Monday, December 11, 2017

Thor:Ragnarok spoilers

One of the advantages of having absorbed a lot of very old media (the Bible) is the pleasure of recognising elements when they recur in popular culture.

Thor spoilers follow -

Hela returns when Odin passes on and reveals how she was his deadly right hand in his conquest of the nine realms, his first daughter and she revelled in the bloodletting as the Goddess of Death.

Compare this to the female personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-ff. 'I, Wisdom, was with the Lord when he began his work, long before he made anything else. I was created in the very beginning, even before the world was set up.'...':30 'Then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of humankind.'

I doubt that the contrast with Wisdom was much in the mind of the creators of Thor:Ragnarok, but I think it makes a good illustration of the way that the Lord was not always or exclusively understood as essentially warlike, for all the wars his people were engaged in.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Top-mount Oliveri Monet 71U

I bought this unit second hand, with a set of mounting clamps as pictured. They won't grip the small flange available, and Oliveri claim that this is an under-mount sink. I don't want it undermounted, and don't think the design wants to be undermounted.  So, to use these clamps, here is what to do:. Cut down the body of the clamp and the bolt by about 5mm or 2-3 threads. I ended up with a range of sizes and most worked. If you start with 12, lose a couple to error, then you still have enough.  Bend the legs away from the biting teeth - they are going to press inside the curve of the flange and balance the torque produced by screwing down.  

Hard parts - getting a hole through the flange, driving the bolt through the hole without the thread stripping, getting the whole job done in a way that lets you seal with silicone and put the clamps on to hold it in place.  Getting the clamps down is sufficiently difficult that I chose not to undo them to silicone under the lip of the sink.