[Dave Rice]

Yes it’s true and it’s not very nice.

[Dave Rice]

Well they may well still be there, but on Google maps I can only see the ones on the A38 end of the runway (they are all intact).

The airfield is now closed and due to be redeveloped into housing. However the shelters I am thinking of may be inside the Airbus site or the scrub around the railway line that is (now) the site boundary at that place. If they get dug up we will hear about it, there’s enough people left (or descendants of) that know of the history, if not the details.

If they were further up the site that has all been heavily redeveloped by the successors to BAC over the years (although you would still recognise the corner of Southmead Rd and Golf Course Lane). If they did anything with them it would have been done properly as generations work there.

My B-I-L has worked for Airbus / GKN (manufacturing outsourced to them) on the site for 15 – 20 years. I will ask him if he knows anything.

Just seen a clip of the local news, the 170 is now in the Brabazon Hanger. I think the wings get moved in the early hours.

[Dave Rice]

I heard that story too Richard (I am a Filton boy but now live in Stoke Gifford) but not the leaving the bodies there part.

Just discovered this reference The aftermath of a raid “The factory death toll was high due to a series of direct hits by high explosive bombs on six crowded air raid shelters. The scenes confronting the rescue parties were horrific, shelters had caved in burying the occupants. Others had been blasted wide open mutilating the occupants almost beyond recognition. The task of identification was a sad and unenviable duty. “ So I suspect it’s Chinese whispers.

There are many shelters still visible inside the airfield boundary but inaccessible even now it’s disused, but I don’t think it’s them that were involved. I know it’s not the ones on the hill by the golf course as I used to pay in them as a kid. The old shadow factory (Rolls Royce) buildings were demolished several years ago (new factory now opposite) and it’s being redeveloped as a business park. Any plaque is probably now in that new building. **

The “new” West of England Mail Centre is on part of the site and the concrete radial engine casts that decorated the front of the oldest RR factory plus the old Bristol Mail Centre war memorial plaques have been preserved outside reception.

** Just found some maps in the earlier pages of the article and it wasn’t the RR shelters. I suspect it was the ones on the edge of the airfield by what is now the Brabazon Hangers (where Concord was built and stood for years when it came home). I worked on this site and have never heard of a plaque, but if it’s by the shelters no-one goes there as it would have been airside and therefore out of bounds.

[Dave Rice]

Complain ?

Its been 6 weeks and 3 times Ive been promised a refund on my useless Genie and still nothing. #AACarGenie

[Dave Rice]

I did say average user, gamers are not average users.

But having practical every day experience of switching between machines that can have a single threaded speed difference of more than 30% link I cannot tell the difference in use. I know the i3 boots quicker but it’s only a second or two and you’d only notice if they were side by side. Put me on a machine with an FX-6300 with an SSD and an i7 with a spinner and I would notice the difference and it wouldn’t be the CPU.

I’m sure the geek and data centre worlds will (rightly) be awash with tales of woe, but Joe Public and home / SMB general purpose servers? We will see but I doubt it will be significant.

[Dave Rice]

Twitter.

[Dave Rice]

Yes this has been all over the local news this week. I remember them as Airfix models when I was a kid but I didn’t realise they were this big.

[Dave Rice]

Problem is Bob, even with the performance hit the Intel’s will still walk all over the FX-6300 in the benchmarks.

This is what makes me think that the average user won’t notice a thing. I switch between the FX-6300 and i3-6300 desktops and an i5-6200U laptop. The one thing they all have in common is an SSD. The i3 boots quicker but it’s only a second or two, in use I cannot tell the difference. Users of the low cost low power SOC laptops are more likely to be those that get the noticeable hit.

Of course none of this applies to boxes where the CPU is deliberately hammered, like rendering or virtual machine hosts. None of that applies to me any more. My AWS EC2 t2.micro server CPU rarely hits 2% looking after 11 APs on 8 sites.

[Dave Rice]

It’s going to affect all o/ses AFAIK.

[Dave Rice]

Yellow warning of wind here from 18:00 for 24 hours.

Winds expected in the mid 50s mph overnight and we’re inland.

[Dave Rice]

Steve, my Mrs took up running with the NHS Couch to 5K program. It’s in the form of 9 weekly podcasts and tells you when to jog, walk or rest so you don’t do yourself a mischief. Quite easy to do if you’ve been a runner before and not done any for 15 years!

She joined the local Sole Sisters club – it’s as much a social thing as running, none of them are “athletes”, but they do 5 and 10Ks and organise one of their own. She runs up to 3 times a week, normally 4 or 5 miles. It depends who’s about and how much time they have – her WhatsApp goes nuts on running days. They have a beginners section and run training courses. It might be worth seeing if you have anything like it locally.

Fingers crossed Bob.

[Dave Rice]

I can see why you don’t want to move the whole home to the spinner, but it’ll probably make it easier. You’ll have to move the existing docs on the spinner into the new Home or you’ll be in the same boat with symlinks.

Personally I would persist (no pun intended) with keeping the Home on the SSD and sorting out the auto mounting / link properties until it’s done your head in too much ?

[Dave Rice]

It’s amazingly easy to damage Ethernet cable and still have it pass a basic tester.

[Dave Rice]

When in Belgium don’t worry about beer on tap, that’s a very British thing. That’s probably why you could only find the local piss water.

Beer comes in bottles and has to be served in the correct glass and it comes in 33ml servings, not pints. Probably just as well as it’s all 8 or 9 percent. You can get Duvel or Leffe anywhere and everywhere, even Tescos.

Bruges, if you’re coming from the coast keep on going to Ghent (if you’re coming from Brussels it’s the stop before). The centre is very much like Bruges but it’s nowhere near the tourist rip off prices. It also has a proper tram system to get to and from the station (the pretty bit in the centre is all walkable).

On the coast, Blankenberge is more of your jolly seaside town, it also has Belgium’s only pier. The little cafe in the square outside the station (it’s the stop after Bruges and on the coastal tram route) is a great place to while away the time waiting for the train with the locals. Antwerp is just wonderful, we spend a lot of time in Leuven.

Brussels is probably the worst place to get the experience of Belgium, like London is not representative  of Britain. Land at Zavantem and get the train to anywhere else ? Leuven is less than 20 minutes away and there are over 40 trains a day on that route. Leuven’s on the main train line to anywhere in the country so get a 10 journey card for E70 you can also share with others and use that as a base.

[Dave Rice]

It’s a normal cable John, you can use any you may already have.

[Dave Rice]

Yes, Seasons Greetings to everyone.

All the kids and guests have arrived, I guess our Christmas starts now ? ???

[Dave Rice]

I believe someone here did actually do just that – Drezha? Might have been on the old forum.

However the keys you get from EBay are for fresh installs only.

[Dave Rice]

Every team had to do a round at the pub quiz last night. I did ours on a Christmas theme and spent a lot of time looking at the different traditions around Europe and then on into the wider world. It’s all pagan at the heart of it with later Christian bits added and some of it can be quite dark.

The Dutch think Sinterklass (St Nicholas) lives in Madrid and returns on the second Saturday in November choosing a different port each year. He rides a white horse and has a sidekick called Black Peter. Black Peter keeps the records on which children have been good or bad. The bad ones he puts in a sack and takes them to Spain for a year to learn how to behave. Yikes!

[Dave Rice]

Windows 10 Pro is a tenner on E-Bay.

[Dave Rice]

I know where you’re coming from Bob. Stonehenge is only an hour away from me and I used to go a lot, especially when the free festival was still going.

I’ve always meant to go in midwinter but never have. Indeed it’s been a long time since I went at summer solstice. At least they let you in to the stones again these days. It was only Ken Barlow and the Druids allowed in back in the 70s and 80s and the free festival was stopped by the boys from the Met Battle of the Beanfield

I was reading somewhere that Yule comes from an old Norse word for the wheel. Yuletide being the turning of the wheel, another year starting.

[Author]

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