Posts by RockBurner 359 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2010
Have to admit I still have one regret about the exit interview from one of my longer jobs.
The main reason for quitting was the behaviour and attitude of one the senior staff, and although I was able to allude to that issue during the "chat" I couldn't quite bring myself to say out loud "The guy is a [area of genital anatomy of which the first letter is 'c', and the last 't'], and is the reason virtually everyone has ever left this company". Not having the gumption to come out with it openly to the big boss is one of my lifetime disappointments.
However, I think they knew anyway, and the guy was gone within 6 months.
I remember when Paddington went "digital" with the platform signage.
Every daily commuter was instantly up in arms about how unfriendly it was because there was no audible notification that the signage had changed - the noise of the flippy-panel signs updating could be heard across the concourse, so everyone could ignore them and get on with other things, until they heard the noise and could then check their trains.
Now everyone is permanently staring at the boards which update silently and without any warning.
My father was most upset about it, and tbh I think it contributed greatly to his slide into luddite-hood.
This reads like the author had a highly traumatic experience within Control Panel / Regedit once upon a time, and never received the post-Windows care that is still needed.
Don't worry mate, we've all been there, but to blame the tools for the underlying mess, or the flack received after the overseeing manager didn't get what he wanted, is not the solution.
A search engine that returns results that are relevant to the search terms, not random adverts, sponsored links to completely unconnected websites, and irrelevant guesswork mis-direction to unrelated terms.
In all seriousness: being able to style input fields "somewhat"* would be useful, it would do away with a huge plethora of CSS/JS tricks that developers are forced to deploy to appease the crayon wielders.
* There need to be limits and restrictions to prevent complete user-confusion.
(as a side note, why the hell are the "designers" always more senior in a web-dev agency than the coders??)
but the Microsoft hardware, I always got the impression, was far, far better than their software.
I used to have both an Ergonomic keyboard and the Trackball (can't remember the exact model names). Both were excellent, robust and reliable, and made Logitech's contemporary offerings look flimsy and knocked together by comparison.
Ah, the nostalgia...
FYI:
If anyone was a fan of the "Lone Wolf" series by Joe Dever (similar thing to the Livingstone/Jackson series), then please be informed that someone has transcribed the books into an App, with the original artworks and everything.
They're currently in the process of doing the Grey Star series too.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=GDV+Games+and+Software
(for Android at least, I couldn't see it on the Apple store).
Looks like the FF series also has an app. (albeit paid for)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinmangames.ffhub
I'm sorry... what??
That's an absolute guarantee that the screen will crack with even a very slight drop.
I suppose if they're going spend moolah making a phone that's easily repairable, they need to recoup moolah by making sure it needs frequent repairing.
"I'm oot".
My Godfather was "someone important" in the RAF in the late 60's/early 70s and living the life of Riley in a forces-supplied home (think Georgian mansion!), with a small support staff.
One morning a package turned up with what looked like a small black wire poking out of it....
Cue bomb-squad's immediate arrival, evacuation of said building, a very nerve-testing movement of the suspect package out of the building, followed by some impromptu garden re-modelling.
When the dust settled the remnants were inspected....
It was a hairbrush.
Obviously, this being the RAF, the offending item was immediately mounted in a lovely wooden and glass frame and decorated his office for the rest of his life. :D
Turns out the hairbrush was actually a joke gift sent by a friend and was just not very well wrapped!
(they obviously didn't use a huge amount of plastique to "detonate" the package because the wooden body still had a fair few bristles still embedded in it. I remember repeatedly chuckling about it whenever the story was told)
This (sort of) happened to me, just minus the misfortunate wife and the initial rejection.
Heading for an interview in London, on a somewhat tired commuting hack, the throttle-cable snapped (bit of a brown trouser moment as I was doing (limit + xx) mph in the fast lane at the time), and I had to divert rather hurriedly to the hard-shoulder of the M40.
20 minutes of swearing later and I'd jury rigged the cable well enough to make the bike rideable and hammered on to the interview.
My filthy hands were commented on (no time on arrival to clean up properly), but my explanation was accepted and my ability to successfully troubleshoot went down well. (ironically that same attitude got me thrown out of said job a couple of years later... some people are impossible to please).
" It's like they have no clue that the user doesn't already know what they know"
This goes for pretty much every one I have ever encountered in any technological scenario whatsoever.
Having extensive knowledge about a subject seems to confer on any given human the automatic assumption that everyone else has that knowledge, it takes a particular mentality to get over that hurdle and be able to explain things to those without the knowledge.
I'll freely admit that I suffer from it myself, and often find it very difficult to "think down" to the level required to explain complicated things without sounding incredibly patronising.
"it means that entire disciplines could be locked down by opportunists without the need to actually implement any demonstrable invention"
Yup - that's exactly how the US patent system works. Patents are only tested for originality or practicability when they are challenged by either a competitor, ie a holder of a similar patent, or when the holder uses said patent to crush (read: overwhelm and buyout) an "imposter" who actually gets something relatively similar to work.
From a UK perspective it is indeed a very, very odd system: only of any benefit to lawyers (guess who wrote the rules...)
"the media still can't get away from Trump. Their constant coverage is surely feeding in to the hype, intentionally or otherwise."
I always find whinging about the behaviour of the media like this to be counter-productive. The media exists to sell media. Be that airtime/printed paper/bandwidth whatever - the "media" will tell any story they can get away with that will increase their sales (and, often, no, not within reason, especially these days).
If a story, or (more accurately), a story told in a certain way, will get people to consume the media, without getting the media source sued, it will be released, no matter the consequences to any person connected to the story or not.
A media source may well have an agenda, but it will always be secondary to the prime motivator.... money.
I know the stuff (neoprene based at the time, the modern stuff is even better), and have tested it personally numerous times. I"ve also had accidents where I wasn't wearing armour.... and bear the scars. Now I won't ride a bike without it.
Incidentally - I once did the steel ball trick on some of the standard "foam" type armour and the ball bounced back about half the height it had dropped from. (luckily when it subsequently dropped onto the glass counter top the glass didn't break.... made the entire shop staff jump though. :D)
I'm assuming that this sentence :
"Bzdyk says us the team does intend to scale things up too far"
is supposed to read:
"Bzdyk says us the team does not intend to scale things up too far".
I do find this grammatical error curious: it seems to happen more and more in general life (news reports, social media posts etc etc) and I can't fathom where it comes from. Missing out a negative completely changes the meaning of a sentence. In this case admittedly it simply makes the sentence difficult to parse, but often the omitted negative completely changes the meaning that the writer is attempting to convey.
Not sure who started the "modular" production approach to motorcycles but BMW certainly used it with aplomb since the middle of the last century at least.
You could probably argue that NVT (Norton Villiers Triumph) did it too, but that was more a badge-engineering effort (ie produce one bike and slap different brand/model names on them at random).
I'm no rocket engineer but....
"It also puzzles me why the stuff needs to be weldable when its whole raison d'etre is to do away with a thousand frikkin' welds."
Because aluminium that is "weldable" is aluminium that can be heated up to a liquid state, allowed to flow together, then, when cooled, retains it's original strength (or thereabouts), and the structure is not weakened by the changes of state during that heating/flowing/cooling (ie welding) processes.
Basically it means you can heat it up, flow it through the print nozzle, and when it engages with the already printed material, it bonds properly at a molecular level (instead of just "resting" on top, or, possibly "keying" at a surface level context).
IE - it's possible to use it for 3d printing stuff like this, where non-weldable aluminium would not be as strong.
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