Vulcan’s Forge

Vulcan's Forge

Don’t feed the Cerberus!

Although Volcanocafé is dedicated to science, sometimes even the most serious of communities needs to relax and involve itself in frivolities. This takes place on Friday Evenings at the Volcanocafé Pub, Vulcan’s Forge. Here, the gentlemen may relax with a pint of the very best microbrewed beer, spiced with Agaric Toadstool if they so desire, while the ladies enjoy a Perfect Remedy (½ Champagne, ½ home-made elderberry lemonade with a fresh, sliced strawberry, chilled, in a tall glass). All eDrinks are of course made available free of charge and everyone can be as silly as they want to be – provided they do not feed Cerberus, the Dog-on-a-leash-in-the-Corner. She is an ill-tempered bitch and may bite without warning, be warned!

37 thoughts on “Vulcan’s Forge

  1. Heyyyyyyyyyy! It’s Friday……When does the bar open? I’ll have a bottle….Ooops sorry not allowed so much…just a glass please, of Lacryma Christi (del Vesuvio), A n excellent Italian wine from grapes grown on the slopes of…Vesuvius of course.
    A nice little story about how this wine was named…..
    Lucifer and the fallen angels were cast out of Paradise. Angry that they were not allowed in, they took a piece of heaven with them and when Lucifer fell, this bit of “paradise” landed on Mount Vesuvius, leading to tears of sadness from Jesus hence Lacryma Christi, Christ’s tears

    • I would rather like to think the heavenly hereafter is made out of erupted bits of volcano that never came back down to earth…..but then again I am told I have a pretty warped view of the afterlife and theology in general.

      Also, would it be too low-brow of me to order a vodka and tonic…hold the tonic? It has been a long day.

    • Hi! I’ll join you in a glass of wine! Now I’m officially a retired ‘old lady’ I can kick off my shoes and let my hair down a bit more often! Anyway, here’s to Volcanocafe and all who sail in her! 😀

      • Hear! Hear! and Cheers…Salute…..Skaal….Proost…….Salud…..Slaandjivaa ……Iechyd da…..Kia Ora……. etc

      • I have a bottle of Etna Rosso vintage 2001. I fear to open it, but, perhaps a courageous friend would give me courage. The bottle, itself, was irresistible: Etnaean ash epoxied on, painted with red stripes to represent a lava flow. I saw the same style of bottle during a documentary on the desk of a volcanologist based at the Hawaiian Volcano observatory.

        Felt like I was in good company!

        Last time I was up Etna I attempted to revisit the scene of my earlier purchase up the road that runs up the Northern side. The entire area was paved over by a lava flow. Such is lis the friability of life on a very active volcano.

  2. Observation. One of the two escapees in New York has succumbed to lead poisoning. Oddly enough, he achieved this lethal dosage by absorption through his skin. The lead particles entered his system at several hundred feet per second, so I guess you would call that forcible absorption…

    • That bit of news is way down the list of ‘top news’ as far as Europe is concerned. Normally it would make it to the main news, but we have had a horrific day from France, through Tunisia to Kuwait, so it passed us by. I did find a BBC article and see that the guy who was ‘caught’ by the hail of lead had only managed to get 30 miles which either means that the cordon put up by the US Police was very good, or that he was not that good at escaping. Andy Dufresne he was not!*

      (*Shawshank Redemption)

  3. ……… and here we have a plaintive song from many of our Lurkers who haven’t found our new home yet….Poor things they are nearly as confused as I was this morning……

    • You can dance like that Lurking? I think I could just about manage the static wiggle bit so just dance round me and my pink handbag.

  4. Actually, my moves more resemble an electrocution in progress

    (you haven’t had fun until you tie in with a 400 Hz gyro signal. It’s called the 400 cycle shuffle for a reason)
    Side Note: It is my firm conviction that many injuries from electrical shock are caused by trying to get off of whatever you tied in to.

    Now, something more fitting for my state of mind.

    https://youtu.be/QH2-TGUlwu4

    Dell™ finally delivered the part that I needed withought canceling it outright with no explanation. I contacted the end user, and got no answer. So, I stopped for catfish. Tried again, no joy. Contacted her IT office (the guy responsible for that organization’s computers) and he couldnt even track her down. His guess? She left early since it was Friday. So, I went to the other three calls just down the road. After much fiddling, I noticed that the decal paper stock had a bump under the decal itself, prior to printing. Exploring it further, I noticed that a lot of them were that way. The issue is, that when heated to about 148°C, any water vapor in that air pocket will flash to steam, or expand greatly, lifting the label off of the sheet, or just getting it high enough to jam inside the printer. Think of it as a miniature phreatic event. On each of the printers, I found bubbled labels in the unprinted stock in the trays. Me being me, I counted and took samples. At the 95% confidence interval, 11% to 35% of the sheets have this defect. The customer who the work is done for, will probably not be very happy with the vendor supplying their decal stock. They will probably find out about it on Monday when I submit my findings.

    And an instructional video of how to dress your cat up like Nyan Cat.

    And specifically for Carl… some guy takes a stab at the melody on an upright.

  5. ohh – it’s the weekend – I’m on the coffee, Just spotted a yellowstone overdue comment , and finally found an analogy I like – this is about soccer (for those in the US) anyway here’s the thought.

    the ‘yellowstone is overdue’ bit – the hotspot is no longer under yellowstone – as the crust has moved on, and X years overdue is a bit like saying Nottingham are overdue to win the Football League Cup – according to wikipedia they won in 1978, 1979, 1989, 1990, so that’s 2 years in a row, every 11 years , should have happened again in 2000,2001 but it’s now overdue by 15 years, the ‘heat’ has gone from that spot.

    • Well, to be honest, I was a bit concerned a few years ago when they had a swarm event under Yellowstone lake that tracked to the north Shore and petered out. North of the lake is about where the Hotspot should have the center of its activity if it has moved along its historical track as expected. I was fully expecting a pheatic event there as a result. That there are pillow lavas under the lake is a fact.

      • BTW, the quakes roughly followed the track of the Eagle Bay fault and then dwindled out under the Sulphur Hills and StoneTop Mountain area.

  6. And fully OT (Friday)

    Mine

    https://youtu.be/f6B_7ZRSwWg

    There is an activity that some gamers like to do after they are done beating the crap out of each other in skirmishes… and that is to have fun with the game engine mechanics. This group produced a few parodies of some well known skits.

    One thing that my clan used to do, after everyone was done playing, was to take packs of C-4 and place them all over the forklifts and pickup trucks on a Desert Conflict modded version of this games predecessor and see just how artful we could make the destruction. The cool part about it was that the model for a destroyed forklift still had about the same makeup of the undamaged model. As such, you could bounce it all around one of the two warehouses along the docks. McPlowed, one of out members who’s main goal in any skirmish was to see how many people he could run over in a jeep, managed to launch a pickup truck up the brow of the ship on that map and out to sea on the other side. (C-4 assisted).

    This is about the extent of my skills with the Mi-24 model from that version of the game. =CSI= Nexroth was my gunner and did the video capture. In this particular game, everyone has access to a parachute by hitting the F9 key. Hovering over the hangar repairs the helo.

    https://youtu.be/En2peIJNafE

    • I do miss that game a bit. Now I’m stuck dealing with Zombies. (7 days to die) This evening I was startled to find a bear loitering in the subterranean “safe” zone that we had dug out. The server saw it as a “cave” and figured that a bear would be appropriate for the spawn cycle… so, I ran out as fast as possible to go retrieve a shotgun. Shooting it with the pistol just pissed it off.

      {and no Carl, I am not THAT guy} (there is a guy in California with a similar name who is really into the Zombie meme. I just fiddle with this game since it’s what many of my clan mates are into at the time.)

      Wanna see something weird? The structures that Shania Twain is driving from in this video look a lot like the Biodomes in Planetside2. I hate Biodomes. About half the time if you have a strong force out capturing control points, they will get distracted and expend all their time and effort trying to capture one of these things. Meanwhile, the opposition forces or the third group of adversaries will cut them off so that they eventually loose the ability to mount an offensive. Also, the Mech unit that is chasing her is about 10 times the size of the large “Max” mech suit that you can use in the game. The game version also does not have the ability to fly, that’s more Tribes like, though the best you can do is short bursts of air time. (Unless you know how to set the launch approach up. We were able to launch TheGit into a high arc over the main flag position off the back of a Grav-cycle… and TheGit rarely misses with ballistic trajectory weapons as long as he’s not stationary. In the BF2 flying video, he was the guy in the appache that nearly took me out with an RPG. He only missed because he was standing on a fixed surface. Because it was TheGit, I immediately left rather than press the attack, his second shot would have corrected for the error. That’s just how TheGit does his thing. The guy is uncanny. No, not an aimbot or cheat, he’s that good. I’ve played with him for a few years, both on his team and against him. I’ve seen him see and shoot things that I didn’t see until after he shot at it. He is my preferred gunner in all vehicles. If you want to see pissed, just watch a Scythe pilot (Vanu Fighter aircraft) after TheGit takes him out with a grenade launcher when he does a strafing pass.)

  7. Enjoy!

    Since I am relegated to a non-Whiskey diet, I can at least enjoy the sweet guitar of Billy Gibbons 😀

    “Crawlin’ through the weeds with a Louisiana mean-toothed grin
    You tell her that you love her, then you better tell her once again
    She might scratch your back, rub you with her rack
    You better watch out or stand back”

    https://youtu.be/FcnYXU7iJWE

  8. This rang a bell..

    The Gas Man Cometh – Flanders and Swann

    ‘Twas on a Monday morning the gas man came to call.
    The gas tap wouldn’t turn – I wasn’t getting gas at all.
    He tore out all the skirting boards to try and find the main
    And I had to call a carpenter to put them back again.

    Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

    ‘Twas on a Tuesday morning the carpenter came round.
    He hammered and he chiselled and he said:
    “Look what I’ve found: your joists are full of dry rot
    But I’ll put them all to rights”.
    Then he nailed right through a cable and out went all the lights!

    Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

    ‘Twas on a Wednesday morning the electrician came.
    He called me Mr. Sanderson, which isn’t quite the name.
    He couldn’t reach the fuse box without standing on the bin
    And his foot went through a window so I called the glazier in.

    Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

    ‘Twas on a Thursday morning the glazier came round
    With his blow torch and his putty and his merry glazier’s song.
    He put another pane in – it took no time at all
    But I had to get a painter in to come and paint the wall.

    Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

    ‘Twas on a Friday morning the painter made a start.
    With undercoats and overcoats he painted every part:
    Every nook and every cranny – but I found when he was gone
    He’d painted over the gas tap and I couldn’t turn it on!

    Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

    On Saturday and Sunday they do no work at all;
    So ’twas on a Monday morning that the gasman came to call.

  9. Just a short Rumination.
    Loss of confidence is a horrible thing and can unexpectedly hit even the strongest of us at any age. Just an injury, loss of the use of a body part, a imagined fraility or a thoughtless word. It can be a very simple happening that can throw a real spanner in the works.
    I would like to thank all my friends on here for their very kind messages. It is you who have helped me find most of my marbles and dragged me out of the mire. It may be some time before I can write anything remotely intelligent. Until then bear with me whilst I settle back up front into the place I love (I have been lurking. I couldn’t stay away. )

    I won’t bore you with details but I was assured after an x-ray that I actually haven’t got any screws loose (Seriously they thought the screws in my foot had become dislodged). This is good to know even though many here will be sceptical. Time for a last coffee before bed. I leave you with a happy song dedicated to Albert, Lurking, Renato and the Facebook Gang and all the lovely people here who are just….. part of my life now……Thank you again.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBo5JVrxkbE

    • Hello Diana just caught this- been two years since I had my hip replaced. I’m still having problems due to an older misdiagnosed injury, been able to fly but my goal is to crawl into a SEAT (single engine airtanker) without boosting my bad
      leg..
      Take care, TG

  10. Pteranodon (/tᵻˈrænədɒn/; from Greek πτερόν (“wing”) and ἀνόδων (“toothless”)) is a genus of pterosaurs which included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with wingspans over 6 metres (20 ft)

    • Dunno, that thought crossed my mind as well.

      The only saving grace that I can come up with, is that some of the mosquitoes where I grew up, came buzzing in low and slow across the pool hall’s floor like miniature B-52s. We used to bip them with the pool sticks as they went by. You just have to mind where the other end of the stick is at, more than one fight was started that way.

      That was a nice pool hall… till a car drove through it. (Which, coincidentally, is how it went from being a convenience store to a game room)

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