Interesting Buildings (2 Viewers)

Yeah, amazing chap. Knew everybody...I think he was mates with Joss who used to post here. I got so many good books there too, had forgotten about that entire section of the shop! In 2001 @portrid and myself were talking about organising a spoken-word gig for Mark E Smith. Gary was such a huge help, most of the work we did got done either in his shop or shortly after chatting to him. I saw very little of him after that, which I now regret. Anyone know how he is?

I always got the impression he was a bit grumpy (possibly because he gave me shit that one time). I do vaguely remember having a nice chat with him about Ray Bradbury at one stage.
 
I always got the impression he was a bit grumpy (possibly because he gave me shit that one time). I do vaguely remember having a nice chat with him about Ray Bradbury at one stage.
I do have a vague memory of him being grumpy a few times too, but in fairness at the time I was probably buying appalling music, which I did a lot back then. I think I was going there for so long - literally every time I was in there I found something I really wanted - that he eventually melted slightly, and we got on well.
 
Yeah, amazing chap. Knew everybody...I think he was mates with Joss who used to post here. I got so many good books there too, had forgotten about that entire section of the shop! In 2001 @portrid and myself were talking about organising a spoken-word gig for Mark E Smith. Gary was such a huge help, most of the work we did got done either in his shop or shortly after chatting to him. I saw very little of him after that, which I now regret. Anyone know how he is?
Further to this, I am told by @portrid that the Mark E Smith spoken word show was 20 years ago next Monday. #lookbackbore
 

Attachments

  • IMG-20210410-WA0012.jpg
    IMG-20210410-WA0012.jpg
    41 KB · Views: 9
Last edited:
i did physics in UCD. a tale i was told there.
some lad came over from the UK many years back (back in the 70s probably) to do his PhD there. there are several areas where the physics department in UCD specialise; astrophysics, spectroscopy, atomic physics etc., for someone to chase a PhD in.
anyway, he decided when he was in UCD to learn how to use the tools in the machine shop, and chose the top of the water tower as a model to try to replicate as a project to learn to use them, so he made a scale model of it, as a paperweight

anyway, several years later, he's back in the UK working on some project, and some chap calls to his office. in hindsight, he realises that said chap shows a little more interest than usual in said paperweight, but leaves without making a fuss. soon after, he has a visit from someone *very* interested in the paperweight, and with enough clout that it's yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. why the paperweight? why this design? what gave you the idea?
after explaining why and what the paperweight was, he was asked 'can you prove this?' so some schmuck he'd known in UCD got a phone call out of the blue from someone he'd known years earlier, just a chat, but ending with 'hey, can you do me a favour and send me a postcard from UCD, but one with the water tower on it? no reason, but i did kinda like it'

anyway, the favoured explanation for this was that with nukes, you need a critical mass of fissile material, but it can't all be one solid piece. otherwise it could go critical on you when you don't want it. a perfect spherical shell would be ideal if exploded inwards to a perfect sphere, but engineering that would be impossible, so maybe instead if you got twelve individual pieces, arranged them in a dodecahedron and blasted them together with incredibly precise timing...
I was told an almost identical story back in my UCD days a million years ago. seems fairly plausible alright, but... if it really happened, we wouldn’t know about it, would we? I’d love to know if this is an actual real story or just some kind of UCD mythology
 
in the story i heard, he bumped into someone from UCD at a conference a few years later and was asked to explain the postcard story, which is supposedly how it became known,
 
i did physics in UCD. a tale i was told there.
some lad came over from the UK many years back (back in the 70s probably) to do his PhD there. there are several areas where the physics department in UCD specialise; astrophysics, spectroscopy, atomic physics etc., for someone to chase a PhD in.
anyway, he decided when he was in UCD to learn how to use the tools in the machine shop, and chose the top of the water tower as a model to try to replicate as a project to learn to use them, so he made a scale model of it, as a paperweight

anyway, several years later, he's back in the UK working on some project, and some chap calls to his office. in hindsight, he realises that said chap shows a little more interest than usual in said paperweight, but leaves without making a fuss. soon after, he has a visit from someone *very* interested in the paperweight, and with enough clout that it's yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. why the paperweight? why this design? what gave you the idea?
after explaining why and what the paperweight was, he was asked 'can you prove this?' so some schmuck he'd known in UCD got a phone call out of the blue from someone he'd known years earlier, just a chat, but ending with 'hey, can you do me a favour and send me a postcard from UCD, but one with the water tower on it? no reason, but i did kinda like it'

anyway, the favoured explanation for this was that with nukes, you need a critical mass of fissile material, but it can't all be one solid piece. otherwise it could go critical on you when you don't want it. a perfect spherical shell would be ideal if exploded inwards to a perfect sphere, but engineering that would be impossible, so maybe instead if you got twelve individual pieces, arranged them in a dodecahedron and blasted them together with incredibly precise timing...
amazing story
 
Yeah, amazing chap. Knew everybody...I think he was mates with Joss who used to post here. I got so many good books there too, had forgotten about that entire section of the shop! In 2001 @portrid and myself were talking about organising a spoken-word gig for Mark E Smith. Gary was such a huge help, most of the work we did got done either in his shop or shortly after chatting to him. I saw very little of him after that, which I now regret. Anyone know how he is?
Just in case anyone is wondering, I got an email address for Gary this morning and got a lovely mail from him. He's well and living in London.
 
I was told an almost identical story back in my UCD days a million years ago. seems fairly plausible alright, but... if it really happened, we wouldn’t know about it, would we? I’d love to know if this is an actual real story or just some kind of UCD mythology
as it turns out i know taubstumm from UCD, it's 50/50 that he actually heard this story from me in the first place.
 
It's like 20th on the list of the most expensive buildings in the world. ITER is top, the children's hospital should actually move even higher in the list when it's finished, although I'm not quite sure how they assign the places based on actual costs paired with inflation adjusted costs. List of most expensive buildings - Wikipedia
The Finnish Olkilouto nuclear plant on this list is gas.
Still unfinished, the completed project could cost 11 billion but the tender contract says the building contractors have to absorb all costs over €3 billion
 

Honestly if the hospital is as good they're claiming here then i'd be ok with it. I'm sure we could do it for cheaper if we didn't contract every single thing out and get in consultants every second of the way but that'd be communism and we can't be having that now.

Was chatting to my neighbour the other day, he's building his house nearby and he says building materials went up a third in cost last year over the space of about six months. He has absolutely no idea why (aside from vague pandemic or Brexit reasons that's he's very suspicious of) and says if he had started to build his house this year instead of about 3 or 4 years ago he wouldn't able to afford to.
 
Last edited:

Honestly if the hospital is as good they're claiming here then i'd be ok with it. I'm sure we could do it for cheaper if we didn't contract every single thing out and get in consultants every second of the way but that'd be communism and we can't be having that now.

Was chatting to my neighbour the other day, he's building his house nearby and he says building materials went up a third in cost last year over the space of about six months. He has absolutely no idea why (aside from vague pandemic or Brexit reasons that's he's very suspicious of) and says if he had started to build his house this year instead of about 3 or 4 years ago he wouldn't able to afford to.


yeah - we originally planned to do work on our house in 2019, and eventually did it last year. costs rose about 15-20% from quote 2019 to quote 2020 (we cut the scope to make it affordable in the end).

chatting to a mate of mine who does shop fitting and bespoke furniture etc, and he said costs have gone up even further in the past year.

materials costs, demand, and probably a bit of gouging as well
 
Was chatting to my neighbour the other day, he's building his house nearby and he says building materials went up a third in cost last year over the space of about six months. He has absolutely no idea why (aside from vague pandemic or Brexit reasons that's he's very suspicious of) and says if he had started to build his house this year instead of about 3 or 4 years ago he wouldn't able to afford to.
Not building material related exactly but raw materials in general are skyrocketing and as such fabricated products are going up as a result. The price of stainless steel has jumped massively in recent months. We're paying €24 a meter for it now when it was 16 not that long ago.

In part it appears to be a supply issue. So many things that were put on pause in the last 18 months are now roaring back and even a manufacturing behemoth like China is struggling to keep up. Plus there are global backlogs in shipping. I put in an order to our US supplier yesterday, nothing too fancy and got an estimated shipping date of October for the parts.

Basically if you want materials now, you're paying through the nose for it, and if you need it shipped you're paying a lot for that too (a pallet from the US used to cost 465 to get shipped over, we paid nearly a grand last time).

Obviously all of this is going to result in us increasing our prices too.
 
Last edited:
Steel is up 60% on six months ago. And theres a waiting list. And thats in South East England, I imagine it must be worse over there.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top