Gorby

We found that the only way you can speak to a human was to say that you are the sender of the package rather than the recipient.

Some excellent scratching there Graham.

Thanks for the comments @Model Mate & @Murdo I won't be allowed to post a link here, so I'll just say that Google is your friend. 😉

Yes it is very tempting but: In 1/35 it'll be eight and a half feet high and wouldn't fit into any room in my house (and it's too cold to work in the garden). In 1/48 it would be six and a quarter feet high. I'd fit it in the room but that would be pointless as Mrs Gorby would kick me out of the house. In 1/72 it would be just over four foot tall and I would fit it in the room, I may be allowed to stay in the house, but I'm not sure I could afford the repayments for the mortgage I'd need for the building materials. 'Only' two feet tall in 1/144 but…. …. I'M NOT BUILDING THE BLOODY THING!!!!!!!!!

It is a very silly tanky thing, but after having a look though Google patents, it starts to look rational in comparison to some. The most ridiculous by quite a large margin is 'Atherton's Self-Propelled Fort': https://patents.google.com/patent/GB125610A/en?q=~patent%2fUS1195680A&page=36 It was supposed to be 300 feet high – the red arrow is pointing to a human figure. You'd have to tether it to the moon to get it to move. And before you ask, I'm NOT building the bloody thing! Thanks for all the comment mates.

Thanks @roginoz There is a work in progress the the beast and the dio, but not on this site and unfortunately I can't give you a link or I'll be banned from BM. Although for this WIP I actually wrote about modelling, which was a bit of a novelty for me.

Thanks @burncpt @Longbow @JohnT @Tim R-T-C @keefr22 @Pete in Lincs @JeroenS @dnl42 @Homer & @swralph for your comments and everyone else for your 'likes'. Being the worlds foremost expert in one of the most useless machines ever to have been imagined ( I certainly understand it better than Jehlik ever did), I would love to bore you into a coma with all the inadequacies and downright stupidities of the design, but I wouldn't want to be accused of filling the internet. Needless to say, the roller-beast would have been more of a liability than an asset and it's own troops and particularly the crew would more likely to come to serious harm than the baddies. There were several occasion when I wondered why I was spending a serious chunk of my remaining life building something who's design should have been burned the instant is was drawn. If fact the paper should have been burned long before it was drawn. It's completely ridiculous – and that's why I love it. @Pete in Lincs Fool! Steam is so last week! This was the totally modern, up the minute, cutting edge war machine powered by those new fangled infernal internal combustion jobbies – three of them in fact. The two filler caps are on the top because where else to put the highly explosive/flammable fuel tank other than directly above the crew?

Jehlik's Armoured Vehicle 1916 In your, frankly disappointing universe, Jehlik's armoured vehicle didn't progress any further than the filing cabinets of the US patent office, but in mine it went on to a gloriously disastrous career. Why limit yourself to this pretty uninspiring reality when a quick browse through the other more interesting alternatives is significantly more entertaining. Anton J Jehlik was mad. Madder than the maddest mad thing ever to hop though madland, you'd have to be to have designed this: Silly isn't it. Sillier still when you know that the big roller is on the front and the bangy things are pointing backwards. Aaaannnyyyway…. It's generally considered that the Americans were supposed to join the WWI party in 1917. However, in 1916 they got themselves a brand new toy and couldn't wait to play with it. The original idea was for the roller-beast to be built in vast numbers in a shipyard on England’s south coast, before the British government tactfully declined, stating “There's no ******* way we want to be involved with such a studi...”, well... the details aren’t important. The contract went to a ship yard near Boston who built eleven metal monsters before they ran out of steel. The machines went through exhaustive testing to see what they could achieve, and isn't it remarkable how fast a nations jubilation can turn to despair – squashing the marching band during the military parade can sometimes do that. With great fanfare the army held a service-wide competition to pick the crew, and the losers started their training soon afterwards. Jehlik became a national hero… briefly, before changing his name and seeking asylum in Andorra where he lived out the remainder of his days breeding with sheep, sorry I mean breeding sheep. After six of them ended up keeping the Titanic company on the bottom of the Atlantic, the remaining five machines trundled ashore in France. The initial surge of joy from the French was soon extinguished after the fourth village was reduced to rubble in the attempt to get the machines to the front. Their début on the battlefield would have been a great success, but as the existence of the roller beast was difficult to hide, those cowardly Bosch had dug a long pit in front of their trenches which caused the first four behemoths to get their silly rear castors stuck. How unsporting is that? The Americans wrote a very strongly worded letter to the kaiser saying it really wasn't fair as they were looking forward to a damn good squishing. To show the strength of their feeling they even omitted the kisses from the end. The kaiser missed the post that day as he was at the bingo. Here we see the sole survivor, number 7 which also had the official name 'USLS (United Sates Land Ship) Friendly Fire' which became the only one to engage the enemy. Enabling the American to successfully take the German trench after finding the occupants helpless with laughter after seeing the roller-beast get stuck on a tiny muddy mound. The ref later ruled the American move to be off-side and they had to go back to their own hole in the ground, leaving the score nil-nil. And so Jehlik's monster was edited out of history by an embarrassed nation. Aaannnyyyway… This took about six months in total. Thanks for havin a ganders - I hope you like it.

Thanks for that Spruecutter - I took the easy option and bought a new camera.

That doesn't work, to be honest I'm not sure what it's for. As Bullbasket says, just post the URL directly into your post.

Thanks for that Jeroen. I wonder if that will also include Google Blog? Theoretically it shouldn’t be a problem as reducing the photo file to a reasonable size means that there still should be room for 40,000 or 50,000 photos. I think that would last most people a hell of a long time.

Some companies do it so that you can't use them as a photo host, although I'm not sure that's why Google Photo links don't last.

Do you mean 'Google Photos'? Google images is their search function. If you do mean Google Photos don't for get you will have to generate a direct link for every photo using https://www.labnol.org/embed/google/photos/ or eventually the links will fail and your old post will loose there photos. I lost eight months of photo links before I realised that.

Thanks Ned - that answers that question. It originally did work and now it looks like the link has broken. Looks like Amazon Photos is a no go. PS. I'll just go an check to see I'm Jeff Bezos - you never know, it might be my turn today.

Have you just tried pasting the link (from left clicking and selecting 'copy image location') directly into your post? Don't use the 'Insert image from URL' button. That button is useless.

Originally I said that Amazon Photos wasn't suitable for hotlinking - it was possible but there were too many steps for it to be practical. I've just had another look and they seem to have changed it. As you say, there is a 'share link' button but as you've found, it doesn't display the photo in the post - just a link to view the photo in the original location. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/photos/share/wvFNgCGBQnjBugTx8l8nvzvwBg4DcGWge2uMhSrGA3J It seems to work when you just click on the photo and then left click and select 'Copy image location'. Having said that, I don't know if the link is permanent as some companies reset links so that you can't use their site as a host. ** UPDATE ** The link no longer works so it looks like Amazon Photo isn't a good option.

I can't remember why I came to that conclusion, although no doubt I was entirely correct (as I always am in my version of reality). I haven't been on BM much recently so I hadn't seen that you were making a mini-me Xantho first – very nice work! Perhaps you could say to the museum staff “No, I definitely said it would be in 1/144.” Then you can get back to making tracks for the tanky thing.

That's a trip down memory lane - that was the first kit I ever built. It goes without saying (even though I'm going to say it) yours is several thousand times better than the pre-teen me managed.

I must admit I am curious about the running costs and would love to know a ballpark figure - just out of interest, not trouble-making. The suggestion that it cost a few Tamiya 1/32 kits is a tiny bit vague when the definition of 'few' is 'not many, but more than one'. So a few Tamiya kits could be from £150 to £1,000+!

Wow! That honestly does look like you've just taken a photo of a loading bay and framed it!

Hi @aviapassionmaquette, Facebook image links are designed to expire and renew after a while. It is to prevent hotlinking to their images in external websites. There are plenty more hosts that you could use:

Thanks @dogsbody In order to show photos on this site you will need a photo host. The site is run on a very small budget (you may have noticed that there isn't any advertising) so can't afford a server big enough to store all the pictures that are uploaded. There are other reasons like security etc. All you need to know about posting photos is here (don't worry that it's several pages long, all you need is the first post on the first page): There is a document on suitable photo hosts here: Posting photo's on here may look complicated at first, but it it is much easier than it sounds.

@aviapassionmaquette In a different thread a couple of people have mentioned that they can't see the photos, are you using Facebook as a host?

I can see the photos without any problems. The image size doesn't seem to be excessive but when I checked the image address it mentioned 'scontent' and when I looked to to see what that is, it mentions that the photos may be stored on Facebook. Facebook isn't a suitable photo hosting site for hotlinking so perhaps that might be the problem. I'll ask the bod who posted the photos.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before either – I don't think it has and it's a good point to make. I also use GIMP* to crop the photo and reduce in size. I use 180dpi and reduce the image size to 160mm (about 1130px) width or height (whichever is the greatest). Then I save the file with an image quality of 90% which reduced the file size to around 200 - 300kB. As you say, the reduction in quality of the image is barely noticeable on a monitor (with my eyes anyway). * for anyone that doesn't know what GIMP is, it's a completely free image manipulation program– a bit like Photoshop but without the cost. It's excellent and well worth downloading if your looking for a photo editor.