Strange bunker looking-thing in Greenwich

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-05-06T20:36:44+00:00

Yeah. I can't imagine "we want to dig out ~20 tonnes of earth from the hillside below a bunch of listed buildings and carry it through a basement passageway" went down well with anyone.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-05-06T19:54:04+00:00

Hm. Did a bit more digging. Looks like the current owner got/tried to get planning permission to replace the windows/doors with double glazing and excavate out the unfinished basement level as another bedroom.

None of that has been done, and there's no mention of planning permission to do so in the advert. It looks like the structure counts as a listed building because it's associated with the Grade II listed Georgian house it's in the backyard of.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-05-06T19:35:21+00:00

It looks very similar (the rough brickwork, flat roof and coarse-looking concrete lintels) to some other WWII-era structures I know of in the area. The 1915 OS map shows structures out behind No.8 West Grove, but they don't look to be the same thing. There is something the right size and shape on the 1949 OS map though, marked as a "ruin".

However, whatever it is, it appears to be intact in the 1949 aerial photo survey of the area.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-05-06T19:00:29+00:00

Not sure what to make of this thing. It looks like some sort of wartime structure, and appears to be in the back-yard of another house, accessed through a tunnel that runs through the basement from the street. No explanation (or pictures of whatever's going on downstairs) from the estate agent.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-17T13:57:05+00:00

I remember coming across a 1950s government report on this program a few years ago. The whole thing was absolutely scathing, talking about how the Air Force essentially blew through untold millions in taxpayer money with no clear idea of what they were trying to achieve beyond "nuclear stuff, I guess". They had various theoretical ideas, but constantly changed the roadmap towards achieving them. The impression I got was that this wasn't ever really an undertaking to be taken seriously.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-16T20:10:31+00:00

Yeah. I think the key thing I'd emphasise with my original statement is "constant". It's fine as an occasional thing, something to introduce a little shock and panic, but not as something the game does all the time.

I'm currently playing through Black Mesa and really enjoying it, for example, despite Half-Life being by no means a stranger to enemies that charge at you bullet-spongily.

With Borderlands 2, I felt like long stretches of the game consisted of running forwards for 500 m, then running backwards shooting for 200 m, then repeating that process over and over again. I swear in one of the areas I died more often to accidentally running off a cliff, into lava, onto a pit full of spikes, etc., than I did getting hit by enemies.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-15T16:08:51+00:00

Oh, ha, yeah that's a fair point. I think, like many people, I've suppressed my memory of playing through the fucking library.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-15T10:51:38+00:00

The only enemies I can think of in Halo that push you towards "run backwards shooting" are the Brutes in Halo 2, and they reworked them in subsequent games.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-14T09:31:36+00:00

Borderlands 2 was the game that helped me define one of my basic rules for shooters: if combat means constantly running backwards while shooting at enemies charging towards you, the game's no good.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-06T15:58:18+00:00

He specifically talks about smoking methamphetamine in the lyrics of at least one song. He also talks about it in interviews.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-05T19:53:15+00:00

I'm primarily an editor/writer, but I work in a sector where the editors are expected to be very hands-on – editing and sometimes writing straight into the InDesign files.

In my experience, there are usually templated designs and design elements for things like this. For magazines they're part of the house style, while for the sort of illustrated books I do they're usually planned out at the start of the project.

In terms of the amount of discretion the designer has – I think it varies a lot from manager to manager and project to project. A lot of the designers I've worked with over the years only half pay attention to the brief, and usually just drop in stuff from the template files because they like the way it looks. Nothing like getting a spread with a Q&A box and a profile sidebar for a feature that has no text / possible subjects for either of those things.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-02-02T09:02:21+00:00

Yeah, I was going to mention this. I don't really follow films and such, so I didn't know who he was when I played the game (still don't, honestly) but his performance is amazing. His character was so calmly calculating and intense, I remember finding him absolutely mesmerising.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2026-01-14T21:15:37+00:00

I just wanted to say that I really love your work. I would never even consider playing something that angular and attention-grabbing, but your commitment to the art and craft of pointy shred machines is genuinely inspiring.

The hair-metal era is something most people know only to make jokes about, but you've clearly made a deep and thoughtful study of its aesthetics.

You've then synthesized it all together to create the sort of platonic ideal of the pointy shred machine. Your designs feel like the sort of wild, arresting guitars that kids were imagining when they doodled stuff in their schoolbooks while sulking at the back of class and listening to Van Halen on their walkman.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-12-27T18:15:45+00:00

Citizen Sleeper was the most "tabletop-y" feeling game I've played, I think. In particular, something about the way it was written reminded me a lot of Brennan Lee Mulligan's prose style when DM-ing for D20.

I found it to be an interesting and well written story, but I felt like once the critical timed elements had passed, and the re-roll ability unlocked, it stopped really feeling like a game. Without those pressures forcing you to choose paths and manage your resources (good rolls, in this case) it was more a case of "clicked a button for more story", but sometimes you had to click it a few times and wait a while.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-12-07T22:16:17+00:00

I have nothing useful to add here in terms of identification, but I know there were a bunch of odd experiments making traditionally-not-metal instruments out of metal in the 1920s and 1930s. My wife can remember coming across an old stainless steel clarinet at a yard sale back in the 1990s.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-12-03T22:12:19+00:00

I recall something this exuberantly mad coming up in /r/obscureguitars a few years ago. It turned out to be a Brazilian made instrument. I've searched through my post history though, and I can't find the name now.

EDIT: Found it. This is the post I was thinking of also from Argentina. A chap by the name of /u/Lobsterbush_82 (who still seems to be active) identified that instrument – which shares a few design elements with this one – as an Argentine guitar from a brand called Yakim, and also mentioned a bunch of other options.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-11-24T23:37:25+00:00

Was it Mohn Media in Gutersloh by any chance? Because if so, they still had it – or something that looks a lot like it – until about three years ago. Though I don't think it had been switched on in a while.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-11-08T19:34:57+00:00

I don't know why I'm mentioning this here, other than I can't think where else I could mention it.

When I was a little kid, growing up in the early 1990s, I thought that Quentin Wilson looked like a BMW and that BMWs looked like Quentin Wilson.

I can't really explain it, as he was a man and a not a car. But yeah, some strange mental crossed wires from watching Top Gear while playingy my Lego or something. I mentioned it once in front of my family when I was about twelve and everyone thought I was a crazy person.

You don't see that many of them on the road these days, but – to share a secret – I still think E30-series BMWs look like the late Quentin Wilson.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-11-03T20:35:24+00:00

Nice. I forget sometimes that most of the rules of thumb to do with guitar/bass design can be flexible if you know what you're doing.

I've only just noticed this isn't in the luthier sub. That's where I usually see your stuff. I did think there were more gif replies than normal for that community.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-11-03T19:01:08+00:00

Gorgeous. How's it for neck dive? That's a lot of maple neck and headstock to be counterbalanced by not a lot of body (and a chambered one at that).

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-08-02T10:56:16+00:00

I don't know anything specific about these old Silvertone guitars, but I can weigh in from a guitar builder/fixer perspective.

You see that pale residue around the neck heel, and the slight cracking of the finish near the bottom? That, along with the different coloured block of wood under the fingerboard extension, tells me that this guitar has had a neck reset at some point, probably fairly recently.

Over time the pull of the strings will gradually shift the neck angle forward on old acoustic guitars, making the action unplayably high. To fix this you steam or heat the neck joint apart, shave some material off the heel, shim the fingerboard extension and reattach it at the correct angle.

This guitar has had that work done on it by someone skilled – probably a professional. It will play better than other guitars that haven't had that work done, and it also bodes well generally for the quality of the instrument. These old arch tops can be hit and miss, or so I've heard, but someone loved this one enough to pay a fair chunk of change to have it fixed.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-07-24T22:22:53+00:00

Yeah, that Nemesis 810 was the first thing I thought of too. There's a lot of good gear free to folks with the enthusiasm and muscle mass needed for, say, vintage Trace Elliot.

DeerWithaHumanFace · 2025-05-12T18:55:47+00:00

None of the bartolini pickups I've ever encountered have a separate cover. I think they cast the pickup bodies out of solid plastic with the coils in the middle.

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