9 March 2026
Two weeks seem to have just flown past as attested to by the fact my medical log is over 10 days behind. In addition to getting stuck into creating a working Firebird driver for laravel's illuminate database abstraction, I was testing it by getting webtrees running on Firebird. I have a working set of code and on the whole it's also properly documented in github, so we now have illuminate-firebird, since illuminate is not actually reliant on laravel, and webtrees with patches that have not made it into the main codebase yet. Where in the past I would have logged changes here, the github repo's have a lot more information against the actual commits, and in the readme files, although the webtrees readme has been reset to the original master. It was easier to rebase on the current version rather than fight to get it to merge with my earlier port, and the recent improvements were getting out of sync with the old notes. Just another documentation job to do.
There have been a couple of model railway shows in between. The Midlands Garden Rail Show the previous weekend at the Warwickshire Event Centre, where I had my run-in with the floor last year. No problems this year and a couple of hours scouting around. I should have thought to take the boiler with me to sort out a smaller burner, but there was only one live steam parts stand. A job to remember for the Model Engineering Show. Or the Stoneleigh show at the end of April.
This weekend I ended up on the MERG stand at the Redditch Model Railway Show. I was supposed to just cover the one day, but ended up doing both. Been a while since I was the other side of the table, it it was quite an enjoyable time, if a little cold at times. MERG had a couple of demonstration panels which unlike the other exhibits, people were encouraged to play with. The kids were fascinated and it allowed them to burn off a little energy after all the 'you must not touch' in the rest of the show. I've signed up as a kitting Elf and have a set of 5 kits to look after. There was a requestion for a batch of one of them last Friday, and I ended up building them up on the stand on the Saturday as it was quiet later on. Little cockup in that I'm 7 transistors short but those are on their way from Rapid along with a couple of bits to finish a DM Super rotary table controller. I sold the stock one a while back, and I will have fun machining the box for this one as I don't have either of the mills fully functional, but if I can get all the wiring sorted then it may need a little hand machining to complete.
I've also spent a little time getting up to speed on the range of boards that MERG produce, and have an outline plan for the next stage of the model railway options. The N gauge kit is probably going to be an easier starting point and will be better served by the electronics, while the best I can hope for the 45mm gauge kit is big oval with a couple of siding loops. Modifying the current engine for battery power with a radio control will be easy given all the bits needed are already in the loft, while the N gauge stuff will need some DCC chipped engines to get me started, along with the MERG controller and track driver. So need some spare cash to handle that, although the DC powered N gauge trains could do with actually being tested.
I have an appointment on Thursday to value the stamp collection. Despite the fact that there are a few thousand pounds worth of Isle of Man material in a couple of the boxes, I'm seeing these daily on the auction sites with estimates in the tens of pounds. Phill the valuer cringed when I said what I had, but I told him I already knew not to expect him to be interested, and hope that some of the other material such as my mothers material from the 1950's may be more productive. He has said just bring everything, so I will, along with some black sacks to sort the rubbish. At the end of the day there is little point hanging on to any off it and the same goes for the map collection which is filling another few boxes. Just a matter of sorting everything into sensible lots but rather than putting it on ebay, I think one of the local auctions may be better.