Tuesday 4 November 2008

Blogs, Press, Sewing machines and bits.

My people have been inundated with feedback about the new Blog Aggregator, which was 100% positive. I have fixed the network performance issues by making it update every hour so it should mostly be fast. Therefore my people have advised me to go live ASAP which I have done. Although it is hard for me to thank all the people personally for their feedback I will do it: Thanks Alan and Joe.

The Moth site did get 2700 unique users a day during the last worlds so there is a lot of users out there, however with all the rss feeds most of them are probably now computers. Unfortunately the log file is too large to download and analyse at 1.3 GB so I do not know.

I will not be writing about Austrian politics any more. There are well known Austrian comics making light of Haiders death and they have had to cancel their tour due to the threats made against them. As far as I am concerned Haider was a great man on the way home to his family after being in a cool night club when he tragically died in an accident as reported in the press here. He was certainly NOT pissed out his head driving at twice the speed limit when he overtook an car and smashed himself up in the tax payers car he was driving on the way home for a gay night club having been in a fight with his toy boy who happens to be the number too in his political party. This information as reported in the foreign press in incorrect.

I am really disappointed that some people "now" misunderstand that he was maybe gay friendly as he will me remembered as this and not for his responsible well thought through policies to the difficult issues of cultural integration.

One problem with my political misunderstandings is they have little to do with Moths. So for those Haider fans that are still reading I got very disappointed today because I visited a sewing machine shop and showed then bits of an old windsurfing sail and some sample sailmaker thread. The idea was their 600 EURO heavy duty domestic machine would handle this and so I could make covers tramps and foil bags for the 2 moths I own. However the guy there said no way and I am looking at 2000 EURO for a second hand machine if I am lucky. So my plan to kit out 2 boats, cut down an old Moth sail for a storm sail, and make the boom end loss stopper thing this winter are over.

I had a great sail on Saturday as Niki and I enjoyed a force 2 to 4 warm wind. It was beautiful flying around an empty flat lake. However I decided that was the was to end the season and packing up my boat I saw that the rudder, that was broken by the delivery monkeys, has cracked again. This is probably a result of the contact with the ground and the fact that it is had to get the core glued back together again once it is cracked. So I think I have a to stick a new horizontal on the rudder this winter.

Moving into winter mode I spent most of Sunday de rigging 2 boats and storing them in the workshop. I will spend the winter getting then in good working order for next season and then I hope to sell my old boat so we have another sailor here and I can get rid of some of the huge number of Moth bits I seam to have.

8 comments:

Teknologika said...

Doug,

Use google analytics if you want stats. It's free and brilliant.

Bruce

Doug Culnane said...

Thanks for the tip. I think Tom told me to do this a while ago but I never got round to it. I will check it out.

nick flutter said...

hi doug
i have an old singer machine that has been used with heavy thread on dacron yacht mainsails in the past. it was a treadle action style one originally, converted to electric with a type of bolt on motor and belt. works a charm, you can get them on ebay for next to nothing, except they weigh heaps. I think it was a 206K. anyway dont underestimate the way they built thing before the war!

Doug Culnane said...

Cheers Nick,

But does it do a zig zag 3 step stitch? I suspect not.

That is what I understand you need for a good sailmaking machine.

nick flutter said...

yeh it just does a plain zigzag in a pre-volkswagen kinda way. it has apparently in its lifetime made sails, but probably the ones you had to iron.

Karl said...

Doug! Dude! You don't a)need the three step zigzag or b)want to pay for it because it costs a fortune. So give up and get a nice regular zigzag one like everyone else, because chances are you cannot sew any better than the rest of us and a fancy machine would be a total waste. If you can get a walking foot so much the better, but even that is not necessary. I have a 100 year old refurbished Singer embroidery model on a new table with a Chinese motor and I love it. eBay and Craigslist. They are not cheap but they are not 2000 Austrian fascist Euros either - more like 500. PS tell Arnold to come home - our state has a $13B budget deficit this year and it sounds like Austria is a politician down at the moment. Nice blogregator BTW.

G said...

What Karl says. I've had a 15$ machine that I used for many years. Stitching sails and other thick crap. Worked great until I lost a small part.
The only thing you need to do is change the spring for the foot.
I decided to upgrade to an industrial walking foot last year, I can now stitch 1/4'' plywood, which is cool but not very useful. It's a pain in the butt to adjust and I can only straight stitch.
These type of machine go fo ~400$, add at least $200 for the zig-zag.

Dubai Moth Association said...

Doug, have three machines over here that my bro and gareth are trying to get rid of!

They do all the fancy stuff you are talking about, i have no idea!