You Can Take The Boy Out Of Engineering...

Last week I was out and about on company business again. One of the many delights of the job that I do is that you quite often get wheeled around peoples warehouses as they proudly tell you all about their 6 Sigma this or Continuous Improvement that. My job in this particular scenario is to look interested and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES look them square in the eye and tell them that I just don't care.

This particular visit was showing all the signs of being just such an occasion. I stood and dutifully listened to their spiel about Kanban and Ishikawa and kept my thoughts to myself. I even managed to keep my face straight whilst they told me about their unassailable dominance in the narrowboat toilet market (which was, to be frank, an effort of monumental proportions).

But then we rounded a corner and they showed me their engineering department. They had lathes and milling machines (both types, no less!) and surface grinders and EDM machines and a chap in overalls and safety glasses called Dave.

I wasn't allowed in due to their health and safety rules so I stood, just on the boring side of the yellow line painted on the floor, staring in like a fat kid at the door of the cakeshop. There were slip gauges and micrometers and engineering drawings and the evocative smell of cutting fluid. It was ace.

And I bet Dave was looking out at me and thinking "it's all right for you, pal - you'll swan about here for a bit and then get ferried off to a nice airconditioned meeting room and given free coffee".

The grass is always greener on the other fellow's grave, Dave.

NDC

The Bad Penny

A couple of months ago I had a strop with blogger, I was upset because the app (which, ironically, this very post is being composed on) wasn't up to my expectations and because blogger doesn't let me fanny about with pictures in quite the way I'd like to when posting from anything other than a full blown PC (which is just so 2013, obvs*). Clearly this was a disaster of biblical proportions and so I jumped ship to WordPress.

But here's the thing.

It's just not the same. Oh I know that I have a million times more control over every little bit of code, I know that the app is a million times better than the blogger debacle (which feels like it was last updated in 2001), but it's just not the same. It feels like renting a fancy penthouse apartment instead of your small basement flat, but not being able to bring your comfy sofa and ask your mates round.

So I'm back. Normal service will be resumed and I'll even try to get the posts I wrote over there back over here (wish me luck!)

But if anyone can suggest a decent android blogging app that'll work with blogger I would be unreasonably grateful.

NDC

* - yes, I am fully aware of the irony of this comment on out-of-date stuff, given that it appears in a blog post of all things

Test blog

Moving On.

Well, it was fun on blogger, but the frankly woeful app for my beloved Android technojiggerypokery stopped me from blogging as I would have liked on my recent jaunt, which has driven me to new shores.  I have, in short, decamped to Wordpress.

My blog is here;

http://adventuresinrealityblog.wordpress.com

I've moved the whole blog and set up everything so that I still get to read you posts and I'd love to see you over on the dark side, to kick off with tales of travels to sunny climes and more day-to-day claptrap to follow.

Hopefully see you there.

Cheers!

NDC

Mad Dogs.

Well, Sri Lanka was ace.

More (much more) to come. But for now, Caruthers, it's time to relax....

NDC

Such A Perfect Place To Start.

Tomorrow we're off on another adventure, this time to far flung corners of The Empire.

Oh I love an adventure......

NDC

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

I’ve never really been a chap who keeps things based upon sentimental attachments. I’ve always felt that William Morris hit the rustic-style nail on the head with his quote that serves as title for this post.

I’m not really entirely sure why I have this deep seated desire to avoid clutter, but I think that The Dad was probably quite central to my views as he was at the other end of the scale. When he downsized from the home we grew up in to his bungalow a few years ago we spent an entire weekend and 3 skips clearing out just the garage. Edited highlights include:

• A roll of cream carpet that The Dad found in a ditch (and you could tell)

• A boiler that wasn’t working even when it was put in the garage in the first place

• Several offcuts of timber that were older than me

• Half of a large garden swing seat that last saw the garden in 1978

Some of these things actually had to be negotiated into the skip. His mantra was ‘it might come in useful one day’.

When he died I kept very little of his stuff. There is a set of plans for the last house that he built in a cardboard tube, a fireguard that he made as an apprentice piece and a roadsign. The roadsign is the only thing I know I won’t throw away.

The beautiful Mrs A and I were talking about such things during one of our morning chats the other day and I mentioned a weird thing that The Mum has had in her house for as long as I can remember. It’s a small, green china ashtray featuring a large cone (such as you might see on an old gramophone, but without the gramophone itself) and two pigs sitting and looking into the cone.

No, I have no idea either. I guess it must have been designed in the 60s during a particularly successful experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. Think Franklin Mint from a parallel universe and you’ll be about right.

Unfortunately, Mrs A mentioned my recollection of this ‘unique piece’ to The Mum when she met her for lunch yesterday.

Even more unfortunately The Mum got quite excited about this (apparently there is a big long list of Things I Don’t Remember from my childhood) and has confused ‘recollection’ with ‘wish to possess’.

I think from now on I’ll just have strong childhood memories of her nice car that she bought a couple of years ago.

NDC