic bucket and allow it to collapse (you may detect the voice of experience here - though it was more of a dustbin than a bucket).

Its best to use cold water, and add the NaOH gradually, with stirring.

It works a treat, and its cheaper than proprietary strippers.

MF-240 knock-offs, made in Pakistan:

Somewhere during the film you get a brief closeup of the word "Perkins" cheekily cast into the crankshaft blanks.

Judging by the uploader's other videos, its in Pakistan. Most of the others seem to show (heavy) vehicle repairs rather than manufacturing.

There's one which shows a truck front axle being overhauled. To us it seems strange to see people belting kingpins, etc. out with sledgehammers when they have a large-ish hydraulic press in the background (later used to straighten the axle beam), but it may be that given a surplus of labour and little or no form of social security, its socially desirable to employ relatives and friends in what appears to be pointlessly labour-intensive work (I remember seeing the same sort of thing in Portugal in the '80s and '90s where every job would have one person actually doing it, and two or three hangers on chatting and passing the occasional spanner).

Despite this, the truck repairers seem impressively skilled at making do with very limited resources - not even a workbench or vice (at one point they use the chuck of a lathe to hold the stub-axle carrier), and of course, no safety boots, or indeed boots at all.

Fancy going into crankshaft production? Here's how to do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-inYCr-fV3Q

PPE (flipflops) must be worn.

Edited By JasonB on 02/10/2021 16:54:47

I like to set the top-slide over so that I don't have to remember what the last cross-slide setting was - particularly useful if, as happened to me today, you get interrupted by the DPD man.

I've never really bought the "cutting on one side" thing though and just set it to half the thread angle.

I found with ABS that it doesn't stick to the build plate unless you first give it a thin coating of ABS slurry (ABS dissolved in acetone).

Not really. It depends what machine you have, and what material you're using, but if you use a proper gear cutter I wouldn't say it was painfully slow, and a lot easier than trying to jury-rig something with a tap.

Home-made single tooth cutters are slow and tiresome, but work if you don't want to fork out for a proper gear cutter.

Another approach if you don't have a mill is to use a single-tooth cutter in the lathe toolpost, shaper-wise. That really would be painful, but again, you'd get there in the end (I haven't tried that one myself, but I don't see why it shouldn't work given sufficient patience).

I have made gears using a proper shaper and a home-made cutter. It works fine, but it's very easy to forget to wind the toolholder back up before indexing to the next tooth. Result - a loud bang as the shaper punches out the entire tooth* in one go, but, surprisingly no discernible difference in tooth quality, at least with benign materials like nylon or bronze. Best avoided though I think.

*Really the gap between teeth of course

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I found this an interesting and informative lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImEpk1s-Vk0

The title is "The Secret History of Fighter Aircraft Engine Development in WW2"

The first few minutes are a bit glitchy, but it's worth sticking with it. I'm tempted to buy the presenter's book, which apparently contains much more of the same.

I totally agree, when we moved to Portugal we might have made a better decision about the place we bought if we'd been there for a while (in theory at least - I don't underestimate my ability to make bad decisions, and we could certainly have done worse).

We'd also have had a better idea of stuff to take with us from Blighty, and stuff to leave behind.

I know the feeling... 15+ years in the Removal business have not done my back any favours. I'm currently suffering the related delight of sciatica. I do not recommend it.

Talking of recommendations - the medical profession now discourages the use of back supports like the ones the OP mentions. They suggest moderate exercise (taking care when lifting, of course).

As Dave says, it's the trivial actions which can set it off - my worst back episode started when I carelessly bent to pick up a small empty cardboard box. The slight twinge which this triggered got gradually worse over a few weeks until I picked up a computer at home, and found myself unable to move without feeling like the mains was plugged into my spine. It took me about an hour just to get down the stairs, and I ended up having to get the doctor round (using the last few milliamp seconds in my phone). Fortunately the front door was on the latch, because there was no way I could have made my way to it, let alone open it.

He arranged a prescription delivery, including Valium, which stops the spasms within minutes, and codeine-based painkillers, which I find a mixed blessing, they give me stomach pains after a couple of days.

Edited By Andy Stopford on 18/07/2021 10:25:01

If the engine is already worn out and the only way to get it to run is Easy Start, then OK, go for it.

However using it as a substitute for buying a new battery, not so good - it washes oil off the cylinder bores, and, worse, tends to detonate (you'll often hear severe knocking as it fires up) which may break the piston rings.

Some older diesels were a pain to start from cold (see Martin's post above), especially those with indirect injection. Sometimes you had to make a decision - Easy Start, or crank it continuously for 30+ seconds till it started to fire. There was a reason they had those very heavy duty CAV starters, and I favoured the latter (or fit a KiGass pump).

edit: NDIY beat me to it, with more details

Edited By Andy Stopford on 28/06/2021 20:51:46

Yes, perhaps his designs were less overweight than the Rs (the accident report mentions R101 used a novel, and heavier, design for the frame rings).

Some interesting stuff about R101 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxXhZVFXxQ&t=0s

Something I hadn't appreciated was the reduction in the (very limited) lifting performance of these machines occasioned by using Helium rather than Hydrogen - it really didn't matter that the US didn't make Helium readily available, the R101 wouldn't have got off the ground if filled with anything but Hydrogen (it would be interesting to know if the same applied to the Hindenburg).

If you don't mind a cloud-based program, OnShape works well, has good documentation, and can produce First/Third Angle Projection drawings to print out, and it's free (the only limitation is that others can view your creations if you don't have a paid subscription).

Some people object to the idea of cloud programs, but OnShape's been around for a few years now and doesn't seem to show any signs of disappearing, and they claim the pricing policy won't change. An advantage of cloud/browser programs is that they will work on any operating system, but if you have an iffy internet connection it might be a problem.

+1 for QCAD for 2D - you don't have to pay annually for the pro version, by the way, but the updates are only available for a year. I bought it once and continue to use the now several years old version. It works fine, and I doubt that I'll desperately need any new features.

This can happen if the chuck is worn so that it's gripping more tightly at the base of the jaws, allowing the workpiece to flex away from what's effectively line contact at the gripping point.