HossC

Countdown (because of the hit song by the band Europe) I seem to remember that Anne Frank wrote a rather famous diary about when war did come to your country!

Soon after the new Minis came out, I was talking to someone who owned one with the checkered flag roof. Tongue-in-cheek, seeing as I'm in Ireland, I suggested they look better with a Union Jack roof. After that he would only talk to my colleague! Bearing this in mind, you can see why I had mixed feelings when I was asked to carry a Union Jack through the streets as part of a parade last year. To put it in context, it was for a remembrance event, and I was walking alongside the flags of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany.

Must've been something wrong with the camera. Here's how it should've looked :

It's definitely got colder here since the middle of the week, and although parts of the UK have snow (reports say it could hit -12C (10.4F) tonight), so far there's no snow here. I did, however, find this rather beautiful frost pattern on my car roof this morning:

I bought it and read it many years ago, but since then I've only dipped back into it for reference. Now that you've asked the question, most of memory of the book is the first half before he got famous - the (sometimes dark) stories of childhood, the college years and the drinking. My knowledge of his time on Dukes comes from many sources, so I can't remember exactly which bits came from the book. Despite reading the book to the end, I have very little recollection of the later years. Maybe I should take another look.

That's only about an hour's drive away from where I live - maybe I'll have to go and see it.

smooth (I didn't google that!)

Ken ----------------------------------------- After writing the Greenland story, I remembered another funny answer on a quiz show from a few years ago. I can't recall the question, but it concerned Central America (possibly something about countries and capital cities). The contestant seemed pleased that the question was about Central America, and claimed to have visited a couple of times. When the host asked where she'd been most recently, she said Iowa! Again, I don't remember the host correcting her, but I think she realized when the correct answer came up. I think my all-time favorite (which I may have mentioned before) is "Who was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas?". Contestant's answer below:

Hey, Roger, you could become like Andy Park, aka. Mr. Christmas. He celebrated Christmas every day from 1993 for 23 years. I think he may still be doing it - he vowed to quit after December 2015 (he was overweight and broke), but only lasted two weeks before restarting his celebrations. From Wikipedia: And more from the Daily Express in 2016:

Long I've never heard that before, but in a quiz show I watched last week, the contestant was asked "Viking Leif Erikson established the first permanent settlement on which island?". Her two guesses were Iceland and Alaska, and she eventually went for Iceland. Why the host never told her that Alaska wasn't an island, I don't know. The answer is actually Greenland!

I'm old enough to have learned both of the common scales, but have been using Celsius (or Centigrade as we were originally taught it) for many years now. Some useful conversions are: 0°C is 32°F, 30°C is 86°F and 100°C is 212°F. If you go somewhere really cold it gets very easy because -40°C is -40°F. I'm sure you've got an app to do the conversion, but otherwise you'll need to subtract 32 and divide by 1.8 (subtracting 30 and dividing by 2 gives a good approximation at normal temperatures and is easier to calculate in your head). I found a 2016 article which suggests that Fahrenheit is now only used by the United States (and associated territories), the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands and Palau. Don't forget that your car will measure speed and distance in miles because the United States (and Myanmar and Liberia) are still using Imperial measurements. Of course your gas will still be measured in gallons, but US gallons are only about 3.8 liters instead of the 4.5 liters that used to be in everyone else's Imperial gallon (so the fuel consumption isn't as bad as you thought!). At least you'll only be paying about €0.60/liter, which is about 40% of the price in the Netherlands (even Ireland is cheaper!)

Roger, I like your idea, but coming across potentially funny moments to screengrab is a bit hit and miss. I'd certainly participate, but I don't really have the time at the moment to do the looking.

logs

Celsius and Fahrenheit both used degrees - it's Kelvin where they're not used. For example, water freezes at 0°C, 32°F or 273K. Luckily, 50 degrees Fahrenheit is easy to convert in your head - it's 10 degrees Celsius.

GreenLight Collectibles have some upcoming 1:18 releases which may interest people here. Firstly, out now, is their 1977 Plymouth Fury in Hazzard livery: Then in May, there's Uncle Jesse's pickup: Out now or coming soon, they also have various other TV and movie cars - see here for more details. I've never bought any GreenLight models before, so if anyone has experience of them, please share it here.

2019 isn't off to a good start for John. His Louisiana home and studios have been seized due to unpaid mortgage payments. If anyone's interested, they go up for sale on January 16. Various sources have the story, such as here and here.

The 3D view of your friend's console appears to have vertical front and back faces, but the images of real ones that I've found online show them sloping: I'm sure you won't find it too hard to modify.

I've just found a 1979 Jeep brochure. It lists "Brown Carpeting" among the features in the Golden Eagle package: There seem to be plenty of pictures of the correct center consoles available online if you need them for reference.

If I'm being honest, I spent most of my time on the exterior, and was a bit lazy when I got to the interior, so pretty much just copied the best stock pictures I could find (the seats have always bugged me, but I never got around to fixing them). I think I did the Jeep about halfway through my Fan Art drawings, and they hopefully got more screen-accurate as they went along (that's why I added updated versions of the General Lee and Mustangs). I tweaked the contrast on the screengrab I posted earlier to show the center console better (I hadn't even noticed it). It also shows a faded Jeep logo on the dashboard. The floors look dark, but they weren't lit well, so nothing conclusive.

I had a look at the reference pictures I used for my Fan Art version of Daisy's Jeep. The only actual screengrab is the one below, which luckily shows a bit of the interior. It must be from one of the Jeep's early appearances, because the doors are still in place. The link above has a few more screengrabs of the exterior. As Roth says, I think the Jeep was pretty stock apart from the decals and CB. I mainly used pictures of regular Jeeps for reference, although the seats and other interior details may not be 100% screen-accurate.

A couple of forums have a very rough sketch of the wide push bar with measurements, but I can't see any plans for the narrow one. Having said that, the Smith Bros. site still appears to offer a narrow push bar for $299, which includes shipping to the lower 48. I'm sure you've probably searched the internet, but I found an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of each type of push bar, and advice on fixing methods, at www.dodgecharger.com. It looks like the steel push bars weigh somewhere between 30 and 45 lbs, and several people expressed an interest in getting push bars made of aluminum if they could get plans. The dodgecharger link above also discusses the best way to paint them. I never joined CGLFC, but did browse it many times. If there's any information you need from that site, you may be still be able to access it through the Wayback Machine.

Boldt Castle sounded familiar, but I was mixing it up with Bannerman's Castle, which I saw on a recent documentary. They're both in New York. I guess I'm spoiled here because there's an 800-year-old castle across town from where I live (as well as the 13th century cathedral which I posted pictures of recently). I haven't done the full tour for many years (why do people so rarely visit their local tourist attractions?), but I have been lucky enough to attend a couple of events there this year. The garden and grounds are open to the public free-of-charge during the day.

Roger, you reminded me of this old Tim Vine joke: I saw this advert in a window that said: “Television for sale, £1, volume stuck on full.” I thought, “I can’t turn that down."

We don't always use the word "County" before the county names, e.g. I would probably just say I was going to Cork at the weekend. Many of the counties have a major town/city with the same name as the county (e.g. Cork, Limerick, Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, Kildare etc.), so the suffix "Town" or "City" may be added for clarity if that's your destination. The "County" prefix seems to be used slightly more in Northern Ireland, so it's not unusual to hear "County Down" instead of just "Down". As for County Hazzard, if we can cope with Americans writing dates the wrong way around, we can remember that it's Hazzard County .

I grew up with December 26th being called Boxing Day, which seems to be restricted to the UK and former British Empire countries. In Ireland, today is St. Stephen's Day. Most of the shops where I live were still closed today, although one clothes retailer started their sale at 6am and apparently had a queue outside. I can't imagine what bargain made it worth getting up that early. After calling in on friends at lunchtime, I took a spin over to a neighboring town which had a few more shops open and a bit more choice in the sales. To their credit, the staff all seemed friendly despite only getting a single day off.