• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Swifty said:
The weird thing, it's the back of them that people need to be wary of when considering distance ... they need to be about 5 ft away from any wall or material to be used safely so basically in the middle of someones room is the key.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure why that would be the case - any idea why?
 
Those halogen heaters are useless, you have to sit on them to get warm, which is not recommended, so if you have to have them five feet away its a waste of time
 
The best electric heater I've got is a small radiator/fan heater combination. The radiator puts out a steady background heat, but if you need it to be warmer, you can turn on the fan heater unit underneath.
 
The electric fire would be the easier fix. It has various flame effects including a psychedelic purple one I call Jimmi Hendrix.
The expense however is hideous, I'll do my homework properly for the butane heater. All will be well.
I see the emergence of The Law Of Unintended Consequences here.
Given that British taxpayers are not exactly benefit friendly, and a rapacious energy industry, those on low incomes will look for alternative ways of heating their homes.
Inevitably this will include imports made by 5 year olds in China.
Therefore I would expect a greater number of house fires.
Dealt with by the Fire Service. Paid for by the taxpayer.
 
smokehead said:
The electric fire would be the easier fix. It has various flame effects including a psychedelic purple one I call Jimmi Hendrix.
The expense however is hideous, I'll do my homework properly for the butane heater. All will be well.
I see the emergence of The Law Of Unintended Consequences here.
Given that British taxpayers are not exactly benefit friendly, and a rapacious energy industry, those on low incomes will look for alternative ways of heating their homes.
Inevitably this will include imports made by 5 year olds in China.
Therefore I would expect a greater number of house fires.
Dealt with by the Fire Service. Paid for by the taxpayer.
Click to expand...
Yeah, running an electric fire for a long time works out hellishly expensive.
One winter, my boiler broke down and I couldn't get anybody out to fix it for several weeks. Cost me a lot.
 
When I was a kid we used to have a rather fierce and somewhat dangerous looking gas heater in the house which my parents always referred to as 'Piper Alpha' - a reference that was totally wasted on me. I get it now, though. File under parents say the most addling things...
 
Carse said:
When I was a kid we used to have a rather fierce and somewhat dangerous looking gas heater in the house which my parents always referred to as 'Piper Alpha' - a reference that was totally wasted on me. I get it now, though. File under parents say the most addling things...
Click to expand...
Piper Alpha:
Piper_Alpha_oil_rig_fire.jpg
 
We have really good heating but in the depths of winter we pull out a portable oil-filled radiator. It runs off electric and heats up the oil inside the radiator. Once it's hot, the thermosat knocks off but the oil still radiates out heat. Once it gets cooler, the thermosat kicks back in and heats it up again.

We have it on alot and don't notice that much of a change in the electric bill. You never need to top it up or change it. Our costs about £50 I think. Here's some on Amazon. It's great because you can move from room to room, there's no chance of fire and there's no carbon monoxide.
 
Ringo said:
We have really good heating but in the depths of winter we pull out a portable oil-filled radiator. It runs off electric and heats up the oil inside the radiator. Once it's hot, the thermosat knocks off but the oil still radiates out heat. Once it gets cooler, the thermosat kicks back in and heats it up again.

We have it on alot and don't notice that much of a change in the electric bill. You never need to top it up or change it. Our costs about £50 I think. Here's some on Amazon. It's great because you can move from room to room, there's no chance of fire and there's no carbon monoxide.
Click to expand...
That's like the one I've got.
 
I have a DeLongi one of those, in the bedroom, had it years, never tried it in a bigger room, does it heat up fast in one?
 
Shady said:
I have a DeLongi one of those, in the bedroom, had it years, never tried it in a bigger room, does it heat up fast in one?
Click to expand...

My experience has been that the oil-filled radiator type heaters are best suited for a relatively small enclosed space. They're ideal for warming a bathroom.
 
Shady said:
I have a DeLongi one of those, in the bedroom, had it years, never tried it in a bigger room, does it heat up fast in one?
Click to expand...
Now I think about it, mine's a DeLonghi too.
 
It was reasonably strange to see blokes in overalls bolting from every door shouting "duck you suckers"
when as it often did reach critical mass, then again it is minor strangeness not reasonable strangeness.
:D:D:D
 
dejanmikic said:
I have such fond memories of "Minor Strangeness" being about.... not boilers and heating.
Click to expand...
And (for now) there is more heat than light....

This time will pass. All will become cool again. A Fortean rule of inverse entropy will ensure that something, soon, that is minorly-strange will come along.

In fact, I shall post a strange story later-on tonight. And I guarantee it is strange, at least to a minor extent.
 
Last edited:
Ermintruder said:
And (for now) there is more heat than light....

This time will pass. All will become cool again. A Fortean rule of inverse entropy will ensure that something, soon, that is minorly-strange will come along.

In fact, I shall post a strange story later-on tonight. And I guarantee it is strange, at least to a minor extent.
Click to expand...


Yessss

Hope there are no boilers involved
 
When I was a toddler, my folks had a similar electric fire(sans wire guard) to this-
classic 2 bar fire.jpg

To cut a long story short, I somehow got my back to the fire and the tail of my horrid nylon/wooly-type dressing gown touched the elements. The dressing gown caught fire and it was a miracle I wasn't burned. It's one of my earliest memories.
 
Wow - lucky escape!
No fireguard.
 
Last week I was travelling south on the M80, towards Glasgow. It's a road I travel often, sometimes a lot, then just occasionally. So it's familiar to me.

Last week (Tuesday morning, I think) I saw the sad sight of a dead fox on the hard shoulder of the motorway. Not unusual for a country road...but on a motorway (especially a road I know well) it most certainly was an unexpected sight.

Moving on, there was another, say a mile further on. Lying upon the road, identically freshly dead. And about a mile and a bit later there was another. This cycle repeated such that there were about eight, over a stretch of about ten miles.

My conclusions were:
  • they were almost-certainly too far apart from each-other to have been aware of their relative 'proximity'
  • They must've all been killed within at most a few hours of each-other
  • I have never seen such a sequence of extended road-kills, especially on a fairly-urban motorway (nor all the same animal)
  • I somehow wondered if they had all been simultaneously routed away in fear, by a predator or hunter, and had all collectively ran away from a central point of origin in slightly-divergent paths, which resulted in a 10mile 'spread' of identical (or at least apparently-so) dead foxes.
The weather was neutral and unremarkable during the night/early morning.

Homing/migration instinct collectively gone wrong? Howling facilitates an exodus but accidentally-massacres a whole distributed pack?

Potential explanations welcome.
 
Ermintruder said:
Homing/migration instinct collectively gone wrong? Howling facilitates an exodus but accidentally-massacres a whole distributed pack?

Potential explanations welcome.
Click to expand...

Finally!!! moving away from the boilers (one of the reasons I left UK)

Glitch in the Matrix?
 
Well, some farmers quietly do their own culls and dispose of the bodies by the roadside (to make it look like an accident). People shrug and accept it philosophically.
 
heisenbear said:
... I somehow got my back to the fire and the tail of my horrid nylon/wooly-type dressing gown touched the elements. The dressing gown caught fire and it was a miracle I wasn't burned. It's one of my earliest memories.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of an incident from early 1975 in mid-Minnesota (i.e., still sub-freezing winter). My longtime guitarist pal and I were 'on the road' (making music), living in a converted rural schoolhouse whose ancient furnace had died. We closed off all but the central room and had to rely on a single radiant heater of the sort heisenbear cited above. It didn't do much good.

One day I arrived back at the schoolhouse to find my cohort in his usual location - swathed in sweat clothes and robe, covered with a blanket, sitting in an old easy chair facing the heater with his feet propped up circa 2 feet away from the glowing elements, watching TV. I caught an acrid smell in the air, and I asked him what it was. He said he hadn't noticed it.

It took only seconds of investigation to find that the rubber soles in both his house slippers had holes circa 3 - 4 inches in diameter melted through them, and the foam padding behind the soles was singeing and visibly smoking. If I'd been a couple of minutes later in arriving, his feet may well have been ablaze.
 
I remember when we finally got a car for our fishing trips being surprised at the amount of roadkill. Poor beggars, not that we were helping the situation any.
Cryptid reports have them often crossing roads in front of startled drivers.
I wonder if like urban pigeons they are attracted to the food debris dumped out of cars?
 
smokehead said:
I remember when we finally got a car for our fishing trips being surprised at the amount of roadkill. Poor beggars, not that we were helping the situation any.
Cryptid reports have them often crossing roads in front of startled drivers.
I wonder if like urban pigeons they are attracted to the food debris dumped out of cars?
Click to expand...
It's not unusual to see crows hanging around roads, waiting for some fresh roadkill.
 
Ermintruder said:
Yes.

And although there have been discussions about the reintroduction of Wolves to Scotland it has not yet happened. Officially.
Click to expand...
Just look at that cute little thing, all alone there at the very end of the post. Butter wouldn't melt in its mouth, to look at it, but I bet there's more to it than meets the eye.

Oh, and there was a nice photo of a wolf, too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top