One depressing memory from 2025

I thought this would be a handy collection of pics to end 2025 with as it probably explains why I walk around with my eyes on the ground, or looking up for anything interesting on old buildings.

Arriving in Glasgow city centre, I have a habit of getting off an express coach I sometimes use frequently and grabbing a pic (there is a sane reason, which might appear in another post one day) as it drives off.

I also have a habit of digging around in the background of my pics, in case I’ve caught something interesting.

This sorry sight was in one of those coach pics.

Fashion by the nearest skip or clothes collection bag.

Makeup by the local blacksmith, piercings, smartphone, vape, and tattoos.

It reminded of this nostalgic meme I spotted earlier in the year.

So, this seems to be an appropriate image to end 2025 on.

I’m with whoever create this.

Can’t wait for the joys of…

2026!

I went for a walk – and found an interesting sign (or two)

It was something of a shock to learn that the Scottish Open Access Code was approved way back in 2005, having been preceded by the Land Reform Act (Scotland) in 2003.

Back in those days this sort of mattered to me as I was actively crawling all around Scotland (and had been for some years prior to that) hunting down the remains of Cold War sites and structures, some of which had survived, some of which had not. I had a big list of NGRs (national grid references) which had been recorded at the time they were still in use, although it seems those responsible were not quite as skilled at determining those NGRs as might have been expected. That said, it should not be forgotten that we are referring to the post-war years, when those references had to be evaluated by carrying out surveys using a compass, OS maps, and the MKl eyeball. Simply pressing a button on a GPS receiver was probably not even a glint in some inventor’s eye at that time.

I mention this simply to highlight the fact that back then, there was a load of legally significant information being placed online as there were numerous discussions underway regarding both the Land Reform Act, and the Open Access Code. Most of it seems to have been taken down now, or evaporated, as I can seldom, if ever, manage to locate any of the more interesting material, particularly the many legal references that were made as people debated the detail of those new rules.

One of my favourites was the oft repeated fallacy of there being ‘No law regarding trespass in Scotland’. Of course, there is, although it is DIFFERENT from that found in England.

One of the other examples that arose was the position regarding people entering your property, as in your garden, or the area around your house, known as the curtilage.

Assuming the material cited back then was correct, it seems there are no specific laws or offences that apply to such a scenario, and if, for example, someone decide to come into your nice garden and set up a picnic, then there’s no legal ruling you can call on to have them removed, including trespass. You could threaten them, or physically throw them out, but then you’d find there were laws that applied – to what YOU had done.

Bear in mind I’m referring to trespass as it would be legally recognised by a Scottish court, NOT what YOU might think trespass is, and it’s the court’s definition that matters, not yours.

This came to mind when I passed some signs I could barely read while I was out for a late night walk recently, and were found just a short distance from home.

It was dark, and between street lights, and the camera would barely even focus and allow the shutter to be fired, but I managed to find an angle that caught enough light.

I find it fascinating that some people apparently think it’s acceptable to cut through people’s property if it saves them walking along the street. This isn’t the only time I’ve come across signs like this that homeowners have felt the need to put up, the most recent being in Prestwick, where there’s a gate with something similar, trying to stop people cutting through a path behind a house, which means they don’t have to walk along the road to a corner, and can cut it out.

I’ll drop the pics of the signs here, without comment, since they’re so close to home.

Again, assuming the cases I saw being cited 20 years ago were correct, this sign is incorrect, as merely cutting across the grounds would NOT be trespass – in Scotland.

Taking the brake lights out of the Christmas lights (didn’t help – but the warm camera did)

Ever find removing one problem just reveals another?

Seems that was the case when I got the chance to take the pic I was denied when I was trying to take a pic for the post that ended up as, Christmas lights with added brake lights.

I’d been balked by the arrival of a taxi that parked up in the middle of the desired shot.

I was in the same place a few nights later, and the place was as deserted, so I was able to take the shot I’d been denied.

Unfortunately, that just provided another issue.

Instead of getting a better shot by standing where I wanted to, I found that just brought a road sign (which had previously been just out of shot) right in front of the camera.

Juggling around the position tended to make it land in front of one of the lit trees, and there wasn’t much choice of where to stand, since the view was so wide it used the full width of the lens’s view, so I couldn’t get the full width with all four trees in if I moved any further left.

Then there was the sign itself, which was insisting on landing in front of the house, unless I stood in an awkward position.

In the end, I had to stitch together a number of shots to capture the width of the whole scene.

If only I’d known that taxi had been sent to do me a favour!

🙄

But, the pic was improved by the warm camera

This shot was one of a set taken to learn if having a warm camera made any noticeable difference to the captured image.

In this case, I think the answer is a definite Yes, assuming I didn’t just happen to take a better pic on this second visit.

There’s less haze and glare evident (to my eyes at least), and the detail and contrast appears to be improved in this later view, compared to the first from a few days earlier.

The previous pic.

Quick revisit to London Road’s new traffic light (with warm camera)

I spent my late Christmas Eve hoofing it around the new traffic lights on London Road.

Curiosity got the better of me as I had broken out the heated boxes I’d added to my collection of goodies, in preparation for the cold weather, in an effort to fight the curse of condensation that seem to strike my cameras and lenses whenever I dare to step outside at this time of year.

I mention adding some USB powered lens heaters last year, and while it was true that they were effective heaters, they didn’t solve my issues as their heat was too localised, and they would have to be applied a couple of hours in advance of going out, in order for the heat to reach the mass of glass and metal inside the camera and lens(es).

The boxes provide more heat over a greater volume, and seem to much more effective for my situation.

I managed to grab a fairly decent shot of the lights going through amber.

Unfortunately, I found it impossible to repeat the capture of the previous post, at green, because this normally deserted spot suddenly turned into a mini Sauchiehall Street – as the nearby community headed to Midnight Mass in the church just behind me.

Not sure if it was the heating, or me getting a better pic, but this second effort certainly looks better to me, and I was also able to apply more filtering to improve it.

Reminder of the previous green light version, with a cold camera.

In all honesty, this pair just triggered my old question:

Which pic is the right pic?

Bonus shot – Santa’s Grotto!

Although the shot is somewhat blurred – low light and slow camera settings are NOT ideal for action pics – I did just about manage to catch this pic as the elves, or is it gnomes, collected one of Santa’s grottos, and sped past.

Although not obvious from the pic, the front of this hut (unfortunately on the far side of this view) was decorated with holly and other goodies.

I did try throwing some (image) tools at it, but nothing seemed to make any difference.

The new London Road traffic lights will save me LOADS of time

A second pass of the new traffic light on London Road confirmed they’ll save me loads of time, since the traffic engineers seem to have fixed the long-standing, crazy phasing/timing they’ve had for years.

They never changed the sequence when the M74 extension was completed back in 2011, and traffic from Kenmuirhill Road has been forced to wait at red as if London Road was still carrying all the traffic from the A/M74, while the reality has been that since that traffic switched to the extension, London Road has become a ‘Ghost Ship’.

Sitting at these traffic lights in Kenmuirhill Road was one of the most infuriating things I’ve found myself doing in recent years, and it feels like I’ve sat there for weeks. As if that’s not bad enough, you have to go through the same thing only a few hundred metres later, at the Carmyle Avenue lights.

I’d only seen these lights (for cycles) turn green with the main traffic lights, like this.

I’d wondered if they cycle light changed independently, and caught this as I was passing.

They do.

I caught another pic too.

Has anybody EVER been penalised for this?

An advanced stop line, or ASL, also called advanced stop box or bike box, is a road marking allowing certain types of vehicle a head start when the traffic signal changes from red to green, and has been used at these traffic lights.

While I was there, GIL 5014 arrived, and not only ignored the ASL, but crossed the second white line as well (now I’m wondering if that’s treated as a separate offence, with the same penalty – so doubling the penalty within a few metres!) stopping in the spot where I’d been waiting to turn right only a few hours before.

While I’m decidedly NOT a rabid cycling activist (I actually hate them, and generally wish they’d shut up and stop whining), seeing this did make me wonder if anyone is aware of the fact that this behaviour is a traffic offence, attracting 3 penalty points and a £100 fine.

Just a thought, since the law also provides mitigating circumstances that probably makes the chances of that penalty ever being applied being slim to nil.

Just a thought.

Christmas lights with added brake lights

I mentioned having to wander along the road for a different view of these lights, after a taxi drive pulled up right in front of me, in the middle of the view I was after, and just sat with his headlights on, and foot on the brakes, for at least 10 minutes (that was how long my patience lasted waiting for him to kill his lights, or move off).

It wasn’t his light that created a problem, being at an angle and not so bright meant I could deal with them in processing.

The real issue was that he had stopped directly across from me, and I had no way of knowing if he was a loony or not, and might have been one of those narcistic nut jobs that think merely because they happen to be in front of you when you take a pic, that you’re somehow fascinated by them, and come over to ‘Have a word’, seldom of the friendly type.

I’d just taken this shot to test how wide my capture was, and had moved further along as I still had width to spare, and could get a less oblique view – then he pulled up behind the mini.

I wandered along to see how the oblique looked from the other end, but it placed the house and lights at the far end of the shot, and wasn’t so good.

However, it did catch his damned brake lights!

I really don’t understand people who park up and feel the need to keep their foot on the brake pedal.

I generally can’t wait to get my foot off the pedal, kill the dazzling bright lights (especially of stopped in traffic), and avoid the chance of warping my brake discs again (or boiling some old brake fluid), something I managed one year during the holidays, while I was driving around the fairly deserted roads of north-west Scotland when you get away from the more touristy areas. It’s nice to find some really quiet roads.

The discs were old, and had probably already been warped by a previous owner, but the brake fluid boiling is a nasty one, and probably always scary, since it’s not going to happen unless you’re braking HARD. Not having felt this before, it was some time before an old hand nailed the symptoms when I described the event, something I don’t want to repeat.

Surprise Christmas present

Sorry.

A few lines somehow developed into ‘long read’.

Technically, not exactly a Christmas present, but I did find something I’d been looking for for years, and all but given up on.

History

Not my first calculator, but my upgrade from the Sinclair Scientific I built from a kit only a few years earlier, and had been trouble free. I have to make that clear since so many people now feel the need to kick Sinclair.

I got my original Texas Instrument SR-51A II some time after the mid 1970s, and have to say I loved it from day one. It all just worked smoothly, there were no crazy keystroke sequences needed to access frequently used functions I needed, and (something I only learned after having to use others), the keyboard was just right too. No stiff/hard key presses that needed too much force applied to register a keystroke, or the other extreme, where key presses were so soft and woolly that there was no tactile feedback, and every keystroke had to be carefully watched over to make sure an adjacent key wasn’t accidentally given the merest touch, and registered as well.

But, there was a downside – after only a few years, I turned it on one day, and was presented with some weirdly flickering digits.

With everything contained in only a few big ICs, there’s no real chance of fixing such a failure, although I did dive in and look for any bad/failed solder connections, or perhaps something loose/damaged. However, it was a waste of time, and no amount of poking or prodding made the slightest difference.

Needing a fast replacement (they don’t pause university degree courses or wait for you to get going again), I only had a day or so to find something similar as the SR-51A was no longer available! If not obvious, there was no handy Internet, websites, or web browser to help. All the info was on paper, in magazines, or pamphlets, or found by walking to shops to look at options.

Suffice to say that in the time available I made the mistake of thinking the TI-58C Programmable would be more of the same.

Did I say mistake?

It had all the functions, and was of course programmable.

But an SR-51A replacement it was not.

It was a loathsome device, with all the functions I used to be able to get direct access to fenced away behind the Second Function key, which had to be pressed EVERY DAMNED TIME!

But, I’d made my scientific calculator bed and, as an actual poor student, had to lie in it, since I couldn’t afford to try anything else.

Can’t fix it – can I replace it?

A few years ago, the old SR-51A bubbled up to the top of my pile of goodies, and was still just showing those same frustratingly flickering digits.

But, now we had the Internet, and eBay, so I started hunting.

There was a steady stream of survivors being offered for sale, but they were almost always being sold for ‘Spares or Repair’. Working models were either looking for silly money, or looked dubious, so I almost gave up.

Seems I did miss out almost as soon as I started looking, having found one for sale in Switzerland from what looked like a reputable seller, however I wasn’t an eBay user, and just wasn’t sure.

I watched for a few weeks, and studied the pics – apparently working, it had also been converted to lithium power with the triple AA NiCad pack replaced by a small lithium cell and an adjustable voltage converter and charger fitted into the battery pack space.

On reflection, I think it was fine, but while I was “Doing my research”, trying to find out the range of prices, and how available they were, it was bought.

I kept looking for some years after that, but nothing as good appeared again.

To be honest, I’d all but given up all hopes of getting a working example.

Most were being sold in America, with the carriage seldom less than almost £30 (this has dropped recently), and always ‘Untested’ or ‘Parts only’,

Slightly more reasonable costwise are examples from Germany, but they have the same issue, “Untested”, and having watched a few, never seem to sell, and can look rough inside – broken battery terminals and/or corrosion. So probably useless except for display, and not really worth the asking priced, even if the carriage is better than from America.

There’s probably no point in buying something like this, as there’s no way of telling how far the corrosion has crept along the tracks, maybe even along the legs of the ICs and inside the packages!

2025 Surprise

My occasional glances contused the same pattern, expensive carriage from America, ‘Untested’ from Germany.

Then the pattern changed one day – a reasonable price, UK postage, and a description that did not claim or state the calculator was working, but neither was it explicitly spares or parts only. I’ve come to learn that means if an item is non-working, chances are you can claim your money back from eBay.

Going through the pics, it looked almost mint and, if it was real, one of the pics even showed a lit display.

I walked around my living room about 500 times that – then hit the BUY button.

Does it work?

Yes it does 😁

The win.

Boxed, with manuals, UK charger, soft case, and some receipts.

Strangely, the box is well worn (obviously the same age, mine still looks brand new, and is printed for the SR-51A ll), and I’ve come to the conclusion the calculatoe spent most of its life inside, only being taken out when needed, then stored away after use.

Both calculators are labelled SR-51A. Mine has nothing indicative of the ll shown on the box.

I’ve examined the components on the boards, and both carry date codes suggesting they were manufactured around the same time, with no apparent differences to their builds. I haven’t seen any details regarding the ll designation on any of the calculator history websites, so don’t know what it may signifiy, if anything. Maybe the code was altered in later models to fix bugs, or just make it more efficient?

The NiCad battery pack looks almost new and original, and has no corrosion. Given it should date from the year of manufacture some time in the late 1970s, that’s unusual. Mine looks pretty bad, and was fortunately NOT left in place. I think it has to be a recently manufactured replacement item as it looks similar to some I’ve seen pictured for sale. They’re also an example of price gouging, being only three NiCad or NiMH cells in a carrier, these packs cost almost as much as paid for this calculator.

The soft carry case is another item that looks as if was never used, except to store the calculator.

I thought the receipts would have told be about the calculator, one being for a purchase, and one for a repair (in the 1970s), but when I checked the serial numbers and other details, found they related to another calculator belonging to the same owner.

Those were the days when shops included the serial numbers on receipts!

In fact, the calculator looks almost unused.

The only complaint I had was that the (female) owner had scratched her name into the gold coloured from panel, AND painted it on the back panel, next to the charging socket behind the display. This is something I’ve noticed on quite a few of these calculators. Were they THAT desirable in their day?

The only issue I could find after trying to use it was some odd behaviour from the keys – a few would either fail to return when pressed, or were hard/impossible to press. It was very odd, and I couldn’t see a reason at first.

After dismantling the keyboard, I found some very tiny drop of a hard material down the side of some of the buttons.

I’d initially thought some sort of spillage, but that would have covered the calculator, and probably flooded it, and there was absolutely no evidence of such an event.

This was possibly a dozen instances of some tiny drops that somehow got down into the space between the affected button and front panel, then dried hard,

I tried shifting them in an ultrasonic bath, but they seemed to ignore this.

Eventually I shifted them all, one at a time, with a tiny pointed wooden stick and plain water. This seemed to loosen them, and let them simply be pushed off the surface.

It was all somewhat pointless (just for my own satisfaction), as the end game was just to swap the working gits into my own case.

Another surprise

When I compare the internals, I was surprised to find my original had some extra components mounted around the charging socket.

I’d completely forgotten I’d added a miniature LED, resistor, and diode, to provide confirmation that the charger was connected, something sorely missing from the original.

Pointless?

The sad thing is that in 2025, few reach for a calculator for anything repetitive, and all my real numbers are crunched in spreadsheets.

Screw up a long calculation on a calculator, and you have to do it all over again.

In a spreadsheet, you can constantly eyeball and check as you go, fix mistakes, and no need to key everything in again.

For stuff I do need to calculate as I go, then I’ve got plenty of cheap calculators which I can afford to risk/lose/damage, as they now only cost a few pounds.

Later

A few years later, probably after the mid 1980s, I got lucky again.

Still before the Internet, I used to go through the ‘Miscellaneous’ section of the Glasgow Evening Times, just out of curiosity as some odd stuff turned up for sale in the small ads.

Not once, but twice, I found a Hewlett Packard HP-41C for sale in those ads.

The first one was just the calculator in its carrying case.

The second one was an absolute WIN!

This came in a carrying case filled with nearly all the accessories, and an assortment of programming books, manuals, and newsletter from the owner’s club, and documentation on ‘synthetic programming’. Synthetic programming (SP) is an advanced technique for programming the HP-41C, involving the creation of instructions (or combinations of instructions and operands) that cannot be obtained using the standard capabilities of the calculator.

In terms of HP-41C hardware, I have the magnetic card reader, the wand (for reading barcodes), the thermal printer, one of the expansion modules, and the cassette drive.

There was even a rechargeable battery pack, but the NiCads failed early on. The long battery life of the Type N alkaline made it kind of pointless anyway, and there was no danger of them leaking, as regular use meant regular replacement.

It’s worth adding that the alphanumeric display and keyboard of the HP-41C showed just how bad the TI-58 programmable was.

While I used, and programmed many applications on the HP-41C over the years, I think I was only ever motivated to write ONE program on the TI-58 – and even now remember it was NO FUN AT ALL.

The HP-41C can be dismantled (the boards are not permanently connected internally, unlike the SR-51A) and reassembled freely, something I did to find out which combination produced the fastest device.

Notably, given the battery pack has to be removed when doing this, the calculator retains all its programming and works perfecly whenever this is done, despite being made of parts from different calculators, and having had its power source removed for an extended time.

Non-volatile RAM (memory) was fairly rare at the time, and most devices lost any stored date if power was lost for any reason, or needed to have a separate power supply provided to keep the data live.

Gimme a Break – it’s ******* Christmas Day!

As if to rub in how my life now revolves under the regime of “If there was no such thing as bad luck, I’d have no luck at all”, taking a moment to stop and test some safe heating systems for my camera gear (I have no desire to turn my kit into a black plastic blob) started out well, then went downhill.

Although I’d given this a try last night, without any problems, I barely got the stuff out of the box to start a second test.

I thought the front filter (always added for protection) had come loose as it made the usual unscrewing sound as I lifted the lens – of course, things were not that simple.

When tried to turn the filter to tighten it in place, it wouldn’t move, but was still loose.

In fact, the threaded filter ring on the front of the lens, which the filter screws into, had parted from the body of the lens.

From what I can just about see, it looks as if there are maybe half a dozen tiny machine screws holding this ring onto the body, and five of them are no longer attached. The sixth still appears to be attached, but is loose, preventing the ring from being removed, or letting the ring be lifted far enough to see what’s actually going on.

This ring actually appears to be in two parts, with a final section covering/hiding the heads of those screws, so they cannot be reached (to be tightened or loosened) without removing that final part. This part also carries the lugs for mounting the lens’s hood.

I can’t see a way to remove it. There are no obvious screws, although it’s too thin to use any, and a first attempt to separate the two parts by unscrewing (using a soft strap wrench) failed to make any impression on it. I’m concerned it may be held in place by some sort of sacrificial adhesive, and needs a special tool to generate enough torque to break the bond.

What I don’t understand is how I was able to wander around taking pics for over an hour last night, without the slightest hint that this filter/hood ring was about to part company in some place, or how five out of six screws could be completely out of their locations.

With the heads covered by the hood section, they could not have come loose, or been unscrewed by vibration, leaving (I think) only the option that they were pulled out by some force.

But, nothing happened last night (camera and lens were inside my jacket for most of the time), and this morning, all I did was lift the camera and lens, separate them (the ‘hot box’ is too small to take them when mounted together), place them in the box with no issues, then found the ring loose/noisy when I took them out.

Might this have been caused by some incident in the past, and the weakened grip of the screws finally let go when the parts were warmed?

Well, this discovery just about ended today’s intended post, not quite finished when I found the problem, and was on a more upbeat subject.

Maybe tomorrow.

😩

Sad farewell to an old friend on Christmas Eve

It’s funny how some things come as a surprise, as was the case when the item seen below finally decided to fail on me, after many decades of faithful service.

I’m not sure when I bought this, but I picked it up when I bought my first proper air compressor to power various air tools in my garage. It was the biggest that could be operated from a single phase 240 V 13 A domestic outlet, and the only way to get more air would have been to add a 3 phase supply, and that was something that definitely wasn’t going to happen. It was before 2000, maybe even 1990, so that hose lasted well.

However, when I snapped the connector into place, and pulled the hose, I knew it’s days were over, and it started to hiss.

Hardly a surprise, I’ve been watching cracks appear in the outer covering for years, although the core seemed to be unaffected – until now.

The source was close to the working end, where tools etc get plugged into a quick connect, but I didn’t think this would be all, and it turned out I was right,

I dunked the whole thing in a bath of water, and there were more streams of bubbles to be seen. Pretty small, and nothing like the hissing fail at the end, but realistically, this hose was gone.

Like the insulation in valve radios from the 1930s, this hose was derived from natural rubber, and was only going to get worse. I’m almost surprised it lasted as long as it did.

That said, I added various modern synthetic hoses to my collection over the years, and they would all still appear to be like new, since they don’t get abused.

Oh well, off to the skip it goes.

You can see the blue covering is covered with cracks.

At least I get to keep/re-use the fittings from the ends.

You can never have too many fittings

😱

The illegals – TIL 121

It’s taken weeks to catch this one.

Although it lives nearby, unfortunately, that also mean it’s somewhere I seldom pass with a camera, and luck was not on my side either. Whenever I did make the effort and take one with me, of course, the plate was never at home, until last night.

TIL 121 lives as an illegally spaced plate on a stinky diesel, in this case a white 2022 Range Rover Evoque.

Maybe my only Nativity scene for this year

If you’re a regular in here, and got the impression there’s not much range in the Christmas pics, you’d be right, as various issues have conspired to limit my travel.

I suspect this may be the only Nativity scene I see this year, but it is an impressive one.

Cropping the original has removed many of the cues, but this usually appears in a smaller window. However, the owner appears to have given over a sizeable portion of their main room to this year’s creation.

Luckily, the condensation curse wasn’t too bad in this shot, and I was able to clear up a lot of it, and do the scene justice, and make the image a little bigger too.