Posts by Mister_C

Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

Re: Automated Coffee Table Railway

Excellent idea, but I'd be careful about controlling the train from the pub in case the fat controller decides on random alcohol testing

Solar moitor

Starting to look at reading the solar panels' output and varying the immersion heater to use free juice when the sun shines rather than 3kW when the water wants it. Then there's play / pause on the dishwasher so the magic cupboard works while I do (at the moment most likely using an xBee linked solenoid to poke the buttons directly). Oh, and switching on the charger for the laptop batteries through the day for evening browsing...

Curiosity succeeds – Mars was wet enough for life!

"we're still deconvoluting the spectrograph information"

Deconvoluting. My new favourite word, ever.

Does that mean interpreting? Or did I misinterpret?

Or simplifying? Or did I over simplify?

'Million-strong' zombie army devours Raspberry Pi's crunchy base

re Chinese ones

Maybe just the original supplier who lost out when production got repatriated to Sony in Wales

Trekkies detect Spock's Vulcan homeworld ORBITING PLUTO

RealMcCoy

That would nark former doctor who Sylvester McCoy. IIRC he used to appear as "the real McCoy" in a mock freakshow thingy before he got the tradis gig

This 320-gigapixel snap of London is size of Buckingham Palace

3 Busbies

more of a "spot the birdy" than "watch the birdy" photo then.

Tux? This is not the bird you're looking for

BBC: Monster cargo ship delivers '863 million tins of baked beans'

Cosmic Jengo

Good job nobody had tried to stack them then, would've made quite a din when they tumbled

Schoolgirl's Hello Kitty catonaut soars to 93,000ft

Kitty in a tree?

Isn't that a job for the fire department?

OK, I'm going

Latest exoplanet discovery is a virtual CLONE of Earth

Re: How far?

So I don't need to get the holiday brochures then (and Scott Broukell can give the estate agentsa miss too).

Beers all round to those who found it never the less

just call me picky

but how far away is it? doesn't appear to be mentioned in the article or links, and it kind of makes a difference between "oh, that's nice to know" and "book me a flight, I'm there"

Nuisance calls DOUBLE, Ofcom vows to hunt down offenders

Re: No it doesn't

Some extra points from my last TPS response that really rub salt in:

- The TPS response had a "noreply@TPS" address

- They don't give any case reference number

- The muppet included comments along the lines of "you haven't given us enough to go on, do contact us again to discuss this further"

Useless Muppets

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

Call me a peasant, but...

"distillers manage to add flavour (and often a colossal price premium) to their products by such means as leaving them in variously-prepared wooden barrels for a few years"

I prefer to serve my voddy after a long infusion of sloes. I'll be trying elderberries this year due to the (non cimate change related) poor potential harvest on my normal picking grounds

Light ties itself in knots - spontaneously

Re: Light Sabre

Sorry, light crochet hook is more likely

'Nutjob' serves half-baked Raspberry PI scam

Beat me to the joke, so here's some boring stuff

Only one of the suppliers has a lead time based on "Jam tomorrow, never today" (raspberry of course). The other supplier is quoting three weeks and shipping after three days (personal experience based on an order placed last week which shipped yesterday). No names given coz I don't want downvotes from their employees ;)

Tandy and Maplin are also advertising "in stock" and "late September" respectively, and CPC appear to be selling them OTC like hot pies

Oh, and peeps on eBay are still punting activation codes. For the souvenir hunters, methinks

Assange calls for help from … Quakers?

Assange calls for help from … Quakers?

I though trying to get his oats was what caused the trouble he's in now

Undead galaxy cluster spews 700 zombie baby stars A YEAR

740 suns a year?

That's a publishing rate faster than NewsCorp. How do they manage to maintain journalistic integrity?

Network sniffing algorithm could have fingered 9/11 suspects

Re: Hindsight

You, Mr AC, are Archibald Tuttle and I claim my five pounds

Old-timer Odyssey to babysit Curiosity's Mars landing

Re: About a million to one......

You can kill them with anagrams of the homeworld? Let's hope they don't say HEART to us.

Skydiving daredevil Baumgartner leaps from 96,000ft

Ground Crew

That's a pretty scary piece of crane driving too - launching the pod like a paper plane

Reg hack bumps into Cockfighter

What just happened there?

I thought I'd have a look at my fave techie website to see if they'd picked up on today's Rasberry Pi video but it seems like I've stumbled into a film buff blog spiced with subtle references to "I'm sorry I haven't a clue".

Ah, its Friday. Carry on.

PS Eben just called your website simple. In a good way. As in loading / rendering.

Nutter bans Apple purchases over environmental fudging

your bet

"I bet the glue blobs have rounded corners though"

<pedant>

They'd be glue prisms if they had sharp corners or edges

</pedant>

Rare AutoCAD worm lifted blueprints from Peru, sent them to China

Re: Mind blowing

Nazca was a long long time ago

Mystery buyer scoops working Apple 1 at auction

Them bidding wars is dangerous

375k?

And to think I nearly got into a bidding war for a RasPi activation code last weekend.

The seven types of online commenter

Re: This is not a type N post

A vacuum flask is a suitable "warm place". Especially if you like coffee flavoured yoghurt.

More Brits desert high streets to spend £50bn online

Mastercard backed? Good luck

Credit cards widely available but MC debit cards are only available through Clydesdale and its subsidiaries.

NatWest & HSBC both claimed "increased security" as part of their decision to push Visa

We're going back to bricks & mortar

If my wife's recent experience of online shopping from the website of a major store (WHo Shall remain nameless) is anything to go by, we'll be ditching online shopping soon.

She ordered a mini filofax (yes, how 80s) last December and after they'd sent her the wrong order, then sent part of the order, then admitting their systems were locked up they're trying to weasel out of completing the order.

She's not out of pocket at the moment thanks to them refunding her card but she's stuck with a 2012 filofax diary and no filofax to put it in.

Needless to say, trading standards will stay in business for a while yet...

Oxford adds woot! to dictionary

w00t description

from 2007:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-w01.htm

and from 2009

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/ar-col1.htm

Android app logs keystrokes using phone movements

too late

Auntie Beeb has already claimed your idea...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/16/bbc_copyright_freudian_gaffe/

Dunkin' Donuts waitress offers additional dunkin'

If you want to find all the cops

They're hanging out in the donut shops

She can't say she wasn't warned...

Lego lover builds big Barad-dûr replica

Playmobil reconstruction

Or it didn't happen.

Allegedly

Iranian pimp plates arse up Afghan car sales

And don't forget

If you forget to pay the annual charge for a retained plate (and they don't send reminders) you can loose the plate.

Breaking wave 'big as the USA' spied on Sun's surface

Imperial measurements

In Belgium they might consider Congos to be an imperial measurement

Tory terror changes promise moon on stick

I believe the term you're looking for

is "cognitive dissonance". To paraphrase, that terrible moment when reality clashes with prejudice.

Or more properly:

Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Cognitive Dissonance and learning [On-line: UK] retrieved 8 June 2011 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm

Yes, it is currently my phrase of the week.

Spot-the-fake site launched

Prior art

Sorry, a marketing type has already been there.

Netto's own brand brandy is labelled BrandX with a reduced serif on the X. Result looks like BrandY (though the effect is lost with this font). Not sure if the contents taste similar to brandy.

Sun attempts to ID entire FA Cup Final crowd

Not tried

He won't be in the Man City end (too easy) and I hope he isn't in the Stoke City end (too hard).

Anyone care to look at the rest?

Slack bank practice creates opportunity for phone phishing scams

3 calling in the repo men?

My wife has had fun with 3 and repo men. We ended up getting ofcom involved and sorting it all out. Then six months later another debt collector sent her a letter... Be prepared for at least another year of crap.

Hacker pwns police cruiser and lives to tell tale

Be afraid

"allowing unauthorized people to view and alter video stored on cruisers could torpedo court cases that rely on the DVRs for evidence"

You mean that some people _are_ authorised to alter DVR evidence?

TV election debate 'worm' graph found to undermine democracy

But what happens when the worm turns?

Someone had to say it. Now its done and you can get on with proper comments

Council dives into crematorium-heated pool

Hg scrubbing

Radio4 did an article on this the other day. Apparently the crem has some kit to remove mercury from what would go up the chimney and it needs the gasses to be cooled significantly (down to 160C IIRC). The council were faced with the adding a heat exchanger and either dumping the heat with a potential compalint about global warming or doing some good with their 'free' energy. Bit of joined up thinking (IMHO) was applied et voila...

Maybe a few power stations could be run in a similar way and reduce the cooling tower clouds that can be seen for 30 miles as they dump 'waste' energy.

There was possibly another option, namely not putting mercury into the crem. I'm so glad they decided not to remove teeth from the customers. Might've caused controversy...

Bold as brass metal thieves disrupt rail, comms, electric

Beer kegs

Empty beer kegs (decent weight of aluminium) don't get knicked for weighing in because back in the bad old days when keg beer was introduced the breweries came to an arrangement with the scrap merchants not to handle _any_ kegs. There's usually a sign to that effect at or near the cash desk.

I know a keg shaped piece of ally is a bit easier to spot than a rats nest of bare copper wire, but better licensing really would sort the honest merchants from the fences.

Norwegian MP nominates Wikileaks for Nobel Peace Prize

Don't forget Henry Kissenger

I quote Tom Lehrer:

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Egypt loses last vestiges of connectivity

BBC world service

Foreign language broadcasting is due to be cut in favour of online content. I do hope that at least one of the suits behind that decision has seen at least one of the Egyptian lockdown stories and has the guts to put two and two together.

Although I doubt it.

Can we have the Rice Krispies advert tune for our new national anthem please?

Snap Crackle Pop. Crazy crazy world. Crazy crazy world we live in

Apple $10k winner hangs up on 'prank caller'

sheesh

but 5k > 999.

seems it is a bit hard to figure out

Nazis 'became obsessed' with piss-taking Finnish dog

There is another option

Mel Brooks has quite a knack for finding third reich related humour

Google battles Derby cops over access to Street View data

and if he hadn't reversed onto the drive...

His rear number plate would have been seen by the camera and not obscured by google.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/street_view_army/

and my next door neighbour too...

Brits now spend more on debit cards than rustle or jingle money

monopoly money

All the major banks have just forced a visa debit card (near)monopoly on us recently. Only one way the merchant charges are likely to go and it won't be to the customer/client advantage.

EXPLODING GARBAGE TERROR hits Florida

you forgot something...

anyone owning a copy of any council published list of revised holiday collection dates would be done for possessing information likely to be of use to a terrorist

Cops cuff armed white supremacist in banana costume

this is a reply

Nah, just better dressed.

Unless you're talking about oranges

PARIS in hot glue gun action

high end of temperature range

my extensive research (searched amazon for "bradbury") allows me to give you the high end of the range.

451F

I leave the cold end to other comentards