James May: New Lego & Meccano Engineering Series

Probably mostly because there's almost always someone more competent around to fix their messes. And they're the people who don't get promoted because they're too damn useful where they are.

Exactly true. i got stuck in a position at my previous job because i proved to be too useful in the area i was working and they wouldn't let me move to other areas. Doing that is all fine but eventually i got so tired of being stuck and not being allowed to move on that i just had enough and walked out the door.
 
as for the off topic comment, even i know that its best to not make any questions there. last time i did that i ended up i nearly got my head chopped off.
Although I've NEVER lied about my age, had a friend who always -'d 5 years and then met a bloke who was 2 years younger than that! Then when the guy proposed she HAD to come clean - he said I love you, don't care about calenders - aww. She's lucky that stupid shit didn't bite her on the arse. Trouble with aging is, still feel like a stupid immature 18 year old on the inside but the mirror shows a 41 year old woman *sigh*
Sadly, I still don't trumpet my age on FG or anywhere else, as too many people pre-judge you based on a number, and most people on here are much younger than me. My issue, I know.


the guardian and the independent? well if the Daily Mail adds themselves to that list i'll start stocking the food and drink because i'm almost certain that its one of the 10 signs that the worlds going to end.

Have you noticed, sometimes the Daily Fail almost flirts with James and other times they smack him down? Inconsistency much? Still, they like him much more than Jezza! :rolleyes:

Well, The Sunday Times was fairly negative. Nevertheless they made them one of the 'choice'
I enjoyed the episode, but not as much as I enjoyed the Airfix Episode. I still maintain that the difference is that Mr May has passion for Airfix, but not for Plasticine nor Mecanno. I'm hoping Scalextric will bring that passion back.

Nevertheless, all the episodes have been better than much else on TV because of Mr May.
(And I'm not just saying that because I *ahem* 'admire' Mr May*

I think you're absolutely right, and of course you didn't :p

*raises her hand*

I'm working on my degree right now!

I also used to sell and install Home Theater...and Car Audio. I also love comics, beer and even have my own Transformers fan website. :p

We really do exist. :)

You, my friend ROCK :D
Big respec' to the mature age students! I didn't earn my Vet degree 'til I was 34!

Those old school types who think that woman that are the problem are idiots heh.. I know a second year aerospace student, he also holds a PPL, who doesnt know which way the elevator moves to pitch an aircraft up :lol: ... When we started on the bridge there were also people who didnt know what an Allen key was.. They're are going to be released into the world as engineers in a couple of years.. Scary heh..

Yup, I know vets that graduated who couldn't set up an IV! Lucky James didn't know about those people, you'd never have got him up there!

Terrifying. How on earth have they managed to get through life without ever owning Ikea furniture? ;)

Well, they're young yet...

Trouble is, it's not just the oldschool types or it'd just be a matter of waiting for them to die out. So long as there's a few of the 'Maddy' type women out there, some people will persist in believing that all women are like that.

Best not say too much, have been slammed for criticising her before...;)

I also once had someone tell me that I *must* have gone into IT in order to pull and that I'd be a shoe-obsessed heat-reading airhead if only I were pretty enough. The really depressing thing is, it was a woman who said it.
:jawdrop:

...which is exactly why Barbie and the like should be banned and all children, whatever their gender, should be given *proper* toys. I don't think I've ever encountered a woman in IT who didn't have Lego, Meccano and the like as a kid, but I've yet to work out whether it's because they were already that way inclined and demanded the toys, or whether the toys turned them techie. I'm tempted to assume the latter, as I was perfectly happy to wear pink frills and pretend to be a fairy princess when I was three, and then got a load of hand-me-down toys from cousins, and by the time I was seven thought girls were silly and would only play with boys...
I'm not likely to ever have kids of my own, though, and friends are strangely reluctant to let me experiment on theirs, so I suppose I'll never get a real answer. :)

And that's the problem. I don't know HeidiL hugely well, but she is highly intelligent and has common sense, two things that don't always go together! She is exactly the sort of person who should be reproducing instead of the many brainless hopeless cretins who are! However I respect her choice to probably not have children, I decided many years ago that my particular combination of genetics and lunacy did not need repeating! Yet I have been repeatedly pilloried as not being a "proper" woman :mad:
I was never very girly, did have some dolls (not Barbie!) but loved my brother's hand-me-down matchbox cars, and of course the Lego my sister brought home form Oz duty-free! Never had Meccano or Airfix, they were really expensive in NZ where I grew up, so last weekend's purchase of a 1:48 Spitfire kits was very exciting for me :)
The boys where I lived wouldn't let me play with them or their Scalextrix, so am not as interested, but still looking forward to next week.
 
*blush* You're too kind Ozgirl. I always wanted scalextric, but was told it was too expensive. I guess either the cousins wouldn't part with theirs or it was thought too expensive for them too. I did pick up a non-scalextric slot-car set in MiniMenders a while ago, but it's not very good and we don't play with it much. It's one of those little tracks where you just have to find the right speed to take the whole circuit at and then stick to it, which gets a bit dull. I think it comes out slightly more often than the wii does, though.
 
Dude, she's a girl in an engineering course... I'm sure she already has more than enough people chasing after her. :lol:

I remember once being sat in the design suite at uni once and a girl walked through the room to get to the computer lab next door. No word of a lie every single male looked up and followed her through the room with their eyes, even me! It was like "what is this pretty creature!"

thankfully more a more girls are doing product design which shares the same building as mech eng where I was. Pdm is a softer version of engineering with more focus on fancy cad stuff. But it gets the ladies in and gives the mech eng boys something to look at.

There were girls on my course and I think in first hear there was a good 7 or 8 out of over 120 people. SAddly only 1 or 2 of those you could actually class as proper girls lol. By the end of masters year there were zero girls, ( not even butch lesbian ones or drag queens) . Yeah engineering needs more ladies.
 
Although I've NEVER lied about my age, had a friend who always -'d 5 years and then met a bloke who was 2 years younger than that! Then when the guy proposed she HAD to come clean - he said I love you, don't care about calenders - aww. She's lucky that stupid shit didn't bite her on the arse. Trouble with aging is, still feel like a stupid immature 18 year old on the inside but the mirror shows a 41 year old woman *sigh*
Sadly, I still don't trumpet my age on FG or anywhere else, as too many people pre-judge you based on a number, and most people on here are much younger than me. My issue, I know.

The way i've seen it is that those who are still a big kid at heart are the ones who tend to be more happy in life. those who feel their age are often carrying around an belief of "if only i had done more."
Unfortunately age is always going to be a judgement issue. I was lucky enough to be going out with another woman who at the time was around 7-8 years my senior and age was never a problem between us. However the amount of flak that rolled downhill from friends, family on both sides and work pretty much doomed our relationship but both of us still admit that we didn't have any regrets. Age is rarely a issue unless people make it one.
 
Im a mature student too, but since I get away with looking about 19 means I tend to shock other students when they realise how old I am heh... I was too immature at 16 to decide on the rest of my life so wasted the first 10 years in and out of welding jobs due to redundancy... Not really in this for the career now, would like to carry on at uni after my fourth year..
Theres about 15 girls out of 45 in my aerospace course.. Theres less in the other disciplines.
 
Wow!

I drop back in to read a few comments, and look what's happened! I'm never going to catch up. Important Lesson, pay more attention when people are talking about James May or you'll end up lost!

I've been really enjoying the show so far - I had an eerie sense of precognition when James was moaning about what was going wrong in the Meccano episode - I am really looking forward to what he has to say about the Lego ;)
And was it my imagination, or did the Plasticine Garden seem less frenetic in the program than it was at the time - I remember watching the RHS Chelsea "behind the scenes" shows on the Beeb in May and it was much less laid back.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the Spitfire, the garden and the bridge - they were wonderful creations! I have to cast my vote in with the bridge as my favourite at the moment, it was a wonderful piece of engineering.
Maybe this has been answered elsewhere, but is it still in one piece somewhere?

Ell_sea_kay.
 
The swing bridge half is inside a ground floor laboratory, the bascule is covered with tarpaulins outside in a courtyard behind the engineering dept.. It was going to be bought by a Californian artist, but that deal fell through.. Ive heard that the Architect and Engineering dept both want to take it apart and use the bits for project work.. But I wont be helping with that :lol:... Besides we learned in the first two weeks that to take things apart was harder than assembling them again from scratch.. Would you want to take this apart?? Would take weeks..
S5000002.jpg
 
The show is focusing very hard on how things went right instead of how things went wrong. That's really an editorial choice I suppose, and one I can't say I mind. I know a lot of people are feeling like that belittled all the hard work they did and whining to all hell about it, but I kind of like it. It impresses me to see how hard everyone worked and that in the end it all worked out in a mighty impressive fashion. I don't want to watch a bunch of people whining for an hour about how hard it all is. That's just not fun.
 
It impresses me to see how hard everyone worked and that in the end it all worked out in a mighty impressive fashion. I don't want to watch a bunch of people whining for an hour about how hard it all is. That's just not fun.

Thanks, but unless you have spent 10 weeks of your summer doing a project like this, and then it is made to look like it was easy, then you wont understand why people involved are a little bit miffed.. Nobody is going to be whining, we all loved being involved and the girl talked about earlier, Charlie, is now a member of the NorthWest Meccano Guild..
 
Indeed, I know exactly where you're coming from, munkyboy. Apart from anything else, there's just less sense of achievement from something which goes smoothly, so glossing over the setbacks will dent that somewhat.

Seems like we've got quite a group of mature students here - I'm doing OU, though not with any particular dedication, and I've got a car restoration course coming up at the local college next year. I've been toying with the idea of going back to full-time education, but it's probably not something that's practical for me at the moment.

As for age gaps, my current bloke's 18 years older than me. Strangers tend to mistake him for my dad - I'm told I often look rather younger than I am, which can't help - but friends and family have been fine with it. The main problem people had with my 7-years-younger ex wasn't to do with his age, it was just that he was a bit of a wally...
 
I was never very girly, did have some dolls (not Barbie!) but loved my brother's hand-me-down matchbox cars, and of course the Lego my sister brought home form Oz duty-free! Never had Meccano or Airfix, they were really expensive in NZ where I grew up, so last weekend's purchase of a 1:48 Spitfire kits was very exciting for me :)
The boys where I lived wouldn't let me play with them or their Scalextrix, so am not as interested, but still looking forward to next week.


My mom bought me the Barbie crap..

But all me and the brothers did was use then as cannon fodder in the "Eternal Battle between GI Joe and the Evil Decepticons"

Barbie and Optimus Prime were the Red Shirt Brigade...lemme tell ya. ;)
 
My mom bought me the Barbie crap..

But all me and the brothers did was use then as cannon fodder in the "Eternal Battle between GI Joe and the Evil Decepticons"

Barbie and Optimus Prime were the Red Shirt Brigade...lemme tell ya. ;)

Yeah someone bought me dolls in an attempt to make me a bit girlier. I was never really sure how to play with dolls, though, so mostly I'd set up whatever set of stuff they'd bought me, and then put it all away again and get a proper toy out instead.
 
Thanks, but unless you have spent 10 weeks of your summer doing a project like this, and then it is made to look like it was easy, then you wont understand why people involved are a little bit miffed.. Nobody is going to be whining, we all loved being involved and the girl talked about earlier, Charlie, is now a member of the NorthWest Meccano Guild..

I do understand what you mean..I cant count the times at work I've poured my blood sweat and tears(literally) into a project, only to have one of the engineers eventually wander down to the line and say.

"Ahh, that looks good. And seems to have gone smooth overall. Piece of cake."

Of course he doesn't see how my co-workers have stuffed me into a closet so I wont rip his retinas out....


Anyway, if after you'd had to struggle with one of these projects and you can make it look easy, then take it as a complement. :)
 
I had Dinky and Corgie cars, and Airfix planes, ships and armies (Troops and Tanks). Then scalelectrix plus some odd manufacturers - ViP & Airfix MRRC cars.
 
I dunno about the devil, but it's been pointed out that Lord Voldemort was running the building site...
 
I dunno about the devil, but it's been pointed out that Lord Voldemort was running the building site...

"he who shall not be named" was there? no wonder i felt the taint of evil then, although that might have been lunch.
 
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