The Grand Cafe

Reminds me of a situation that I faced each year for about twenty years !

I used to run an engineering/science course at our local secondary school. A couple of hours once a month, finishing the year with an open day for parents whilst the students had a competitive project to complete.

It was good fun, but I had to make a speech, including thanking the Headmaster etc, etc.

Trouble was, the Headmaster was called Paul D i c k.

Fortunately, I always managed to “thank Mr. D i c k, Headmaster of the school …” but was concerned I might one day “ thank Mr. D i c k h e a d, Master of …”

1 Like

We did that almost by accident - and love it! A son had been sharing a flat with friends, where he had bought a projector. One friend moved away and the was due to get married, so he move back home. We agreed to put projector in the music room, to convert which we needed a blackout blind for a large (12ft wide) window. Found a suitable size (nominally 160”) motorised screen that doubles as blackout blind, through Amazon at a price far cheaper than a manual blackout blind from the local shop (only about £200). Son had an AV receiver/amp, so I bought a cheap 5.1 surround sound system secondhand (around £200) plus a couple of extra speakers because it offers 7.1.

The result, viewing a 12ft wide image from about 12ft distance, is more cinema like than some cinemas I’ve been to - and very immersive and so enjoyable. When he moves out again we will definitely buy our own projector and amp! I’ve since wired the main two channels to the hifi, because although when we watched films the sound was fine, we then tried the free Met opera streams, and that showed up the limitations. The projector wasn’t expensive (something like £550) and is only HD, so with that size screen to viewing distance ratio I’m sure 4K would be noticeably better - but it really doesn’t seem to matter if a film is any good.

1 Like

The real name of singer Fish, originally of Marillion fame, is Derek D i c k. One can imagine the ribbing he had at school.

And there is the famous D ick Pick, who devised the Pick operating system

Us Grateful Dead fans really like Dicks picks but have to lose the apostrophe when recommending.

Not a name to Google these days I suspect.

1 Like

How’s your holiday

It was cleaning the house and buying stuff today. I got a Karcher k4 to clean the terrace, a new hammer etc. tomorrow I’m going to clean one of the children’s rooms, put new carpet in and hopefully shuffle some beds around. The kids agreed to change rooms. Tonight I gave the laptop of the first kid an update, it was slow.

I need to book some musicians for Easter.

Oh and I’ve sent my trusty old Nait 5 for a service …

1 Like

My geography teacher part way through secondary school was named Wayne Kerr…you can imagine the teasing, poor man.

It gets through spell check though.

That’s very Aussie, and a title we even give to people we like. :grin:

Our geography text book had been written by a Mr. Pickles.

The start of each lesson was the teacher saying “I wasn’t to all to take your Pickles out”

Finally got a reply re the stick insect, see below.

Hi Peter

Thank you for your enquiry.

This is probably not Ctenomorpha Gargantua, this is more likely the Titan Stick Insect, Acrophylla titan. The feature that is noticeable from this photo are the two cerci, Gargantua have very long cerci in comparison with titan, and from what I can see these are quite short cerci. Although to be certain we would need more and better photos, or the actual specimen.

Here is a link with some photos

2 Likes

Ah, a shame that it wasn’t the rare one, but nice that they got back to you.

It’s probably still somewhere in the garden, you could go hunting for it. :smiley:

1 Like

Eventually, he’d moved on weeks ago.

It’s a great name, he’s now got an assistant with an funny name as well.

I remember using a Wayne Kerr conductivity meter back in the late 70s.
Apparently they’re still in business.
image

2 Likes

Would you believe it, common as muck.

I won the poker last night by calling out someone’s absurd bluff.
Which is the most satisfying way of winning anything!

£160 - nice!

1 Like

My whole working career was based on bluff.

4 Likes

Yeah I’ve heard that Pete from very reliable sources :crazy_face:

2 Likes