Notting Hill Carnival

This year Carnival was a special affair for the Thomas Clan. My youngest daughter played with the Ebony Steelband in the Panorama competition, a traditional lead up to the Carnival. Unfortunately they came 4th, not a position they deserved, they should have won but it seems that 19 wins is considered enough by the pan community.

My daughter was disappointed but still thrilled to have been part of it all. She stayed for the after competition party which goes on till 5am, and then took part in J'ouvert where participants are pelted with paint and flour.

She didn't go to the first day of carnival, rather she had a days rest, but she did attend the second day, again with Ebony. Apart from some crowd control problems and some thuggish behaviour from some parts of the crowd she enjoyed it and is looking forward to next year.

Tears of steel - a Sci-Fi short

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXKp0fDGTg

feeling hot, hot, hot

The UK is currently having a heatwave with temperatures upwards of 30 degrees and I am melting!

Today I had to do the final part of my CPC (certificate of professional competence) which all Bus, Coach and Lorry drivers will need to hold in Europe after September 11th if they wish to continue driving. You get a plastic card which you have to have on your person whenever you are driving. Trouble is the room that we use for training has no ventilation as the company had the window sills plastered which blocks the windows from being opened! We were all very glad when 4pm came along and we could go home.

Back to driving yesterday with another very hot day forecast although after that the temps should drop as we approach Sunday but then rise again to even higher levels in the middle of next week.

I hope to get some more of my garden railway finished as well as creating a photo album of the Great Gathering in York and also for the North Bay Railway in Scarborough and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Right now its half ten in the evening and time for me to go to bed.

Goodnight

Holiday

I have just come home from 5 nights in York where I visited the Great Gathering. All 6 surviving A4 Pacific locos are arranged around the turntable in the National Railway Museum's main hall and many thousands of people have come to see them.

The Great Gathering. As you can see it was popular.

We looked around the rest of the museum and found a couple of famous exhibits in a less that glourious condition.

'Flying Scotsman' appears to be dumped at the back of the workshop missing parts and covered in a layer of dust.

The Rocket replica looks less than at it's best although, to be fair, this is only to allow her smoke box to be cleaned

We had a wander around york, once the crowds got the better of us, in search of ice cream as the only place to get ice cream in the museum was in the yard and with only one person serving and cooking getting a simple ice cream was taking forever.

We found a small park near the river and ate our ice cream only to find ourselves surrounded by geese. Lucky, apart from some noise, they were no trouble and I got some nice closeup shots

That was our first day in York. I will be adding a photo album of the Great Gathering pictures very soon. Tomorrow I will tell you about our trip to Scarborough and the moors.

Plurality - A short film

A wonderful Sci-Fi short film

Rare posting!

Oh well, the best laid plans.
I havn't put any postings up for a while so what have I been doing?
A bit of motorsport has got in the way with trips to Brands Hatch as guests of Ali Rushforth Motorsport and one to Silverstone for my Daughters 19th birthday. I have also been building a new locomotive for my garden railway and started building the station building. DIY and other leisure activities have also kept me busy.

On the Geeky side I watched the last episode of Dr who on Saturday and it was a rather explosive episode, you really need to see it to find out why. I also saw the latest Star Trek film that was a real trekkie geek fest, well worth seeing.

More pictures and updates will follow including a few pictures from Brands and Silverstone plus a review of Dr Who and also Start Trek.

Dr Who is back

As i write this we are looking forward to the second episode of Dr Who but what was the first one like? Well it was a good story about peoples souls being sucked out by the Wi-Fi and had the usual amount of running about plus a new creature in the Spoon Heads and we had the Doctor flying around on a Triumph, nice.

And the new companion? Well she is beautiful, obviously, and has a great Chemistry with the Doctor, her slightly selfish nature is a nice change from the 'put my life on the line' nature of recent companions, this could be an interesting ride.

Happy Easter

Oh well, Easter is upon us and we shouldnow be seeing summer on the horizon however winters colkd hand is still upon us as snow and sub zero temperatures dominate the weather.
I had hoped to get out nin the garden and start building my new railway but the snow, wind and rain has stopped me.
Still this has given me a chance to watch the first grand prix of the season with the first one being a real entertaining race with an unexpected win for Kimi in his Lotus. The second one was marred when Vettel decided to ignore team orders and overtake his cruising team mate Webber who was following orders to preserve the machinery. Not a nice podium that one!
Today isd Easter Sunday and the first BTCC meeting of the year, lets hope that the tin tops are as enterrtaining as usual

Short film of the week

Watch "The Gate (Short Film)" on YouTube

This looks like the lead in to a feature film.

Short film

I put up a post a while back saying i was going to put a short film up every week. Oh well, best layed plans and all that. Here is another one at ladt based on the video game Portal.

Watch "Portal: No Escape (Live Action Short Film by Dan Trachtenberg)" on YouTube

Sunday Morning

Thought I would have a nice lie-in today but was rudely awken by guinea pigs squeaking for food, then disturbed by next door neighbour repeatedly slamming his back door then finally driven to get up when a local yoof decided to ride his 30mph moped with an illegal exhaust round and round the local roads.

Of course now I have decided to get up its all gone quiet again!

Williams FW35 launched

With the launch of the new williams the 2013 gridbis complete.
The new car was launched at the start of the second test of the year with test driver Susie Wolff being the first to give it a try.

Caterham and Marussia launch cars

Last blog entry was wrong, the Caterham and Marussia are the penultimate launches with only the Williams left to be presented. 

The Caterham CT03 has one of the worst step noses around and this is one ugly car.

The Marussia MR2 is much nicer but will probably still be the slowest thing in the race.

Toro Rosso STR8 is launched

The penultimate car reveal of 2013 is the new Toro Rosso and it looks nice.

Mercedes W04 finally launched

After a lot of pictures of the car the official ones have now appeared

Redbull RB9

The latest launch is the current champions title defender, the Red Bull RB9. Not the best looking of the new cars but it is bound to be effective.

Mercedes W04 teaser

Mercedes tried a teaser reveal of their new car using Twitter but the whole thing turned into a pr disaster as their site crashed and remained offline for several hours. When the picture was finally revealed all wee had was an open garage door with a shadowy outline of a front wheel. The internet came to the rescue with this enhanced picture showing a rather different looking car from last year's.

Sauber C32

The 2013 Sauber is a nice looking beast with some neat detailing

New family member

Last weekend we gained a new family member in the form of Stanley the Guinea Pig. He joins Timo as our pair of piggies and so far they seem to be getting on although Timo is much bigger and can bully little Stanley a bit.

Stanley is a very curious little fellow ready to crawl into any space to see what is there. His personality is completely different to Timo and should give me a few interesting things to blog about

Force India's 2013 car

The new Force India is the second car to be launched today but unlike the Ferrari it has that awful stepped nose. Clean looking car otherwise

Ferrari F138

A nice looking F1 car that, same as the McLaren, does not have an ugly stepped nose. Pity its not all scarlet though.

McLaren Launch their 2013 car

The new McLaren MP4/28. Looks nice with no horrible stepped nose. Lets hope its as fast as it looks

The first F1 car for 2013 is revealed

2013 will be the last year that features the V8's as from 2014 onwards there will be a 1.6litre turbo charged V6 formula.

The first of the 2013 cars to be unveiled is the Lotus E21

As you can see the black and gold livery is still there but now with red highlights. Also still there is the duckbill nose. The car looks good and would seem to be very conventional and very much like the 2012 car which was no slouch. Can this new one get them into the championship fight though?

Happy New Year

2013 is here and hopefully it will be a better year than 2012.

2012 saw my both my cars off the road and a stay at home Christmas and New Year. Hopefully one of them will be on the road soon before all the preserved railways start their winter gala's as I aim to go to a few this year beginning with the Nene Valley Railway.

2012 was a real up and down one with the highs of the Olympics and the lows of not being able to use my caravan. As far as the van is concerned we have decided to sell it and save the storage and insurance money towards a campervan.

The end of 2012 saw the wife and I visiting York for a 2 day break to do some Christmas shopping and to visit the National Railway Museum. We really enjoyed ourselves despite the rather wet conditions. It was our first time in years staying in a hotel and we used the train to travel to York which made it a real treat.

We also visited the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park with our daughters which was another treat, although the food and drink in the Wonderland is expensive we still had enough to sample some of the delights.