Defeated.

The lens on Olivia's Nikon J2 has been cactus for quite some time and I got serious today about effecting a fix for it, the problem has been the aperture iris thingy shown in the middle here stays in the closed up position, rendering the lens quite useless.
After much work I finally gained access to it but the years do condemn and I consider it somewhat beyond my ability to fix.
Happily this prompted me to seek a replacement lens which to my surprise I found one at a not too outrageous price and grabbed, the new lens is a 10-30mm job which is a technically superior unit to this base model 11-27.5mm one. I say technically because I was struck by how good the images were from this inferior lens.

I may have to prod the council about this.

The gutter outside our place doesn't drain, due to water being reluctant to flow uphill, I suppose I can be fairly laid back about it for now but if a council inspector ever comes here and says anything about mosquito breeding places in our yard I'll let fly about their gutter.

Skidmark.

Not the sort of skidmark you'd expect but whoever laid this one in the small hours of this morning did manage to awaken me. We don't get many incidents here so this can be put down to boys will be boys.
Note the lovely blue sky and lack of breeze, now thanks to the wonders of satellite we know there's a cyclone approaching but in the past it would have come as a surprise. I don't think that "Debbie" has our name on it, for us I just think we'll have a bit of wind and rain but nothing major, I'd be more concerned if I was further South in Ayr.

Out with the girls this morning.

We performed at the Canossa Aged Care place today and had a pretty good time, they even gave us some cake afterwards, correction delicious cake, I suppose I'll be in trouble now.
I wish my chest would clear up so I could put a bit of effort into things but I have grave doubts about it ever coming good again.
Kudos to Rita our boss on the far right here who plays piano, she's really quite superb and she makes our Ingham group of Sing Australia a very fortunate one.

This spark plug is still clean.

I wanted to play fancy buggers and eyeball how Daisy's piston and bore are doing but the tablet I chose to use didn't want to get along with the borescope camera I bought.

For whatever hardware/software reason after about one second of use the camera consistently locked up resulting in more frustration than I wanted to put up with, so with further motivation from the mosquitoes draining my life giving blood I promptly gave up with this image of the piston crown the only one I managed to take.
Sometime in the future I'll attack it with a windows laptop, which in past testing was vastly more reliable.

A heartbreaking tumble.

Olivia bought this ceramic piece last week from the Salvos in Townsville after I'd seen a fancy doctor at the hospital, sadly today after I walked past where it was it took a heavy fall and broke, oh dear $6 ruined, but being fixit Jimby I attacked it with some glue.

I also added some felt feet to it as it didn't sit steadily on hard surfaces, hopefully Olivia feels a little better now.

Partial success.

This is a vent out of Daisy, the pivot holes for the link that joins the vanes had broken, and the wire I've melted into place and formed a new link with is my attempt at a repair.
It does work but the problem is the post at the lower left here, it's misshapen and binds slightly at this fully closed position resulting in a bent link wire if it's opened by pushing a finger in the spot cast on it, but that isn't a real problem here as we always have vents open and even if shut it's easy enough to push the other vane to open them.
This is the second vent on Daisy to break so a definite design weakness methinks. To be fair to Proton though there's bugger all else I can moan about.

Lorna's water pump.

This is the water pump that I changed on Lorna's car the other week, one thing I should say that may help anybody who does a job like this is to changeover the studs for the fan before you bolt the new water pump in place, I didn't and it made for a more awkward job for a short chap like myself.

The impeller side was very good, that rust is only from sitting about for a while.

There's some sign of seepage from its blowhole but I'm far from an expert, I'm just good at gaining information online that helps me to take on tasks.

Almost 100 years ago, a little tribute.

I'm a fortnight early but in case any of my family see this it may jog a memory.
On the 24th March 1917 my Grandmother's brother Sgt. John (Jack) McGregor 4881 was killed in action by a sniper's bullet to the head.
War service has largely been missed by my family, one grandfather was too young for WW1 yet a family man and too old for WW2, the other grandfather was asked by his family to just stay and do one more harvest after he was old enough to join WW1, but the war was over by then, he too was a family man and too old for WW2. My father was too young for WW2 and Korea never crossed his mind at the time, perhaps a good thing given how Korean veterans were shunned upon their return.
Myself I was too young for Vietnam, given Australia withdrew from action by the end of 1972.
So really of my blood kin I'm limited to Jack, my maternal Great Uncle who was killed in WW1, and John Smyth VX48125 who was a Rat of Tobruk and survived WW2.

This is the war service record photo of John Smyth, I'd say because he had about the same lack of tallness that I have that his remaining a private throughout his many years of war service is quite believable.

Now I'll add copies of what I have from the Red Cross file into Jack's death.

Jack didn't receive any medal and he mother certainly couldn't have as she had died shortly after my Grandmother was born, something her father always held a grudge against her for.

This is from Jack's commanding officer Captain Trainor, a write up to be proud of, of course Jack had already achieved the highest rank possible for someone from a non-privileged family so gaining a medal was just that step too far.

  

Sgt. Hills testimony here to me is a good straight facts one that I favour is correct about the place where Jack was killed.

I've marked in pink where I suspect Jack was shot. On the edge of Doignies chasing Germans back to the Hindenburg line.

And to end my little tribute a photo of my Grandmother with her older Brother Jack.

Tight squeeze.

I mentioned to the driver when he returned from a delivery that his height clearance was marginal at best, but he knew, that's why he always reverses out of that bay.

Froggie.

I saw this as I was heading into the doctor's place today, hidden fairly well out in the open.