Ingham has lights.

In a fancy ceremonial fashion our Mayor switched on our new town xmas tree tonight. Ingham won't look as drab at xmas time after our council splashed some money about for decorations.
I think this shall serve as a future trigger point for our lights to be put up.

Paxton is dressed up now.

With thanks to John in Newfoundland Paxton has a lovely maple leaf shirt now.

It's either very happy or very sad.

Olivia's plant that she bought a little while ago is blooming a-plenty, I hope it isn't in pain.

Our road gets a freshen up.

We had traffic control outside today, a surprise to me was they were giving the road a fresh seal. It was still in pretty good nick, having only seen 11 years of service and floods since the previous job.

The crew seemed to know their job pretty well and I have to praise their productivity.

First a layer of tar.

Then spray on a layer of rocks, the method looks a bit odd but works very well.

Then road rollers settle the surface by going up and back a few times.

A splash of paint to indicate where to paint.

Today's job is done.

On the 27th June 2003 this crew did a lovely smooth asphalt job, we can only hope the new job lasts as well.

Now I just have to hope Daisy doesn't break a windscreen.

A GPS upgrade for Daisy.

Daisy has fairly proper OBD compliance, something the auto trade in Australia has been very loathe to pass on to consumers, but since it appears to largely comply I treated Daisy to a tablet that can act as an OBD dashboard and fault reader. Then I realised it had a lovely screen and inbuilt GPS so now I've set it up to be mainly a GPS, and use OBD in a secondary role.
As usual my mounting method is rough and simple.

Happy Birthday Mega.

Something from the past.

I'm always tinkering.

Daisy comes with a very ordinary transmission indicator lamp, which must exist purely to comply with an ADR, but being a budget car why would we expect any better?
To use up some time I cobbled a few bits together to make a three coloured LED lamp for it, I just grabbed a 470 Ohm resistor that was handy and series connected them, 11 mA current flow seemed like a good number so I kept it.

I never measured anything so anybody else who may try this will be sure to improve on my ordinary effort, but eventually it did work after sorting out issues with plugging it into the existing T5 socket, including blowing a fuse that took an age to locate.
The end result though is nicer yet still retains my groanworthy finish and touch.

An early start to Xmas.

Peter next door has been itching to get into the Xmas spirit so lit things up last night, I'd be inclined to thing Halloween is just a mite early but maybe he was just testing.

1st of November, a double birthday in the family.

Olivia's mother Fidela would have turned 85 today.

Also my Grandmother Mollie would have turned 111 today, neither are with us any more.
My Nana is posing with her British Empire Medal here, they don't give them here any more but I have to think she merited this lowest of the Queen's medals which coincidentally is also the highest non-bravery award a common citizen could attain.
I also think today marks the 111th anniversary of Mollie's Mother's death, an event that drove a wedge into her relationship with her Father.