Posts by GlenP

Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper

I've had...

A (very expensive when bought) document feeder on an HP scanner ruined when somebody tried to feed paper still held together with paperclips through it. By then spares were impossible so the feeder was trashed.

The there was the company that though it would save money by reusing paper in the fax machine. Quite why someone felt the need to Tippex out something on the "clean" side just to reuse 1 sheet is beyond me, I did point out that the cost of a single replacement toner/drum for the unit would keep them in paper for a long time but fortunately a quick clean with 1,1,1 Trich* did the trick.

Reusing label sheets in laser printers is always a recipe for disaster of course, although possibly not so much these days. I've had to peel a few stickies off drums before now, generally they've got away with it but I recall there was one that didn't.

*That probably dates how long ago it was!

UK.gov urged to ensure punters can 'still roam like at home' after Brexit

Mobile operators had to absorb huge costs

More like they had to pass on the costs in other ways. Roaming in Europe may be free but without bolt-ons added to the account calls from the UK to Europe have rocketed in price. It's costing us as a company at least £100/month plus the time to manage bolt-ons and data allowances (as we're using VOIP where possible).

It's Pi day: Care to stuff a brand new Raspberry one in your wallet?

I really must...

get back on to some Pi work. I've got a model 2 currently sitting under a model railway. It's connected to servos via a dedicated board for points control (its main use at the moment), has inputs from track detectors and a small push-button controller and can drive locos from code via a USB DCC controller. It all works and I've written the relevant Python control software, I just need to put all the programming together to get fully automated running.

I'll get my coat, mine's the anorak!

'A sledgehammer to crack a nut': Charities slam UK voter ID trials

I'd argue that if you don't pay any bills you're either here illegally, squatting or not mature enough to cast a vote.

Simply not true. In many households one partner or the other (usually, but not always, the man) will pay all the utility bills.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

Re: Top this...

That reminds me...

I was at a quality control exhibition in the early eighties when inspection equipment was starting to move over to computerisation*. At least one multi-thousand pound machine had a ZX-81 in it (they wouldn't have admitted it but the display was clearly recognisable).

*The company I was temping for later acquired a fully computerised 3D checker, it used a PDP-8! DEC engineers would fall about laughing before trying to work out how to actually fix the darn thing.

Still got one...

Having started to learn programming at school on an RM 380Z I spent my paper round money on a ZX-81. It did get upgraded with a 32K memory pack (which was a bare board, uncased as that was cheaper!) Once at Uni and with a bit more money available in those full grant days before student loans I upgraded to a Spectrum. With help from a flat mate I built a fully programmable multi-button joystick for that (advantage of the keyboard matrix being presented on the expansion bus) which was brilliant for playing Halls of the Things as you could easily access all the weapons.

In third year I acquired a Beeb Model B cheap, someone wanted the floppy upgrade and wasn't prepared to do the minor PCB mods so bought a new one and sold the old one second hand. The irony was he went from an Issue 7 motherboard back to an Issue 3, but he wouldn't listen. I think I used the Watford Electronics kit to then install a floppy.

They've all long gone now as houses have been cleared, etc. but a friend recently offered me an apparently working ZX-81 with RAM pack for a small charity donation. Unfortunately it's not boxed but it's now a display piece.

Boring. The phone business has lost the plot and Google is making it worse

I'll happily accept stock Android. I'm happy with "boring" if the darn thing works and is updated regularly.

Sheer luck helped prevent mid-air drone glider prang in Blighty

The existing rules are clearly being flouted all the time* but short of significant penalties I'm not convinced tightening them will make much difference.

*Like the drone being flown at a car event last weekend, well within 50 metres of a pub building, a gathering of people in the car park and within a few metres of a major road junction which was probably the worst of the three.

Here's how we made a no-fuss RSS vulture app using trendy Electron

First, the app has to be oriented toward the efficient display of text, to maximize the number of headlines visible. It should be a headline scanning app, not a news reading app. It should not display images at all, because they take up screen space and slow load times.

Second, the app should sort stories chronologically. That's something more RSS apps should do.

Third, the application should filter by time. It should contain links to new pages and not old tired stuff. That means it shouldn't retain material, which most RSS readers seem to do. There should be no concept of "read" or "unread" articles published within a specified time window. I don't want to open it up after a week and find thousands of unread pages.

Could someone point out these objectives to the BBC, Google, and just about every other news site on the web?

Microsoft ends notifications for Win-Phone 7.5 and 8.0

I've still got my Lumia 1020 somewhere, bought for the superb camera primarily but I was more than happy with the Windows UI. Unfortunately in the end it was the lack of app availability (and support for the apps that were there) that killed it.

I've ended up back with Apple largely 'cause that's what we use at work.

Developer recovered deleted data with his face – his Poker face

Not major but...

Back in the day when I was switching between Apricot and PC Compatibles I will admit that once or twice I went to format a Floppy on the former with Format A: forgetting that was the HD.

Thank heavens for Norton Undelete! As long as you caught it before it finished you could run that and rebuild the file system in a few minutes.

UK mobile customers face inflation-busting price hike

The increase prompted me to check my package with EE, so instead of a 4.1% increase I've scored a 33% decrease with better limits.

Uber saddles up for a new cycle of controversy

Dockless?

So they're electric assist but don't need to be docked?

How many will be abandoned when the charge runs out as they're too heavy to continue pedalling?

User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster

First one this morning, "My laptop isn't coming on!" User has laptop plugged into external monitor.

My reply, "The laptop is on, try turning the monitor on as well!"

It's gonna be one of those days.

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

I've even got the bolt cutters!

Amazing how often someone has said, "I need a..." and I've had one in a shed.

Self-driving cars still do not exist even if we think they do

Re: They kinda do and kinda don't

As for townies who quake in fear at the first sign of a country road with, gasp! corners and pootle along at 30mph on an open road (it happens) an autonomous car would be a boon, they can close their eyes.

I hate those. Crawl at 30mph in the countryside and then speed up when they hit the 30mph limit in the village.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the data centre temp's delightful

The server "cupboard" I inherited at the current employers had two heat pump units instead of proper air con. Instead of placing the condensers outside they were mounted just the other side of the wall in the factory/warehouse right underneath the metal roof. Now what could possibly go wrong?

In summer they struggled to cool things sufficiently, bearing in mind they were being fed with hot air to start with, in winter they shut down as apparently they weren't rated to run in sub zero outside temperatures. They constantly dripped water (fortunately they weren't right over anything too critical) and eventually iced up completely and destroyed themselves.

I specced the replacement, 7.5kVA of proper cooling power is a bit excessive but I know it will be reliable.

Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious

Power Cables...

I've had a few power cables not properly plugged in over the years. I always used to ask them to unplug them and plug them back in, try a different cable, etc. warning them that an engineer call would be chargeable if it was just that. They still wouldn't listen!

Years ago when working for a small software house selling Apricots we always knew from the symptoms when a computer had been switched off or unplugged without being shut down. I had one user who insisted that this couldn't possibly have been the case, she'd left her desk for a few minutes and the data had spontaneously become corrupted. A couple of hours later she phoned back, very apologetic, her boss had managed to dislodge the power cable and plugged it back in hoping she wouldn't notice.

BlackBerry won't kill BB10 until 2020, pulls regular Priv updates

Re: Not entirely correct

Handset quality finally ended our use of them. The last few dead 9xxx's I didn't even bother returning for warranty replacement. With a lot of travelling users the compressed data was still of some benefit but not sufficient to make running the server worthwhile.

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

Re: Acorn Econet got there first?

Given how sensitive Econet could be when using cable I'm not convinced! :)

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

We've decided to be different this year. As we all much prefer the left-overs to the actual roast dinner we're doing a buffet. It will include turkey (although we usually have cockerel), beef, Yorkshires, pigs in blankets, stuffings, bread sauce, etc. plus fresh bread and butter. People can make sandwiches, or whatever, as takes their fancy and it can mostly be prepared in advance.

Dawn of The Planet of the Phablets in 2019 will see off smartphones

Re: What I want

My washer/drier does a full load, however it's true that hybrids generally do neither thing well!

Thou shalt use our drone app, UK.gov to tell quadcopter pilots

I live almost adjacent to a small airport roughly in line with the end of the runway. I would never, ever, under any circumstances consider flying a drone from my property it's simple common sense.

A certain millennial turned 30 recently: Welcome to middle age, Microsoft Excel v2

But...

For a while, an essential measure of PC compatibility was how well it dealt with 1-2-3 rather than some abstract technical spec

The essential measure of compatibility was whether the PC would run MS Flight Simulator!

'Sticky runway' closes Canadian airport

Re: On Google maps...

Apparently it had a technical problem in flight, landed there and never left! It became a Gate Guard to commemorate the RAF's involvement with the airfield.

Never landed there in my "commuting" across the pond but a colleague did when they ended up on a short haul 747, due to a plane going out of service, from Heathrow to Detroit. Let's hope they get this sorted soon.

BOFH: Do I smell burning toes, I mean burning toast?

At the previous company we were forced to move the office out of one factory into the adjacent one after a flood (fortunately the raised floor in the computer room meant nothing was damaged).

After pointing out that trying to cram the computer room and two people into a one-person office would be totally impractical, and possibly even illegal (insufficient volume per person) we were offered a semi-redundant toilet as an alternative. As part of the refurb we insisted that a dividing wall was removed, only to be told, "We can't, it's supporting a 1,000 gallon water tank!" Said tank turned out to be sitting on wooden beams between two walls and could easily have come down at any moment. We got it moved!

We also then discovered that there was an internal valley gutter running over the other end of the new room right above the comms rack. It only overflowed if the rain was really heavy... A year or so later and it was eventually fixed and we could remove the polythene sheet.

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

Re: You ended up with a Nissan Puke? Unlucky!

Drove one as a hire car. I can honestly say it's the only car I've ever driven that was as ugly from the inside as outside.

Shame as it was a very good vehicle otherwise.

Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre

Re: PAT was barred...

An argument I've just been having. I've reluctantly agreed to the desktops being tested but they're not going anywhere near the server room.

Combinations? Permutations? Those words don't mean what you think they mean

If anyone wants to know more about this I can lend you "An Introduction to Computational Combinatorics"! Still got it over 30 years after I left Uni, and still can't read it without falling asleep.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

I had a Nokia 1020, admittedly mainly due to the camera. It was a decent phone and performed acceptably well for what I wanted. In the end it was the ecosystem that let it down. Even when apps were available they were often out-of-date and buggy. The killer was that MS were offering later and better versions of the Office apps on iOS and Android than on their own product.

Support team discovers 'official' vendor paper doesn't rob you blind

Re: As the old, old saying goes...

I have to disagree, there are some things Duct Tape can't fix, that's when you need cable ties!

Re: Common English words with very different meanings.....

It is correctly pronounced "rowter".

I've had American colleagues disagreeing on the correct pronunciation so what chance have we Brits got?

Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine

Re: VMS documentation

Yep,

First job one of my duties was to insert the updates in both the Vax/VMS manual set and the PDP-11/45 set (the latter was only powered on once in all the time I was there but couldn't be disposed of due to some government ruling).

Re: Not quite IT

We had a similar problem at an office I worked in. The intruder alarm would go off on cold mornings shortly after 05:30. We also hit the issue of police refusing the call outs until someone noticed that the large world map hanging in the sales office was right over a radiator.

In certain conditions when the radiator warmed up the map would waft enough hot air to trigger the movement detectors.

Re: Dockyard

It took a heck of a lot to kill those DEC terminals.

We recovered a VT240 out of a burnt out computer room (electrical fault in the machine shop next door), case was a bit melted but for a laugh we plugged it in from a safe distance.

It came up with the standard VT240 OK message after running its self tests, albeit it was a bit dim.

BOFH: Come on, PFY, let's pick a Boss

Must remember...

"And perhaps it could give lectures about scope creep while it was at it?"

Change it to the first person and it could come in very useful!

Beer 'cause it's Friday.

If you need to replace anything other than your iPhone 8's battery or display, good luck

Having had 15-20 iPhones* in the field for the last 8 years or so we've only ever had one with a smashed screen. Better repairability would be nice but it's not a priority.

*No, I wouldn't have chosen them but what Directors want they generally get.

Manchester plod still running 1,500 Windows XP machines

Re: I still have two XP instances

1.44mb discs, what is this new media of which you speak?

Try doing VMS from 250kb RX01 8" floppies! I think there were 70 or 80 of them to be inserted one after the other.

User worked with wrong app for two weeks, then complained to IT that data had gone missing

Re: Label as TEST

Exactly the same with our ERP system, except it's just the database name and URL that differ.

We don't generally have users in the test system, but it's there partly for training/experimenting as well as testing.

Boffin wins (Ig) Nobel prize asking if cats can be liquid

Re: Cats are neither a solid nor a liquid.

"Winning at Gambling is for people who can do math(s) well"

In other words bookmakers! Casinos don't need to do maths, the odds are already in their favour.

123-Reg customers outraged at automatic .UK domain registration

The registrar we use, GetDotted, have offered the free registration. Its entirely optional and opt-in.

That's how it should be.

Google to relieve HTC of its phones biz – report

Re: Screw HTC, buy Wileyfox instead

Agreed, even after the forced move from Cyanogen the security updates keep flowing. I just received their release of the August Android update today. When I replace the phone (another year or two probably, easily replaceable batteries extend the life) I'll probably go with them again.

Way back in around 2007 I had an HTC P6500 that I managed to get for free* from Orange (as it was then). It was solid (I dropped it onto a concrete step, it survived), had all the required features including fingerprint sensor and GPS that came later for other models, and being Windows it integrated properly with the PC. Trouble was HTC stood still at the time and everyone else moved on.

*It was supposed to be business supply only and around £320 up front on the contract I was on. I didn't even have to threaten to leave although I'm sure that's the justification the helpful customer services person used.

Stuff the movement of celestial spheres, let's sit down and watch Bonnie Tyler on TV

Re: Sheer Heart attack

I was originally taught that Nellie the Elephant was the correct rhythm and correct number of compressions before breathing. Then it changed to doing Nellie twice, making sure you didn't pause in the middle.

Personally I found it easier to just count!

Smart meters: 'Dog's breakfast' that'll only save you 'a tenner' – report

Economy n Tariffs haven't gone away, but tend to be confined to large "traditional" suppliers. I've got Economy 10 (it adds a cheap period in the afternoon) principally for heating hot water from the ground source heat pump. It makes less difference with the heating itself as that's running at a constant temperature.

Terry Pratchett's unfinished works flattened by steamroller

I've got one here, simple USB multi-format controller.

Internet addict sent to an anti-addiction boot camp is no longer an addict. Because he's dead

What about parents...

Sadly Internet Addiction seems to strike some adults as much as children/teenagers these days.

Seen at a railway museum at Easter:

One mother with two pre-teen boys who were creating havoc. Very occasionally she'd look up from her phone and moan at them but that was her sole interaction.

Fortunately on the other side was another young mother with a 5 or 6 year old, they were going round and she'd be, "Look at this Peter, isn't that interesting?" Youngster was walking round fascinated by everything. There is some hope even if the lad does grow up to be a geek with a model railway*!

*Takes one to know one.

Linux-loving lecturer 'lost' email, was actually confused by Outlook

The Usual...

"Some of my emails are missing!" problem is 'cause they've accidentally dragged the folder into another one, surprising how often that happens. Still, IT look good for solving the problem in a few seconds.

Hell desk to user: 'I know you're wrong. I wrote the software. And the protocol it runs on'

That extra accuracy in time is usually the critical factor!