Sunday, April 26, 2020

Stress Followed by Relief


Any spare time this week has been taken up concentrating on and preparing for what was to occur yesterday evening.  This was the first livestream of 24 sessions in hourly timeslots from around the world in the NMRA-X live stream to the masses via the NMRA USA Facebook page.
Agenda for Saturday/Sunday's NMRA Live stream event.


I think I was asked just over a week ago to participate.  That started the brain ticking over.  What was I to present?  How was I do to it?  Where was I to do it from?  So last Saturday I got a wifi extender from Jaycar and set it up in the shed.  So my laptop could then get internet access when it was located in the shed.  I had a previously created a PowerPoint presentation that I had given to my team at work about what secret business actually gets transacted in the shed.  This was 20 slides, with 20 seconds to talk about each slide.  The team loved it and feedback spread around the organisation.  This was the basis of my presentation on Saturday evening.  So the number of slides were doubled and a few items changed.  Photos in the presentation featuring locations were updated as the trackage in some locations has evolved over the last 2 years when the original presentation was first created. 

I got out my “spy camera” that is suitable to be positioned on a flat car – container flat – and pushed around the layout.  But that camera would not charge and then issued an error after a minute or two of charging.  I asked around my close mates and they advised that they either did not have a “spy camera” or theirs was in the same boat and was consigned to the bin.  Mine had not been used for almost 8 years.  I found the next evolution of these cameras on eBay with the help of PK.  So I ordered one on Monday night.  Would it get here by Friday so I could use it and have some more current footage of the layout for Saturday evening’s presentation?  It was only coming from Sydney.  Surely it would!  You all knew the answer.  No chance like a snowflakes chance in hell.  But on Friday night another mate posted to our private Facebook modelling group some shots of his layout from his version of a spy camera on a flat wagon pushed in front of his loco.  This bloke had a “spy camera”!  So I made arrangements to scoot (don’t say anything PK) over to Jeff’s place and borrow his camera early on Saturday morning.  What a mate!

So I came home, put the camera on a flat car and then started running the car around the layout.  The first trial trip was from Grafton Yard to Cassino.  I checked the footage.  It was good, except there was no sound.  Damn!  Anyway I then proceeded to run the train all the way to South Brisbane Interstate Platform.  The only issue was running through the Running Creek area after Border Loop and before The Risk.  The train just stopped in a hidden section of track.  The loco derailed.  The camera fell off the wagon.  I think it hit the tunnel portal upon exit of the hidden section.  The wagon derailed many time in a very extreme reach area.  The wagon and loco derailed again and the camera fell off just before reaching the Risk.  So I restarted videoing after the troublesome section, and I just left that section of footage out.  I will eventually go back and investigate that section of track when I’m in the mood.  However, today I did look at my "Inspection Car" that houses the camera.  There is no bogie movement.  The screw was too tight.  So I loosened that up a bit so next time I expect to get better results.

Now to make matters worse, when I checked the Internet access in the morning sitting in the shed, I could not connect to the Internet.  My wifi extender would not work.  I could not get the internet.  I did everything I could think of.  I set it up again about 5 times.  Nothing worked.  That is when I need access to a good "plumber".  That is a work joke!  I am not a plumber.  I work with some of brightest network and security guys in Australia and I’d like to have one of them on tap when things go bad at home.  I can’t say what they actually do, but together, we can do practically anything.  Actually I sort of do have a plumber on tap.  Just up the road in the next suburb, “And Son” or “Raymondo the Magnificent” as we call him is almost in this tier of category.  He is in our local modelling group – the Tuesday Nighters.  He is also a go to man at work for network issues.  But I persisted alone.  I could just get my house wifi in the shed, but at 1 bar of signal, I thought the streaming of a slide show and any videos would be very bad in quality for the viewers around the world, and the network could possibly give up the ghost at anytime.  Anyway, I moved the location of the wifi extender in the shed, and everything came good.  Damn technology.

On Friday night the Australian contingent for the presentations (4 from Queensland and one from NSW) and some of the people assisting with the preparations and the event were online together discussing, showing and testing bits of their presentations.  So this week’s worth of stress seemed to be for no reason at all, as everything was in readiness.  At this stage my shed wifi was fantastic.

On Saturday afternoon, I logged on, saw a few mates online, and watched the Australian content.  As my presentation time came around, I logged onto the chat room and began my presentation.  About 15 minutes into the preso, the PC that streamed to Facebook downstream from my place got a norton’s violation.  So normal services were interrupted while that was fixed, and then we resumed the PowerPoint presentation and then showed the 6 video’s that ran for about 20 minutes and showed the train trip running from Grafton Yard to South Brisbane Interstate.  I watched the next session and then resumed watching this morning and after 26 hours of broadcasting the stream finally ended around 11:00am this morning.  Eventually the presentations will be cut down with the downtime where the change over of presenters is cut out and this will be available on YouTube in a few weeks.

It was a great show.  You could see the friendly banter of the team from the UK, USA and Australia that put this together.  I was in stitches at times.  Great work by everyone.  So now I feel relief.  Well when you have just over 7 days to plan and prepare a presentation to the world, out of the blue, it will create a bit of stress.  So my original plan for this weekend to have a box assembled for the station building at Kyogle by this today has not progressed at all.  I’m sort of feeling exhausted right now.  So maybe that is now next week’s goal.

I did however do some tinkering in the shed this arvo.  I had a 12mm curve point sitting around unused.  Today I finally found a locations for it.  At the far end of Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard, I can put this into a headshunt and create another short 600mm siding.  That is a location for my growing fleet of narrow gauge wagons.

4 comments:

  1. All I'll say is... "Er" ... Hehehe

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  2. My camera turned up today. Who'd have thunk that?

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  3. Murphy exists - didn't ya know?......

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  4. Glad you persevered Craig, don't forget to share a link to the YouTube clip when its done!

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