GazChap wrote:
And of course, being from Wish the carcinogens are probably seeping into your skin as we speak 
Might kill off the covid
When's the rest of the gimp suit arriving?
DavPaz wrote:
When's the rest of the gimp suit arriving?
Thanks for that mental image
DavPaz wrote:
When's the rest of the gimp suit arriving?
Surely any suit is a gimp suit for Kov
Mr Chonks wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
When's the rest of the gimp suit arriving?
Surely any suit is a gimp suit for Kov
You are not wrong...
Has anyone tried VonShef cast iron skillets? This - https://www.vonhaus.com/vh_en/kitchen/c ... killet-set - 3 piece set seems incredibly cheap compared to the likes of le creuset. Have googled reviews but only found a couple and both seemed to be advertorial/affiliate earning style sites so can't tell if they're legit reviews or not.
Or, alternative question, anyone got a recommendation for a good cast iron pan?
Or, alternative question, anyone got a recommendation for a good cast iron pan?
I have a VonShef cast iron griddle. I've only used it a couple of times but it gets hot and it didn't fall apart 
Normally cheaper cast iron is rougher to the touch, but the VonShef is pretty smooth. It's not preseasoned either, but that's no big deal.
Normally cheaper cast iron is rougher to the touch, but the VonShef is pretty smooth. It's not preseasoned either, but that's no big deal.
Brill, thanks Grim...
But those pans are out of stock.
Grim... wrote:
But those pans are out of stock.
Yeah, I saw that
I used the stock notifier thing. Not in any great rush.Dimrill wrote:
What a shame, also out of stock
Why do you need two of them?
One's a present for Malia but don't tell him. He always admires mine when he comes round.
Dimrill wrote:
This is superb for onion rings
Zardoz wrote:
Dimrill wrote:
This is superb for onion rings
As served at the Ritz and other fine dining establishments. The upward curve prevents accidental ring drops.
Also a fun game to play whist awaiting your sorbet.
The railway line goes all the
Way up the big hill
Most trains cannot manage this
Way up the big hill
Most trains cannot manage this
It looks like... Yes. I think it's a funny-colour.
I'm surprised those small legs can take all that weight.
https://twitter.com/landunderwife/statu ... 6281999360
https://www.boredpanda.com/anonymouse-m ... gKrh5PA81E
@TheBloggess please tell me you've seen this! https://t.co/LZzIitS1r8
— landunderwife (@landunderwife) August 15, 2020
https://www.boredpanda.com/anonymouse-m ... gKrh5PA81E
Quote:
30 Of The Cutest Mouse-Sized Architectural Masterpieces Created By A Group Of Artists From Sweden Called Anonymouse
MaliA wrote:
The railway line goes all the
Way up the big hill
Most trains cannot manage this
Way up the big hill
Most trains cannot manage this
Aberystwyth, innit. Mrs W and I ended up there for a couple of days when the hotel we'd booked in Pembroke turned out to be a shit hole.
I'm travelling 90 miles to adjust the lid on a mobile ticket printer because there are no other engineers available today who live closer. It'll take 20 seconds to push a little plastic lug back into its correct position to allow it to close.
That's 90 miles out and 90 miles back.
That's 90 miles out and 90 miles back.
We once sent an engineer from Glasgow to Guernsey (none of the other engineers were free) to get me connected into a site remotely over their 4g dongle so that I could do a 2 minute fix on a file.
If I'm not mistaken he missed the last ferry back that day, and then there was a storm or something that cancelled the service the day after, so he had to stay in a hotel for 2 or 3 nights. His round trip essentially took up the whole week for him. All for something that if their internet connection was working could have been sorted in less than 5 minutes.
If I'm not mistaken he missed the last ferry back that day, and then there was a storm or something that cancelled the service the day after, so he had to stay in a hotel for 2 or 3 nights. His round trip essentially took up the whole week for him. All for something that if their internet connection was working could have been sorted in less than 5 minutes.
There are lots of times when this kind of thing happens, and on the face of it, it seems crazy. The worst one I ever had was to drive from Macclesfield to Newcastle-on-Tyne, around 170 miles each way, to reboot a Cisco switch. But it was the same scenario, no other engineers available closer to the customer site and an SLA target rapidly approaching.
In fact, here we go again. I'm currently lunching in Bolton, but need to go to Liverpool to reboot a Juniper switch. There is a possibility that it'll need replacing, but obv I won't know till I get there.
I used to do a few of that sort of trip where it needed nothing more than turning it off and on again.
Even when a router needed swapping it could be a six hour round trip for ten minutes on site.
Even when a router needed swapping it could be a six hour round trip for ten minutes on site.
The Liverpool job turned out to be four hours. Switch had rebooted and hung while loading the OS, but the store was operating normally. I rebooted it and everything went off-line. Tills, card readers, internal phones, hand held terminals, PCs and wireless printers. Deary me, that's not supposed to happen. The switch had lost its Config and engineers can't fully config them, so I just plugged my laptop into it and called the network ops people who used my laptop to reset it remotely. Pain in the arse, but three hours overtime, so I'm Quids in.
So another dose of 2020 might be able to hit us. I'm looking with great concern at hurricane Laura which has just cleared Cuba. It was supposed to still be a tropical storm until later today but has decided to cut to the chase and fire up early. Projected ahead of it is only light wind sheer and warm waters. The cone of uncertainty is mapped for from Galveston at the South-Western edge to the unpopulated belt of Lousiana just east of Port Arthur. The cone of uncertainty represents a set of circles pathed along the agregate of forecast tracks at 12, 24, 36 hours. The size of each circle is set so that two thirds of historical forecast errors over the past five years fall into those circles. Essentially this means that a hurricane has a thirty percent chance of being outside the cone at any given forecast point, but it gives a good impression as to areas under threat and where to evacuate from, as a hurricane's effects outside of wind such as storm surge and heavy precipitation can have a wide reach.
At first New Orleans was in the cone, but that has been ruled out thankfully. However new forecast tracks are trending further and further south west, and it's looking increasingly possible that Houston is going to receive a hit, with Galveston possibly under the gun. Galveston has just announced a mandatory evacuation, which I'm not surprised about, as the worst ever US Hurricane disaster happened there back in 1900 with 12,000 lives lost. All the models are pointing to a major hurricane - major being a category three or higher - with a category four possible at landfall on Thursday.
There's still a lot that can happen. One of steering ridges could suddenly break down. The core could form a gap allowing dry air to enter, weakening it. It could go under an eye-wall replacement cycle at a vulnerable time and come in weaker. And it could end up just battering the deserted part of the Louisanna coast - which is deserted for good reason being something of a historical catcher's mitt for hurricanes. I'll freely admit that often some odd and fortiutious occurrance happens to take the punch out of a hurricane. Hell it even happened to Katrina, which ended up further east and two categories lower than it should had been had it not been for a last minute injection of dry air - without which there wouldn't have been a New Orleans left to write about. But this is one to watch and could end up being historic for all the wrong reasons.
At first New Orleans was in the cone, but that has been ruled out thankfully. However new forecast tracks are trending further and further south west, and it's looking increasingly possible that Houston is going to receive a hit, with Galveston possibly under the gun. Galveston has just announced a mandatory evacuation, which I'm not surprised about, as the worst ever US Hurricane disaster happened there back in 1900 with 12,000 lives lost. All the models are pointing to a major hurricane - major being a category three or higher - with a category four possible at landfall on Thursday.
There's still a lot that can happen. One of steering ridges could suddenly break down. The core could form a gap allowing dry air to enter, weakening it. It could go under an eye-wall replacement cycle at a vulnerable time and come in weaker. And it could end up just battering the deserted part of the Louisanna coast - which is deserted for good reason being something of a historical catcher's mitt for hurricanes. I'll freely admit that often some odd and fortiutious occurrance happens to take the punch out of a hurricane. Hell it even happened to Katrina, which ended up further east and two categories lower than it should had been had it not been for a last minute injection of dry air - without which there wouldn't have been a New Orleans left to write about. But this is one to watch and could end up being historic for all the wrong reasons.
Update on Hurricane Laura. It's a mixture of good and bad news. Okay, the good news first. After the models all worryingly trending west for a time placing Houston under the gun, the classic 'wind-shield wiper' pattern of hurricane forecast tracks re-asserted itself and the models swung back towards the east again. Now with less than 24 hours to landfall the track appears to be zeroed in on Port Arthur on the TX/LA border. With the time remaining the closest Laura could likely get to hitting Houston is around the upper Bolivar Peninsula. Bolivar Peninsula was a spit of land with a small town that was wiped off the map back in 2008 by the Category 2 Hurricane Ike, and which never really recovered. Even though both Bolivar and Galveston will feel effects from the hurricane, they'll be on the weaker side where the wind whips round to push water out of the bay, so storm surge for that area and Houston is only 3-5 feet. A Houston hit would have been catastrophic, with the environmental damage from all the stored crude oil and chemicals in the bay beyond belief, so it's pretty great that Laura wobbled North. Instead before her sits Jefferson County and the Sabine Nature Reserve, far more sparsely populated.
Okay, here's the bad news.
Laura is now a Major Hurricane, ahead of schedule and more intense than predicted, with a widening wind field. Yesterday she was ragged and having great difficulty in closing up any sort of eye, leaving her vulnerable to dry air. She'd also been battling a colder than expected trough of water left by Marco which did help for a time against her intensification. We've also Marco to than for cutting the notch in the ridge that probably helped steer Laura away from Houston. Unfortunately Marco also cleared the dry air in her path, and upon waking in the morning I found that without much of it in any quantity there was nothing really to inhibit Laura. Back into warmer waters and moister air, this morning she managed to close off her eye, broaden her wind-field and began a process of rapid intensification with a pressure drop of 6-8h mb in less than an hour. The lower the pressure the faster the wind and the greater the storm surge. As of typing she has now reached Category 3 - the predicted Major category. However she's still intensifying and she's still got some amount of time over water, and it's looking increasingly likely that a Category Four is likely.
What is a Category Four? It's anything between 131 and 155mph and with the shallow continental shelf located in this area around 10-15 feet of surge, a surge which in this case will push up to 30 miles inland owing to the many lakes, channels and general bayou nature of the area. Fortunately the coastal area itself is very, very, very sparsely populated. Unfortunately a little way in from the coast sits Sabine Lake and Lake Charles, both connected to the sea. Both have large towns clustered around them at the north end and both are very vulnerable. The ideal result would be for Laura to hit just to the east of Sabine Lake, which would hopefully spare Port Arthur and Beaumont the worst being on the weaker side for surge, and directing the bad surge into the unpopulated Sabine Wildlife Preserve which stretches along a large stretch of coast for a very good reason. Not only is it sparsely populated but marshland and wetlands do a great job of robbing a hurricane's surge of its battering power. Much more to the east however and Laura would badly threaten the small city Lake Charles and its large chemical works. Still further east is Lafayette and Morgan City. A strike here is unlikely, but anything closing towards that direction would be a surge of 8-12 feet in the area, and it's far more populated.
This is going to landfall in the middle of the night local time. I'm worried the Marco-Debacle combined with Covid19 worries might induce people not to bother evacuating. Now comfortably measuring a category three in pressure drop, this is nothing to take lightly. If this weakens somehow to Category 2 then the above mentioned towns will only get their feet wet. If it sticks in at Category Four...
Okay, here's the bad news.
Laura is now a Major Hurricane, ahead of schedule and more intense than predicted, with a widening wind field. Yesterday she was ragged and having great difficulty in closing up any sort of eye, leaving her vulnerable to dry air. She'd also been battling a colder than expected trough of water left by Marco which did help for a time against her intensification. We've also Marco to than for cutting the notch in the ridge that probably helped steer Laura away from Houston. Unfortunately Marco also cleared the dry air in her path, and upon waking in the morning I found that without much of it in any quantity there was nothing really to inhibit Laura. Back into warmer waters and moister air, this morning she managed to close off her eye, broaden her wind-field and began a process of rapid intensification with a pressure drop of 6-8h mb in less than an hour. The lower the pressure the faster the wind and the greater the storm surge. As of typing she has now reached Category 3 - the predicted Major category. However she's still intensifying and she's still got some amount of time over water, and it's looking increasingly likely that a Category Four is likely.
What is a Category Four? It's anything between 131 and 155mph and with the shallow continental shelf located in this area around 10-15 feet of surge, a surge which in this case will push up to 30 miles inland owing to the many lakes, channels and general bayou nature of the area. Fortunately the coastal area itself is very, very, very sparsely populated. Unfortunately a little way in from the coast sits Sabine Lake and Lake Charles, both connected to the sea. Both have large towns clustered around them at the north end and both are very vulnerable. The ideal result would be for Laura to hit just to the east of Sabine Lake, which would hopefully spare Port Arthur and Beaumont the worst being on the weaker side for surge, and directing the bad surge into the unpopulated Sabine Wildlife Preserve which stretches along a large stretch of coast for a very good reason. Not only is it sparsely populated but marshland and wetlands do a great job of robbing a hurricane's surge of its battering power. Much more to the east however and Laura would badly threaten the small city Lake Charles and its large chemical works. Still further east is Lafayette and Morgan City. A strike here is unlikely, but anything closing towards that direction would be a surge of 8-12 feet in the area, and it's far more populated.
Attachment:
surgemap.png
This is going to landfall in the middle of the night local time. I'm worried the Marco-Debacle combined with Covid19 worries might induce people not to bother evacuating. Now comfortably measuring a category three in pressure drop, this is nothing to take lightly. If this weakens somehow to Category 2 then the above mentioned towns will only get their feet wet. If it sticks in at Category Four...
That looks pretty serious.
Yeah, it is. Hurricane Laura is officially a Category Four now at 140mph sustained winds She's probably got about another four hours of proper intensification available to her before coastal friction kicks in a bit but she's still got a good ten hours over sea. The National Hurricane Centre have not ruled out a possible Category Five. The surge numbers have jumped up. Peak surge in the region of Calcasieu Lake is now set to be 15-20ft, and that doesn't include the waves.
Currently she's 'stair-stepping' prior to her northward turn, which means she takes a jog west, then a jog north, then a jog west, etc. Folks in Houston are eyeing her with some trepidation but mainly I think for the loss of air-conditioning a power-outage would cause, which is no laughing matter in coastal Texas. A Houston hit would be very unlikely now, in the order of 5%. Which is a relief, as a Category 4 / 5 going into Houston would probably make for the worst hurricane in American history, as her bay is perfectly designed for storm-surge, she has tons of heavy industry and stored chemicals surrounding it, and she's one of most populated cities in America.
Small comfort though. Category 5 begins at 155mph sustained, so she only needs another 15mph to make that. When morning over the SW Louisiana coast comes I can't imagine what we're going to find. I'm praying that Americans are paying attention. They should be, mandatory evac orders are now being handed out right and left but anyone thinking of leaving has only a very few hours left before the tropical storm force winds hit. The NHC warning states, "Unsurvivable Storm Surge... could penetrate up to 30 miles inland from the coastline."
NHC Summary here:
#contents">https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at3.s ... t
Currently she's 'stair-stepping' prior to her northward turn, which means she takes a jog west, then a jog north, then a jog west, etc. Folks in Houston are eyeing her with some trepidation but mainly I think for the loss of air-conditioning a power-outage would cause, which is no laughing matter in coastal Texas. A Houston hit would be very unlikely now, in the order of 5%. Which is a relief, as a Category 4 / 5 going into Houston would probably make for the worst hurricane in American history, as her bay is perfectly designed for storm-surge, she has tons of heavy industry and stored chemicals surrounding it, and she's one of most populated cities in America.
Small comfort though. Category 5 begins at 155mph sustained, so she only needs another 15mph to make that. When morning over the SW Louisiana coast comes I can't imagine what we're going to find. I'm praying that Americans are paying attention. They should be, mandatory evac orders are now being handed out right and left but anyone thinking of leaving has only a very few hours left before the tropical storm force winds hit. The NHC warning states, "Unsurvivable Storm Surge... could penetrate up to 30 miles inland from the coastline."
NHC Summary here:
#contents">https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at3.s ... t
It's front page news on BBC News.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53921285
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53921285
I honestly thought it would be the lead article, even with the protests.
Laura closing in, not much deviation from the forecast line, which looks bad news for the small city of Lake Charles, which is on the bad-surge side. Police have blocked off roads below Lake Charles to forbid anyone stupid enough to head that way. I am a bit worried however about a few of the storm chasers in the area, there's been a report that some of them have almost been cut off on the low roads round the coast as the surge begins to come in ahead of landfall, which should be nine hours or so from now.
Wind speed has gone up. Now it's predicted by the NHC to be a 150mph hurricane which is a very high end Category Four, a mere 5mph shy of a Category 5. However an injection of mid-level sheer which appears to be commencing now may be enough to stop further intensification. It won't weaken the hurricane any appreciable amount, this is pretty much baked in as a Category Four now, but it may hinder further intensification into the dreaded Category Five.
The National Surge Map can be found here with an estimate of how far inland floods and to what depth for each category.
https://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSe ... ad&entry=1
In a triumph of naming the acronym for the computer model they use is called 'S.L.O.S.H' by the way.
I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to stick around for this below the I-10 line based on those maps, but the surge can reach up to 40 miles inland with a category five in this location, so it is a bit nerve-wracking. (Please note the model does not mean it will flood along the entire stretch of coast to that depth, only in the area of the hurricane force winds in the north-western quadrant of its approach.)
Laura closing in, not much deviation from the forecast line, which looks bad news for the small city of Lake Charles, which is on the bad-surge side. Police have blocked off roads below Lake Charles to forbid anyone stupid enough to head that way. I am a bit worried however about a few of the storm chasers in the area, there's been a report that some of them have almost been cut off on the low roads round the coast as the surge begins to come in ahead of landfall, which should be nine hours or so from now.
Wind speed has gone up. Now it's predicted by the NHC to be a 150mph hurricane which is a very high end Category Four, a mere 5mph shy of a Category 5. However an injection of mid-level sheer which appears to be commencing now may be enough to stop further intensification. It won't weaken the hurricane any appreciable amount, this is pretty much baked in as a Category Four now, but it may hinder further intensification into the dreaded Category Five.
The National Surge Map can be found here with an estimate of how far inland floods and to what depth for each category.
https://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSe ... ad&entry=1
In a triumph of naming the acronym for the computer model they use is called 'S.L.O.S.H' by the way.
I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to stick around for this below the I-10 line based on those maps, but the surge can reach up to 40 miles inland with a category five in this location, so it is a bit nerve-wracking. (Please note the model does not mean it will flood along the entire stretch of coast to that depth, only in the area of the hurricane force winds in the north-western quadrant of its approach.)
Attachment:
christ.jpg
There is now a good chance that this hurricane is a Category Five. These are incredibly rare in the Gulf of Mexico, especially for August. Since 1924 there have only been FIVE hurricanes to landfall as a Category Five in the United States. Katrina was a Category 5 further out to sea but 'diminished' to a Category Three before hitting east of New Orleans. Category Five's out to sea or otherwise are very rare for August too, with only seven in history since 1924. We are not even at peak season, which happens on September 10th, the hurricane season stretches into late October / early November!
Keys - 1935
Camille - 1969
Andrew - 1992
Michael - 2018 (Rated 5 retrospectively. Happily it landed where almost no one lived in the Florida panhandle.)
It appears the hurricane may finally be making its turn North, directly threatening Lake Charles. Lafayette may see flooding also, with life threatening surge running up to Morgan City and the parishes to the south of Lafayette City. New Orleans may also see slight surge, but probably no more than three feet. New Orleans is about 150km away from estimated landfall. Where this storm directly hits will have huge consequences for those close to the eastward side, but again this one is so big now it may be a moot point if you're just to the west of landfall.
I dread to think what may have happened if Houston was in play, with up to a million to evacuate with less than 36 hours notice.
Update: Lake Charles Memorial Hospital Storm Surge prediction has been raised to 9ft.
Lake Charles Memorial Hospital is THIRTY MILES INLAND from the coast.
Laura is still strengthening.
Well it's over the coast and its doing its thing. It appears to be sustaining its winds fairly well, but how much of it is making its way down to the ground and where is hard to tell - though the strongest winds will be in the eastern side. The eye passed directly over the small town of Cameron (and by small town I mean American sized small town - so village in our vernacular) whose tidal gauges measured an eleven foot storm surge. For minimising damage this hurricane has landed on a bit of sweet spot, as the powerful north eastern winds will appear just outside Lake Charles where there's pretty much nothing, and Port Arthur will get the far weaker side a good distance away. The hurricane also took a harder than expected turn north, which meant that it shifted its surge pattern resulting in less water being pushed forward onto land than had it struck at the original oblique angle.
So far the surge isn't as bad as forecast, but a lot of it usually comes with the backside of the hurricane and it's only muscled itself half ashore so far. Dawn over there will tell the story so I'll wait until the end of the working day before looking further. If something gets hit bad its probably going to be the unfortunate small incorporated communities between Charles and Lafayette. I have no desire to watch four hours of people from the Weather Channel standing in pitch darkness next to wobbly signs screaming, "Catastrophic damage!" as a fence falls over.
So far the surge isn't as bad as forecast, but a lot of it usually comes with the backside of the hurricane and it's only muscled itself half ashore so far. Dawn over there will tell the story so I'll wait until the end of the working day before looking further. If something gets hit bad its probably going to be the unfortunate small incorporated communities between Charles and Lafayette. I have no desire to watch four hours of people from the Weather Channel standing in pitch darkness next to wobbly signs screaming, "Catastrophic damage!" as a fence falls over.
Just got home from holiday and kicked a set of house keys across the drive where they have been since Thursday.
MaliA wrote:
Just got home from holiday and kicked a set of house keys across the drive where they have been since Thursday.
Aren't you supposed to leave them under a brick or plant pot?
Shropshire, I am in you!
What are you doing in Shropshire, you maniac?
GazChap wrote:
What are you doing in Shropshire, you maniac?
I live here!
GazChap wrote:
What are you doing in Shropshire, you maniac?
Camping, innit?
DavPaz wrote:
Camping, innit?
Where abouts? Was it you that mentioned camping in Bishop's Castle recently, or am I misremembering?
KovacsC wrote:
GazChap wrote:
What are you doing in Shropshire, you maniac?
I live here!
We're near Bishop's castle, but you're thinking of Malia who was here last week
DavPaz wrote:
We're near Bishop's castle, but you're thinking of Malia who was here last week
Are you in Wentnor?
DavPaz wrote:
We're near Bishop's castle, but you're thinking of Malia who was here last week
You timed that right then
GazChap wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
We're near Bishop's castle, but you're thinking of Malia who was here last week
Are you in Wentnor?
We are! Don't tell anyone
DavPaz wrote:
We are! Don't tell anyone
Probably at the camp site that I camped at when I was a nipper.
It rained. A lot. I distinctly remember waking up to find the tent flooded, and my brother still asleep on his side despite half of his face being submerged in water.
Fun times.
It's like a real world Everybody's gone to the rapture round here
