Investigate again, success.

It seems that I had the non-polarised LCD display plug fitted in reverse, I shall now consider Peter's TV to be saved from the rubbish bin, for a while at least.

Two problems here.

Problem one: Peter's back room TV became as lively as a dodo a week ago so muggins volunteered to give it a check over. The dodo-ness was due to a blown fuse and oddly a shorted inductor, some bad mojo must have played on his power lines.

 A makeshift repair was slapped together from a scrap inductor (the bad one is lower right on the photo) and a near enough fuse. Result is TV powering up fine, backlight fine, voltages seem OK, but not having any picture output. That's the end of my tinkering, I don't have the eyesight or the coordination to do anything about the fiddly little bits nor would I think it viable to source bits for a budget TV these days, I'm done.

Problem two: The photo of me shows up a patch of hair on my forehead that was missed on my last trim.

Something in common.

I was checking out some of my toys and noticed my Goldfinger vintage Aston Martin DB5 model has something unusual and much in common with Daisy. In the real world you can't say power and handling are equal, Daisy has ample power, perhaps not my 21st century standards but most 1960s vintage cars would only see her exhaust pipe in a race, Daisy also handles superbly so that wouldn't be in common either.
The answer is simple.

Both are made in Malaysia, a country that should be applauded for standing up to a big neighbouring country bully a couple of decades ago that may well have helped to raise relationships overall in the region.

A short wander at TYTO and a wedding.

A cloudy rotten day for photos today but it was warm (winter may have broken for the year) and a bit of walking would be good for both our health.
Here I was about to set up a tripod to capture ourselves but a Japanese family came by and offered to shoot us, an offer gratefully accepted, a pity though that my new TF card seems to have a few bad blocks in it as we lost some shots at this point, it happened on the Walgett trip too so I'll need to act.

The water is not dead at TYTO, here's some wildlife.

A wedding was setting up when we wandered past, folk were doing a great job of setting up the place and the ambiance of TYTO will make for a great day for all.

Best wishes to Danielle and Scott, whom we know nothing about.

A door switch fix for Daisy.

I noticed on our trip that Daisy's door switches had become quite unreliable, I think due to a design that needs a slight alteration to provide more contact leeway.

My ugly fix is to solder a copper strip to the V tang to extend it a tad, I wad ideas to solder it to the mount but it didn't take to soldering and I suspect it's stainless steel.
I did all four doors and they now work reliably, at least for now.

Back to fixing again.

The shower head broke on Olivia last night, the plastic the Chinese use isn't very durable.
I gave it some thought and reasoned a jubilee clamp might hold it pretty well, and it does seem to work OK.....for now.
In this nanny state the law was relaxed a little while back to allow anyone to change shower heads, so I don't think I've even broken one of our punitive laws. Incredible the we have the word "free" in our national anthem when we have so many rules limiting what we can do.

Last picture.

Very pretty country near Carnavon George just after sunset, sadly for me by the time I got comfortable then set up the camera the magic light had ended.

Balonne river.

Our trip to me parents was over, this was at St. George, and it's another river name along the Murray system,
Judging by the countryside and rivers we'd seen plus the painful price of meat lately I'm inclined to think the drought is much reduced.

Namoi river.

Another branch of the Murray river system, this is from a levee on the edge of Walgett.
Good to see some water in it.

Studnets.

Walgett has about the lowest school attendance rate in NSW but I can't say that's a link to this little typo.
Irksome to me is extra funding to schools over the the years would be funding this pretty but overdone notice board, meanwhile student results dip lower.

This is a worry.

It's Saturday afternoon and no bowls are being played, it costs plenty for upkeep of the greens so I would have expected more utilisation.

A beer with Dad.

Since this was a special occasion I allowed myself a drink, at least in my life I've had many years of being able to have a drink with my father, many people regret never having done that.

Unfair.

My Mother uses a low tech AV cable for watching Foxtel, and even then the picture is better than what the free commercial broadcasters dish up from Townsville.
For free TV they also use a satellite and to my disappointment the picture on Imparja is also better than we get from WIN in Townsville, a dozen years ago the reverse was true, but for one broadcaster things have moved on.
I gave up trying to read the blurry numbers on the players some years ago on WIN, it just made me too angry.

A kludge.

Despite my parents having a battleship full of bric-a-brac I couldn't find a RJ-11 to RJ-11 cable, so I crafted one by soldering a couple of old 605 plugs together with safety pins so they could act as a RJ-11 to RJ-11 cable.

Missing.

I got a shock when I noticed the two valve caps on the drivers side had been *borrowed* my only real grumble was the long drive home without these seemingly useless things that nevertheless serve an important purpose.

 I had ordered these pretty new ones before going on our trip and they arrived today, that apprehensive look would be real now. The golden one is the same type as were taken.

Orion rises.

Orion rises above shops at Walgett.

Walgett bore bath.

I saw Walgett has a bore bath but sadly it spends most of its time locked away from access, even closed on weekends.

Venus above Jupiter.

A night shot from my parents back yard. Venus is the bright one and Jupiter is below it.

Ladies first.

My Dad Fred about to give way to the phone girl before going in for his daily fix of newspapers, myself I virtually ceased buying them years ago when some saint made the internet available to mere mortals like myself.
Good to see his pants at a decent length, unlike the masses who wander about with the cuffs dragging on the ground.

Cemetery.

Walgett has a lovely and quite quaint cemetery, it seems an awful lot of the dead loved their football, I didn't see any Cowboys flags though but that wasn't a surprise.

Bingo.

Olivia played bingo for the first time and even had beginner's luck, but the NSW Blues football bag only brought a groan from me.

Like a Phoenix rising.

The old supermarket was burnt down but this new wonder to replace it is very modern.
I wish we could by grog from a supermarket but that's a no-no at home in QLD.

Not camera shy.

I was spotted wielding a camera so a photo was in order.

This is about what I was trying to capture.

Walgett.

Early on our visit to my parents the weather was cool and quite pleasant, and a bit of a surprise to me was the friendliness of the town, it seems the troubles of the 1990s have been left behind.
I can't say that I was happy about the amount of dogs that wander freely about the town though, I'm powerful scared of them and just like when I see smokers I tend to walk a lot of detours to avoid.

Burren Junction.

Olivia snapped me taking a taking a few shots so I aimed a rough one at her, rather badly.

I decided at Inglewood that a detour via Mt Kaputar to check out the bore baths at Burren Junction would be interesting, to me it was but just like every other place of interest on our tour the bore baths were chockabloc full of caravans, so I didn't bother adding to their crowd, pity as they would have been refreshing on our drive.
The countryside today has looked good.

Bingara.

I timed my crossing of this old style narrow bridge at Bingara rather poorly, so with no traffic behind me I thought it wise to pause for a few seconds to let the tanker have a bit more comfort room, he was probably happy too.

Well spotted.

Olivia spied this St George car in the shopping centre carpark, very topical at the time as the Cowboys had just beaten the St George-Illawarra Rugby League team in the NRL competition a couple of days prior, so I did a lean over to display my Cowboys cap.
Different St George but good enough.

I wish we had one of these nearby.

We would do a lot of shopping at Aldi if we could.

Siblings.

We don't meet often enough and the years are passing fast now since we were once children together but the reason for our detour to make a longer journey south was to drop in and visit brother Mega and his lovely wife Robyn.
I got a bit ahead of myself with the last few posts on this weblog but they live in Brisbane, barely as the council border is very nearby.

Texas.

This one is a mere town that's in a state larger than Texas USA.

Inglewood.

A nice place for a hair cut.

Condamine river.

We're about 100 km from the longest source of Australia's longest river system the Murray. It was nice to see it was flowing.

Not so good was realising I'd forgotten to turn Daisy's headlights off.

Finally an arty shot.

Eidsvold.

I've always found Eidsvold a pretty place to stop at.

Half mast.

I don't know why the flag is half mast but the rest stop here in the tiny town of  Jambin which the local CWA has some input to is very nice.
Naturally when we were here the ambiance was ruined by a pair of travellers, one yacking on a phone, and another stinking the place up with a cigarette, which naturally was tossed on the ground afterwards, but at least the air cleared a bit after that.

UFO.

There's something odd above the moon here, but since I don't believe in things like that I'll just call it a fish because it looks like one.

The piccie it's cropped from at Mount Morgan.

A mystery solved, the old Tropic of Capricorn marker still exists.

I saw an old family photo of a marker for the Tropic near Rockhampton 45 years ago but in my travels have never found one on the Bruce highway, with most folk wrongly thinking the huge tropic marker at the info centre near the southern edge of town marks it, but it's out by a few km.
These markers are on the old Port Curtis road which I have to believe was the highway before being bypassed. They're overgrown now but their purpose has long gone, in reality the Tropic has moved north to somewhere near that lone tree on the right side of the road since the highway moved, but this just solves what to me has been a long term mystery, thanks to earth and street Google.