Setting up a new RAID 1 NAS at home and had a heart attack when on first power up, two brand new and not at all cheap spinning disks were reported faulty. 😶

Powered off, removed and replaced the drive bay, powered back on. Both drives now report healthy. 😌

To say I am relieved is an understatement!

I’ve run without a home NAS for most of a decade but have decided that now is the time to plunge back in. Especially as just today MacOS told me I need to update my OS to carry on sharing documents from iCloud. And I have absolutely no intention of doing that. So on the NAS they go.

Slowly working my way through The Jennifer Morgue by @cstross. My first foray into his writing as I rediscover my love of reading (lost during the pandemic).

Why didn’t I start with the first book of the series? Well I wanted to support the bookshop I was in with a sale, and they didn’t have it, so here we are. Will be looking to pick that one up next.

Today Cornwall Hospice set a new Guinness World Record for the largest cream tea party, with 2483 sitting down and partaking this afternoon at the county showground. Well done everybody!!

#CornwallHospice #WorldRecord #CreamTea #JamFirst

And finally I added a short piece of track to each of the first two (of three) carriage sidings, to ensure they were long enough for the carriages that will be stored there.

And that’s it for today. Tomorrow I’ll mount the two offset point motors and the three way point that they will drive.

The next 3D print design lifts this Dapol double home signal up to the right height so that the trains don’t hit it s they go up and down the incline

Been fiddling again this afternoon. First off, I needed a way to offset a point motors from the point, due to the proximity of baseboard framing. This will do the job nicely.

The point motor screws onto the frame. At the top end there’s a slot for a sliding piece, which is retained by a top piece that is glued out screwed in place.

The point motor engages at one end of the slider, and the point at the other. The whole arrangement screws to the baseboard.

#ModelRailway #pointmotor #3dprinting

Going back in time a bit now to post some pics from Kew Gardens. I lived in Ealing for about a decade and had Kew membership for most of that time. It’s a wonderful place. These photos are of an art installation that was there for several weeks in 2019.

#KewGardens

Just been to see the new (for 2026) fox at the Lost Gardens of Heligan and wow it’s a beauty.

Clearly not a dad. If he was, he’d have called it “shocking” #DadJokes

Decided to take some pictures to give a feel for the work I’ve been doing… mostly making cables, doing trial installations of those cables, and drilling large holes for the cables to be routed through, under the upper baseboards. I’ve some point control looms to make next, then I’m all ready to take the boards out to install uncoupler electronics and power feeds.

No pictures for this update but the model railway construction continues to move forwards.

I’ve spilt two of my storage lanes in half to hold four shorter trains instead of two longer ones. I cheated and just cut the circuit breaks with my dremel and wired in the four extra block detection circuits and updated JMRI to match.

The final three baseboards have been installed and I’m working on the wiring loom - power and DCC to the boards and the accessory controller. All the point motor feedback wiring is in. All the signal wiring is run (but not connected) and I’ve just finished installing the electronics that connects the SIGM20 signal controller to a Dapol double main signal (transistor switch, driven by the SIGM20, switches a relay, which is connected to the control wires that normally connect to a two way switch, x2). Just need to make up some point motor feeds, install decoupler electronics…

#ModelRailway #Construction #Progress

The Stranglers - Golden brown, because, well…
Madness - House of fun
The Dandy Warhols - Horse Pill
Ian Dury - Sex & drugs & rock & roll
Roxy Music - love is the drug
REM - I’ve been high
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Dosed
Blonde - The tide is high

Ok, that’ll do.

#ThePlaylistSuggestion

Now with added grass and… stuff. First try with the static grass applicator was not a resounding success. Clearly there’s a technique I’ll need to research and practice.

In the morning I’ll clean the track, wire it up temporarily to check continuity, that the points work properly and that my smaller engine can run across them in both directions. Then I’ll install the board on the layout and move on to the second board 🙌

The first board is lacking some stone walling that I ordered earlier today. I have some sheep to add, will also be putting some chickens on, some farm machinery when I find some, and hopefully a farmer and a couple of farm hands. Maybe a walker or two… And other small pieces of detail as I get them. Quite pleased with this effort.

The corner board is just about ready now for static grass. Fences fixed in place, trees balanced (for now), some other scenery decisions made and orders placed.

#ModelRailway

We’re inching closer to these two baseboards getting permanently installed in the next few days. Exciting times.

Put the last two backscenes on the wall, they’re not perfect but the dodgy parts won’t be visible.

#ModelRailway

All done, quite straightforward. Torx T10, T9 (bottom cover, iFixit say it’s a T10 but no), T5 and T6. Ten minutes tops. You might want to dust while you’re in there!

Today’s AI lol was witnessing an individual spending LLM tokens to answer a question about Kubernetes. Put the sane initial question into DuckDuckGo. the correct answer (a particular kubernetes command) was easy to spot on the first page of results.

It took three questions to the LLM to get a complete and correct answer. Why do people continue to do this?? THINK FOR YOURSELF!!

Right, I’ve had enough.

The settings battery in my M1 Mac Studio died earlier in the year and most of the time the only inconvenience is that it doesn’t holds the time while powered off, so after turning on its midnight on, err April 4th of some year, which is sorted out as soon as I log in.

However. Occasionally I’ve had the date stay out of sync (yesterday instead of today) while the time is accurate. This happens infrequently enough to be confusing, and it’s a bit of a dance to sort it out (because I’ve only had to do it 3-4 times, weeks apart, I struggle to remember exactly what the sequence is).

The replacement battery has been on my desk for a couple of months at least because Of Course Apple buried the backup battery deep in the middle of the computer instead of right underneath the cover you remove for servicing.

Such design choices. Gits.

Anyway it’s open heart surgery on the Mac Studio at the weekend. Wish me luck, I’ll need it!

#Apple #BadDesignChoices

Two more bags down and the gearbox is largely complete at step 117.

Well I say “largely complete” but there are still a number of gears that aren’t really connected to anything else, yet. So clearly more to go.

And we’re off! Two bags down tonight. I have to say I’m already impressed, this gearbox is probably the best they’ve designed so far. Rigid construction, solid movement that ensures everything changes as it should, and a great indicator dial!