Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[mansaxel]

Having 3 phase mains is nice if you have a lot of big industrial machines. For smaller stuff a VFD gives additional advantages like variable speed including higher speeds. soft starting, dynamic braking and active motor protection.

Robert.

Many VFDen are built to take three phases in and make three phases out as well, albeit in a different frequency...
OTOH, My clothes dryer and the air/air heat pump we never run both have integrated 1ph/3ph VFDen, though.

[Robert]

250W, but UK voltage.

Hi I have an OMRON 3G3MV AB003 240V in 240V out 0-400Hz 1.1kVA output VFD This is more than big enough for your motor. The motor would have to be connected in delta configuration. It is a compact VFD.

Robert.

[mnementh]

So... have you started collecting the parts to build a UniLoader to complete your "estate"...? Your survivors will be glad you did...

mnem
yes, you may touch it.

I was standing outside my garage with my friend and his wife a few years ago when she gazed in through the open door and said "Paddy, we need to die before you do!"

-Pat

mnem
"my preciousssssss..."

[mnementh]

The counter to that would be Anne, and Edward+Sophie, who seems to do a reasonable low-key job. Wish Anne would keep her cows in her own fields; I've had to play cowboy to get a herd off the runway.

Mind you, at least they could be chased away. Two miles away on Minchinhampton Common, the damn things are quite content to chew the cud lying in the road, or just hold up the traffic.

Before long, the shaggy moo-moos will be needed to pull the bus, so may as well just be patient.

mnem
pants are highly overrated.

[tggzzz]

The counter to that would be Anne, and Edward+Sophie, who seems to do a reasonable low-key job. Wish Anne would keep her cows in her own fields; I've had to play cowboy to get a herd off the runway.

Mind you, at least they could be chased away. Two miles away on Minchinhampton Common, the damn things are quite content to chew the cud lying in the road, or just hold up the traffic.

Before long, the shaggy moo-moos will be needed to pull the bus, so may as well just be patient.

[mnementh]

Maybe I should've said "...the shaggy moo-moos will be needed again to pull the bus"...

mnem
what goes around comes around, yo.

[tggzzz]

Well, that was a good pre-Christmas day: a good start followed by three miracles.

Flogged two auction/hamfest treasures, one for 100% profit, the other for 2500% (or was it 5000%?) profit.

More importantly I found a nearby shop that solved some Christmas/birthday problems. I'd been trogging around many places trying to find somewhere where I could feel the item, since that is a critical part of my choice. Not only did most places not have most of their stock available, the staff barely had a clue. The latter I expect, the former is intensely irritating.

I was expecting to have to take an 80 mile round trip to a specialist shop/warehouse, but decided to try a tiny shop maybe 4m wide and 10m deep.
It is in a maze of tiny one-way streets with appalling parking problems, but I hoped the forecast rain would keep people at home - and it did. Miracle one.

Not only did they have an excellent selection, they let me play with half a dozen them, and the staff really knew his stuff. Miracle two. Plus I'd taken one of mine in to get a guard for it, and he said "woah, that's nice" - pleasing since daughter had brought it back from Japan as a thank you for looking after her dog.

Consequently I actually enjoyed spending the money - miracle three.

It is the yellow shop on the left
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4549406 ... FQAw%3D%3D

The whole area is like that; it will be entertaining watching installation of on-street EV charging

[EC8010]

I once went to a shop where the assistant knew their stuff. It was almost thirty years ago, but the experience made an impression on me. It was a haberdashery shop and the young lady was a punk in full regalia with pink hair, mohican, and ring through nostril. My expectations fell. Appearances were deceiving. I described what I was after and she took me straight to it and showed the various different types on offer. I bought 3m. So what was it? If you've ever seen pictures of studio microphones, you'll see they're often supported in a cat's cradle of elastic as an anti-vibration mount to guard from noises from the floor or (most common) performers moving and hoofing stand. That was the elastic I wanted. It's used in underwear.

Kitchen stuff is often expensive, now that it's fashionable for people to try to emulate Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay. I can do the swearing bit when things go wrong, but not the glamour.

[MED6753]

It is the yellow shop on the left
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4549406 ... FQAw%3D%3D

The whole area is like that; it will be entertaining watching installation of on-street EV charging

"Kitchen Artillery" on Waterloo Street? Perhaps Napoleon should have shopped for his weapons there?

[tggzzz]

Kitchen stuff is often expensive, now that it's fashionable for people to try to emulate Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay. I can do the swearing bit when things go wrong, but not the glamour.

I found Nigella flirting with me to be off-putting. The food should be more pornographic than the chef!

The shouty side of Ramsay is also off-putting.

Come to think of it, I dislike Fanny Craddock because she combines both of those traits.

I much prefer Keith Floyd (his first restaurant was in the adjoining street), or Rick Stein. Food should be a relaxed pleasure that brings people together, not a competitive anger fest.

[Zenith]

Consequently I actually enjoyed spending the money - miracle three.

It is the yellow shop on the left
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4549406 ... FQAw%3D%3D

The whole area is like that; it will be entertaining watching installation of on-street EV charging

Clifton, one of the better heeled parts of Bristol. Lots of interesting independent shops and restaurants. Bath, Cirencester and to some extent, Cheltenham come to mind as being similar. They reek with wealth - old money.

The last time I was down there was four years ago, when I went down on a Sunday morning, about this time of year, to buy a CD player from Richer Sounds on Whiteladies Road. Parking was impossible and the one way system a nightmare. Eventually I spotted a slot and bagged it. I was parked the wrong way on a one way street. I nipped into Richer Sounds, bagged the item and got away with the parking violation. Having it shipped here would have been less hassle. I wasn't copped.

Before then I had friends who lived there, and going down there was more relaxed. There were a few butcher's shops (now a rarity). One was run by a South African and sold very good beef biltong in sticks - not ostrich, hartebeest or kudu etc, but there are limits. There was also an extremely good fishmonger - even more of a rarity.

Before then I went there to buy a kitchen knife as a gift. There was a kitchen shop which wasn't poncy and sold high priced professional kitchen gear. It was £32, 30 years back. A proper Sebatier knife. It cut like a razor and from what I understand, it continues to do so.

[Zenith]

Kitchen stuff is often expensive, now that it's fashionable for people to try to emulate Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay. I can do the swearing bit when things go wrong, but not the glamour.

I found Nigella flirting with me to be off-putting. The food should be more pornographic than the chef!

The shouty side of Ramsay is also off-putting.

Come to think of it, I dislike Fanny Craddock because she combines both of those traits.

I much prefer Keith Floyd (his first restaurant was in the adjoining street), or Rick Stein. Food should be a relaxed pleasure that brings people together, not a competitive anger fest.

Keith Floyd was fun. "Look at the food, not me".

Nigella, fondling the tangerines and then carefully caressing the banana. What more can be said?

I think it striking that in the UK cookery programs on TV are popular, but the local shops sell loads of frozen or packaged foods, including Carbanara sauce. How much effort does it take to fry bacon strips and mix them with eggs and cream and a dose of pepper, and then mix it with boiled spaghetti?

I bought a couple of jars of pasta sauce for lockdown and to satisfy curiosity. They were barely edible. Pasta with some garlic, a bit of butter and
grated cheese was a lot better.

[Zenith]

Kitchen stuff is often expensive, now that it's fashionable for people to try to emulate Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay. I can do the swearing bit when things go wrong, but not the glamour.

You could do it, especially if the money was right, but it would be going through the motions. You know, holding the apples with a fulsome grasp, evaluating them, letting fingers pass over the stalks and the bits at the bottom. I doubt anyone would be saying, "Forget this tomfoolery, I wants to get me hands on the big un's at the back of the stall". As for fondling the tangerines and caressing the banana - well, how much would it cost to get you to do that? It would take some living down.

[tggzzz]

Parking near Richer Sounds on Whiteladies Rd (i.e. East Clifton where the commerce is) is much easier than in Clifton Village (where all the slave traders and merchants lived safely away from those terrible docks).

I know, because my parents house was just off Blackboy Hill.

Whiteladies, Blackboy geddit?! And Ladies Mile on the downs was a euphemism

[EC8010]

I found Nigella flirting with me to be off-putting.

I envy you the experience; I don't suppose for one moment she'd waste her time on me.

I always enjoyed "Floyd on the Piss", especially the one where he got his come-uppance from the diminutive French lady about his boeff bourbignon.

My kitchen knives are 1986 vintage Sabatier; they've lasted me this long and will last me out.

As far as I can make out, people who buy poncy kitchen makeovers with ceiling spotlights (that give awful working light but allow sexy photographs) are more interested in showing off than the actual results. I've cooked from scratch since eighteen and have fluorescent strip lighting in the kitchen because it gives a good working light. If you cut your finger whilst slicing finger chillies, it hurts.

Bought-in pasta or curry sauces are salt and sugar. Oh, and E-numbers. The only cook-in sauces I buy are baked beans.

Could I ape Ms Lawson's gestures? Perhaps, but to carry it off requires more sex-appeal than Steptoe. Ms Lawson gets away with it because she's drop-dead gorgeous. Nothing else. Doesn't take after her dad. EDIT: I used to be on stage, so I could do it. (I served eight years at the chalkface as a lecturer, and soon learned that the performance counts more than the message.)

I fear that despite all those euphemisms, "Bristols" was entirely forgotten.

[tggzzz]

I once went to a shop where the assistant knew their stuff. It was almost thirty years ago, but the experience made an impression on me.

Shopping underwent a big change for the worse in the late 80s.

It used to be that each shop had a specialism, and they became masters of the subject. Benefits:

• if you wanted X you knew where to go. If they didn't have it, you either went to a different area, or worked out how to do without it. Quick and simple.
• they probably had several types of X, and similar X⁺ and X^-
• the staff had a chance to get to know about X, and could advise you without bullshit

Example in Cambridge, where I lived at the time. If you wanted anything DIY or tool related, you went to MacKays. Easy.

Then it changed so that each shop tried to encroach on the other shops territories, and they became jacks of all trades and masters of none. Example: supermarkets tried to become record shops and sell gardening supplies, and DIY tools. Drawbacks:

• shops have a crap small selection of the basic items, plus a few oddities
• each shop has the same crap selection plus a different few oddities
• you can't predict which shop to go to first, nor whether is its worth going to others. So you go to them all. Slow and timewasting.
• staff can't be knowledgeable about X and M. Thus there's no point training them and they are encouraged to bullshit.

TL;DR: some things were better in the past.

[EC8010]

Sadly, I have to agree with all of that.

[Zenith]

This is largely true. Supermarkets cream off a lot of trade in basic items, smaller sellers would have had as bread and butter. Garden stuff, tools, kitchenware, making it harder for independent shops to exist. There are very few butchers and fishmongers these days.

Some types of shops pass in and out of existence with the times; VHS hire shops, vape shops, tobacconists. In the 70s and 80s there were shops in most big towns, selling electronic components and kits. There'd be one or two camera shops in most small towns, selling film cameras and accessories, film processing and maybe darkroom equipment. I'm sure a mobile phone does enough photography for most. There were radio and TV shops. Tailors where you could buy made to measure suits.

The internet has had a big effect. People are much more willing to buy online these days. There are lots of things, such as computer items, where I could find a shop that may sell them, but I've almost always bought on line, because of better choice and better prices.

Cycle shops are something of a counter example.

[tggzzz]

This is largely true. Supermarkets cream off a lot of trade in basic items, smaller sellers would have had as bread and butter. Garden stuff, tools, kitchenware, making it harder for independent shops to exist. There are very few butchers and fishmongers these days.
...
The internet has had a big effect. People are much more willing to buy online these days. There are lots of things, such as computer items, where I could find a shop that may sell them, but I've almost always bought on line, because of better choice and better prices.

Cycle shops are something of a counter example.

Yup

The supermarket effect started a decade before online shopping really got going. It surprises and saddens me that new housing estates (think Sadly Broke) only have one single low-end supermarket (Tescos) and never seem to other useful shops. However, in some dormitory towns around there are fishmongers and greengrocers; perhaps being a local foodie area helps. Certainly I would find it difficult to live in an area without interesting food, e.g. places where you can pop in for dosa and idli based meals, or have a morning glory stir fry with a mango salad. (Pavlov's dogs are applying ).

A hardware shop near here recently closed after 140 years; there are too many examples like that. My village had a seriously decrepit general store where you could get anything at a low price because they had bought the item a decade earlier. You could get to the counter, but if you wanted a chuck key for a drill (they had 4 types, more than big sheds!) the owners had to clamber around and go up ladders and pull a random cardboard box off the top of a cupboard/shelf. When the owners died, they had to demolish the shop and the Victorian 4 story houses behind; they were unsafe.

There was a forerunner to internet shopping, particularly in the US: catalogue shopping, exemplified by the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. That was vital when railways were the main form of transport, and declined as cars became widespread.

I remember 29 years and 11 months ago sitting in the sun outside a works canteen, watching humming birds flitting around. We discussed this new internet shopping concept, thought it made perfect sense for books, CDs, electricals but would never work for pet food and the like. We also theorised that the real place to put your money would be in logistics and transportation, as per the California gold rush. We got that lot partly right.

OTOH in the dotcom boom I was highly sceptical that boo.com would work, since who in their right minds would buy clothes and shoes online. You need to try them on. Still think I am right there, but I hadn't anticipated the concept of widespread throwaway fashion, let alone Vinted.

In general the internet is a great place to search for purchases, but a lousy place to browse for objects. That's one reason tiny bricks and mortar bookshops seem to be resurging around here. They have a tiny selection of interesting books which they constantly rotate - and you can browse their entire stock in an hour or two. I often find there's something I buy; the last was Tim Berners-Lee's autobiography, for personal reasons.

[Zenith]

The widespread ownership of cars made a difference. In the village where I grew up there were five shops in the late 50s. There was a post office, a butcher, a general sweetshop/birthday card shop, a grocer and a newspaper shop/cafe. There were three pubs. By the 70s there was the grocer, the sweetshop/birthday card shop was also the post office and newsagent, and three pubs. For the last 10 years there have been two pubs and the grocer is cafe/catering business. There's a fast food place which is an extension of one of the pubs. I think it's the same general story in France.

The more affluent the area, the more likely you are to have small independent shops and restaurants.

Mail order was a significant business in the UK, probably from the end of the 19th century. There were general catalogues; Kays, Grattan, Littlewoods, with local agents. There were specialised catalogues, such as Buck and Hickman for tools and industrial supplies. and various others. There were mail order advertisements in newspapers and other periodicals. Some of them are funny now. X-ray specs and miracle Russian radios. Then of course, there was Exchange & Mart. If you were interested in hobby electronics, which really took off in the 60s, you were more or less bound to buy things by mail order. Later on there was Maplin and the awful Tandy, but mainly in fairly large towns. Comet was a retailing phenomenon, which did a thriving mail order business. Then it morphed into just another store. I believe it still continues in some form.

Amazon has had a massive effect on most sorts of retailing, but particularly the book trade, which it completely dominates. Then there are supermarket delivery services, which I see a lot where I live. People prefer to buy their groceries on line and have them delivered. Covid forced people to buy things on line, which they normally wouldn't have thought about, and they got used to it and found it convenient.

Times change.

[tggzzz]

Mail order was a significant business in the UK, probably from the end of the 19th century. There were general catalogues; Kays, Grattan, Littlewoods, with local agents. There were specialised catalogues, such as Buck and Hickman for tools and industrial supplies. and various others. There were mail order advertisements in newspapers and other periodicals. Some of them are funny now. X-ray specs and miracle Russian radios. Then of course, there was Exchange & Mart. If you were interested in hobby electronics, which really took off in the 60s, you were more or less bound to buy things by mail order.

Oh, there are some names from the past!

I remember buying enormous (0.5" LEDs) and a MM5314 digital clock IC in ~1973. Had to get it from California, which meant using an International Money Order (not credit card). IIRC it took about 6 weeks to arrive.



[/quote]
Amazon has had a massive effect on most sorts of retailing, but particularly the book trade, which it completely dominates. Then there are supermarket delivery services, which I see a lot where I live. People prefer to buy their groceries on line and have them delivered. Covid forced people to buy things on line, which they normally wouldn't have thought about, and they got used to it and found it convenient.

Times change.
[/quote]

They do indeed, usually for the better.

I've never bought standard[1] groceries online, even during covid; I just went to upmarket supermarkets when few people would be there. I enjoy bumbling around, finding things I had never find by searching. Serendipity is my favourite word and concept.

[1] I occasionally buy Loch Fyne Kippers online, since they are much better than the supermarket variety.

On a very few occasions the first mouthful of a food has stopped me in my tracks:

• fresh pigs liver from a half-pig, quickly fried to eat it before it went off
• a main course in a restaurant in the centre of France
• south Indian coconut curry in a long gone thali restaurant. This is an excellent substitute: https://uk.thespicetailor.com/products/ ... nut-curry/
• kippers for breakfast on Arran. I went out of my way to find the source

[Zenith]

I've never bought standard[1] groceries online, even during covid; I just went to upmarket supermarkets when few people would be there. I enjoy bumbling around, finding things I had never find by searching. Serendipity is my favourite word and concept.

[1] I occasionally buy Loch Fyne Kippers online, since they are much better than the supermarket variety.

I used to have kippers and smoked salmon by post from Achiltibuie.

I think it was Summer Isles Foods, which may have gone bust. This looks like a similar company

https://www.ardtaraig.com

There was a kipper club and a salmon club. They sent a couple of pairs of kippers, and a different sort of smoked salmon every month for six months.

The kippers were expensive, but well worth it. They were properly smoked. Nothing like the supermarket rubbish. The smoked salmon was excellent, especially the smoked salmon steaks. They also did very good smoked mussels among other things, such as ham.

[tggzzz]

There seem to be many such places nowadays, with kippers from Craster, Whitby, the SW, and Highlands. They all seem to be £9/pair, with free shipping above ~£45.

An interesting alternative is https://peskyfish.co.uk/ They specialise in very fresh fish, including live lobsters. The the stock varies depending on what was caught that day. They will send emails, but you have to be fast because they sell out! I haven't tried them.

If you're in Cardiff, which I often am, there's a superb fishmonger in the central market. Interesting traditional range but not cheap; some of their crustaceans are live. There are also a couple of greengrocers a couple of butchers in the main hall.

[MED6753]

I do like pickled herring either plain or with sour cream. So I'd like to try kippers but I don't even know if they are available here.

[tggzzz]

While pickled herring can be nice (if not sweet cured ), they are very different.

These are smoked and partially dried, with some salt. They were designed to be stored and moved inland on horses. Hence it is one thing I don't worry about going off in the post - and should reach you ok. Except, of course, for food import regulations!

Whatever you do, don't bother with anything in brine or a plastic bag

It isn't usual to see them in restaurants, let alone know how good they will be. Specialist fish restaurants are the best bet. I was stunned to find them for breakfast in the B&B on Arran. But that was a traditional breakfast up there.

We have many types of sampled fish, haddock being another. School haddock was known as "yellow fish" because it was dyed. Kippers were often dyed with BFK (brown for kippers!) but many are now marked undyed.

Other types include bloaters (delicious, now rare) and red herrings (never seen them,, but they did exist).

Surely there are smoked fish in the US?