More bargains of sorts

[ffutures]

I wanted to pick up a can of black paint from Poundland, so (having totally misjudged the weather) went out without an umbrella, and arrived at Poundland a bit damp. Needless to say the paint was out of stock, but I got some other things I wanted and one that may be useful - a copy of the Computer Shopper guide to Linux, which included a free CD with Ubuntu 12.04 - not the latest version, but it's the current long-term support version I have on my old PCs, so hopefully the book will be fairly useful. I also noticed (but didn't buy) several blu-ray discs in their DVD section - unfortunately they look to be fairly crappy action-adventure stuff so I didn't buy any, but hopefully that's a sign of better things to come.

Took the remaining region 1 DVDs to Oxfam, and (as one does) checked out their shelves, especially the buy one, get one free offer on DVD boxed sets. As usual this did not end well - I spent a tenner on Planet Earth, Blood Ties, Gossip Girl S4 (have S1-3 already) and Luthor S2. At some point I really need to start watching these things...

Later on I'm heading out to the Isle of Dogs to pick up a table I found on Gumtree. It's the right size for my wide printer and has two lower shelves for paper etc. This one seems to be designed fairly strong, for office use, so hopefully will be OK. The best part is the price - £8! Not looking forward to this trek, so wish me luck!

later - got the table; bit of a boring trek but it's OK, made of tubular aluminium and MDF and I'd imagine is some sort of Ikea model since it uses their hex-socket screws. Nothing fancy but it does the job.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Good luck. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst you can always Macguyver your new table into a raft if need be.

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TFL seems to think tube trains are currently OK, just hoping that when I get there the Docklands Light Railway is working normally and not e.g. shut down due to high winds or flooding.

It's going to be a bit small for raft conversion, the top is 3ft x 2ft and the shelves are a bit smaller! The coffee table I got the other day would have probably worked quite well...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Turned out to be made of dense MDF - I don't think that stuff even floats, though I could be wrong.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

In my experience it mostly seems to just soak water up like a sponge and then turn to mush. But they might have improved the formula in recent years.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Years ago my school bought a load of measuring cylinders that were cheap but turned out to have really fragile bases that inevitably snapped off. It was fairly easy to trim off the broken glass since it was very thin, but we didn't have anything to put them in so they would stay upright. So I asked the design and technology guy if he had a suitable material (e.g. some sort of sheet plastic) that could be cut to discs or squares and used instead of glass.

So he gave me squares of MDF, which I duly glued onto the cylinders, then dipped the bases in molten silicon rubber to seal them and make the bases non-slip. Unfortunately it turned out that the rubber was slightly porous - after a couple of washes all of the bases swelled up and split the rubber, had to do the whole lot (about 25 cylinders) again. I was not a happy bunny...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Did you hear some people are starting to refer to MDF as the potential asbestos of the 90s? Because of the very fine particles of dust you get when you work the stuff, and they use formaldahyde to bond it. Which is carcinogenic. So it gets really deep into the lungs of builders and people who work with it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I was prime contact for a lot of the health and safety stuff in my school, including that. The DT people were NOT pleased, they had to spend a fortune improving the dust extraction systems for bandsaws etc.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oh, do schools use MDF a lot?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

They used to use it a fair bit for craft projects, don't know if they still do.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Wood too expensive?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine so - not my department.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Nobody in Wokingham must buy box sets, they very rarely turn up in the DVD shelves of my local Oxfam. Still, I do well out them for books.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of this stuff goes to the Oxfam bookshops from other stores, your chances are much better there.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Try cash converters, they've sometimes got cheapish sets.