Chat

[Michael]

I did, thank you!

[Randi]

Buoys and Markers - A History of the Original Waypoints

[Caro]

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear ...
Happy Burns Night!

[AvastMH]

Buoys and Markers - A History of the Original Waypoints

'You sneak into their skinny channel by lining up your bow to where an old try pot stood on a dock for years.' Aha!! The whalers again

---

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear ...
Happy Burns Night!

Had a lovely dinner of vegetarian haggis. No haggises (or is that haggisi?) were harmed in the making of my dinner. With baked spud, beans and mashed swede and thick gravy it was a fine Burns night dinner. Sadly no Mallaig smoked mackerel for starters, and no cranachan for pud. But even so it was worth piping in (achieved via you tube ).

'Go fetch me a pint o' wine,
An' fill it in a silver tassie' R.B.

Lang may your lums wreak! Happy Burns Night!

[studentforever]

Does your vegetarian haggis have 4 legs of equal length? The true scottish haggis has 2 shorter legs so it can only run round the mountain in one direction

[AvastMH]

Another victim of Covid - sniff...
Up Helly Aa 2021 Postponed

Up Helly Aa 2021, due to be held on Tuesday 26th January, has been postponed for a year. The Up Helly Aa Committee made the unanimous decision following a period of consultation with key partners of the festival.
The 2021 festival will now take place on Tuesday 25th January 2022.
There are short recordings of many previous years like 2019

[Randi]

Does your vegetarian haggis have 4 legs of equal length? The true scottish haggis has 2 shorter legs so it can only run round the mountain in one direction

[AvastMH]

Does your vegetarian haggis have 4 legs of equal length? The true scottish haggis has 2 shorter legs so it can only run round the mountain in one direction

Aha! I do know the secret to that story and it starts with the vegetarian haggis. It also tells of the close relationship between France and Scotland. When Mary, once Queen of France and then Queen of Scotland, returned from France she brought with her the 'Nantes' and 'Chantenay' carrots. At that time many people were injured by toppling haggises that fell off the mountainsides because the poor beasties had legs of equal length and they could not keep a decent purchase on the ground in the heather. Concerned for the well-being of her subjects she had a small enclosure set up to spread the seeds of the new carrots to create the odd-legged haggises that we know today...


A small flock of vegetarian haggis in a typical country setting (they are shy - that's why you can't see them)


A beautifully presented vegetarian haggis - all the parts are used...

[Randi]

Looks pretty good to me!

[studentforever]

"Aha! I do know the secret to that story and it starts with the vegetarian haggis. It also tells of the close relationship between France and Scotland. When Mary, once Queen of France and then Queen of Scotland, returned from France she brought with her the 'Nantes' and 'Chantenay' carrots. At that time many people were injured by toppling haggises that fell off the mountainsides because the poor beasties had legs of equal length and they could not keep a decent purchase on the ground in the heather. Concerned for the well-being of her subjects she had a small enclosure set up to spread the seeds of the new carrots to create the odd-legged haggises that we know today..."

I wonder how many drams were consumed during the telling of that tale???

[Randi]

Canadians create huge works of [snow] art... all done by foot!

[Michael]

[AvastMH]

"Aha! I do know the secret to that story and it starts with the vegetarian haggis. It also tells of the close relationship between France and Scotland. When Mary, once Queen of France and then Queen of Scotland, returned from France she brought with her the 'Nantes' and 'Chantenay' carrots. At that time many people were injured by toppling haggises that fell off the mountainsides because the poor beasties had legs of equal length and they could not keep a decent purchase on the ground in the heather. Concerned for the well-being of her subjects she had a small enclosure set up to spread the seeds of the new carrots to create the odd-legged haggises that we know today..."

I wonder how many drams were consumed during the telling of that tale???

None - I just made it up

[Morgan]

Randi wrote:

Canadians create huge works of [snow] art... all done by foot!

This is quite a piece of art. No room for errors, redo, or crazy dog running through.
Further down the webpage I found this one I thought was fun:

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/vi ... st_popular

It was under the title "Need a laugh today." Certainly, always.
Thanks, once again Randi, You have lead me down a great rabbit hole and I got a smile out of it.

[Randi]

That's a good one too!

(This project is full of rabbit holes! )

[AvastMH]

I enjoyed a bit of rabbit hole adventure too

[Hanibal94]

My laptop suddenly died last night from hard drive failure (which is as dangerous to computers as heart failure is to humans). It left me feeling very
I have another one, but it's just a small weak thing, so I won't be able to do any transcribing, or Shipopoly updates, until the new computer arrives on Tuesday (Amazon Prime has its benefits).

The good news is that nothing OW-related has been lost, as I keep careful backups of my transcribed data, the Shipopoly program, and Gallery material.
Also, the laptop was 4.5 years old already, so I was kinda expecting it to die sooner rather than later.
So all in all, it's not the end of the world. Just gotta wait a couple days, then I'll be back in business.

[Michael]

I'm very sorry to hear about your laptop dying! Backups are important. I do them periodically, but not every day.

Years ago, in early1988 to be exact, I was working on a set of programs for entering forecasts and doing various calculations with weather data. These were written on an IBM AT in a system called Framework. The programs were going to be used to produce weather forecasts for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. I had decided to do a backup of my work. You had to use those old 51/2 inch floppy disks. The backup was very slow, and I may have needed more than one floppy. Some of the other forecasters were going for lunch and they wanted me to come. I told them they would have to wait until the backup was finished, which did not make them too happy. They wanted me to do it after lunch, but I insisted on finishing it then. They waited, the backup finished, we went to lunch. When I got back, as soon as I signed on to the computer there was a complete hard drive failure. If I hadn't backed up my work, we would have been in a real mess, because there wouldn't have been enough time to re-do all the work before the Olympics started. We were renting these PCs, so our fearless leader had to rush downtown and trade the dead PC for a new one. I was able to get all the work from the floppies back onto the new PC and we carried on.

[AvastMH]

So sorry to hear that your computer went to the great hard-drive cloud in the great beyond Chris Getting a new one on Tuesday is amazing!

Michael - what a hero you were! I hope that your colleagues plumped up your chair cushions and got you cake and tea (or something stronger) and gave you a thank you. I remember those Olympics.

[Michael]

No, I don't remember anything special. I had a feeling that I needed to back things up, and I'm just glad I stuck it out. I suppose you remember Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team.