Re: One of Severn Wonders
No they are
The Iron Bridge
Healings Mill
Upper Lode Lock
Gloucester Docks
Gloucester & Sharpness Canal
Severn Tunnel
Hinkley Point (sort of - I needed 7)
6857 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2009
Old railway lines and canals, I used to love finding them and examining them, seen such as the Coombe Hill canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coombe_Hill_Canal
https://www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk/nature-reserves/coombe-hill-canal-and-meadows
Droitwich canal pre reopening
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Canal
Always had an interest in Thames and Severn Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_and_Severn_Canal
Small streams off the Thames when I was young, explored some with a cheap old canoe (parents had a cabin cruiser) from where we moored.
Old railway lines, like Forest of Dean, managed to get my bike on a couple, but rather too bumpy for a road bike so did not do much, didn't have a traily.
As to unpaved roads, same sort of thing, I just love to be off the beaten track, still finding them, but many are not obvious, and others blocked from traffic, but I now have a 4x4 for ones I am allowed on.
Cornwall, about 25 years ago my parents won some first class train tickets and gave them to us, we went to St Ives. Managed to get to Penzance, Falmouth, Truro, Looe, by train, Newquay was closed so still need to do that branch.
Helston was really really annoying as some idiot closed the line so could not go there.
We travelled down behind a 47, through Cornwall in 158s and branches were ran by a right mix, Looe was the GWR150 117 set. Home by HST.
I have started abusing them, calling them dirty bastards, they look very sheepish.
If security say anything.
"That dirty bastard didn't wash his hands after using the toilet, and now he is going to walk around the supermarket touching food people eat. People are going to eat his pee or poo."
If they tried to hit me I would not hesitate to break their kneecaps. (Stamp on them).
Airbus & Boeing - after the 737 Debacle?
Cars - I prefer British cars to Yank cars. I own an early 2000s British made 4x4. My previous cars have been Scottish and pan European (German French and British in one car).
Want to see horrible look at German basic level cars, I had a nice car a big saloon, large EFI engine, lots of nice stuff and it was bottom of range but did not feel it.
German version, no rev counter, small carb engine and no power steering!
Funny how so many of the Clipper tool writers went to Dephi.
I have had exposure to most of the various databases, found bugs in some, I could crash some on demand.
Was a tester for an AS400 database engine, best described as slow.
Just had three different tools up using our data.
Advantage Data Architect (part of server software in Dephi)
My own DBU (multi RDD version recompiled with Alaska XBase++into WIN32 Console)
Our own software in Visual Objects.
If I wanted I could go to an XP PC and load up our last gen software.
All playing nicely.
Clippers great tricks were, very basic OOP in places. Replacable Database Drivers (If you didn't use Advantage your software was born to corrupt indexes.)
I used to like the VGA mode in 5,3B and managed to make a DOS application pretty usable and good looking even in XP days.
Oh and EVERYONE had Blinker
Actually it was something completely different.
MANY Delphi programmers came from the Clipper world, a big selling MSDOS database handling compiler which could handle a number of databases.
As to the replacement environment there were many.
Number one rules was - can my new development environment use the same database?
In most cases yes, but Delphi not straight away.
A large number of Clipper applications used the data formats DBF CDX FPT.
This was supported in a few other environments including Visual Objects and Alaska XBase++, Delphi used Paradox.
HOWEVER serious systems using Clipper used client server systems with Advantage XBase Server, this was a server based NLM handling the data, later on a Windows service and even more recent a Linux versions were added.
When the Advantage wrappers for Delphi appeared it took off. It was one of the bigger DOS escape routes.
I would put its escapee market share as similar to Visual Objects but with more non Clipper programmers on top.
The writers of AXS later ADS also used Delphi themselves.
But with the improvement in hardware specifications making SQL more usable for medium sized systems the need for fast client server ISAM is dropping, also we do not trust SAP with Advantage, SYBASE were fine.
Also all us older Clipper programmers are either retired, or within a decade of retiring, so systems are now moving to more main stream stuff like C.
We are currently benchmarking tools for our post WIN32 world. We took one choice to WIN32, Delphi users took another.
Oh and in the DOS days it was almost open warfare between Clipper and F*x developers.
B5, Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly.
Lots mentioned.
Seen bits of all, but still favourite is Trek.
I liked Firefly but the film ending upset me (Wash).
Wars, prequels, and the latest films seem odd.
Now when will ElReg channel a few other series?
And what will they be?
My hearing is a bit duff.
I cannot bear being interrupted, it starts me stuttering (and I don't stutter) and breaks train of thought.
Two people talking at once, I do not even TRY to work out as to me it is a wall of noise.
I actually have to concentrate to listen to people.
Imperial and Metric
I use both
Miles for distance, HP for car power, but NM for torque, fuel in litres but quick conv to gallons for consumption.
DIY all mm and m, none of this cm or inch nonsense.
Use kg most for weight except people weight when stones, converting stones to pounds is easy
10 stone x 6.35 = 63.5kg, 63.5 x 2.2 = 140 pound, I do not know how many pounds in a stone, some even teen number I think.
I never knew because I do not use it, nor the menu, they are too weird. I wanted to reboot new PC, no obvious button, so added one.
Windows Key R is all you need.
mspaint
notepad
regedit
services.msc
shutdown /r
these work
Most importantly
CMD
Now I can use it
Find a file C: DIR name.ext /s /p
How easy is that?
Still trying to get open with working properly though, keeps on about a store.
Since I have had DVD always used SCART RGB, even works with NTSC on a PAL only TV.
Decided on newer TV to do multi way tests, and I tested DVD via RGB SCART, Component, and then DVD in the PS3.
TV upscaling and PS3 upscaling were indistinguishable.
SCART provided WS switching and the colour balance appeared better than component.
So I still use an old DVD player for DVD on a HDTV.
Netware 5 and friends.
Customers were not allowed Windows servers until.
1) Our database could run on it.
2) Our customers had hardware support.
3) Server 2003.
4) They accepted the performance decrease.
We did have one NT family to Netware upgrade as they were hammering the server too hard.
Get good service from a company they get repeat custom.
Get good life you look at same brand to replace.
Get good performance, the same.
Had 4 TVs same make, 3 Video cameras same make, gone from heavy separates to an all in one with HD tapes.
I am prepared to spend more occasionally to spend less overall. Known people buy a TV every 3 years. I spent £1200 on one, less money than 3x£500.
New one every ten years or so, does me.
First because wanted to see TV
Second because first was portable
Third because it was DVB-T, widescreen and flatscreen
Fourth because HD and HDMI and big
Fifth will be higher resolution, HDR and more HDMI, will probably go same make.
So I had a really good 14" portable from about 1980 or so. An expensive 32" IDTV, now a big LCD which upscales rather well.
Same make as my video recorder from early 80s and my last few games consoles.