2015-02-20

Moon and Venus.

The Moon and Venus greeted me when I exited Coles at dusk, so I took a photo.
It seems Mars was besides Venus but good luck seeing that.

Panlight.

It's sort of a contrast to what folk in some countries would call a penlight.
It may come in handy for taking photos as light is a big friend to photos.
Urghh, don't try this at home people.

It works, and made something useful of an old frying pan.

2015-02-17

Drill chuck problem - solved.

I had a rather an odd problem with this chuck for my fancy big drill that I wanted to use on the lavatory floor the other week, the jaws would only close part of the way so I scratched my head, put it aside for a while and used the other drill.
Anyway I went to disassemble it today and found the screw under the jaws had become loose, loose enough that the jaws closed onto its head. The fix couldn't be simpler, just tighten it but be aware that chuck screws in my experience always have left hand threads, so tightening them is an anti-clockwise operation.

2015-02-11

A busy time at Ingham station.

We had a visit from a celebratory steam train which because it was delayed coincided with the normal Spirit of Queensland passenger service, thus causing some awkward shuffling to occur.
Here the steam train has just stopped as the Spirit of Queensland draws to a halt.
The place was packed with camera toting folk who had the same idea as me, as well as a horde of school children whose teachers must have desired a change in pace, but it is a once in a generation thing in these parts. Getting a decent photo wasn't really possible, made harder by camera folk being moved on if we found a good spot.
It had two of these massive water tanks, needed these days which a lack of places that cater for old steam locos.
The rear end as it moves down the track to make room for the Spirit of Queensland, both will do a bit of looping now but I went home here.
Arriving, I had about one shot and I blew it.
It has wheels too.

2015-02-10

Flattop.

The tree that grows on the footpath outside our place was given an excellent trim the other day. Not a good place for a tree under power lines but it's pretty well out of my control.

A Jimmy drain.

Olivia asked me nine months ago to put a drain in the lavatory floor, finally Jimmy worked out a simple and cheap way to do it, whether it's any good or not we'll find out in future.

I just used a bit of 12mm copper pipe and flared the end. I drilled a hole in the lowest part of the floor judging by where a pool of water from cleaning remained, yes cleaning as I would never splash.
I put some contact cement on it to hopefully act as a seal.
Then bent the pipe after seating it down, and joining an old bit of garden hose to it and routing it away. Hopefully the job won't cause any angst for a while.

2015-02-04

It's only ratepayers money.

Our council is replacing the public lavatory on Herbert St with this charming structure, this mainly serves travelers through Ingham so they will be pleased, but Jimmy is rather irate that its cost will be $138,000, life is simple when you're spending someone else's money, just chalk it up and rubber stamp the paperwork. The QLD government will throw in a 40% subsidy so it'll only cost the ratepayers $82k, no worries no auditor will ever query the cost.
Meanwhile yesterday a householder pamphlet arrived from a shed seller, golly this looks fairly similar.
The council could also go ballistic with something like this, and being council they need never worry about getting approval.