Despite your past clear enthusiasm for the Torque product, a Torque work centre isn’t on my radar as they seem to be of the same ilk as the Triton workbench. Viz, you can do all sorts of things to them by adding hand power tools but I always wonder, if like the Triton experience, there comes a time when the price of dedicated machines to do the same thing more conveniently makes the Torque device an anachronism, just like the Triton is now. (I still own a Triton Mk3 and use it daily but I would not buy a new one now as a contractor’s saw bench is probably a better buy.)

So to a total neanderthal in terms of understanding the Torque product and company reputation, your rant against your unfortunate experiences makes me even more cautious that the Torque product will become an orphan because of poor management.

Thanks for expressing your frustrations. It is a useful post.

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We are having a second session in a couple of weeks, focussing purely on templates and copying functions rather than the initial overview of all the different operations.

You weren’t stuck waiting for an Air Australia flight?

The exposure doesn’t look too bad on my iPad – certainly there is some flare from the window, but the iPhone has done a reasonable job of the exposure all things considered.

Also, it really wakes up anyone who may be falling asleep on watch having one of those flung across the compartment! (No, not ‘at’ the guy, just close enough to make a really loud clang as it hits the plates (metal deck plates that is) next to him.

(I say him, because it was only in my final year on steam ships that females were allowed to serve on front-line vessels, and certainly at that stage there were no female stokers in the RNZN)

The crests (from left to right) are HMNZ Ships SOUTHLAND, WAIKATO and TE KAHA. WAIKATO gets pride of place as being the best warship I served on, designed early on in the cold war period, it was capable of operating in a nuclear environment, complete with radiation sensors on the bridge, and ability to have the entire ship in positive pressure.

The gauge and plaques came from WAIKATO once it was decommissioned and being prepared to be sunk as a dive site. The 50 cal cartridges and Steyr rifle cartridge (below the gauge) came from various live firings.

The main ship gun shells were also from live firings (some of which I got on video at the time). Things few people will ever have the opportunity to experience in their lifetime.

Being a stoker, (Lt Engineer), the torch was used many, many times on every shift I did, particularly while performing salinity tests on the boiler feed water and the product being produced by the two steam evaporators (which produce all the fresh water for the ship from sea water)

Having a compact city, and limiting sprawl in themselves are methods of obtaining a sustainable city, but they are not the only ones. There are other (financial) drivers for those goals- a compact city requires less costly infrastructure, less roads to maintain, less power, water and sewage lines to run etc. Compaction = a decrease in the standard of living.

Nowhere does it say “hey, we should just stop adding more people”

Perhaps it should. If population became sustainable (as in neutral growth), then the city would not sprawl any further than it had, and it wouldn’t need to try to compact itself any further than it has. There would be no need for a decrease in the overall standard of living.

For a government, people = money. More people, more money.

That governments are hell-bent on revenue raising is well recognised already. Just look at taxes, speed cameras, rates to see how focussed on money governments are. They won’t let a little thing like the standard of living get in the way of a buck.

Sure, developers are a soft target. They are chasing easy money. It is the councils that allow the developer plans through, knowing the revenue such places will generate- more houses, more rates, more money. More houses, more people, more money.

Do we really trust them to make utopian decisions that affect standards of living when there is money to be made?