Confessions of a mediocre modeler

Dave Farquhar Toy trains

Spookshow is an N scaler’s autobiography of his hobby experience.

I agree with him that he isn’t a master modeler, but if he’s mediocre, he’s upper-tier mediocre. The biggest difference I see between his layouts and the layouts in magazines is the photography–their photographers take clearer, “poppier” shots, and they don’t take photos of the layout’s weak points. (What you don’t show is as important as what you show.)He talks about everything that went into building his layouts, including his thought process, and his philosophy on the hobby. It’s interesting to watch another hobbyist think, and it’s kind of refreshing to see it from the point of view of someone who isn’t full of himself. A lot of hobby sites tend to pat the author on the back a lot (mine may have too much of that attitude too, for that matter), so I find this guy refreshing.

This site is worth spending some time reading, certainly. I don’t do N scale and I don’t go after the realistic look (I may try it someday, but not now) but his insights are very useful.

I don’t know if this attitude is a general thing, or if it’s just one particularly vocal modeler and it seems like a lot because he just talks too stinking much, but I get really irritated with a tunnel-vision approach to the hobby. I can still learn a lot from people who take a different approach from me. I think I can learn more from them than I can from the people who think just like me. After all, we’re probably all stuck in the same rut. I even look at what the tabletop wargamers are doing. They build scenery too…

What high school did you go to?

Dave Farquhar St. Louis ,

Crestwood Plaza is a mall in the southwestern suburbs of St. Louis. It was originally built in 1957, and was one of the largest, if not the largest, malls in the area. I remember the radio commercials from the 1980s where the pitch line was “The ultra mall has it all.”

Today it’s at least 30% vacant and struggling. It’s been for sale for a while. They finally found a buyer.It merited mention in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A group led by two brothers is buying the mall to redevelop it.

The article doesn’t say what the two brothers plan to do with the mall, except that it will be a “mixed-use” redevelopment. That tells me about as much as saying there will be concrete and steel involved.

But the article goes out of its way to mention what high school the two brothers attended.

Yet another example of the St. Louis attitude. Nothing’s as important as what high school you went to.

I’m surprised the headline didn’t read “Two Ladue H.S. Alumni Buy Crestwood Plaza.”

I guess there just wasn’t enough room.

My new toy train website

Dave Farquhar Toy trains

For the first time since about 1997, I’ve created a hobby web page. Since my ISP provides web space and I pay for it whether I use it or not, I thought this would be a good use for it. I have some photographs there, and some general information on toy trains, particularly tinplate trains.

The address is pages.sbcglobal.net/dave_farquhar/.Since the old Prodigy servers (theoretically) have more bandwidth than my puny 128K upstream DSL connection, I thought that would be a more appropriate place to put it, rather than on my own server. The pictures aren’t huge, but they’ll download a lot faster from an ISP than from me.

Hopefully someone will find it and enjoy it. I have no idea how often I’ll update the page, but now it’s out there.

Fifteen minutes a day

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

I’ve been spending entirely too much time on train forums lately. So have a lot of other people. Places that used to be good for learning things have turned into cliques, or worse yet, hateful arguments over stupid things like whether Lionel O gauge is more popular than HO scale (something that hasn’t been true since about 1957, and I’m shocked anyone has believed otherwise since about 1960).

A few months ago, someone actually posted something helpful: a suggestion that you spend 15 minutes a day working on your hobby instead of talking about it.

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Trailing edge computing

Dave Farquhar Hardware ,

I found a blog entry today suggesting that you buy 3-year-old computer hardware and software.

I’ve been doing this for years, although I never put that much thought into it.The idea goes like this: Instead of buying cutting-edge computers, which depreciate faster than cars do, buy a machine that’s a few years old, and then run older software on it. He says games, but the trick works fine for other software too. Just make sure the software you run is still getting updates. Microsoft generally continues releasing updates for 10 years, for example.

He suggests scouring the bargain bins at game stores for old software, but you can get used copies of pretty much anything you want online too, such as at Amazon. If the game is rare the price can be high, but the titles you’re likely to want are also likely to be common and cheap.

I haven’t built a new PC since 2002, which might surprise some people since there was a time when I would either build a new PC or do a major upgrade once a year or so.

But it’s telling that when I built that machine I didn’t use cutting edge parts either. I used a surplus Compaq motherboard and the cheapest ATI video card I could find. Is it useful? You bet. My wife uses it every day.

The PC I use most often now is a 2 GHz Compaq, most likely an off-lease business PC. I put a discrete video card in it and filled its memory slots. It probably dates to 2002 or 2003 also, but it’s almost as peppy as the 3 GHz PC I use at work.

Needless to say, I like the idea a lot.

As far as whether you should build a PC from old (or mostly old) parts or buy an entire PC, it really depends. I bought the Compaq because there was no way I could build anything comparable for the price, even if I reused components (and I have a lot of parts I could reuse). I can assemble a PC in less than an hour, so time wasn’t a huge consideration for me, but it would be for some people. A PC built entirely with off-the-shelf components is more upgradable, but this Compaq is tiny, and I really liked that.

If I could have bought a bunch of cheap parts, I might have gone a different direction.

The most thorough article to date on the decision not to prosecute

Dave Farquhar net.culture ,

Steve Pokin, the journalist who broke the original Megan Meier story, published an account today of the decision not to press charges.

Some of the things in the article trouble me.It troubles me that Jack Banas interviewed Lori Drew and perhaps Curt Drew, but didn’t interview Ron Meier at all, and talked only briefly with Tina Meier.

His justification: He has a property destruction case pending against Ron Meier. In a way that’s considerate of him–he could have used the opportunity to get Meier to testify against himself–but I can think of one way around the problem. Interview Meier with his attorney present, so that if Meier were to start to incriminate himself, his attorney could cut him off.

If I can come up with this workaround, then a prosecuting attorney ought to be able to as well.

It bothers me that each time something Drew said contradicted the many news reports that have been written, it means the news reports are wrong. It was obvious from the very first police report that Drew was trying to cover her tracks–in the report, she stated that somehow others were able to get access to the Myspace account and send messages to Megan. That’s an indirect quote, but it’s pretty close to the wording in the report.

The Meiers’ story has been remarkably consistent, even when they are visibly exhausted. The police reports on Smoking Gun aren’t forthcoming, and they aren’t consistent with what Drew is saying now.

I know from personal experience that when a traumatic event happens, your memory of it is generally very good–nearly photographic. Sometimes people refer to them as “flashbulb” events for that very reason. I can tell you every little detail about the car crash I was in four years ago, just as plainly as it happened yesterday.

So if someone has difficulty consistently recounting the events of a flashbulb incident, that suggests to me that he or she is lying.

I don’t know about law enforcement in St. Charles, but in journalism, if I’d ever come to one of my editors with an important story and I only interviewed one side, and I relied solely on two old interviews of one of the other participants (Ashley Grills), something bad would have happened next. Really bad.

For that matter, Grills and Drew dispute whose idea it was to create the account. Each say it was the other. Both women had different reactions to Megan Meier’s suicide. Drew felt less guilty after she heard Meier had attempted suicide before. Grills threatened suicide herself and ended up getting psychiatric treatment.

All of that is solid evidence that Grills has a conscience, ability to feel guilt, and knowledge of right and wrong.

Both Grills and Drew have track records of deceit and changing the story afterward. So which liar should you believe?

The safer bet is to believe the one with a conscience. She’s less likely to lie now.

Finally, I take issue with Banas’ statement that Drew never intended to “harm, stalk, endanger or harass.”

The police report Drew filed last year stated that some of the communication was of sexual nature.

Let me ask a question. If it turned out that Michael Devlin had made such a statement, would Devlin be in court right now, facing charges of harassment?

If it’s harassment if Michael Devlin does it, then it’s harassment if Lori Drew does it. Period.

Besides that, in a story published in The Age, an Australian newspaper, a neighbor states that Lori Drew told her about the fake account, laughed about it, and said she would “mess with Megan.”

So an Australian journalist halfway around the world found someone willing to say this was intentional harassment. Yet Banas won’t give this neighbor’s testimony equal weight with the testimony of an already established liar and deceiver.

I don’t live in St. Charles County but a friend of mine does. He tells me Banas has three more years in office.

This is precisely what recall elections are for. If you live in St. Charles County and see a recall petition, sign it. If you don’t see one, call the St. Charles Election Authority at 636-949-7550 and ask how to start one.

And failing that, I wholeheartedly endorse whoever is running against Banas for St. Charles County Prosecutor in 2010. Whoever that might be.

I’m sure I have company.