Posts by Klimt's Beast Would 83 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Mar 2020
She was spayed years ago but for some reason this year she's changed her habits from her usual gentle tail lifting. Vets usually leave a little bit in there for 'quality of life' purposes... One part water and one part vinegar has been applied and the carpet is being left to hang off a door... What a git.
....for a horny middle aged cat?
Ours has gone beyond the brief squirting of ladyjuice on my DVDs (wot they?) and usual places. Only summer she has started to target our 4 euro (1mx2m) carpet we bought from a brocante a few years ago. This is too far. In the evenings we get a more than faint Mungo Jerry whiff. Alco-gel? Check! Soda bicarbonate? Check! Does she give a s***? No. If there is a robot vaccum cleaner which can detect spots of cat juice and spray the affected areas, I'm interested. Either that or I hire a sniper to knock off the young buck who puts our puss in to a tizz by parading across the garages out back.*
*It has occurred to me to wee on the carpet to cover the cats non-discretion, but I think the 75% might object...
...weather balloons!
Or maybe second hand aliens?
I hope somebody reboots the classic 'The Invaders' series from 1967/8.
Instead of being able to identify them by malformed pinkies, it could be the digitus medius manus ;) two left hands or something else.
But who would play David Vincent? Answers on a postcard please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invaders
... is a vertical mouse.
I bought an Anker one a few years ago and it has been great for gaming work.
This is combined with a standing desk (just a small table on a slightly larger table) and learning to stand for long periods. Once you are in the habit it's much better for your back too.
It turns out that 'industry standard' HDMI CEC is more of a set of guidelines than a hard set of specifications which is why different brands don't behave well together. F**ers.
How did I discover this? A half a decade old Samsung TV + a not fancy Sony soundbar.
Getting the Samsung universal remote to work (TV settings) was only half the struggle but still easier than Marx.
Once you use a DVD player, unplug and replug a RaspberryPi, use the TV as a second monitor (and general messing about), at some point the TV magically forgets the soundbar and goes skipping off through a field full of dasies.
This 'Standard says NO' has driven lots of others to go up the wall and give up. But I have a stupid stubborn streak and didn't, spending quite a long time going through all the combinations & reading internet posts to find a solution.
If you unplug the TV & soundbar power cables, wait ten minutes or so and plug it all back in and on it may work again; If not, unplug TV & soundbar power and the HDMI-ARC cables. Wait, plug in the TV power and turn it on. Connect the soundbar's HDMI-ARC cable to the TV's ARC socket. Only then plug in the soundbar power and turn it on. Go to soundbar settings on the Sony remote and make sure it is HDMI /CTRL is set to on and also /TVSTB. Exit.
Go to Samsung TV settings and find 'universal remote setup' and set up 'sound theatre' to go through the IR on/off tests until it works, et voila! Even then I still need the Sony remote to control sound functions.*
The first time I worked this out, I did not write it down. Cue a few months later and the same situation with even more swearing and learning the same thing again but writing it down. AAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH!
The kicker? The 75% won't touch the remotes. She tells me what she wants. I'm the remote control.
* There is one gremlin as every now and then the TV forgets which HDMI channel it's on and the 'source' button on the TVSTB remote doesn't work so you have to use the Samsung remote. Once that's done everything's find and dandy again.
...giant cosmonaut space balls of iron!
And everyone who followed, those that didn't make it and all the involuntary beasties who preceeded them.
I would love to see an experiment in space to measure the metabolisation of alcohol in the human body. It would make a fine IgNobel prize. I volunteer! ;)
...coz 'O' is next to 'I' on the keyboard!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpfWORQWhU
I walk along OpenRanavenue,
I never thought I'd meet a network (architecture) like you,
Meet a network (architecture) like you,
With 5G masts and swap out kit,
The kind of kit that hypnotizes me through,
Your kit hypnotizes me through
And I ran, I ran so far Huawei,
I just ran, I ran all night and day,
I couldn't get Huawei
...soon with it's own Air Force:
https://apnews.com/article/sports-nfl-football-new-york-jets-17f74a62c2e12f5ecf41234df10bd4ab
-Seattle-based Amazon has been working to deliver most of its packages itself and rely less on UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers.-
-Amazon said the 11 planes, all of which are Boeing 767-300s, will be converted to hold cargo instead of passengers.-
-
It looks like just the start. Also many US trucking businesses have been going to the wall with a splat while Amazon's fleet keeps truckin'
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-truckers-low-rates-no-work-2019-6?op=1&r=US&IR=T
What's the phrase for a 'state within a state? ;)
Amazon response to its detractors is 'Cry me a river' as long as it is legally allowed to get away with abusing its dominant market position.
...but Anita Ward can.*
Just more Amazon spyware that the consumer pays for. Motherboard has done a series on Ring.** We should be at minimum, horrified.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URAqnM1PP5E
** https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8qjq/amazons-ring-announces-an-entire-line-of-dystopian-surveillance-devices
We also had the Advanced Passenger Train under British Rail but it was flogged off to Italy (Pendolino*) and BR privatized...
Sometimes I think that we have a perverse penchant for dispatching our ginuea-pigs in more and more interesting ways. I'm sure there's a Neflix series in there somewhere.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#United_Kingdom
...although much of the technology was used to design and build Pendolino trains.
I bought the 75% a nice Xiaomi (which apparently also means 'little secretary' slang for a laptop & 'little mistress'*) with its nice headphone jack, IR blaster etc. as a b/p and get her off her expensive phone contract here in Brussels. I bought a cheapoid Nokia for myself. I'm still jealous but that is probably because I'm a git.
5G? I'm happy to wait two or three years.The only way to get me off my pay & go is when I'm cold and dead.
* according to Qiu Xiaolong, the author of the Inspector Chen detective novel in 'When Red is Black.' The BBC has produced a bunch of his novels for the radio.
https://books.google.be/books?id=PzYSbIREpBsC&pg=PT41&lpg=PT41&dq=xiaomi%2Binspector+chen+little+secretary&source=bl&ots=EQHzN3H4L5&sig=ACfU3U0BTeoEUKsQjcTOfBbHABxCjPgWXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj17IrAp8vrAhXRsKQKHfvbAzIQ6AEwBHoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=xiaomi&f=false
...but other manufacturers have been offering two OS updates and three years of guranteed security updates for a while already. That's why I bought a budget Nokia recently.
So this is more one-upmanship of a trend already in the making, a smart, pragmatic and PR friendly move from Samsung.
In the meantime with the consequences of COVID-19, are people going to be spending as usual or holding on to what they have for a little longer?
It'll probably be an ink tank printer for us too in future but to be honest we don't use it much except to have a paper backup of tickets and some documents.
I did have a wireless Samsung mono laser but when I discovered the business had been sold to HP, I sent it for recycling. My better 75.2% has a Brother inkjet that takes four cartridges (BkYCM). It used to wake up in the middle of the night to noisily 'clean the nozzles' until I left it unplugged until needed. It also refuses to print black/grayscale if any of the other cartriges have low ink levels (YCM=10 euros each, Bk=20!). It turns out that there is an easy hack to stop this by covering the cartridge transparency. Firmware updates over internet are blocked but the printer is quite old and of course hasn't had an update for a number of years.
...the Stanford Research Institute had been named the Research Stanford Institute (RSI), we all would have been warned.*
It's always a great loss when a genius and a pioneer passes.
* Have been using a very good cheapoid vertical mouse (Anker) the last few years. I've always wanted one since they appeared (late 1990s?) but they were an exhorbitant price for a long time. Fancied a trackball, but I've got weak thumbs.
...if only there had been a dog in the cockpit to bite the software when it interfered with the controls...
I assume these fixes also mean that the pilots will no longer have to bust a gut to move the controls when there are significant aerodynamic forces acting on the control surfaces (i.e. at speed).
A long time ago my dad asked for a visit to the cockpit of a 747-300. I met the Pilot, Co-pilot... and the Flight Engineer. Woo!
The change of heart might also have something to do with the Tory 1922 committee which has been banging on about dumping Huawei for quite some time.
Following his general election victory in December, at least 40 Conservative MPs would have to rebel against the government to inflict a parliamentary defeat on Mr Johnson.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-faces-conservative-rebellion-over-huawei-in-commons-vote-11950865
plucking spunk. But that was a fertility clinic* which I guess would want you to go there first rather than try it in public, underground and moving at speed...
* Though with Boris, he's already blurred the line between government and fertility clinic.
Does Troy know Joy? My first thoughts were the song by Harry Nilsson which could start as:
The other day, I got an email from Troy,
He said 'you've been pawned,
Don't be someone else's Troy boy,'
Well I went SQL and things were fixed,
Now every time I think of Troy,
It makes me sad
It makes me... sad
https://youtu.be/H7v_v7xbagY
That's the same Senator Tom Cotton who is keen to have the US military on the streets and show protesters 'no mercy?' What a psycho.
https://www.businessinsider.com/gops-tom-cotton-calls-for-military-force-against-anarchist-protesters-2020-6?r=US&IR=T
Icon: Armageddon it, coz Tom Cotton is not gettin' it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
