Posts by Martin-R 90 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2010
Great system in principle but lousy implementation even with the cloud data... Binned it a while back, switched to Drayton Wiser which is far more flexible and works locally - no cloud required. It also offers nice add ons such as connecting a smart meter to the system so I can see actual usage and cost in the app.
And another vote for Eufy doorbell and other cameras - just works, local hub, no cloud
I think it's more "went righter" than "went wrong". They will work to a range of outcomes from each burn and eight will (probably?) have been the worst case. If you look at the JWST coverage, they ended up with a lot more fuel for station keeping than the 10 year baseline thanks to a very precise launch and mid-course burns - see https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Precise_Ariane_5_launch_likely_to_extend_Webb_s_expected_lifetime
Could you hear me shouting at the radio too…?
I know people who were looking at something like this about 10 years back and the key arguments were, yeah, small reactor less efficient than big, but
1) small reactor much easier to build and manage
2) if you 20 50MW reactors it’s easy to take one off line each month for maintenance rather than losing 500MW for a year or more
As to the technology being unproven, I just assumed RR would be delivering something based on the submarine reactors they’ve been building since about 1966
I say this as someone who lives about 5km from several nuclear reactors and 7km from a recently decommissioned coal plant - I know which worried me more!
The problem is having staff skills and time to support it. I was lucky to have staff who could & would go the extra mile when I went off-piste with the curriculum (eg the biology teacher who just happened to have her 2m handheld in school for me to borrow the day I told her my ham radio licence came through - first QSO at lunch time from outside the science block :-) but that was a while a go and funding has got tighter since then (and curriculum much more prescribed). There are some schemes out there which will stretch the brightest without too much staff input, eg UK Mathematics Trust offer mentoring for their challenges, but you're still dependent on the school's awareness of such things - and then of course the volunteer mentors.
Oh if only... I was recently locked out of my business banking for 10 days due to a 500 error while they'd been telling other people with the same problem there was no problem... Posting the error message from the Chrome developer console to their Twitter support desk at least got them to admit there was a problem, but it took several more phone calls and them physical posting me a 'magic word' to get it resolved :-(
Hats off however to the Ocado developers who put their recruitment links in the console complete with Ascii art of the logo :-)
My "calendar of record" is the iPad... The *many* Gmail calendars I'm interested in reach it via one Gmail account, and my multiple exchange accounts are configured on it too. It seems to work pretty well - certainly much better than trying to show Gmail calendars in Outlook, let alone something rash like trying to see all the Exchange calendars together in Outlook without ticking multiple checkboxes that won't stay ticked next time you visit!
Somewhat amusingly, the iPad also seems to be the best place to use Teams... at least there I can easily switch between accounts instead of having to log out and log back in again as on the Windows Desktop client.
If you bumped up the electric field enough for it to actually zap them, not sure I'd want to go in the room myself while it was on... But maybe you could put an electric charge on the mosquitos and then a high enough magnetic field would deflect them all out a window?!
Can’t be bothered with baiting them any more, just installed a call blocker. Once I’d remembered to white list the kids (they always call my mobile rather than the landline, except that once…) it’s been pretty seamless. And from the reduction in calls in the logs, I think some of the scammers may have blacklisted *us* :-)
Chrome supports multiple profiles, they just open in new windows rather than different tabs. Works a treat for keeping all the different O365 accounts separate (and that increasingly includes for voluntary groups as well as work clients)
The frustration with the Teams client for Windows however is quite justified... Outlook is sitting there quite happily supporting six different Office 365 accounts simultaneously, letting me receive emails from any of them and send with little more fuss than a dropdown to select the account. Teams on the other hand is struggling with my work account and one client 'guest' profile; to support any more requires major logging out and and in again. Ironically the best client I've found for Teams so far is on the iPad...
From reading the AHF paper, it would appear that these implants have a 'magnet reversion mode' that triggers a certain behaviour when a doughnut magnet is placed over the device. Normal phones have 'little to no risk' of interference but the Magsafe alignment magnets are in a ring that appears to do more than a passable impression of the doughnut magnets - 3/3 devices for their in vivo tests vs a previous study that found none in 148 patients with an iPhone 6
8GB Pi 4 Model B is showing as £73.50 inc VAT. chuck in an SD card and PSU and I guess we're at ~£85 a pop, plus the mess of extension leads for the PSUs. So if you're only doing something short term, or experimenting with say a cluster, then may be it is worth it. 'Course if you do buy them outright, you have to be wary of the damn things breeding - I seem to have 3 running full time at home doing various jobs plus the one I tinker with...
To which I can add "have you turned it off and left it for four weeks?" Power shower stopped working after a couple of power cuts in quick succession. "The Internet" says yeah, can happen, turn it off for an hour, it'll reset. Nope. Left if off 24h. Nope. Decided to survive on feeble shower for a few weeks as bathroom needs completely refitting anyway. Chap comes out to do survey and estimates, turns it on, works... aargh!
Mostly I'd agree with you - in the last year my laptop's lid has really only opened for access to the power switch. But in normal times I'd have to visit clients one or twice a week so then I do need a laptop. Running a laptop and a desktop and keep everything in sync (even with all the cloud tools) is more grief than I can face, aside from the expense of two machines :-(
Also open to suggestions on a small screen laptop that will drive two external monitors - I don't need a QHD touch screen when the lid is shut, but all the smaller ones I've found seem to only support one external monitor
My least favourite remote access tool has a helpful popup with words to the effect of "this will disconnect your session" followed by an OK button and only an OK button. No it's not OK, it's far too easy to click the button that ends the session accidentally, give me a cancel button!
I also love applications where closing a record with unsaved changes usually says "do you wish to save your changes first?" and at other points says "this will discard your changes, do you wish to continue?" - but at least there are yes and no options in both!
My kids' recent experience of STEM degrees (Maths and Engineering) is that the vast majority of final year projects on offfer have some element of ML or big data, and have done for a few years, so it's no great surprise there's more interested in straight ML/AI/Big Data degrees
I had three instant credit store cards in *almost* my name turn up over a few days. Trying to convince the issuers to talk to me about store cards that weren't for me was a farce (which caused much hilarity in the open plan office), and I later found that the credit checks that had been done against my almost-name and address had DOB and time at address wrong. One of them was even done after I'd spoken to that issuer's security team about the first dodgy card... Make me wonder what you have to do to fail a credit check - be honest, probably :-(
Forget beer consumption, if it's late at night and you're already tired, you probably shouldn't be driving yourself into the office anyway, let alone home again a few hours later! I've done enough first flight out/full day on site/last flight home trips to know there's no way I'm safe to drive home, so the company can pay for the cab both ways or I'm not going.
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