willedoo

You've been checking the records.

Me and cousin Clem about to look for logs:

When I used to grow a few vegetables, I found the Roma tomatoes were the go. They used to put out an incredible amount of tomatoes per bush. Tasted good and easy to handle as well.

About six months ago a small tomato seedling popped up in the yard, no doubt instigated by a bird dropping the seed. I dug it up and put it in a pot on the verandah and it's been producing small cherry tomatoes for a while now. I'd forgotten what naturally grown, bush ripened tomatoes tasted like. The taste is amazing. It reminds me of how tomatoes tasted when I was a kid. The supermarket tomatoes are fairly tasteless. They look like a tomato but taste like nothing.

The risk increases on a big scale dropping trees in steep, rough, rocky country. With country like where I live, a lot of thought has to go into figuring out an escape route. Often there's never a good option. On flat land you stand half a chance if a tree doesn't play nice but steepness, rocks and undergrowth will get you if a tree falls wrong. I think the restrictive tree clearing laws have helped a lot of us live longer.

That's what a bike mechanic told me many years ago. He said to always pull the Honda on to compression when leaving it for any time. The price difference with the firefighting pumps is big, but that's the pump quality as well as the Honda engine part of the cost. I bought a 5hp Honda with a single impeller Davey pump last year and it was around the thousand dollar mark. The 6hp Honda with the twin impeller Davey pump I have down in the creek has a replacement cost of around $1,300 these days, about twice what I paid for it originally.

I was told that the bullock teams coming down the old tollbar Toowoomba range crossing used to chain big logs behind the loaded wagons and drag them as a brake.

It's good to see robots making intelligent decisions.

I remember a bloke once telling me about an accident he came across on the beach at Fraser Island. A vehicle was bogged and a good samaritan with a snatch strap stopped to pull him out. They attached the strap to the bullbar of the bogged vehicle. The problem was the bolts holding the bullbar on were rusted and weak. When the rubber band force of the snatch strap was applied, it tore the bullbar off which went airborne hitting the girlfriend of the bloke who had stopped to help. It hit her in the head and she got a brain injury.

There's a lot of good synthetic products used these days for winching, although they are more expensive than the steel alternatives. These soft shackles pictured below have a 14 to 15 tonne minimum breaking strain and cost around $50. Saves the risk of a steel shackle becoming a flying missile. Synthetic winch rope in 10mm thickness, 25 metres long would cost around $200 with a load capacity of around 8 tonnes. Often a synthetic winch rope of a decent size will cost more than a cheap winch.

I was watching a YouTube video last night about some construction in Indonesia. One of the workers had a home made hacksaw with the frame made out of bent and shaped concrete reinforcing bar. You'd get a good grip but it would be a bit rough on the hands.

The career as a lumberjack hasn't really taken off yet, but today I did manage to winch a brush box log out to the track. It had to be cut down at the start of the year when the power line was repaired as at some stage in the future it would have toppled on to the line. The brush box around here get a rot or decayed portion in the base. I don't know what causes it, a fungal thing perhaps. The end result is a tree with big limbs up top and not much holding it up at ground level. They have a fairly big canopy as well which catches a lot of wind and adds to the instability. The winch is a poxy little thing, one of those 500 kg Gorilla winches, but it did the job. The log will live there until I set up some transportation method to haul it up the hill. I'll go ahead and build a rear log dolly to take care of the back end, then it's just a matter of deciding on the easiest way to handle the front of the logs. The rear dolly is worth building as I can design it for multi-role use. I've got some 16'' Landcruiser sunraysia wheels on an axle that will do the job.

That looks like a tough restoration.

My uncle, auntie and cousins had a party line fairly late in history. Definitely through the 1970's. I was still using the old bakelite dial phone until early this century, but gave it away as you can't do the press one or press two option with the automation. Dialing it doesn't work. My dad was still using the old bakelite PMG phone right up until he passed away in 2015. They're collector's items now.

An exoskeleton for a paraplegic as the technology is now would only be usable for short periods. The biggest problem I see is chafing from the attachment points. The weight has to be taken on whatever straps hold the person in. They'll figure out something better eventually.

In the future life is sure to get a bit easier for some disabled people due to technology evolving. This exoskeleton thing has a lot of potential. They will probably operate a lot smoother and more nimble as time goes by. Then there's the issue of affordability. This clip was previously posted in the Paris Olympics thread.

I didn't really think about it at the time but I think they all were. They probably have a bit of regulation at the school on that issue, like a staff member keeping an eye on them as they leave.

They're certainly cheap enough compared to a genuine Honda. I've heard they're very close copies with a lot of parts interchangeable.

I was asking from the point of view of an engine that was not for critical use such as firefighting and would only see occasional use.

I'm not sure how random this thought is, but for want of a better place to ask, does anybody know how good or bad those cheap Chinese imitation Honda stationary engines are. I think some people call them a Chonda.

I never realised how dangerous to pedestrians electric bikes and scooters are until today. I voted early which was at the local RSL and was walking back down the footpath to my car at the same time all the high school kids were heading home. More than half of the ones who passed me were on ebikes and scooters and they were really putting the speed on. The problem is you can't hear them coming up behind you until what would be too late to avoid a collision if the pedestrian suddenly changed course. The one saving grace is that kids have good reflexes and once a couple of them go flying past, you know to expect more and to make sure you keep walking in a straight line. It's hard to estimate their speed, but it would have been at least 15kph, some a fair bit more. To explain the environment, the footpath is not your normal footpath in town in a heavily built up area. The school is a couple of kilometres out of town and the RSL is at least 500 metres out of town from the nearest houses. There's only the RSL, school, council swimming pool and sporting clubs in that area. The bitumen footpath extends all the way out to the school for the kids to walk or ride home from school. You wouldn't see them speeding like that in the built up area of town for a couple of reasons. One is that they'd get caught doing it and the other is that it wouldn't be safe from their own point of view.

I'd feel a lot safer in one if it had better protection for the feet, like a solid fairing in that lower area.

Sounds like a Texan accent. I wonder if the rifle case is an add on extra or compulsory standard equipment.

I don't think anybody would seriously think of using a skid steer tracked vehicle inside on their polished floors. But then again, it's America we're talking about here.