'Faithful admirers of my long-standing column will immediately recognise a sexual double-entendre when they read one.'
I see what you did there.
I couldn't give a Greek clock about your IoT fertility tracker
Like to get wet, confides (or asks) the manufacturer in suitably moist English. Faithful admirers of my long-standing column will immediately recognise a sexual double-entendre when they read one. But this time you'd be wrong. Or at least you might be. I'm not sure. I am looking at Comper Healthcare's promotional web pages …
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Friday 16th March 2018 10:25 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
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Friday 16th March 2018 11:26 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
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Friday 16th March 2018 16:48 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
You know, Samantha puts in a lot of hard work on this round and she gets a bit fed up with silly comments about the way she 'checks the teams' 7 inchers' or 'pulls out my reproduction equipment and twists my knob'. Samantha tells me she tries to take no notice of these pathetic, purile critics, but it isn't always easy to ignore her knockers.
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Friday 16th March 2018 10:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
You went to a museum, that is a popular conference pasttime
Museums are classic. There are less classic things to do at a conference like bring a kayak and do some rowing around the lake in the park next to the 5 star hotel (disclaimer - I will neither confirm nor deny that I have done that, but damn those German river police boats are seriously impressive - more like a "pocket battleship" than a police cruiser).
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Friday 16th March 2018 11:16 GMT Paul Cooper
Re: It sounds more fun than real camping
No, REAL camping means digging a flat spot in the snow on the glacier for your tent, making sure the poles are well embedded so it won't blow away in a gale and remembering not to collect snow for drinking water from near the red flag that marks the area used for other functions! Other horrors include living on preserved food, and cooking on a primus (gas doesn't work in the cold) in a double walled tent (what could go wrong with that?)
The good news is that few other organisms are daft enough to even TRY to survive in those conditions!
Before anyone takes me TOO seriously, a well-known aphorism amongst polar scientists is "Any fool can be uncomfortable in a tent!"
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Friday 16th March 2018 11:45 GMT Russell Chapman Esq.
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to mention Clickspring too, he is an amazing engineer and his attention to detail is incredible. That clock he made! Here is the link to his channel for any who are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA/videos
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Friday 16th March 2018 12:44 GMT Russell Chapman Esq.
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
We are a weird bunch of commentards, I don't work in IT but enjoy keeping up to date with technology, at the same time we are people who enjoy engineering and science. I don't feel like a dinosaur but I do wonder if we are dinosaurs, in the sense, people like us seem to be, becoming ever rarer.
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Saturday 17th March 2018 07:51 GMT MrT
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
I don't *work* in IT. I'm employed in IT but that's something entirely different.
AC because I know other people here read El Reg.
"Hey <insert name of everyone with whom we've ever shared an IT office>, is that you?"
No-one ever lists their own name. It's mysterious - an Enigma, even...
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Friday 16th March 2018 15:40 GMT GrumpenKraut
@ Russell Chapman Esq.
> ...I do wonder if we are dinosaurs, ...
Easy check: Is you skin really scaly, are your arms somewhat tiny, and did you have a Triceratops for breakfast? Congratulations, you are a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Note, however, if your skin is just somewhat scaly, your hands are really tiny, and all you are chasing is women who run away in disgust. Bad luck, you are the US president.
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Friday 16th March 2018 17:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
"I don't feel like a dinosaur but I do wonder if we are dinosaurs, in the sense, people like us seem to be, becoming ever rarer."
There is evidence that today's children have higher IQs than our generation - but remember IQ measures abstract thought not practical ability,
In the same way, dinosaurs did all right when they stopped all that ground-based lumbering and took to flight.
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Saturday 17th March 2018 15:47 GMT swampdog
Re: Antikythera Mechanism - dinousaurs
You mean dinosaurs invaded us in their asteroid spaceship 65 million years ago? That explains why their bones are all over the place. Archeologists really screwed up there. Someone should tell 'em!
Thank our dinosaur overloads for their faulty braking thrusters .. is all I can say.
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Saturday 17th March 2018 15:26 GMT Mage
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
Education, practice at similar problems etc gives a massive boost to IQ score. The inventor of it said it doesn't measure intelligence, but just compares people of a similar age and background. The USA in particular ignored that as the IQ tests inherent biases made most ethnic minorities and people with darker skin score worse.
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Saturday 17th March 2018 20:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
I was trying to figure stuff out as soon as I could toddle. I don't think it's at all environment, most definitely genetic. That being said, those of us off engineering/making/whatevah are not out and about. Rather the people you do see everywhere are those that are consuming rather than making. Usually their nose stuck up in their phone.
Whenever I do run into a young person that's bent on engineering I make every effort to encourage them including my time and what resources I have. Never enough of us.
[My mother says that I was at a light socket trying to figure out what it was used for. Having failed to get a reaction from it, I wet both fingers and put them across the contacts. On getting shocked I said, "Mommy, wall bite." Her reply was, "Yes Brian, they do that." She's the electronic engineer half of my parents.]
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Friday 16th March 2018 18:57 GMT pɹÉÊoÉ snoɯÊuouÉ
Re: Antikythera Mechanism
"Nobody needs an excuse to go off on a tangent about the Antikythera Mechanism."
to go off at a sort of tangent, there is a nice bloke over in Australia, he has a YouTube channel called "clickspring". He usually does clock type stuff, but for the last year or so he has been doing a series remaking the Antikythera mechanism, using a mix of tools that would have been available back in the day to show how it would have been made, but using modern machinery for the grunt work once demonstrated with the ancient tools, even demonstrating how files and other cutting equipment are made.
Its worth a look, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA/featured
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Friday 16th March 2018 12:11 GMT imanidiot
Re: Field conferences in nice places.
The more prudent approach would be to just stop organizing those "networking over coffee" type activities. I've never attended a conference where those actually draw any crowds, even if they are in the middle of nowhere with nothing better around to do people prefer staying in their room and have an hour of downtime than be forced to be in a predictable location so that annoying people can track them down. Because that's what it always boils down to, the people you WANT to talk to are being kept busy by boring sacks of shit trying to sell them on the idea of recycling pencil shavings and when they become available you yourself have been latched onto by a brain leech sapping your will to live. True networking is done by inviting someone to go grab a drink somewhere out of the way and far away from where anybody from uninvolved parties can pin you down.
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Friday 16th March 2018 12:04 GMT Pen-y-gors
Glamping?
An added problem with these new-fangled 'words' (hey, why don't we invent a word to describe them, something with a nice classical ring - neo-logisms?) where was I? Oh yes, An added problem is the pain caused to translators around the globe. I was on a Welsh course a couple of years back and one of the tasks was to devise a suitable translation for 'glamping' that caught the flavour of the original. Our best effort was 'pabell posh' (Lit. posh tent). Anyone know what it is in German?
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Friday 16th March 2018 22:44 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Glamping?
"Our best effort was 'pabell posh' (Lit. posh tent)."
But Shirley, in the spirit of "glamping", that should become "pabosh"? Having said that, you're contracting and inventing, not translating, so what you really want is a literal translation of "glamorous camping" into Welsh then contract the result into something pronounceable (which ought to be easy for a Welsh speaker)
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Friday 16th March 2018 12:21 GMT Alistair Dabbs
1901
A note to pedants. I am aware that the Antikythera Mechanism artefacts were recovered in 1901, not 1900 as stated in my column. I typed 1901. The irony of cyberpixies from the gremlinic dimension turning the clock back by one year in an article that's actually about a clock isn't lost on me.
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Friday 16th March 2018 14:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
two sorts of conference
1) Serious. These are generally somewhere bloody awful (with 2-star accommodation a few kilometers from the meeting in Central Europe in November taking place over your weekend)
2) Fun. These are held in 5-star accommodation on tropical island resorts, with large breaks for "networking"
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Saturday 17th March 2018 01:21 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
On heat...
Comper Fertility Tracker is designed to help a woman track her body temperature over time. Or in other words, to find out when she's – quite literally – on heat.
Measuring core body temperature - for low a tech cheap solution, use a rectal thermometer.
Admittedly, somewhat inconvenient to use in the middle of say a supermarket whilst doing the weekly shopping. But performing the insemination right there and then would also be frowned upon even of the time was right
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Monday 19th March 2018 03:52 GMT fidodogbreath
Glenglish
My favorite line on the Comper website:
Based on your basal body temperature data, Comper App can accurately predict your next accurately predict your nex (It's extra sentence that need to be deleted) menstrual cycle and ovulation.
...while elsewhere bragging about their attention to detail in the product design.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
