Posts by Roger Greenwood 951 posts • joined 7 Sep 2006
It's unlikely you will be struck off as long as you keep paying the fees. After all, those folks who wrapped buildings in flammable plastic for decades still seem to be doing OK. Some of them must have belonged to a professional body, not heard of any being struck off yet. Even doctors and nurses have to be REALLY bad before that happens.
We have one machine running just one specific piece of software that has a problem with updates. These two must be kept in sync version wise otherwise it breaks. Yes that means the software is crap, but this is the real world so auto updates are disabled and just done a few times each year. Rather than coming in Monday morning to find it is my fault... again...
It's not BS, it's not emotion, just reality.
On an unmanned site I know of the operators were fed up of false alarms from the methane detectors. None was ever found when they visited so eventually they disconnected the remote alarm. Of course in reality when they opened the doors the added ventilation had cleared the gas and the fault.
This was discovered when one day the methane reached a critical mixture and met a spark, causing the roof and doors to depart the building.
When DOS and UNIX ruled, we wanted to upgrade our CAD system (among other things) but that also meant an upgrade to the computers which would require the use of a new fangled "windows" operating system.
One of the managers at the time couldn't quite get his head around this. "Windows!" he shouted, "what the f***k is windows?". He pointed to the glazed hole in the wall "that's a f*****g window!".
It was a simpler time.
A visit to the Leicester space centre is also recommended. You can get close to a real (old) rocket and see the thin and flimsy materials they are made from.
Also anyone not read Ignition!, now is your chance to laugh/recoil/marvel at the antics of rocket fuel designers and testers. Very readable classic book.
Not just software. I keep old IDE disks as spares for some of our large machines. They acquired a much higher status when I was told "yeah we can get you one shipped from Japan but it will take a week and cost £500" (this was many years ago). Now my precious stash is dwindling.....
On a related note, I read recently the story of how Lancaster (UK) lost the 'leccy for several hours in the 2015 storms. Folks were so glued to technology it was a shock to many how much they were reliant on it. The paper records, your grandads filofax etc were still all accessible (even though the mobile phones were mostly dead) so yes I also understand why print still matters.
No single solution is going to 'fix' education, but it could be a part of it. I have been inspired by many teachers and learnt much from the really bad ones. I wish it had been possible to record those and let other generations experience some lessons/lectures from the 1970's to 90's in my case.
But there is also no substitute for a real world interaction some of the time. I recently joined 2 very different online meetings, both just local club/members only events, both of about 30 people. One was run as a lecture i.e. sit and listen, very limited interaction, Q&A at the end. The other was a short lecture followed by a discusion where every participant was asked for their opinion, short or long. Both had a chair to keep control and both met the requirements of the organisers. But the one where we were asked individually was more enjoyable, we got to hear all sides, no one was excluded. That would be scary for some the first time, but that's what happens in class (or at least it should) and could probably not be done any way other than with a good teacher/leader.
How about we vote for our favourite teacher and they get paid accordingly? The catch is you can only vote at least 20 years after you leave school (Mr Duckworth, Physics, 1975.... :-).
No surprise that they go for the easy wins. The small villages, cul-de-sacs and other dead ends will be at the back of the queue, digging roads is expensive. It doesn't stop the publicity machine though, once the fibre arrives within a mile or two the local news is all over it even though that bit is the problem.
My local town is all fibred up but unless you are on a trunk/through road it's hurry up and wait.
Some years ago we had a new mains gas supply installed. The good news was that the gas main passed by in the road a few feet away. The bad news was that the road was also full of other services including HV/LV cables, water and telecoms, which everyone knew about.
Hole was dug with care, cables dodged, gas pipe identified i.e. cast iron, right size, right place.
Hole drilled, cue waterspout and village water supply cut for several hours, upset neighbours, innocent looks from us, new village swimming pool created.
Real gas pipe was a couple of feet away (deeper), same size, also cast iron.
It's going to need one hell of a map to follow all the existing services as they intertwine, at the accuracy needed.
It's not funny though, really. The CAD world has been pushing very hard to rent you stuff instead of sell it for some years now, Autodesk being very popular of course. If their network did get shut down I feel for all the folks and businesses who would be affected as soon as they try to log on in the morning. I don't rent my CAD software, but plenty do....
Mar Hicks previous book is also very readable for any youngsters out there (under 50!) and contains many fascinating (and tragic) insights for us old folks (>60). The picture of Ann Moffatt from 1966 also appears in it, with toddler.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality
I should add an IT angle that during the fiasco of the poll tax Kirklees was running 4 different billing systems in parallel to try and manage the various local taxing/rates systems. I assume all the other councils (many others just in West Yorkshire) were in a similar position. All duplicating work, all with their own PHBs. etc.
It's going to be a wild ride - the various councils within West Yorkshire (some large, some small) all seem to hate each other. Local rivalry or something but there appears to be very little co-operation and co-ordination between them on the ground. That's before you add South and North to the mix, not forgetting Humberside who couldn't even keep "East" in the name.
If in doubt rename it - try and find Kirklees town centre on a map. That was an attempt to unify various smaller towns but seems to have ended up alienating a lot of old grumps. Leeds as the unifying force would work as it is the gorilla but is being hugely resisted.
Northern Powerhouse? We've heard of it. So yes prepare for change as that is the only constant.
"12 cars off each lamp post"
If each car only takes 7kW (30A), and all plugged in at the same time, that's around 350A (as most lamp posts are only given a single phase @ 240V). Current fuse would last seconds.
Obviously that may not be enough anyway, but it highlights the effects.
I predict your road is going to need to be dug up for new cabling as well, and copper is expensive.
Clever scheduling is going to be required to mitigate the worst of this, either in the vehicles or the charge points. Obviously possible and available but not yet talked about much.
Nail meet head:- "all of the parking spaces need to be charging points".
If you could add 500 miles range in a minute or so, then yes service stations are the answer. But they can't so every parking place needs to be a charge point, adoption is easy and service stations are top up in transit.
The last UK hotel I stayed at a couple of weeks ago had spaces for hundreds of cars but no chargers - that has to change.
Once every car park space has a charge point your car just gets charged on schedule, simples.
Every house has a 60A to 100A supply, luckily we are not all cooking at the same time so charge scheduling is the answer (and yes, the grid will still need reinforcing but not as much as the worst predictions).
It took over a week to realise that a doubling of cases every few days was going to be big trouble, given what was going on in Italy at the time? You didn't have to be a genius (or even a data scientist) to spot that one. Changing national policy/direction was always going to be difficult though, fair play to those who did the persuading.
Those who were prosecuted are the obvious ones to feel aggrieved. Then there are many others (thousands?) who were audited, came up short and had to pay it back out of their own money (or face sacking/prosecution).
No doubt there are crooks everywhere, but surely very few amongst those many who ran post offices for decades. I hope they get it returned, even though it can't fix the wrong it would be the right thing to do.
1 - 1 device, 1 browser for everything (don't care/no money/clueless/life is too short)
2 - many devices, 1 browser for everything (still don't care but has money)
3 - many devices, different browsers for different tasks (care a bit)
4 - different device per task (overpaid/overthinking/properly cautious)
I think I am generally level 3 with a bit of level 4 for some tasks....
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