Virtual Reality

 Lockdown has had strange effects, there can be no doubt.

In the relative affluence of the house of Sears, I'm pleased to be able to say that the idea of spending a few hundred quid on something special every now and then doesn't seem like a catastrophic dent on capital, really.  On the other hand, a few thousand quid for some sort of flying machine does seem like quite a lot. And have you seen the price of gyrocopters recently!  Gyrocopters used to be the last bastion of "I built it myself out of random bits of metal and pop rivets (and it looks like it!)" aviation,

single seat gyrocopter - may swap for kayak or similar

 but they have gone super-fancy in the last few years, and prices have gone fancy too - £50k for this 15 year-old Calidus two-seater, for example. 

two seat gyrocopter - may part ex. Lamborghini

Which is definitely not going to happen in the house of Sears.  

And by this inescapable logic, it came to pass that I shelled out four hundred of the aformentioned UK dollars on an Oculus Quest 2 Virtual Reality headset, as a kind of not-so-much mid-life as nearly-end-of-life substitute for proper aeronautical toys.

Which is really quite good.  It's completely stand-alone, unconnected to anything except by wifi, and the experience it provides can be quite enveloping - "immersive" is the VR buzzword, and rightly so.  At its best, the optical performance is exciting; viewed soberly, it is, undeniably, blurry round the edges.  Nevertheless, it is perfectly possible to play a convincing game of table tennis against your Quest-equipped next-door neighbour, in real time, via the internet.  Which, actually, is a kind of "wow"-moment for me.  Believable virtual table tennis in real time?  For £400? ( or even £300, if you can tolerate only 64GB of memory - nah, 256GB will be better in the long run, trust me) Yes, indeed.

Anyway, for me the whole point of VR is simulation, so I got the nearest thing in the Oculus store to a flight simulator, which is called Ultrawings.

Ultrawings is a flying game, where you take control of different aircraft and take on "tasks" to generate income with which to progress - you can buy a different plane, or an office in a new location with the proceeds of your efforts.  Each task has Bronze, Silver and Gold achievement levels, according to your best performance.  You can crash, or fail, without penalty.  You start with an ultralight:

ultralight - easy

which is very slow and easy to fly (but still has flaps!).  The next plane is (somewhat strangely) a rocket-powered glider.  

rocket powered glider - somewhat strange

It has similar performance to a glider (very low sink rate at 50kt, but slippery in a dive), but it has a rocket motor, which provides an arbitrary period of considerable thrust (above the centre of drag!).  You usually get a few goes on the rocket in each flight.  The flaps allow near-vertical approaches at 55kt.

Obviously you get a cockpit-based view, and the cockpits are nicely sharp and detailed, even if the scenery is - well - basic.  But it's always a lovely bright day in Ultrawings, with some puffy cumulus in a blue sky, which is nice.  Alas, in Ultrawings, the air never moves.  No wind, and no lift (or sink).  Shame. 

The game has "arcade" and "simulator" modes - naturally I only play in "simulator" mode, because I really wanted a proper flight simulator, and I'm a bit embarrassed to be just playing a video game, if the truth be told.  And it's fairly realistic in some ways, but as usual, the rudder is a bit wrong.  I only discovered recently that you can change the direction of flight using rudder alone, while the wings stay level.  Gah!  The only saving grace is that flying it this way does induce unpleasant motion sickness, whereas flying it properly doesn't.  

The third plane (an absolute bargain at $20k (virtual dollars)) is a sporty aerobatic jobby that flies quite well upside down, and can fly knife-edge, but oddly still doesn't have much of a climb rate.  It crashes with a disarming ease, not least because it's incredibly difficult to grab the throttle lever in flight, which is rather necessary for a successful landing.  You have to look down to see if your little virtual glove has actually closed around the throttle lever (which, bizarrely, is still no indication that you will be able to move the damned thing).  Obviously if you do this for too long,  you are pretty much doomed.  At the moment I'm experimenting with cutting the magneto to land instead, as if I were flying a Sopwith Camel.  Not having all that much success though.

another fatal accident about to happen

The rudder suffers quite a lot from being controlled by a switch - a little thumb-stick on the left hand controller - so you can't hold part rudder continuously.  You have to give it little kicks at a suitable rate, which is very unnatural.   And it's easy to accidentally select full rudder while you're trying to grab the throttle, and thus not looking where you're going, which is (of course) usually fatal.  

The last plane (I haven't got there yet) is the so-called Gee-racer, which is really quite silly.

a really silly aeroplane

It's heavily based on the 1932 Granville Gee Bee Model R Super Sportster:

a real, silly aeroplane

which was not only real, but a serious racer in its time, and won races, not least by having the biggest available engine (22 litres and about 800hp) in an airframe about the size of a car. It also briefly held the world land plane speed record, although Supermarine et al were going quite a bit faster with seaplanes.  According to Wikipedia, it wasn't that bad to fly, although there were, inevitably, a few accidents, not least because of its unusually high stall speed of about 100mph.  After a couple of rebuilds and various  changes, including the addition of bigger (302 US gallon!) fuel tanks, and fancy flaps which brought the landing speed down to a more manageable 65mph, the company went bust and sold the thing to a chap who fitted an auxiliary fuel tank in the tail.  The company's (ex-)chief engineer warned him never to fill it, or the plane would be so tail-heavy that it wouldn't fly, but our man thought it would be OK.  He crashed on take off and died.  

So, interesting to fly then. I'm hoping for savage torque-steer effects, at least.  Might have to settle for the obvious snag of zero visibility when landing, and a few little quirks the games people have put in, like the "you can't see the instruments when facing the sun" feature you get with the sport plane.  There are quite a few deliberate quirks in the game, and overall I think they do add something to the appeal of finding out how to succeed, even if they can be - er,  extremely frustrating!

Meanwhile, I bash on with the tasks.  I have to say, this game is not a training aid.  It positively encourages some flying habits I've previously been very much encouraged to avoid, like flying extremely close to, and under, and through things, and shooting at balloons which are hidden amongst houses, and squeaking it in against the clock to land like a 1920s airshow ace, rather than flying a sedate and well planned circuit.  In other words, it's flying just as you would want it to be.

The VR experience in general has some unexpected quirks. Ultrawings cleverly figures out where you are in your real-life room - sort of - so sometimes you can restart the game and find yourself under the table, or behind the chair, or just outside the office wall.  Once I managed to fly the aeroplane from just outside the cockpit for a while, although not being able to reach most of the controls is, er, somewhat limiting.  But everything is still rendered properly, wherever you find yourself.  Just don't try to lean on that all-too-convincing table tennis table!

Obviously, I'm now sold on the whole VR flying thing on the strength of Ultrawings alone, but I'm already looking ahead.  The next step would be to improve the VR performance (and increase the number of simulators and games you can choose from enormously) by running the software on a fast PC with a decent graphics card, and connecting it to the VR headset using a superfast wifi network.  Unfortunately, all those bits would need to be bought, and the cost would be not inconsiderable - definitely a few grand, I'm afraid.  But still not in the price bracket of a real aeroplane, even a microlight, let alone a fancy gyroplane.  And don't forget, the running costs would be extremely low!

We shall see.

Let there be light

Well, I haven't managed to increase my shaving frequency much, despite the ongoing loveliness of the waterfall tap.  But I have kind of completed a project that's been lurking ever since we had the extension built - which was getting on for two years ago.  Here's the blog post celebrating that event, which actually mentions the project in question: "the multi-coloured LED recessed uplighting around the inside of the lantern".

The idea of making this thing out of edge-lit perspex rather died following the experience of making the wall lights, because the effect we'd originally imagined getting from the perspex doesn't really happen in practice; and with that, my enthusiasm to experiment with different ideas declined to a level below that associated with some scrambled eggs on toast, or a nice cup of tea.  Obviously, that meant it never rose to the top of the priority pile for very long at all.  I did go so far as to order some bits - a nice radio controlled LED controller and 5m of LED light strip, and a sheet of 6mm MDF, but then when I thought about it a bit harder I concluded that one sheet wouldn't actually be enough, so that was a dampener.  Then I discovered aluminium alloy angle section (up to 5m x 101mm x 101mm x 3mm) which seemed like a better idea anyway, but then again, it's pretty expensive, especially when you include the cost of  shipping; so I went back to the scrambled eggs for a while.  

Then I bought a nice super-fine 80 tooth blade for my table saw (they usually come with a rather rugged 40 tooth blade for quick cutting).  Obviously this made it necessary to saw something up, by way of a test, so I decided to have a go with the MDF, and make a prototype to test out the light idea.  Maybe just make one end, since I didn't have enough MDF for the whole thing.

However... When I though about it even harder, I found that I could get all the pieces out of one sheet if I moderated the size just a smidgen, so I set up the saw, donned my dust mask and cut it up. And this went so well, with lovely straight cuts and such nice edges that I was inspired to cut all the bevels (on the rough old chop saw with a coarse blade), just to see what happened.  And this went so well that I was inspired to stick it all together with glue (and some bits of metal to reinforce the corners).  The bench isn't really big enough to accommodate the thing, but fortunately some of the bed slats from the bed I built for the spare room at the old house were on hand to extend it (surprisingly straight, too), so no problem really.  

surprisingly straight

By this time I was firing on quite a few cylinders, so putting a few coats of primer and paint on it just followed on fairly naturally.  Then a big fillet of builder's caulk all the way round in the inside corner, for the LED strip to sit on, and it's almost done.  Shock and dismay when, after a whole night in the garage, the caulk still had the consistency of soft ice-cream, but a day in the nice warm house facing the sun sorted it out, and it went off as if nothing had happened. 

The electrician had provided a handy space for the 12V power supply behind a light switch in in the dining room wall, but he'd only installed a bit of three-core mains wire from there up to the ceiling lantern (where it has been sticking out of the plaster for 18 months like a sad, partially exposed archaeological find).  Since the LED strip needs five wires to connect it to the controller, I couldn't hide the controller down with the power supply - it would have to be hidden somewhere up in the lantern.  No problem, because I know that all the way round the lantern there are triple joists behind the plasterboard.  So I simply drilled a big hole using a 62mm hole saw I happen to have already - except that the saw isn't as deep as a joist is thick, so I had to stop and violently chisel the waste away a few times to get deep enough.  And, rather unexpectedly, I hit a nail at one point, so I had to grind that out of the way.  Overall, it wasn't anything like as simple as I had anticipated, and there was a lot of bashing and graunching to go with the expected squeaking, whining and squealing; but no matter - I got there in the end.  And it can be quite a rewarding experience to overcome adversity by the use of noisy power tools; especially up a ladder.

Although the hole now accommodates the controller quite happily, it's still just a hole in the wall, which isn't really a good look.  So I fabricated a circular cover out of a bit of sheet aluminium with some perspex glued on the back (actually one of the waste pieces from cutting 62mm holes in perspex for the wall lights).  The original idea was to hold this in place using a large flat washer and a screw, out of sight behind the MDF - but I realised that I wouldn't be able to assemble it, because I couldn't hide all the bits away without the MDF covering the screw.  So I had to add a spring between the screw head and the washer - now the screw can be done up with the cover off, and the cover itself sneaked into place after everything else has been fitted. Pleasingly, this actually works!

And so it came to pass - light comes out in all directions, in a variety of colours and intensities.  The radio controller (rather than the more common infra-red sort) doesn't mind where you are or what you're pointing at, which is good. There's a lighting effect that we didn't anticipate, too, which occurs in the corners of the lantern - the upward washes of light from each vertical face meet to give a sort of art deco wedge-shaped column of brightness, which is rather cool IMHO.  Here it is in a groovy lilac mood:

groovy lilac

and here in funky blue (complete with wall lights):

funky blue

Overall, I'm very pleased with it. And so, I am delighted to say, is the lovely Jackie. 

And (one must remember) it's only a prototype. 

Taps and beards

 If I were alone in the world (by which I mean, somehow - heaven forbid! - deprived of the company of the lovely Jackie), I would certainly grow a beard.  For me, the relaxed living style which accompanies getting up in the morning and not even thinking about shaving is worth much more than "keeping up appearances" - by which I mean, worrying about what other people think of one's appearance.  But, the lovely Jackie has a dog in this particular race too, because her comfort is affected when she snuggles up against my cheek, and she declares a full beard to be too prickly.

So I am caught in a slight dilemma - I'd prefer not to think about shaving (except possibly on special occasions) and Jackie would prefer my cheeks to be beautifully smooth.

Actually I think if I did grow a proper beard, it would eventually be perfectly snuggly, in a fur coat sort of way.  Whereas, my current "occasional" shaving habit results, on average, in a cheek texture similar to part-worn 40-grit sandpaper.  Or at least a small, stiff brush.  Possibly the worst possible compromise, on the snuggling front. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, regular readers will remember my disdain for the Roca sanitary ware that came with our house from a previous post.  But there's another thing that has always been a slight niggle about the process of lavation chez Sears: the taps provided (Ideal Standard - which are neither ideal nor standard of course, that's just the name of the shop, love) are essentially just sink fillers.  They stick out over the sink and deliver their watery load vertically downwards, from a point about half an inch back from the front end.

just a sink filler

This works fine for the purpose of filling the sink, but that's about all.  If you should want to get your face under the flowing water to rinse off your shaving gloop, it's not really possible.  You can put your hands underneath and collect some water, but you have to manoeuvre your cupped hands round the tap before you can use it.  The tap sticks out into the sink enough to get in the way when you are washing, but still delivers water right at the back of the bowl, which makes it difficult to swill running water around when you're cleaning it.    None of this is actually, really a serious problem, I must admit.  Many people would be, quite rightly, just very grateful for the copious hot water and general functional adequacy of the whole kaboodle.  But I know better.

Our friends Mike and Belinda redid their bathroom a while ago with a rather unusual but exceptionally pleasing Moroccan vibe to the whole thing.  And in the hand basin they fitted a waterfall tap.

This marvellous device solves all the problems mentioned above by projecting water out in front of itself into the middle of the basin from an open-topped spout.  It doesn't sound like much of a change, but really makes a difference!  The first time I used their one, I was genuinely delighted by the experience. 

So, with nothing much going on these days, I decided to splash out, (ha!) follow their lead, and fit one in our family bathroom. I even went to the trouble of finding out the exact model they had, to avoid the disappointment of accidentally choosing something inferior.

Then the complications began.  Even though Mike and Belinda's tap has a a remote waste system just like ours (you can see the little chrome knob behind the tap in the picture above), I was completely unable to source that tap (or, indeed ANY waterfall tap) with such a feature on the internet.  It seems that today's trendy solution is the so-called "click-clack" waste, which has a mechanism like a retractable ballpoint pen in the pipe, so you just push the chrome lid to make it go up and down.  Ah, but there's a problem.  The mechanism, together with its supports, partly fill the pipe, and the remaining little spaces get clogged with hairs and the usual drain gunge.  On most of these click-clacks, you can unscrew the top, but then you have to poke around in the drain to get the gunk out - not very nice.  I actually like the system we have at the moment better; you can lift the plug right out and clean it up, and the drain itself is almost clear of obstructions.

Fortunately, somebody at tap-mongers Vellamo has though of a solution, and developed a click-clack waste which can be bodily removed from the pipe.  They also make a fairly similar looking waterfall tap, which comes with a spectacular ten year guarantee.  These two features convinced me to buy their offering - even though their tap comes bundled with a "free" click-clack waste system which isn't the one you want! You have to buy that separately, and then you end up with a redundant waste thingy, even though you never even wanted to change the waste in the first place.  Grrr!

And so to plumbing.  All modern taps come complete with flexible "tails", so it should be pretty trivial to swap them over, right?  Not quite - the old tap has tails with a female 10mm connector at the tap end, and a 15mm compression fitting at the other end.  The new ones have a male 10mm at the tap end, and a female end-face thing with a flat washer at the other end.  Sigh.  

tap with tails

Incidentally, there seems to be no proper way to tighten the tails into the tap - there's no room in there for any kind of tool, as far as I can see.  Hmmm... Fortunately they don't need to be very tight for the little O-ring seal to work.

no room in the tap

Also fortunately, Screwfix are still open to supply a solution to the tails compatibility issue, in the shape of pair of little isolating valves which have a compression fitting to connect to the house, and will accept the flat washer fitting thingy at the other end, even though they weren't really designed for it.  So no real problems there.

But to change the waste, you need to remove the pedestal from underneath the basin.  This necessitates  jacking the basin up, so you need to loosen the connectors on the waste pipe first.  The connectors are meant to be hand-tightened, but dear old Roca, in their very limited wisdom, decided to make the inside of the pedestal so narrow that you simply can't get your fingers in there.  So I had to make this special tool out of a bit of scrap aluminium:

another special tool (yawn)

...which did the job very nicely, thank you.

And so, eventually, it all got done, including white sealant round the edges and everything, and I'm very happy with the result.

I know it doesn't look much, but it is so much more joyous to use than the old one that I find myself washing my face much more often than I used to.  

I'm even thinking I might be able to increase my frequency of shaving to something more than once a month...

Raspberries

In the midst of all this lockdown gloom, I'm afraid I've become a pretty poor retirement role model - at least if you were hoping for the fulfillment of lifelong dreams.  Other people have been doing much better at that.  Of course it would help if one actually had a dream - alas, my dreams are mostly the stuff of vague anxiety or frustration, occasionally with an unexpected twist.  Last night's was about being unable to find the children's bicycle section in a department store designed like a malicious, multi-story IKEA, which included one-way tunnels full of overlapping doors so that you can't go back, which climb between floors whilst narrowing, ominously.  Hmmm... Perhaps I should see someone about that.

On the other hand, if your dream were to be, say, designing and building from scratch,  singlehanded, a semi-monocoque car that looks quite like a Ferrari Dino and does 200mph, I would recommend starting at the Jarvie Arete project .  Totally mind-bogglingly bonkers stuff.  There are quite a few episodes - I think about 63 so far - and there's still quite a lot left to do IMHO.  But if you like seeing other people doing things, it's very watchable.  And he certainly achieves a lot.

Back on planet earth, I've pretty much been reduced to the occasional crossword, drinking too much and watching the telly in the daytime.  I do have one tiny little project I can report on though - moving the raspberries; or, at least, preparing the raspberries' new home.

There is, in the mind of the lovely Jackie, a half-formed plan to build a garden shed, or summerhouse, or garden room, or studio, or something whose real purpose in life hasn't really been fully defined, in the area of garden once occupied by a vegetable garden, and which is now occupied by an assortment of rubbish, including bits of left-over garage roof (see Garage Roof Post Script) from our last house, and some pallets.   And the raspberries, which until recently lived in a narrow bed and were supported at height by a bodged-up pair of rotting wooden gibbets with a piece of hang-glider tube between them, together with a load of wires and some bamboo canes.  Altogether a bit rubbish, really.

A bit rubbish, really

So, to move the raspberries, and I made a new somewhat-raised bed for them out of bits of the old wooden retaining wall (removed for terrace-building, see Patio Exercises), and a new frame out of welded rebar.

welded rebar (inverted)

Here's what it looks like in situ:

convenient raspberry-picking access!

I know you're all dying to know what my rebar welding looks like, so here you go:

Good enough for garden work

Not the most beautiful ever, but adequate for the job in hand, I hope you'll agree.  

The amazing thing about unpainted welded rebar is how long it lasts in the garden.  It just rusts gently, and takes on a natural-looking garden-brown rust tinge, and sits there, apparently forever.  I made some tall obelisks for roses to grow on in our old house using the same technology.

Not that it's cheap, mind you.  That raspberry frame cost the better part of £100 in materials!  Obviously, it's been worth it, in the light of the impending thingy project.  No stone shall be left unturned, in the quest for whatever it turns out to be, eventually.

Speaking of the cost of things, I came across a picture of something we found in a garden centre during the Italian trip.  We stopped to buy some presents for the Italians we were visiting, and ventured outside to see if they had any interesting pots there.  Well - they did have some impressively large ones.  Like this:

impressively large ones...

...with spectacular features

But the really spectacular feature was the price, seen here in close up:

Yup, that's €731.00 each, or a bargain €1,462.00 for the pair!

For grandiose earthenware enthusiasts on a more modest budget, they did offer the same thing without the decorative garland of grapes, for a mere €561.00 each.  If only we could have fitted a couple into the van and driven them all the way home...

Flower pots aren't the only thing that comes in oversized doses in Italy.  Here's another one:

not melting

And finally, one which would fit into the van, and did come home with us:

Flagon of wine, anyone?

That's a 5 litre bottle of Montepulciano.  I think the price was about €13.  We'd already stocked up of wine to bring home, but it seemed churlish to ignore this fine offer.

 Isn't Italy great?

Italy

 Today's foray into blogland begins in a car park in Padua, Italy!

We have been touring the country in the camper van, and revelling in the general lack of tourists, the excellent food, the cheap wine, the hospitality of Jackie's relatives (some very properly socially distanced, others, surprisingly, not at all), and the congenial average temperature - about 23°C in the daytime, and not very cold at night.  Obviously, this means quite a lot of driving.

Italy seems to have come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of road maintenance.  I think they must use a bit more concrete in the mix than is common in the UK.  Many of the roads seem to have a surface which is harder than standard asphalt, and some even have quite a concrete-like colour.  Whatever the secret formula is, it seems to give their roads an extremely long life.  They use it on local roads and autostrata alike, and these roads simply don't need any repair; even when they have cracked, sunk, collapsed into ragged ruts, or dissolved into a patchwork of potholes whose severity jars the teeth of car drivers, and reduces camper vans to a crashing, rattling, cupboard-flying-open-and-depositing-the-contents-of-the-bin-all-over-the-floor ordeal, they still don't need any repair. Amazing!

Alas, since Italy isn't especially renowned for architecture, art, literature, opera, design, fashion, Roman history, or even football, I have had to return to my go-to topic for foreign blog posts, which of course is sculpture - especially in public spaces.  

The Montagnolo Park in Bologna has a few examples of the genre.  At the entrance gate, atop a massive plinth, is this rather unsettling tribute to that most ignoble of sentiments, revenge.  The dead geezer apparently borrowed the other chap's windsurfer without asking, and completely ruined the sail; whereupon the said chap clocked the geezer a good'un and knocked him out cold.  At least, that's how I read it.

That'll teach you to ruin my windsurfer!

Inside the park there's a round pond featuring a few more pieces of the chiseller's art, displaying an odd mixture of themes.  Underwater hairdressing seems to be one of them; at least I detect a strong undercurrent (ha!).  There are also battling animals of various sorts, and mermaids, which are obviously a good excuse for the most commonplace and historically popular thematic undercurrent in sculpture.  I refer, of course, to breasts.

So here are some mermaids in the subaquatic salon, engaged in the final throes of an underwater half-head foil tint in granite greys, caught in the moment just before applying the aerosol fixer spray.  Of course, there are breasts aplenty, and quite proudly so. The customer seems quite delighted, as I'm sure are the breast-fancying public. Excellent work by our master chipper.

Close your eyes while I give you a spritz with the glue darling!

In case you're wondering what's going on behind the mermaid's tail, here's a view from the other side.  It's a lion and a snake, earnestly engaged in a fight over a dead fawn (or some such), without offering the slightest clue why.  Surely we shouldn't be celebrating this sort of apparently wanton violence?  Or is it just to show us the horrors of nature, grey in tooth and claw?  I don't know.  At least there aren't any inappropriate breasts on show.

My dead thing!

Moving on, we come to the second of our underwater hairdressing scenes, this time in the hair washing category.  Another prize-winning collection of pert breasts is on display, but this time the customer has an extremely steely gaze, which either says "I asked for black coffee and all I got is this ridiculous sea shell" or "My eyes are up here mate, what do you think you're looking at?"

Either way, its a little bit unsettling.

What do you think you're looking at?

Finally, there's another animal battle scene.  This one seems suggest a title like "When you think you've won, and then someone unexpectedly sticks a sharp object up your bum"

WTF??

Elsewhere in Bologna, the message seems a bit mixed.  This chap seems to be sitting in judgement - 

I paid for a haircut, what do you call this?

 - but maybe he's upset by the pre-pubescent asp-ects (geddit?) of this latecomer to the Bologna shopping centre breast-fest:

Hmmm...  What do you think? Is it art, or is it just a bit wrong really?

In other news; some Italian towns have a surprisingly large number of bicycles.  The picture below was taken in Padua, which is a university town, and therefore a bit of a special case, since all students everywhere are obliged to have one or more bicycles; but it does give a clue as to how extreme the situation has got there.  

quite a lot of bicycles

It's quite an old university actually, having been established some time before 1222, and so it's naturally a good place to find old bicycles, too.  As part of my never-throw-anything-away mentality, I have a special affection for those bicycles which go on forever, and thus a particular delight in still-in-use bicycles with rod operated brakes. I'm sure you do too.  Anyway, I was jolly pleased to find this one...

rod brakes

...which seems to still be using the original chain, too, judging by the state of it.

look at the the state of it!

Maybe chain covers only work if the back end hasn't fallen off.  

Anyway, imagine my delight when I found this:

This marvel of biciclettaria was made by A. Cottognoli, who not only wrote his name on the frame and the saddle, but also hand-painted it on the chain cover.  But the interesting thing is that this bike marks the very point of the transition (at least for for Signore Cottognoli) between rod brakes, and those new-fangled Bowden cables.  Behold:

See what I mean?  All the bent rods, springs and trunnions (look it up!) of a rod brake setup, and then some more of the same technology to connect up those cables.

Incidentally, the rear brake cable goes neatly into the second top tube without drilling any holes in the headstock or the seat tube.  The second top tube is welded (or brazed) in place without any lugs, even though lugs are used on the other tubes.  He can't have added that second top tube just to hide the cable, can he?  

I refuse to pollute my frame

with your ugly cable, Signore Bowden!

Hmmm....  Classy job threading it through there, though.  Respect.  

If only the chap who wired up the front light setup on hadn't let standards drop.

Progress on all fronts

 

Things are looking up! 

We have relocated the bird feeder to the middle of the lawn, the better to protect the little critters from predatory cats, and also to thwart the embarrassed squirrel, if he (or she) should ever overcome the ignominy of falling off last time, and return to try to steal our nuts again.  The lovely Jackie cut and folded back a square of turf and dug a little hole for position, and I brought in the pro tools - Leo's post hole device and his big pointy steel stick.  The post hole device is like a pair of steel hands, hinged at the wrists, that you throw vigorously down the hole.  Then you lever them together with the long handles provided and lift them out, complete with a handful of soil clutched between them.  If the ground is hard, you have to break it up a bit first, by throwing the big pointy steel stick down there a few times, point first.  In this way you can dig a nice clean cylindrical hole, about eight inches across, up to (or possibly down to) two or three feet deep. Then you stand your bit of aluminium tube in (with the bird feeder post installed, and 2-axis spirit level (specially for posts) attached, and put all the soil back in again, this time tamping it down all round as you go, with vigorous blows from the blunt end of the big pointy steel stick.   Keeping an eye on the spirit levels and adjusting for verticality all the while, of course.

Post, with various tools (and aluminium tube offcut)

So far so good, but I still hadn't decided how to make the thing usable by people of modest height when refilling the bird feeders.  Of course I went through various ideas involving hinges and sleeves, and we even discussed lifting the whole thing bodily out of the ground, without finding any appealing solutions.  Somewhere along the way I found myself explaining how a pip pin works* to the lovely (and ever-tolerant) Jackie and remembered that windsurfers used to use a pair of pins mounted on a U-shaped spring for exactly this sort of telescoping tubes requirement.  I used to have windsurfers many years ago, and even though I did once have to saw one of them up to take it to the dump,  I kept a few of the more more portable bits - like the heavy duty mast foot connector.  And so I had just the thing.

So now you just lift the pole, press the little blobs on either side together, and slide it all down into the ground, leaving the feeders at a comfortable height for maintenance.  When you're done, you lift it up, and a satisfying click tells you that your work is done.

Although installing this gizmo part way up the tube did necessitate making a special tool, it was only a bit of aluminium tube with some notches filed into the end, which wasn't really much of a stretch, technically. So I made a little plug for when you want to mow the lawn.  You can remove the bird feeder pole to a safe place, and plug up the hole to stop any bits of stuff falling in while you mow over the top.

Here it is being a plug...

plug

...and here it is showing off its tiny little retractable handle.

tiny little retractable handle

 Awww!  

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, parcels have begun to arrive.  Two 4-channel USB relay boards (Chinese ones this time - £5 each brand new) the other day and today, the three-port motorised gate valve!  Which is also from China...

Here it is, looking pretty funky on the sofa:

pretty funky

It even comes with a User Manual, written in English - sort of.  But it's not all completely plain sailing.  On the top of the casing, it mentions AC220V 50/60Hz (which is promising) and shows the connections as two live - "BR" and "BK" and one neutral - "SR".

That might me OK if the wires were Brown, Black and, er, Sun Ripened? Spring Roll? Snow Reopard?   But no.  This is the actual cable they used for two live and one neutral wires:

two live, one neutral

 

Which is not quite the way we do it in the UK, as I'm sure you are aware.  But I'm sure the User Manual will make it all clear, no?

The User Manual is eight pages long, but the pages are only 100mm x 70mm.  Still, they manage to cram a lot in there, by simply writing in very, very, very small letters. The largest characters on the page shown below are less than 2mm high, and the smallest ones are so small as to actually be completely invisible!  Here is page 3,, showing the the ever-useful "Electric Principle Diagram", with a biro for scale:

gigantic biro

OK, here's the important part made a lot bigger:

Electric Principle Diagram

Ahah! So there are two wiring diagrams - but no clue which one is relevant.  No worries, I know this is supposed to be a CR3-01 layout - so it must be the bottom one.  "Three wires two controls", don't you know. Now the wires are usefully labelled ON, OFF ,and N.  But the colours have changed to BL, BR and SR.

At this point one could just infer that SR means "yellow with a green stripe" in some world, and bash on, but since the valve is liable to destroy itself if one wires it up wrongly, my preference is - take it apart and see what's happening inside. Fortunately the case is held on with actual screws.  It turns out that Yellow and Green is indeed neutral(!); applying power to the Blue wire moves the valve to straight though (which they call ON, or perhaps OPEN VALVE), and powering Brown moves it to divert to the side port (or OFF, or CLOSE VALVE).

So that's everything cleared up then.

Except for this feature:

a worra, or Chinese arrow

I am not a real plumber, so I accept that I may be barking up the wrong pipe here, but I would have thought that arrow cast into the housing on the right shows the way the water goes in.  Seems a reasonable guess, anyway.  Actually no - that's one of the ports which gets blocked off.  The available states are:

  (1) The arrow port is connected to the straight-through port, and the side port is blocked

  (2) The arrow port is blocked, and the other two are connected

The actuator mounts on the valve body like this:

I hope you can see how this works...

I hope you can see how this works - when it's all screwed together, the actuator body is keyed to the valve body, and the spindle is driven by the actuator.  Note that all these parts are 180 degree rotationally symmetrical, so it doesn't matter whether you mount the actuator with the lead at the front or the back, it still does the same thing - the actuator still rotates in the same direction through 90 degrees, and back.  However, the valve ball itself has a tee-shaped hole through it, which is not 180 degree symmetrical.  If you rotate that 180 degrees within the housing, the possible outcomes are: 

  (1) The arrow port connects to the side port, and the straight-through port is blocked

  (2) All three ports are connected together

   

Alas, this isn't a very useful arrangement.  It's just a two-port valve with an extra port that's always connected to the arrow port. So did the folks in the factory put the valve ball in upside down? Or do arrows really work the other way in China? They do write from right to left, after all.  Who knows? 

Well, maybe the User Manual can help:

AB to A what?

The note reads "Attention: When you assemble the actuator and valve body, the angle of actuator power down-lead and valve body should be 90 degrees".  Which is simply not possible with my valve components (as you can see in "worra - a Chinese arrow" above) even though it clearly was possible when they took that picture for the book.

And that diagram of the "3-way"!  It says: "The direction of flow: AB to A  AB to B" - but they have sadly neglected to label the ports.  The arrows certainly suggest that the side port is common, and the valve should select which of the others connect to it - but then again, those are Chinese arrows.  And that arrangement is not possible with the bits I've got.  You would need a ball valve with only a right angled hole in it.  And be able to mount the actuator the appropriate way round - one might almost say, "at the right angle".

All this is really neither here or there is the long run, since I can get it to do what I want merely by filing off the offensive arrow, and going left-to-right instead.  I just thought you might be interested.

Still the User Manual does contain some useful information, such as this "Installation Notice":

"Please keep the temperature of pipeline and the valve.

Do not put the actuator inside of protected cover"

OK.  I had been planning to put it in a nice box, but now maybe I'll just leave it out in the rain, and hope for the best.  Just as well it's got a CE mark, eh?

 * If you don't know what a pip pin is, here's a pretty animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLTZiNngk9c

Gardening, again

Apart from the watering system, and investing large sums of money in plants, soil improver and the services of Jason the gardener, I haven't really had much to do with the progress in the garden.  But progress there has been, and the once tiny plants are mostly bursting forth all over the place.  The most spectacular of all is the raspberry patch we inherited from the previous owners, which is just astonishing.  We are now in the middle of the fruit season, and it creates at least a pint or two of large, perfect, beautiful tasty raspberries every day - yesterday we processed a haul of 2.3 kg of them into coulis, and still ate a huge pile for supper.  We've had the neighbours in to pick them, and given them away to people, and they just keep coming.  

Meanwhile, with the help of the local sparrows and their specially adapted beaks, my bird feeder has propagated a splendid crop of grass where the excess seeds fall into the flower bed underneath it.  Alas, this wasn't in the planting plan, and the lovely Jackie disapproves.  So the bird feeder must now be moved to a socket in the middle of the lawn, and the modified fence upon which its intricate latch machinery is mounted must return to its previous state.  That didn't last long, did it? Still, it was only a prototype.  It does mean buying a suitable piece of square tube though.  Oh well.

Also only a prototype, the automated irrigation system has been such a resounding success that it has outgrown the capacity of the recycled water system's pump to supply everything at once, so I am now obliged to modify it into zones.  This means having a motorised ball valve out in the garden, to switch the water to either the bed with the new fruit bushes (but not the old raspberries) or the bed on the other side of the lawn.  While we're about it I've splashed out (ha!) on a motorised ball valve to control the on/off state instead of the washing machine valves.  Ball valves provides less restriction to the water flow, and they don't take any power when they're open, so you don't need pauses in the watering to let them cool down.  Alas, the new valves must perforce be purchased - but the washing machine valves can go back into stock.

Of course two valves instead of one means we need a multi-channel USB relay board, which means a new box under the counter top too.

So essentially, all the interesting bits of these two projects are about to be replaced.  As I said, they were only prototypes...

Meanwhile, at the other end of the garden, the raspberries still need frequent watering.  If only it would rain occasionally, the nearby water butt might be of some help, but it's always empty these days, so it seems a bit silly to use that in an automation project.  I may have to extend the plumbing of the rainwater recovery system through the back of the garage and use that...  So there's a use for the single channel USB relay board, right there.

Then there is the issue of the pots.  The terrace is positively littered with pots containing flowers, which also have to be watered.  So that's another possible automated system.  The problem there is that the layout is liable to change at any time, according to the aesthetics of the moment, as sensed by the lovely Jackie.  Which makes laying out the little hoses a bit more difficult than it is for a flower bed.  Maybe leave that one alone for a while.

littered with pots...

...but no hoses

Meanwhile, the garden seat you see in the picture above (and closer-up below) has become a project once again.

It used to be a bench, but the wooden bits rotted away so to avoid throwing it away completely, I replaced the wooden bits with shorter wooden bits made of left-over decking, and made it into a single seat.  The enormous weight of this chair has turned out to be quite an an asset when you want to tie something down.  Like the garden umbrella, for example.  Or possibly a dirigible of some kind.  Anyway, now, it seems, we need a bench again, to go on the newly-paved corner you can see behind it in the picture above.  No problem, I've got all the wooden slats of the old spare room bed (no longer required since it was built specially for the old house and is now too small) which will do quite nicely.  Although they will have to be painted - grrr.  Incidentally, if the new paved area looks a teensy bit off flat to you, well spotted - and I have new found respect for people who can do better than that with slabs on (left over from the terrace) sand.  I can't!

The poor old trampoline has been somewhat repurposed, too, since I gave up my front flip adventure.  I chopped up all the fencing we removed when the terrace was build and used it to make a sort of den for Layla, by enclosing the trampoline.  The tramp base moves around a fair bit when you jump on it, so the fence has to be quite flexibly mounted - basically it stands on the concrete pads, and there's only only one attachment per panel, and a strap to the next panel.  

I don't know how it will stand up when Leo gets going on there though.  Bits may well fall off.  Anyway, it's only a prototype.

I also made a hinged door using some stainless pipe clips for the pivot and a bit of old bike cable to hold it up.  For some reason I find the separation of axial and radial loads in this arrangement strangely satisfying. 

hinge

It's probably just me though.  

Anyway, it's only a prototype.