Saturday, December 24, 2011 Lethbridge (a.k.a. Christmas Eve)

6:50 am

The temperature is +5° C, with a high predicted of +7° C. From the Environment Canada website: Wind warning in effect. Today Cloudy. Becoming a mix of sun and cloud near noon. Wind west 70 km/h gusting to 100 diminishing to 50 gusting to 70 late this afternoon. High 7. Tonight A few clouds. Wind west 50 km/h gusting to 70. Low plus 4. Normals Max: -1°C Min: -13°

8:00 am Model Trains

I have a number of different threads on the go at the moment:

• building the viaduct
• painting the wheel stops that I bought in Calgary a bright yellow
• begin weathering my rolling stock with the powders I bought in Calgary
• read books on the history of the CNR
• continue running session 2 trains
• build some switch stands that I purchased a couple of weeks ago
• apply ballast to mainline track

[Addendum: 4:00 PM]

I made some progress on 3 of the above items.

• The wheel stops have had their first coat of yellow paint (one more needed).
• I ran the trains for the period 9:00 am to 10:00 am.
• And I tried adding ballast to a small section of track - about 15 inches. This involves some technique, but I am beginning to get the hang of it.

7:00 PM Literature

I found time for a little more reading of "The Sisters Brothers". The style is a delight. Definitely black humor, but very effective.

 

 

 

 

9:30 PM Technology

I made progress today with my use of the iPad2.

But first a new flash. I was in the local mall a couple of days ago. There is now an Apple store! A real one.

Back to the iPad2. For the last couple of months I noticed that I was no longer able to obtain ebooks from the amazon.ca web site. This was a real let-down as this was easily the best source for new books. Today I tried using the amazon.com web site and this worked fine. This is particularly good for non-fiction books. I also noticed that the Barnes and Noble app now works on the iPad2. Unfortunately the selection of ebooks seems very limited, unless I am missing a link, or am the missing link.

The following is a new feature that I am testing.