Reply to: Monday Links from the Bench vol. CLXIV

[Sysman]

Pink plastic?

This is a Proper Meccano set:

Meccano outfit 9, circa 1949, parts complete | eBay

The Number 10 set came in a large wooden box.

You had to be seriously rich to buy one of those new.

A mint condition Number 10 set went for £3k some years ago.

One of my ambitions as a nipper was to upgrade all the way to Number 10. I discovered girls and foreign travel before I got that far.

The red and green paint used prior to the yellow and silver scheme had lead in it.

I distinctly remember the Concerned Parents asking "Do you suck your Meccano?"

"No", I lied.

That might explain a thing or two.

I'm not sure.

[mudskipper]

Ok, that was mean. Spent 20 mins waiting to see what was going to appear.

[NickFitz]

Ok, that was mean. Spent 20 mins waiting to see what was going to appear.

Examples of "loading" indicators always have that problem

[northernladuk]

Ah, right. Yes, it uses PhotoSwipe, which is pretty crap IMHO but is popular at the moment with the kind of people who don't know the difference between JavaScript and jQuery. I think they like it because it proudly trumpets its compatibility with "lots of mobile platforms", though it rather obviously fails miserably in the area of compatibility with anything else.

The throbber, to give it its proper name, will just be an animated GIF You can make your own, in a variety styles, at sites such as Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator; for example:

Ok, that was mean. Spent 20 mins waiting to see what was going to appear.

[barrydidit]

Yeah, you probably wanted to avoid 2 girls 1 cup - too late now though

Don't search for goatse.cx, tubgirl, or lemonparty either

I won't. I've got an ace chilli cooking - any more of that nonsense and it'll have to be frozen till the memory is subdued!

[NickFitz]

That 10 best films thing....good. The reference in 'the kiss' to '2 girls 1 cup' which I felt compelled to search...super-bad.

Still, at least I can tick skat films off the list of unknowns and that means Monday hasn't been wasted. Cheers NF!

Yeah, you probably wanted to avoid 2 girls 1 cup - too late now though

Don't search for goatse.cx, tubgirl, or lemonparty either

[barrydidit]

That 10 best films thing....good. The reference in 'the kiss' to '2 girls 1 cup' which I felt compelled to search...super-bad.

Still, at least I can tick skat films off the list of unknowns and that means Monday hasn't been wasted. Cheers NF!

[NickFitz]

OK let me be more specific. While the first picture loads quickly, about 20-30 in, quite a numbered appeared just as blacked nothing. clicking forward, waiting a while then clicking back and the images were there. So it seemed to me that the site itself was slow.

As for Flash, my bad. While this black nothing was happening, a flash-like (actually more Apple like) "I'm waiting for something to load" spinny thingy was displayed.

And the forward one / backward one buttons kept disappearing off the bottom of the screen.

Either way, crap site IMO but funny pictures

Ah, right. Yes, it uses PhotoSwipe, which is pretty crap IMHO but is popular at the moment with the kind of people who don't know the difference between JavaScript and jQuery. I think they like it because it proudly trumpets its compatibility with "lots of mobile platforms", though it rather obviously fails miserably in the area of compatibility with anything else.

The throbber, to give it its proper name, will just be an animated GIF You can make your own, in a variety styles, at sites such as Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator; for example:

[Platypus]

Also, you might want to check your network

OK let me be more specific. While the first picture loads quickly, about 20-30 in, quite a numbered appeared just as blacked nothing. clicking forward, waiting a while then clicking back and the images were there. So it seemed to me that the site itself was slow.

As for Flash, my bad. While this black nothing was happening, a flash-like (actually more Apple like) "I'm waiting for something to load" spinny thingy was displayed.

And the forward one / backward one buttons kept disappearing off the bottom of the screen.

Either way, crap site IMO but funny pictures

[NickFitz]

I thought the full kits were still being manufactured in Poland.

Must admit I haven't seen Meccano advertised recently, in New Scientist for example.

Looking on Amazon, it does seem that most of the sets are kits, although there seem to be a few that are, at least, kits for making mutiple things, and therefore nearer to a general-purpose set.

And then there's this, for the laydeez:

Meccano Girls Tool Box: Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games

You can tell it's for girls, 'cos the components are made out of plastic

[vetran]

This is cool

My Petabyte roommate:

My Petabyte Roommate - YouTube

[northernladuk]

Also, you might want to check your network: loading through an HTTP debugging proxy on Firefox, with Firebug active, took 2.68 seconds; the total size of all content, including the first image, was 301.8KB, which isn't that huge. For comparison, the CUK General front page is 406KB, although it loads in a snappy 1.78s. (All load times are with an empty cache.) So the "ages to load" is one-and-a-half times as long as CUK. (Also, CUK makes 48 HTTP requests, versus hadonejob.com's 12; so hadonejob could easily turn out faster on a congested network.)

Yep, yellow cable is in the right hole... God knows what any of that other stuff means though :|

[OwlHoot]

You've not been able to buy the old style construction kits of rods without a direct purpose for meccano since 1992.

I thought the full kits were still being manufactured in Poland.

Must admit I haven't seen Meccano advertised recently, in New Scientist for example.

[NickFitz]

It's a dreadful site with a Flash slideshow which takes ages to load. But it did work for me in Chrome.

No Flash. The slideshow script uses the standard element.addEventListener method, which IE didn't support until version 9. Seems a bit crappy not to include a workaround using old IE's non-standard attachEvent, but that's the way things are going these days.

Also, you might want to check your network: loading through an HTTP debugging proxy on Firefox, with Firebug active, took 2.68 seconds; the total size of all content, including the first image, was 301.8KB, which isn't that huge. For comparison, the CUK General front page is 406KB, although it loads in a snappy 1.78s. (All load times are with an empty cache.) So the "ages to load" is one-and-a-half times as long as CUK. (Also, CUK makes 48 HTTP requests, versus hadonejob.com's 12; so hadonejob could easily turn out faster on a congested network.)

[darmstadt]

The Scarfolk Council one reminds me very much of the National Office of Importance...