Down into the Dungeon...

Where I have a little store. The company chairman thinks this is a works-related store. Well, I do occasionally store a few tools or materials in here for work, but really its my stuff, that I've got no room for at home at the moment. Roll on the lottery win.

Oh. and images in this post are all over the place. It's because I did it using Picasa, and Blogger-in-draft, and I can't figure out how to edit the html to get them to do what i want them to do.

The basement...

And the store

I just accumulate stuff. It's not my fault. There's a v8 engine, a motorbike trailer, must get that ebayed.... Tools Tools Tools A Landrover hardtop and rear door, A landrover SWB roof-rack...

Pottery materials, oxides.

a roll of 1350 degree celsius rated fiberfrax

Kiln furniture

Cane Handles, the circuit board was part of a kiln vent control system a geek friend made for me.

Ceramics Review back issues and a Lewis Chess Set cast in resin and aged by mine own fair hands.

 Ah- look! A test piece for the house-portraiture in 2/3 scale, a landscape bowl with an island in the middle, a bisqued (in 1989) teapot...

there's some other stuff there, my ancient books and newspapers.

 This is "Acta Eruditorum", of February1684, the equivalent in its day, of Scientific American.
The book is in Latin, in those days the universal language of the learned, though the second paragraph is in Swedish.
I have about three or maybe four bound editions from the 1680s.
Its a long story. I saved these and some other books and papers from destruction.

Site/visitor meters.

I have two, Site-meter, and activemeter. They didn't both start counting right at the beginning, but even accounting for that there's a big discrepancy between what they pick up.
Some people are completely invisible. I know they've been, and when, if they left a comment. But sometimes neither of the counters recorded a visitor at that time.
Now I'm not obsessive about it, honest...
The thing that interests me most, is a) referrers... Where did you come from, a sidebar link on somebody's blog? Google? where?
and b) Where in the world are you.
That's only approximate, of course, the info is where your isp's server is located.
Like this:

Grit in the Gears By Details > Visit Detail Visit 50,137 [<<]  [>>] Domain Name (Unknown)  IP Address xxxxxxxxx(I xx'd it to protect the innocent.)# (Frontier Communications) ISP Frontier Communications Location Continent  : North America Country  : United States  (Facts) State  : New York City  : Rochester Lat/Long  : 43.286, -77.6843 (Map) Language English (U.S.) en-us Operating System Linux UNIX Browser Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090216 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.14 Javascript version 1.5 Monitor Resolution  :  1024 x 600 Color Depth  :  24 bits Time of Visit Jan 3 2010 11:49:46 pm Last Page View Jan 3 2010 11:50:39 pm Visit Length 53 seconds Page Views 3 Referring URL http://www.blogger.com/home Visit Entry Page http://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/ Visit Exit Page http://gritinthegear...NhCBcD1s3awhqM43L6dx Out Click

You're a linux user? I'd never have guessed.

Somehow I thought you might have a shiny mac....
Then again, I bet hmmmmm......
Grit in the Gears
This Week's Visits and Page Views

Anyway, it having just ticked past midnight, and work at six in the morning, oh sadness, I'll just compare the two counters again, see what discrepancy they've amassed on an unusually busy page-hit day.
Sitemeter,     400 page views
Activemeter, 435 page views



Plus the uncounted invisibles...
So if anybody's got a better counter, I'd love to hear of it, G'night everybody....

50,000th visitor

The 50,000th visitor, as counted by Sitemeter, came along early today.
Something odd is happening though.
One post, with pictures of lighthouses, here  has been getting an avalanche of hits all from the same google-image referrer, and all of the hits come from isps in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

I can't imagine why everybody in the German-speaking world is suddenly google image searching lighthouses, and then clicking on the link to my blog.
If any of you are reading this page... please tell me how you got here, and why, because I can't figure it out. Currently, that page has been accessed 357 times today, which is 357 times more than in all of last week.

Ahhh:-

Hinweis weiterleiten

 Die von Ihnen besuchte Seite versucht, Sie an http://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2007/06/pressure.html weiterzuleiten.

 Falls Sie diese Seite nicht besuchen möchten, können Sie zur vorherigen zurückkehren.

Now, I never learned german, but I think it says (roughly) The site you were trying to visit refers (transfers?) you to.. gritinthegears etc. If that isn't what you want, you can return to the previous page. Looks like a glitch in Google.de's image search Nothing I've done, anyway.

I missed the photograph of the bouncing of the swans, so...

Greetings from the Future!

Well, the new year's been here for a couple of hours now, but I know some of you are still in 2009.

Clear Those Winter Miseries With a Little Steam

Some of you may remember me posting pictures of the National Railway Museum, in York, not far from my home.On that page there's a video of the first scheduled outing of a shiny new steam locomotive, built to the highest standards of 1940's steam technology, and coming into commission in 2009.
It was, of course, a crazy concept. A lot of steam enthusiasts raising money to build a giant toy.

The railway modeller's dream. A full sized locomotive. But still, the modern railway industry would say, a toy, not practical.... All this year, 6163 Tornado has been hauling steam excursion trains, in all the regions of britain, and countrywide. -Distances like the London to Edinburgh mainline run, faultlessly.
Then comes winter. The much vaunted super high-tech London to Paris expresses curl up and shiver, the Channel Tunnel is put out of action.
Across southern England, commuter trains fail, leaving many commuters stranded on snowbound stations, far from home.
But the Tornado is hauling the Cathedrals Express in the region, so they shovel a bit more coal on, and announce that they will call at the stations and take the commuters home. How's that for steampunk technology in the modern age? And they do, flawlessly, whilst the southern region's 21 st century trains shiver, whimper, and sneeze, impotent in a light snowfall.

And

BBC News "Passengers were rescued by a steam locomotive after modern rail services were brought to a halt by the snowy conditions in south-east England.
Trains between Ashford and Dover were suspended on Monday when cold weather disabled the electric rail.
Some commuters at London Victoria faced lengthy delays until Tornado - Britain's first mainline steam engine in 50 years - offered them a lift.
They were taken home "in style", said the Darlington-built engine's owners."

Photography for Potters (well, for rich potters)

I see lots of potters with photography angst, worrying about presentation of their works on the web. Here's the answer.



Okay... There's no price.
The cheapy, entry-level light box thingy, the photosimile 100 is a couple of thousand dollars.
This? Maybe the price of a car, who knows, they're a bit coy about pricing on their website.
Ortery site says, “We do not list pricing on this website due to international pricing concerns.”

My photos will continue to be taken with my camera phone.

Marjorie Wondered..

If she might just have had one too many rum-truffles.

Or had that last cup of tea at the Richardson's tasted a little strange?