Posts by Peter Mount

Ah memories

Did my O level on one in 1986 & by 87 had a second one with 64K of ram (Slogger Master Ram board) which replaced the CPU with a daughter board, a faster CPU & 32K of shadow ram.

That machine had a 3 way toggle switch added which provided 3 modes:

* Normal - where it ran as a standard electron

* Turbo - where the new cpu ran at top speed (can't remember the speed off hand)

* 64k - where the video remained on the original ram but the OS ran on the shadow ram - so BBC Basic had more ram available than the BBC B had.

Then there were the floppy drive (+3) added to it.

Ah takes me back.

Oxford St the highest density of non-working wifi

As I'm litterally 5mins walk from Oxford St (just of Regent St) WiFi is totally unusable. There's way too many hotspots around here for it to work.

It's made worse because the only config anyone's done is to setup the SID & a password - everything's on either channel 1 or 6 so it's just way too congested for it to be of any use.

Before you asks, it's all on 2.5GHz, there's sod all on 5GHz around here.

One way PM's anti pron law could fail...

It's not just Cockerels which could fall foul like in this instance but our dearly beloved pubs!

I know of one local to home which is actually called "The Cock" and if that pub's website got blocked because of the name (it dates from the 17th century) then it could go the way that the Australian's equivalent did initially... when they blocked a dentist's website :-S

As for Scunthorpe, I remember when url blockers first appeared in the 90's (was working in local government at the time). Anyhow Scunthorpe's own council blocked their own website from their employees - for obvious reasons.

Beer icon for the danger to certain pubs...

There was once a vulcan before

It was a mythical planet that was once thought to orbit the sun closer than Mercury...

Which is why some people thought it was a bad idea for Pluto (ignoring the theme the IAU correctly went for).

In Star Trek Vulcan was a hot desert planet, so having a real Vulcan out in the outer part of the solar system doesn't tend to go with that theme either.

Amateur footage shows it better

This footage taken from a few miles away shows it failed shortly after it left the ground - something you can't tell from the official footage.

http://youtu.be/DSTVkkDv30k

Don't exactly blame them from ducking when it hit the ground.

Mint 15 is pretty stable so far

I've been running Mint for years on the desktop - ever since Ubuntu started having issues with wifi from v10 & then Unity & haven't had any major issues with it. Thinks like WiFi just work (almost).

On a desktop running Mint 14 it had intermittent graphics issues causing the machine to hang but so far since 15 was released thats been stable (touch virtual wood).

Might get round to upgrading the lappy to it when I get chance (running M14 at the mo)

RIP Flash you won't be missed

The day when flash is no more is eagerly awaited. It's a cpu hog more so when some moron thinks having 20 swf's on a single page is a good idea because it's 'cool' but you can't do anything because you're standard spec machine cannot do anything else.

Ah the A930

I think I still have one in a drawer somewhere. The only phone I've ever had that actually had 2 batteries in the box (& chargers). Battery life was really bad.

Anyhow with 4G the costs are far too much & so little actually has 4G coverage. For me why pay 4G prices when I'm mostly going to get 3G?

I was a T-Mobile customer since before they were T-Mobile but since the merger the service just dropped so I'm in that list of people who have left

Raspberry Pi

Apparently the CPU used in the PI has a hardware RNG. Back in February they added kernel support for it:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=19334&p=277747#p277747

it sounds like it uses a thermal entropy source.

Was it HMV's fault?

When there was a tweet just over an hour ago stating:

'Just overheard our Managing Director ask "How do i shut down Twitter?"'

Was it a coincidence? ;-)

Teletext on the BBC Micro

Anyone remember the teletext modem the old BBC had which downloaded software broadcast over Ceefax?

Or the bulletin boards of the mid eighties which used teletext (Mode 7 on the Beeb) ?

Ah they were the days. Still miss them occasionally

Maidstone didn't have queues

Carphone warehouse was open early this morning & had a few inside as I walked past to get the train - but no one queueing.

The funny thing was getting stopped outside & being asked why they were open - so Apples PR machine hasn't brainwashed everyone ;-)

Its not what it used to be

Things have changed since the early days on Slashdot, the quality of posts have changed for the worse IMHO. Originally they were more for the geek part of the spectrum but these days they seem to be more aimed at getting more eyes than quality.

Saying that, ads can't be the main reason, I do see the option to opt out of ads appear every so often even though I use Adblock when I can (can't on the tablet for example).

Still, Im puzzled on why a recruiter wants this type of site though.

#5613 & wondering how many on here have 4 or less digits in their uids - uid envy being one of the /. contributions people will remember ;)

Yet another Mapping service

I gave up trying to keep up with the various API's - especially when Google started charging so I've gone the other more extreme route, OpenStreetMap data on my own tile server & OpenLayers as the front end.

I don't need the whole world but the UK still needs 7Gb of disk space just for the PostgreSQL database - but it works & I can customise it to how I want not to how some advert farm wants it.

Orkney Dark Island + Bread

OK as Orkney Dark Island was mentioned in the article, years ago when I then had a bread machine I actually tried using beer as part of the recipe & Orkney Dark Island came up tops.

Simply use white bread mix but replace 1/2 the water with Dark Island.

It comes out brown but tasty. Could be a good one to try again with some decent bacon

Nothing OSS wise gets close...

I started using Postgres around 1995 (this is before PostgreSQL) & by 98 I was one of the developers so I'm a bit biased but whenever I need to do something serious then I always use it & the more recent versions are simply getting better.

Large DB's, no problem. My biggest currently runs around 7+Gig & yet it's lightning fast. I'd dread trying to do that in mysql.

Right now I'm setting up my own OpenStreetMap server covering the UK & guess what, they use Postgresql. From what I read a full earth DB is around 90-100Gb!

It's a pity I ran out of spare time 10 years ago to continue working on it personally but it's still weird that even now I get people emailing me with questions about large objects or JDBC :-(

It does depend on coverage

I always see people say XXX is crap or XXX is fine but it does all depend on where you are or where you use it the most, as always it's usually down to either coverage or too many users.

I use both T-Mobile & Giff Gaff for data & for where I use them they both work well.

T-Mobile works best at home as I get a good strong signal, all the other networks don't have good wall penetration.

Giff Gaff works well at home when used in an unlocked MiFi unit hung up high but I tend to use it more when on the train. On the routes I use I find that the O2 network tends to be better than T-Mobile (I had tried 3 PAYG on the routes as well). Each one has it's own set of 3G blackspots but you get to know where they are.

NB: I had used O2 for the train until recently, switching to Giff Gaff last month to try it out - actually finding it more responsive but that could be down to the APN not being as heavily used as O2's.

Ah Chuckie Egg

I still play it on the odd occasion using an Electron emulator on the mac - sometimes you just can't beat the old games :-)

Quit launching balloons?

I have a feeling what the payloads of weather balloons weigh a lot more than LOHAN would do & how many are launched around the world each day? In fact how many accidents have happened with something falling out of the sky let alone from a balloon?

Definitely a comical comment from a troll or typical scaremonger/nanny state type moron ;-)

All because they are lazy

At the heart of this is where they say telecom equipment can't handle the odd leap second (most are added but they can be taken away as well), citing things like navigation - presumably GPS.

The thing is that GPS doesn't use UTC - it has it's own time system strangely called GPST which doesn't use leap seconds.

So since GPST started in 1980 it's now 15 seconds ahead of UTC

A good example of the various clocks & how far they are out: http://leapsecond.com/java/gpsclock.htm

I'm already lining up projects for these

I don't care if these have a case or not - there's plenty of uses for them as they are & I'm intending on getting a couple - one to play with & one to run my weather station.

At the moment the station is running off the back of an ancient itx linux box but one of these would be ideal to replace that box. Not much local storage is needed & the rest is pushed over the ethernet.

Mars vs Earth scores

There used to be a page carrying the current scores - i.e. point to Earth when we get a probe to Mars & a point to Mars when a probe fails - but I can't find it anymore (possibly gone).

Anyone remember that page & got a link to it?

Reg must drink in the most expensive pub in the UK

£4.59 for half a pint! The most expensive full pint I've come across is in Soho & even that was about £6.50 - I won't be drinking in there again I can tell you :-(

Launched in 1972?

Strange as I always thought they were launched in 1977, Voyager 2 first in August then Voyager 1 in September?

It's now 2pm & they are still down

well I'm still not able to get in :-S

Thats weird

My mac prompted me yesterday morning to upgrade so it's already been running 6 for over a day now. Somehow at one point the update servers must have had it up.

Saying that this has now broken most of the plugins as they are now reporting incompatible etc :-(

I'm not sure what this fad about releasing major versions every time is but it's not going to end well at the rate

I'll wait a bit longer

I'll wait a bit longer but I've found the iPhone app works perfectly fine on my 1st gen iPad - in fact even when not using a headset the hands free side works better than most purpose built phones do.

The only down side is that it does look like an enlarged iPhone - hopefully the app will work fine