Posts by Intractable Potsherd 4167 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
I prefer to go a short way from a junction now my mobility and balance aren't so good, so as to reduce the amount of looking around. On a T-jungtion as described, crossing at the corner requires looking behind, down the side-road, and forward. Moving down the side-road reduces that to just left and right, with a reduced chance of losing balance compared to looking behind.
Whilst I (think I) understand at least some of Russians motivations re: Ukraine and NATO, I don't agree with the country's actions. However, this "All Russians baaaad" attitude, forcing Russian people who want to contribute to the world (be they programmers, sports-people or whatever) to become effectively stateless is not proportionate, useful, or effective. It is a huge misuse of power tantamount to bullying. Torvald's "I'm Finnish so yah boo sucks to Russia" is, frankly, pathetic - history or not.
The main bit of car maintenance I've had to do over the last few years is removing and replacing batteries. I miss the old days when turning the key to the "0" position meant that there was no electrical draw, so that there was no spark when putting the negative terminal back. Electric clocks used to cause a tiny spark, but with the multitude of electrics/electronics in modern cars, the spark is bug and loud. I hate it!
"This isn't much different from planning for gas stops..." Who plans for fuel stops in civilised countries?? I've driven many times from Scotland to the Czech Republic, sometimes doing the trip from which ever ferry-port on the mainland coast in one go, sometimes with one or two overnight stops. Since I know the mpg of my cars, and watch the fuel-gauge, and start thinking "fuel needed" once it gets to about a quarter full, I have never yet had a problem needing to "plan fuel stops" in advance.
A point made as expert witness in a research misconduct case a few years back. TurnItIn results requires skill to interpret, especially when the topic is very narrow, such as questions set for a degree or research results in a very specialist area of medicine. Of course there are going to be terms of art, specific phrases, and quotations and references common to the papers. My usual example is to consider a question about the definition of theft - a paper that doesn't have "Theft Act 1968", "Section 4", "dishonest appropriation of goods belonging to another", and at least one of three or four key cases is a failure, yet TII gives each one a really high plagiarism score.
Hailing from that area, and being at school from the late 60s to early 80s, I went on school/6th form college trips down mines, into steelworks, oh, and at around the age of around 10, into Ladybower Dam (that was a lot of climbing that day!) I think RAF Finningley was the most exciting, though, standing coder than the usual airshow flightline whilst a pair of Vulcans took off. I don't know whether I'm more sad that school children would never have the opportunity to do any of those things today because of risk-assessment disorder, or that only one of those things still exist.
Overall, I like the idea of a word-based method of giving locations. This is based on my experience of people who cannot remember, nor are able to read out, any number with more than three digits, combined with those who cannot accurately write down/type any number with more than one digit. I absolutely agree that things like AML are probably the best way to give locations, but only as long as there is no transcription needed anywhere in the process - sometimes even 10 metres out is too much. However, any word-based solution has to be done right if it is to be used for emergency situations, and that isn't easy due to things like accents etc.
Until such a system comes along, though, many of the problems can be dealt with by a) getting people to enunciate the dots - dogs DOT toe DOT dearth is clearly different from dog DOT stowed DOT earth - and b) asking for spellings - W3E words aren't long, and can be spelled quite quickly. Again, there are accent problems if the speller doesn't know the phonetic alphabet, but it reduces the error-space quite significantly.
In general I agree, but I actually like "Battlefield Earth"!* There is something I find very playful about it, and the utterly mad change of direction from almost extinct, completely uneducated humanity to galactic superstars leaves me breathless every time!!
*The book, not the film, of course!
There's no risk of that happening at this household* because if you ask for coffee I'll boil the kettle, transfer the brown granules from the jar to the mug, and pour the boiling water onto it. I'll even let you have milk and sugar if you wish :-)
* OK, I suppose there's a small risk depending on what can grow in/on coffee granules after >6 months in the cupboard (no one in the house drinks coffee, so it only gets used for visitors!)
The thing is, you never know what is going to become "need[ed] records or memorable details" somewhere down the line. Even minuted meetings can become disputed later if (as some employers do) the "official" report gets changed to the benefit of the employer. Contemporaneous records, such as emails, can be very useful.
No. Emails provide a searchable and all-but-permanent (if one is sensible about backing up) record of who said what and when. Management wants telephone calls so that there is no record of who said what. I'm currently assisting a person with an employment tribunal in which the employer is getting its arse kicked because the employee kept records almost obsessively.
To be fair, I live in (what is becoming*) a reasonable sized town. The older bit in which I live is very much a 15-minute town, taking in two supermarkets, what passes for a bus-station, the railway station (two trains an hour in each direction), plus a couple banks (for now), Post Office, library, couple of convenience stores, pubs, cafés etc. However, the nearest (State) schools we could get the children into was a) sink estate huge and just 15 minutes away on foot, or b) proper sized six miles away (10 minutes by car). Sounds heat, until you realise all those new developments are significantly more than 15 minutes from any of the things I've just mentioned. A car is an absolute necessity for people living in them.
*Lots of new develop ments going up around the edges.
Exactly. Until last year I was a landlord, using a letting agent due to distance from the property. I thought having a local agent would make maintenance easier for everyone. When the last tenant left, I went down to view the house. It was in a terrible state, not as a result of tenant activity, but because of the agent not doing the job I was paying them for. The agent knew very well that my instructions were to tell me if anything needed doing, and I would get it done. However, it was obvious they hadn't actually visited the property in years (even taking into account Covid). In the unlikely event I ever become a landlord again, I will not be using agents.
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