Turning to larceny?

I think it's for making cakes...

Image search says it is for lock picking.



Edit: That was a whoosh, wasn't it?

It's a fun hobby. I've made most of my own lock picks, but having a decent gun makes life a lot easier.

That’s where it started to go wrong for Oscar.

Harry Houdini was famous for picking locks.

Good morning Fangle.

How's things?

the woodwork has just disintegrated

Still in place though. The woodworms are holding hands.

Pellet stove?

We have pellet central heating but the stoves are woodburners.

Had some gift voucher presents from Christmas so grabbed these, much better than any of those overpriced Beats by Dre headphones that look nice but are pretty sh!t. These Bose are not the cheapest either but so far so good and are noise cancelling AF

Doing well, thanks Tae. Good to see you around. How are the guts holding up?

My guts have been brilliant since I stopped taking the drugs that was causing all my trouble.

your fridge is on fire!

My old hard drive crashed. Hopefully they can recover the last 19 years worth of photos I stored on it

Always have two copies mate....

Synctoy and keep one offsite

Yea lesson learnt. Going to fork out for some cloud storage too.

Assfly, be careful who you ask to recover the info.

I recovered photos from a corrupted harddrive for a friend, but a lot of so-called professionals (especially in Africa) will risk damaging the contents in the process.

I used this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/?source=directory to create a bootup from flashdrive, make a copy of the hard drive and then run tools like photorec https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec to recover the photos. More here:

I would say that there's every chance you can recover your photos (unless some dimwit trashes them in trying to examine the hard drive).

Not mine but this is the latest to go up in my friend's house in Naples, Florida.



A bit OTT for my taste.

He went over two days ago to keep an eye on the builders. With flu. Goodness nose how many were infected on the way over the Pond.

The B&W ones are the absolute danglies...

Nothing classy but regretted getting rid of my Vinyl and record player a few years ago, so decided to spend Xmas money given to me on these. Back to the future me.

I've got a Linn deck, an audio system (Audiolab) to blow your socks off through Kef Reference speakers.

Plus over 3000 vinyls, most of which take up the space in my late mother's house.

Your mum has gone too ?

How unfortanate

Pity about the spelling and an inappropriate response from you.

Grow up. My mother died of a glioma, a brain tumour to you, you ignoramus.

She was head of the household and I have tried to keep her role alive.

I expect you would just evaluate that in money terms. Not the sort of post I'd expect from a true rugby man. I suspect your credentials. You have gone to an almighty amount of time to challenge mine.

You lose, on all counts.

I am typing on the phone , and it would appear at times, rather badly.

It does seem though that whatever the subject or problem in your tales, any problem (say lack of funds or lack of storage space) is always solved by some wealthy relative dying and leaving you a house to keep it in.

If you were to take up a hobby that required lots of space (and right now I can’t think of anything you haven’t already won, invented or sold) then any remaining relatives you have left (surely their numbers are getting low by now) must start shitting their pants .


Most true Rugby men, do not talk such made up bollocks as you do.

Surprised you've gone for something so down market. Thought you would have one of these



Or these

Again, you lose. You can accuse me all you like about lying. It's about as good as you will get I suppose. The truth is that you need to get out and about, as much as I have.

I was brought up to get out as much as I could from my three score years and ten.

Many years ago I wrote down what would challenge me, long before the lists of "50 things before you die" came along.

Plenty of compromises in there as I could not get either my first wife, nor the Management, throw themselves out of a perfectly servicable aircraft.

I've no idea why you keep poking fingers at me. The chances are we'd enjoy a decent pint somewhere.

As it happens I may be down your way as there is a crossword convention nearby.

There were some seriously mad and expensive bits of kit. But I was a friend of Derek Scotland and Philip Swift. Look them up.

Derek lived in my village (Hilton) and I used to mow his lawn when he was away. I also helped Philip in a social way but I'll not say anything about that. He's now the head honcho of a certain speaker firm.

Have a look at their credentials. It involves TagMcLaren which meant I got front row seats (the pits) at the F1 at Silverstone.

Plus a bit more.

I always find it amusing when people who don’t understand acoustics think that spending vast amounts of money on various pieces of kit equates to a high quality listening experience.

Instead, they could spend a couple of hundred quid on acoustic panels, corner baffles and get a WAY better experience with more accurate reproduction at the listening point from a £500 system.

All the gear, no idea at its most acute!

I have never had the money to go ALL posh and get this system or that system (even though I worked all my working (15-65) life. I find I enjoy listening to music as I have ALWAYS known it, even back to the 50s - 60s even if that means listening on inferior systems.

Never tried anything B&W before. I travel a fair bit so escaping noisy planes with these are great. I wouldn't recommend wearing them on the streets though, but also good for the gym.

Yes, there's a danger that you end up listening to the quality of the system rather than the music itself. The music can be just as enjoyable on a modest system as a really expensive one.

Yep. I just enjoy annoying the next village when I turn the volume up a bit.

The really good bit is that there is no distortion, at all. It's fingers in ears time here and Glapthorn gets the benefit.

Hmmm.....if you listen to an album you know well on an inferior system after hearing it on a great one, it really can lose its appeal.

Which (apart from the finances) is why I stick to what I know and love.

Italian powder coated alloy outdoor chairs and table set.

This is all hearsay and told to me by a friend of my girlfriend's so no guarantee of veracity, but I was told of a Hungarian expat living here in Jo'burg, who has a special room in his house with only one especially designed chair in it for listening to music, principally jazz. All lights have to be turned off and the single electrical outlet to the record playing equipment is connected to a magnetic device to minimise electrical interference. The audio equipment (he told me the name, but it's a bespoke firm which I had never heard of) was built especially for the room and engineers were flown over from Europe to design and install it at the cost of millions (Rand, but still a six figure sum in Euros).

Now, it's all very well to go to those extremes if you are ostentatiously wealthy and want to impress, but I cannot see how the human ear can differentiate between that sort of dedication to quality sound and reasonably good off-the-shelf gear. Certainly I can't, although my gf, who is a professional musician, might.

Still, a topic for another thread, methinks.

Nah, the difference between a 'modest' system, and a great one, is still quite marginal. By 'modest' I'm not talking about something crappy - £500 can get you one that will always sound pretty good.

Indeed, anything can be crazily taken to the extreme.

The point I was making about improving the acoustics is it’s easy and cheap. And will have a bigger impact on listening experience for most rooms than the marginal gains of spending £1000+ on better speakers etc.