Posts by Stevie 7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008
They need to *fire* the net at the fairing and reel it in after both hit the drink. Four rockets where those posts are arranged to spin the net slowly as it hurtles at the skittish and uncooperative fairing.
Or they need a fleet of recovery mini-subs in addition to the boat.
Or something like Sky One that can fly up to the fairing and nab it in a net that the submarine part reels in and salvages.
The Arduino and Pi prove my contention, being relatively expensive ways (in the case of the Pi) of reducing a circuit design to a coding problem.
I wanted to set up a simple pulsing green light effect. I was told "Oh, you need an arduino and some LEDs and a resistor or two" by the cognoscenti. What I actually needed was a 555 timer, a transistor, three resistors, three capacitors (one just to make the glow fade instead of just going away if someone cut the power) and however many LEDs were deemed proper for the maximum oomph.
Yes it took longer to test, but for the cost of the Arduino set-up I could get two to six of mine depending on source of components.
Plus, putting an Arduino in a "dumb" maker project "just because" is lazy.
Also: Get Rid Of Needless Computers In Stuff Now. (GRONCISN).
don't understand technical terms such as "variable" and "geometry"
From the article:
First, the glass is tilted to the perfect angle for the initial pour. At the midway point the angle of pouring changes to avoid an over-froth scenario. Finally, the glass returns to vertical and a last squirt of foam ensures the perfect head*.
A fucking variable geometry vending machine is not a bartending robot!
That would be either the half-man, half-segway thing from "Passengers" or a mobile Realdoll that would let you cop a look down the cleavage as she pours a pint from the beer engine using her deceptively strong arms.
Enough with this bogus goalpost-shifting and playing-field shortening! There's enough of that going on in the A.I. and Nanotech fields.
A robot is either an anthropomorphic machine indistinguishable from a human (or alternatively made of glass-like polymers) or a hulking bipedal death machine bristling with high cyclic-rate weapons of various calibres and fitted with chicken legs!
If it could appear on a clipboard checlikst owned by Rimmer or Lister, it's a bloody vending machine!
ebeer for your joke which was very droll indeed.
Now leave Yes alone. They founded a genre of music still being created by da yoofs of 2nd gen prog rock, and their albums still sell enough to keep 'em in press even though some of their oil paintings have worn through in recent years.
Revere the Old Wild Men. There are damn few of them left in the world arguing about musical differences and becoming tired and emotional in airports.
#I_Miss_George_Harrison_And_Alex_Harvey_And_Yes_Dammit_Chris_Squire
"This feedback loop, done weekly or even daily, is what improves modern software"
Or, to state the more usual case; This is the process by which a fit-for-purpose utility (eg MS Office) can be walked through numerous less-fit-for-purpose stages (eg menu redesigns) until it becomes completely unfit-for-purpose (eg The Ribbon).
The process of "enhancing" something until it doesn't work for anyone not on the design team is as old as electronic computing.
And "unused functionality" isn't always "excess fat", it's often the new process waiting in the wings for the users to adopt. If you are constantly designing products with features that no-one ever uses, you don't know your audience or its business requirements half as well as you think you do. In that case the problem is behind the drawing board, not the keyboard.
Neither do dogs, deer, cats and squirrels, but they result in hundreds of car crashes every year.
Pilots are trained to AVOID collisions with anything, not just grit their teeth and see what happens.
It's a matter of training and reflex and thank Sikorsky for that. I don't want to be an a plane or helicopter driven by someone who wants to experiment.
Also, FYI Canada Goose (the most prevalent on the East Coast of the USA) typically masses more like 8.5 pounds. A twenty pound Canada Goose would not likely be in a position to collide with a helicopter, though it might threaten a Segway.
Small helicopters have a double yoke. Each person in cockpit can easily reach and share the cyclic stick.
They also have doubled pedals, just as a dual control car does, so taking control of the tail rotor is a non-issue, basically informing the student "my aircraft".
The collective pitch control typically resembles an old-fashioned handbrake lever and sits between the seats.
So no real issue at all unless the student screams "NO! *MY* aircraft" and initiates a pissing match.
I grew up in a town made famous for Lady Godiva. Everywhere one went in the city center there were statues of naked ladies on horseback. What sort of statues did they show young boys where you grew up?
In that town center was Barnby's, the best toy shop ever. They sold awesome Pelham puppets and real chemistry sets (AND the bits and chemicals to expand them or replace the breakages) and Hornby train sets and Minic Motorways and Scalextric and everything Britain's made from model gardens to working field guns. Their Lego selection was incredible.
Virgin Records had one of their two stores only 18 minutes away in Birmingham, and in the early 70s opened one in Coventry anyway.
Coventry connected with the rest of the world by British Rail, which was inexpensive and reliable in those days. In the early 80s I commuted to London daily for a contract and they only cancelled one train the entire time I was doing so (and had another ready to go as a "special" shortly after).
Coventry produced some stellar musical acts during my youth, and had many venues in which they could be seen. I remember a particularly fine Gryphon concert as part of the University of Warwick's three day arts festival, though of course Gryphon were not a local band. Caravan were also playing that gig.
And by living in Coventry I could find and afford my TR6 and keep it running. Not a big deal in Coventry, roads were full of them etc, but I was then pulling contracts all over the south of England where the car was a rarity and a complete asset when it came to getting introductions to the southerners a young man *wants* to get closer to.
Also the Coventry TR6 scene was a total blast. Drive down a city street and soon you'd be in a convoy of five or six, all basking in the envy of the older drivers in their sensible saloon cars. I remember one guy had his done in midnight blue mirrorflake paint, and when it was illuminated by others' headlights after dark it was indescribably beautiful to look at.
I only exist because driving a bus or an ambulance in Coventry was considered as hazardous as front-line service during the height of WWII. My paternal grandfather (from Norwich) was given the choice and picked the civilian option, so the family relocated there, where my father met my mother after the Luftwaffe had failed to bomb the city flat flat as promised.
And there is good reason to believe that Coventry as such is one of England's oldest cities, with history dating back beyond the Cadfael era of Maud and Stephen.
So no, actually, I kinda enjoy the fact I came from there.
Except of course you can't.
Robinson's have been out of business for many years.
Walkers use a hermetically sealed plastic bag that is by-and-large chew-proof. The Real Thing was a twist of blue, waxed greaseproof paper that was anything but.
Quite why you thought a different brand of crisps would be anything approaching an acceptable substitute is beyond me. Robinson's was a small, local firm, what would today probably be called a micro baker. Walkers is a huge conglomochippery. Other than the fact that the crisps in the bag* are slices of fried potato there is literally no comparison on any level between the two.
This sort of woolly thinking is what makes people say LibreOffice is a drop-in replacement for MS Office and Windows users would be better off with an Apple machine.
* : made of different materials too: Robinsons used greaseproof paper bags, Walkers the ecologically unsound plastic
As a five year old in Coventry, I were on three bags o' Robinson's Unsalted a week and it never 'armed me!
Apart from the bit where y' accidentally chewed into the little blue bag of salt hiding in t' packet o' course.
These days y' can't gerrem o' course. Y' can only get ready-salted. Bloody namby-pamby nanny state.
Mistake number 3: Storing images in a third-party cloud shared by millions.
Mistake number 2: Using a permanently networked device to copy the image to another permanently networked device.
Mistake number 1: Taking the photographs on a phone.
You wanna do nortypix, fine by me. I enjoy looking at them just like everyone else (I just admit to it rather than screaming with fake outrage which is the fashion right now).
But for the love of Snowden and Man Ray stop doing it on a device that uses a third ) and a fourth and a fifth and who knows how many more) machines, each with it's own cache, to store and/or copy that image. If driven to celebrate your pride in you body pictorially, use a trad digital camera and if you must share your snaps, print them at home. Even then you are one scan or re-shoot away from World Fame.
There is no such thing as private information on the internet. All of it is just one ALT-PRNT SCRN away from being broadcast fodder.
Laptops.
Hmm. My workstation is hooked to a crap no-bandwidth network that is firewalled to the point that I cannot reliably download manuals from our two top mega-conglomo vendors. The addition of Office365 has crippled what functionality it had.
I have an old Inspiron 1545 lappy I've been using for nearly a decade to do development work, to which I added my own wireless hotspot for netty stuff. Naturally my building is in a dead spot, where connectivity is certain but bandwidth limited by low signal strength issues and also by a polytechnic next door hoovering it all away every time a lecture ends.
Even so I can now use google and get manuals from Snoracle and Big Blue. Plus, no reporting me to HR if a sidebar hops off to a firearms dealer (no I'm not a gun nut but when I googled Wff'n'Proof - a logic game from the 1960s - and it resolved to a university of Wisconsin link, that's what the sidebars filled up with).
But it is a tad heavy, and I got a back injury just before xmas making me want to stop carrying it around.
Unfortunately a few days sans laptop showed I had grown used to having the thunderously useful thing, especially when using "lunch breaks" for personal projects. The iPad was NBG for most, not all, of this.
A second machine seemed in order, but synching over the net would eat up my limited pay-by-the-byte bandwidth, and besides the latency would be horrible every hour or so due to WoWing and GTAing by students.
So I built out a second machine to be identical and I just carry the hard drive from home to work. Cost very little. The memory was expensive, being an older spec. Stupid in this cloudy day and age? Maybe, but very cost-effective.
In point of fact this was my third lappy build-out; I already built up an old Latitude as a database training machine too when years of asking for a lab LPAR resulted in so many restrictions on use it was unfit for purpose (what's the point in a lab machine you have no root access for? You can't crash it, recover it or do anything labby at all). 8 gig machine, USB3, Optical drive, 1TB HDD running Oracle Linux and Oracle 12c, less than $350.
I didn't like the keyboard on that one so I added a Logitech K120. Cheap but possibly the nicest keyboard I've used in 40 years in IT. I own three of them. (Because Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, etc).
"This is the one thing I am worried about. Come hell or high water my next machine WILL run a Nix variant because of this auto upgrade rubbish. If the worst comes to the worst I think I will have to run windows in a virtual machine just for certain programs."
Then I welcome you to the new world, where upgrades are not automatic unless they are, everything is easy to find out unless it isn't, things are intuitive unless they are opaque and all you have to worry about is systemd.
Been there. Done that. Have the T-Shirt.
Mint should be your first try in my opinion, though they will ask you to make decisions about *which* Mint that you are unequipped to make at the start. Just go for one and try it out. The installation is relatively painless, or was for me.
After that you may learn to approach software with the catchphrase "what new hell is this?" since everyone has their own axe to grind in the OS GUI world.
And good luck with the hosted windows idea. You may need it by the shovelful.
"if his PC was truly borked by the W10 "upgrade", then he wouldn't get very far trying to install anything else to persuade it to behave more like the PC he was used to"
Unless, and this is just a guess, part of the cost if for a new HDD or SDD on which to load the much nicer Windows 7.
60 dollars for a 1TB HDD, one hundred million times that for the hassle of trying to find all the little programs and drivers that make life so great with that particular machine.
Entirely reasonable.
To do *my* work on it I'll need it to stay propped up on my knees on a rocking train and not slip off to the floor or have the screen pop out of its slot and fold itself flat.
Does it do that? Don't worry, I can see from the picture it can't. The floppy bit that provides the spacer between the edge of the screen and the prop for it can't cope with this simple requirement. I know 'cos I have a case with much the same assembly.
I also need a keyboard that has no "apple specials" because I'll be needing it to use as a terminal on much non-apple kit and two sets of finger habits is one set too many.
And finally, I'll need the browser to run the Java thing that provides the remote connectivity I would be using the thing for work on the move in the first place. Can it do that?
Because if it requires me to put it on top of a laptop so I can do less than if I just used the laptop, it sadly isn't ready for my prime time nor that of my colleagues in the SA, SAN and DBA departments.
Which is to say, people who support infrastructure rather than "creating content".
Before anyone screams and leaps I would love to be able to use my iPad air for proper work, but it has been an uphill battle to get it ready for integrating with my lappy using Scrivener for play-work so I'm not sanguine.
It *is* a great way to do email, Twitter etc. untill you enter soft-keyboard hell (I know what you want to do better than you do, so either erase the whole thing and try again or live with my version, mate).
John, you are being a tw*t.
In Alberta -27C doesn't include the windchill, and no you won't be standing outside in any amount of "appropriate dress" in that because even breathing is uncomfortable if you've ever actually done it at those temps. Which you obviously never have.
The hose-in drive-off is still depressingly possible with a manual-only pump gun as five minute browsing YouTube will show. I'll grant it is slightly more likely with a pump latch.
And in "Civilized Countries" (you started it) the pumps are designed to recover the vapor (no "u" because we are being snotty) so there is nothing to ignite with the static electricity you feel will be coursing around the forecourt.
Why you feel that a person holding the metal trigger with gloves graded for -27C and wearing waterproof rubber-soled boots good for -27C would provide any sort of reliable ground anyway is a bit of a puzzler. Which I suppose could be why the pumps themselves are grounded. Long shot I know, but that sorta works for me.
What the flock are you talking about JR?
You either say "I want X amount of gas" or "I want X dollars worth" to the attendant (EXACTLY like it used to be in the UK back in the late 70s when "pay before you pump" was first initiated) or you use the almost ubiquitous pay-at-the-pump credit/debit card technique.
Where do the "multiple trips to pay" come in?
Me: Can I please have git installed on the Project Millstone server?
My Boss: What's git?
Me: It's a version control and software repository tool. Our vendors use it. I could use it to comply with your order to "stop using .old files to save stuff that gets changed, dammit!"
My Boss: No. Everyone must use the Microsoft version control tool we have.
Me: Okay. What's it called?
My Boss: Dunno. Microsoft something-or-other.
Me: Where's the documentation for it?
My Boss: Dunno. On a share somewhere. Maybe somewhere on sharepoint.
Me: Who owns it? Who's the SA?
My Boss: Dunno. One of the windows guys.
Me: Is there training for it? Can I have some please?
My Boss: No. The budget is all used up.
Time Passes In Month Chunks
Me: I've written my own version control. I run a script that just appends ".old" to everything of the same name before you edit.
My Boss: That's the opposite of what you were told!
Me: I know. I was faced with insurmountable difficulties in implementing your methodology.
My Boss: How in hell do you tell one so-called version from the rest? what happens if you need to reinstate a previous version?
Me: You figure out how many versions you need to go back and count the ".old"s.
My Boss: Whut?
Me: It works very well.
My Boss: It's stupid! And you've soft-linked this "script" to all the servers and filesystems, I'll bet.
Me: Of course not!
My Boss: Well that's something at least ...
Me: I simply copied the script into every directory on every unix computer we own.
My Boss: WHAT!
Me: Very quick and cheap, if a tad cheerful. Works though.
My Boss: Get rid of it!
Me: With pleasure. Can I have git please?
My Boss: No. Everyone has decided to use Toad's built-in version control. I don't know what it's called before you ask.
Me: I do. It's something called "git".
"I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear," wrote Barlow
Then he attempted to get his modem to connect to AOL. Six tries and various connection string edits and he was in at a mind-blowing 28.8 kbs. He sent his email and went to bed.
Two minutes later his connection dropped because of a gateway timeout.
Next morning Barlow reconnected in record time and re-sent his memo just as a high school senior, busy adjusting his stereo while tootling at 75 mph along the road in the Merc SUV his doctor father and lawyer mother had bought for his 17th birthday two days before, smashed into the telephone pole outside his house and removed the internet from the great man for two days.
Barlow took a photograph of the wreckage with his blue Handspring Visor's Eyemodule and uploaded it to his computer so he could share his fabulous 78.8 kilopixel image of this event with his pals.
Pole reinstalled by a doughty team of Telephone Pole Guys, Barlow once more listened to the squeals and double bong of his modem connecting to AOL, but he couldn't type anything as his screen filled with annoying chatspam trying to make him visit dodgy websites to fix imaginary problems his computer did not have. The double bong had suggested a way to wait out the idiots, and soon the house was filled with Jerry's sublime guitar work and the smell of Special Smoking Mixture.
At around four AM the next day Barlow was able to connect to AOL and send his email. A mere two hours later it bounced because the mailbox he sent it to had more than twenty five emails in it. This wasn't discovered until the next next day due to connection issues brought on by noise on the telephone line induced by the reconnection of the cable when replacing the snapped-off pole.
A call to the phone company (almost inaudible due to the noise on the line) brought swift action and only a week later the line was replaced and the Internet was back!
There was the usual minute or so of modem connection antics, then the picture was attached to the email and Barlow pressed "xmit". Two nail-biting hours were spent watching to make sure this unusually large upload proceeded without let or hindrance, and history was made.
"You've got mail" said his computer, in a friendly female voice. It was a note from AOL warning him that large uploads would in future require the purchase of a business account, which would enable him to enjoy up to fifteen 128 kb uploads a week for the low-low price of $50 a month.
Any further abuse of the consumer-level TOS would be met with instant loss of AOL connection privileges, they wrote. AOL said they were sorry to be so abrupt, but they had been in contact with Compuserve and found that Barlow had a pattern of large, 5 kb+ up- and downloads on accounts properly configured for much lighter, consumer-level usage.
AOL thanked Barlow for his continued patronage.
A chat window opened informing Barlow that his computer had a virus and he would need to use his Netscape Navigator to link to a site that could fix it for a very reasonable rate.
Barlow closed down his computer in disgust and went to play Castlevania on his SNES.
Stihl saws are very nice. Smoke jumpers use them.
I bought the Poulan to cut up the sawn-off trunk of a 50-odd year old maple tree left outside my house after a 'misunderstanding" with a feller. Truth be told, I wanted the saw and was looking for an excuse.
After five minutes of cutting I was knee deep in tiny shavings. The chain made little plane shavings rather than sawdust/chips it was that sharp. Lost the edge abruptly after about an hour and I was never able to get it back with hand grinding. Had the chain skip the bar so destructively it buggered up a couple of teeth a few months after that, so had to replace the chain and bar (never got to the bottom of why; it was oiled properly and the bar was in what looked like perfect adjustment when cold. With the new chain I was seeing shavings again. Pure cutting joy.
Only bad thing about the Poulan (as an occasional use saw) is that it has no carb primer. You have to just keep pulling the string and chanting the Magic Start Words until it fires.
I once bought a chainsaw from a national sells everything store. The automatic chain oiler broke, so they told me to bring it in for a free warranty repair. Three months roll by, and I call to say the job that was the reason I bought the saw is drawing near and where was it please.
They apologized profusely and told me to return to the store where a new saw would be given to me to replace my broken one. I do this, but am brusquely sent packing by the department manager. I go to the management office and go through the story so far, then back down to a chastened department manager who gives me a replacement saw.
Six months go by and I get a call to say I can pick up my chainsaw. I explain that it is no longer my saw because I have a replacement. The same scenario is enacted each Saturday for the next three weeks. The next call consists of “We have a truck in your area. We are dropping your saw off”.
I say “OK” and hang up, then we go out for a lengthy breakfast (I don’t see why we should hang about to take unwanted delivery of a saw over which I do not have legal ownership. When we return, the saw is sitting on the front steps.
I fire it up later. It leaks oil everywhere<.
So that worked. Later, the oiler on the new saw broke down. So I have the choice of oil everywhere or nowhere. I loan the Oil Everywhere saw to my brother in law who manages to get it stuck in a tree despite my supplying the drool-proofed “how to use this saw and not get it stuck in trees” manual (he never confesses but the signs are obvious). After this the saw only cuts in broad left-hand curves. I replace the chain bar and the chain but the odd behavior persists. Also, oil everywhere.
I buy a Poulan saw from Home Despot for my next big timber removal job. S’triffic.
Oh cripes. When I had the TR6 I dreaded the trip to the local British Leyland parts department. If the part I needed I would leap in the air, click my heels and get a lift to Cox and Buckles for an over-the-counter replacement part (made in America using the original tooling). If it was a “stock part” I would have a three week wait for the wrong fucking part to be delivered even though I and the spares manager had pored over the microfilm together and identified the part by sight and part number at the time of ordering from “head office” (stock parts were never in stock). Bad quality, bad inventory control and bad attitude all down the pipeline. This in Coventry, the Detroit of England, car central.
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