2nd mouse
(a) around here, the third mouse gets the carcase.
191 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2019
Met regularly with in 8.3 file-naming conventions.
Back in the mists, I programmed a (VERY) rudimentary "statistics analysis" package in Fortran on a VAX 11/750.
So to be concise and succinct I shortened both words to four letters each, and then concatenated to the required 8 letters, and, like OP, with no intention of crudity.... until I handed it over to a human tester to find the bugs. He just lengthened the pronunciation of the first /a/ of the second word and raised an eyebrow.
Filename changed pretty quickly.
Will tell this story against my young-teenage self (with no mentor, and no "how to" resources easily available).
Trying to build my first two-transistor electronic circuit on Veroboard (lines of copper parallel to one edge of board, with 0.1"-spaced holes drilled in as a grid, diameter narrow enough to ensure continuity), I did not realise that I had to cut the tracks between where I had used them for different nodes in the circuit.
You can get sound modules for the inside of your car linked to the engine speed. Then you can select Rolls-Royce or Maserati, depending on your fancy (or age), played through the in-car entertainment.
Perhaps self-driving cars could have a similar selector feature but by the type of driver steterotypically driving the brand. See El Reg passim about certain brands of motorcars not needing indicator lights or rear view mirrors because the drivers do not seem to use them.
Try Lisbon, about 30 years ago, in a taxi with shot rear suspension cornering on damp cobbles: more of a slide than a drive. The added irony was that I had recently signed a life insurance policy whose wording had asked me to vouch, for the selected premium level, that I did not indulge in dangerous activities/hobbies such as parachuting etc. After Lisbon, I felt that their list was a bit short on real life experiences, but did not disabuse them of their ignorance.
Well, there was that time when the Russian navy mistook a bunch of trawlers for an armed Navy and opened fire. One suspects that their navy's talents of identification have improved a bit since 1904 (under new managment). Look up "Dogger Bank Incident".
Yes, very "interesting". Just look at the direction of twist of a motorbike accelerator. You open it up fast, underestimating the power available, fall back in the seat, hold on tighter to stop falling off, and intertia does the rest. Positive feedback.
Just speaking on behalf of my brother who did that as a learner on a BMW 650 single....... He went off backwards, leaving the bike to slap its way down the road until friction took over. Fortunately it had "sissy bars" on either side of the block. The instructor's observations in his earpiece are NSFW.
Many years back, I watched a team come in to install a firedoor on my corridor. Did a very nice job, from concrete floor right up to ceiling tiles. Once they had re-instated and left, I went to the house services manager to ask if it was supposed to be a fire door. I then pointed out that there was a 30cm void above the ceiling tiles running the entire length of the corridor. There seems to have been a flaw in the tendering process....... Cue the return of the workmen.
For those right-ponders, think of how the the (1987?) Kings Cross fire (specifically the smoke) spread up the escalators.
I was "trained" that there were 3 reactions possible when carrying a replacement CRT and accidentally touching the anode cap:
(1) Idiot : you drop it immediately below you and shower your legs with imploding glass. (pedant alert: yes it IMplodes: the EXploding is the rebound after the implosion).
(2) Sensible : as you drop it you throw it as far away as possible so that imploding glass does not shred your legs.
(3) Macho : you stand there and think "I can take it : what is 15 kV?"
This goes back many years (>60). My father's narrated version of that jape was to play "carrier landings" with the (army) mess dining table. Most of the assembly fitted around the side so as to lift the table, while a hapless person did a running dive to try & "land" on said table. Of course the table "pitched" in the "wild sea". It was not uncommon for a person to pitch into the end of the table rather than on to it...........
Many moons back, a work colleague narrated a story of a site where they tested generator sets by attaching them to an electric motor and spinning them up. When the bearings seized, the set pulled itself out of the floor bolts and rolled through the wall, ... and down an embankment onto a railway track. Made a change from the usual "Please can I have my ball back ? "
Allegedly, when Rolls Royce were testing Merlin engines to see what went bang first, (and hence find the weak points) the technicians used to doze while sitting next to the rigs running the engines...... they used to wake up when the engine sound changed.
Mid-80s, the BBC were playing with general distribution of 625-line colour TV around 70 Mb/s. 34Mb/s was used as the final stage of distribution to the transmitter, when no more coding was anticipated. And then along came HDTV, in its studio format requiring around 1 Gbps.
We had an office-quality big-name inkjet printer. It kept on saying that the ink cartridges were empty, even the day after you put a new one in.
Pull the cartridge out and give it a shake to hear lots of ink sloshing around. A web search eventually found the fault: a strong spring had been attached to a pillar in a plastic moulding. Insufficient webbing at the pillar base led to stress concentration and plastic flow, so the ink detection method failed.
A totally poor design which had not led to a product recall. But they did sell us the re-designed plastic part : cost £80. Nowhere near the cost of the wasted ink cartridges (opened prematurely).
Yup, we were fooled once. But we stopped buying printers from that manufacturer.
Manufacturers need to appreciate more the cost of a trashed reputation.
Suggest you look at https://gridwatch.co.uk/
And find the graph marked Last Year (Day Averages).
Look for the yellow line amid all the other colours.
From a northern European perspective, the chances of functionally charging your car on solar power between October and March are negligible.
Cheaper version of this. My office backs onto a lecture classroom. The wall is plasterboard & studs, but with offset studs for better sound isolation (decouples the walls). I complain that I can hear the bass of every lecture (despite loudspeaker not being mounted on that wall) , so during re-vamp of the classroom they put in a third, offset stud wall.
I can still hear the lecture, so do a bit of prodding myself.
Yup: stud walls go up to beyond the (early 2000) ceiling tiles. But only as far as the 1950s ceiling studwork for attaching an earlier set of now-removed acoustic tiles. Sealing that gap sorted the problem. (too thin for students to crawl through to escape the lecture)
Agreed, but eg railways: 150 years ago when the (UK) royal family travelled by train.
Post COVID you virtually have to pay someone to get on a train.
Or the other way round: 200 years ago you had to be poor to be press-ganged to get onto a sailing ship.
Nowadays sailing is you a wealthier man's sport.
Yes, take the long view. YMMV.
Last century : Using a new analogue chip, I found that in order for it to work, I had to have two conditions satisfied, rather than just one, as the data sheet had implied.
Phone call to technical support, UK importer :
Me : I have an issue with a new chip of yours. The XXXX.
Them : Oh, have not heard of problems with that.
Me : I would like to report a bug
Them: We do not have a procedure for that.
"Data sheets: an expression of hope rather than fact." (source : a friend)
I have heard rumours of people building research kit with the useful knobs hidden away and the front panel populated with mostly functionless knobs. This kept the people who did not keep their hands in their pockets 'amused', while allowing the designer/builder to keep it in a known state.
Moved to Linux Mint 20 recently and brought my legit copy of CoolEdit across. Works under Wine and also in 32 bit audio mode. And no "Contact your software vendor for an updated version".
20 year old software that does as much as I need and does it well: I feel that I owe something to the original author for keeping me away from Audition.
Related strand of "unhelpful help".
Have been trying to order parts for a child's toy.
UK importer has had them out of stock for at least 3 months, and offer to send email when back in stock: no reply.
Recently their website is showing signs of activity, in the form of updates on service levels post COVID lockdown. I decide an alternative approach is to check on a possibly compatible part before ordering.
"Phone us" : Get through to answering machine, even during the hours the message says that they are offering telephone support. Leave message and get no reply even several days later.
"Email us" : Answering machine says they will reply next day, but offers no address.
Go to website to find page with "Email: [Blank]", as well as the same telephone number.
At least they have not got my money (yet).
Look at previous methods of imaging with WiFi, eg this from 2013 :
http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf
And that was using 2.4 GHz.
BTW Why use of public Wi-Fi when mobile small-quantity data contracts are pretty cheap nowadays and the downside of MitM is all too apparent ? Just asking.