Posts by Tom 7 8318 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
I came from a mill area. They were always Jacquard cards but largely because I like to be irritating. Had kung fu films come in a bit earlier they could have been death throwing cards from the way they frequently escaped from their elastic bands and flew round the room just as you were about to get them onto the shelf so the invisible operators could deal with them.
Alas people use responsive HTML without actually testing it on the devices, they just seem to assume that a form with 30 entries on it will work on a phone because it works on their PC.
I use one set of code that works on any device - but that's on the server and it check what you device you are using so it can server you something ergonomically useful for the device. Phones work better if you feed them small pages of info rather than the big pages that work fine on a PC. Responsive HTML is never going to solve that problem but too many people assume it does.
I'm not sure its (just) arrogance. It's ignorance (though they seem to be opposite sides of the same worthless coin these days). Rather than try and understand what they are trying to do for the user they seem to just grab libraries that go some way to what they think they want and then find other libraries that do another bit and we end up downloading massively complicated bucket loads of javascript that spin your cpu fans and delay proper rendering due to time-outs when something infinitely simpler can be achieved with simple understanding of what the fuck they are trying to do in a simple client server setup.
Though as with all coding ignoring the marketing departments demands until you have a working bit of code can help.
"It may be of superior sound quality". Lower noise than FM - not noticeably in a vehicle. And given most of the radios I've seen are not capable of matching FM quality reproduction let alone venturing into the realm of hi-fi that can only be detected by people not doing double blind tests I think its a pointless expense for most.
I've only ever used a DAB car radio when driving minibuses round Devon and Cornwall. Being a minibus the aerial is quite high. Fortunately I can connect the phone to the radio and listen to music stored on that because there is no usable DAB signal in 90% of the places I take people. The 4G coverage round here has improved a lot lately but DAB coverage is still pathetic and I dare say will remain so.
I must confess my old Quad FM tuner is generally regarded by all and sundry as sounding far better than any DAB radio anyone has listened to. And its mono!
I dont know how people say DAB sounds better when the boxes the radio come in wouldnt have been called hi-fi in the 1930s.
I have made special covers for certain machines - something that allows airflow when people will insist on piling shit on top. I've even made a chimney to attach to the back of a tower PC that lived under coats in the winter. Even remembered to perforate the top foot of the chimney in the absolute certainty that someone would hang something on it. And sure enough flat caps were often dried on it!
Hermes and DHL are the ones most offten asked for on the local moan and groan FB page. I think they select their drivers by their cussedness factor. Even had one angrily demand that I put up a sign on the next door neighbours gate so they didnt try and deliver my stuff there. We did have a sign with the name of the property on but delivery drivers kept running over it when reversing.
One of our posties puts the mail in the box on the wall, climbs up the steps, through the gate, opens the conservatory door and gives the dog a biscuit bone. All the other posties get a good barking at but you can only tell this one has arrived by the beating of the dogs tail on his cage!
I went to a mates 50th in Amsterdam and had got a very detailed headmap of where the pub I was to meet him in was. Couldn't find the bugger. Went back to my hotel and checked directions and set off again still couldn't find it. Then I bent down and looked under an anonymous awing to see the pub name beautifully etched on the windows invisible to anyone more than 4 feet tall.
Strangely I could read it when I left!
There's a similar problem turned up with two of my banks. I had 2 lloyds accounts and when they split the company they sent one to TSB. The home phone number I use is UK style staring with an 0. Now they want the number with +44 international style for Visa to do the payments and of course it doesnt work. TSB seem to have automatically updated their number properly but lloyds haven't and they've just closed the local branch and when I try and change it online it cant seem to phone me with the one time password!
I was taking the dog for a walk one day, our shared drive is 1/2 mile long, as I got near the adjoining public road the dog pulled into some long grass where a parcel for us was hidden! Things are a bit better now as often delivery is accompanied by a photo and we can head off up the drive to find our delivery nestled by one of the gates to other farmers fields along the adjoining road.
I did find a parcel for next door up there which turned out to be a very expensive catalytic log burner which went walkies before they could retrieve it. When the replacement arrived it was dropped on our lawn and whoever nicked the other one must have had a crane - it must have weighed 400lbs or so!
I live in the sticks and the postcode can be huge. I took my kids to a pool and the sat-nat chose the bottom left corner of the postcode to go to and I ended up on the top of Dartmoor but fortunately could see the pool from the road on the way down but only cos the sun was in the right place to bounce off the sloping roof.
We have some new builds near here with bizarre numbering and even more bizarre signage of the same. One has all the odd numbers down one branch and all the even numbers down another branch but 32 is in the odd numbered branch so if you follow the sign to even numbers you cant find it. Well you can cos the lady who lives there has an air horn she toots off when she sees her delivery or taxi attempting to drive off.
3 words? So you use your phone GPS to translate your location into 3 words to send to someone else's phone , which could locate the GPS perfectly accurately! And the GPS could even provide altitude which would give the courier the excuse not to find your address from the off. Pointless app.
.We have a local group on FB which is basically a place for people to ask whose got their delivery or to try and track the drivers who cant find even obvious addresses in broad daylight.
Meteors tend to hit the earth's atmospheres at 10s of Km a second. And slow down all the way - especially when the break up. I would imagine the terminal velocity of a baseball sized rock to be less than 100mph. After all a skydiver pointing head down is around 180 near sea level.
I was somewhat impressed by the SIMD instruction speedups on the RaspberryPi ARM machines though the compiler/coding infrastructure was a bit tricky to work through - this was a while back I need to revisit!
If the RISC-V stuff is as good then NVIdia will not be happy, which is a good thing!
As a teenager I did have a collection of various books on how to make fireworks. Some quite old, and now I cant find them, seriously valuable. You could even work out how to make saltpetre from your own urine if you could a) collect enough of the stuff, b) wait till the crystals grew out of the ground once you'd processed it.Fortunately my dad was a uni prof and we could get hold of that shit without too much difficulty as he liked to play stupid too.
I dont think we're living with covid like we were with HIV and Hepatis. Neither of those had 5 to 10 of people of work, out of school, generally feeling ill and neither of them could be caught from some twat walking up to you in Sainsbury's and breathing over you while you looked at the produce, or just sat on a bus on the way to work,
I live by the met office radar. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/observation/map Zoom in on home and set it running. 95% chance of taking the dog out for a walk for an hour and not getting wet. We're at 500' here so can get wet even when the radar says there is none, and the uplift can make rain where non existed 1/2 hr before but its the best I've managed so far!
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