Posts by DJV

Re: odd coloured sand ornaments

The one we bought when we visited Alum Bay in the 1960s wasn't packed as tightly as it should have been, leaving a small pocket of air at the top, which allowed the sand to start mixing if it was moved at all. After a while the entire top was no longer banded colours but a uniform yellowy-grey.

At least back then they still allowed you to collect your own coloured sand from the cliffs - that was before they realised that "human" erosion was going to eat the cliffs a damn sight faster than natural erosion!

Re: My hunting camera is safe...

I'm intrigued... what exactly does your camera hunt and what does it do with its victims after it catches them?

Re: Going By NASA's past performance it'll probably last about 2 years

If they send another one up there on the next mission, what's the betting the two will find each other and start breeding?

Re: I'm a word wrangler...

No, he isn't - this one made sense and was definitely quite amusing as well.

Of course, I'm just wondering how many forests would need to suffer if he was asked to write a novel instead of just a couple of pages!

Re: I've dumped it on the Mrs

Ooh, I bet that hurt!

Re: Pointless?

You mean you don't want to find out what this week's revised icons look like?

Re: "realistic flames across the bottom of a dos 6.2 screen"

Well, at least it kept the classroom warm!

UFO?

In this case I think it was an IFO.

Re: Copy Protection Blues

Yes, a lot of Commodore 64 protection was done in a similar way. Make a straight disk copy, run a program to corrupt a specific sector which the loader then checked for and would bomb out if it didn't encounter it.

I once had some copy protection that used a bit psychological warfare on the user in that, at one point about 3 or 4 levels in, the entire program was ORed with a string of characters that read "THIS COPY PROTECTION IS 50 LEVELS DEEP" (or something similar). It wasn't actually that deep at all.

Re: Learning without a computer

You're lucky! I have to get up even earlier in the week as mine come on a Monday!

Re: Shine a light

Yep, I've been moving my domains from Heart who are part of (please hurry up and) Go (away) Daddy to Mythic!

Yeah, but look at who is involved - of course, it won't get any better...

I'm sure Gartner are preparing one right now...

Re: Jackie Chan kung-fu fighting scenes...

Or any old broadcast of the Old Grey Whistle Test where tracks were set to ancient and obscure b/w cartoons.

Re: made me get a premium account

It made me get an ad-blocker instead!

Re: That was then..............

"And here we are today............more "configure" possibilities........no end in sight"

Absolutely, and it reminds me of something else that appears to be a trainwreck of piled together crap looking for a place to happen (i.e. crash)....

systemd

No, no, no! What you have to realise is that Gartner's ability to be wrong nearly 100% of the time is actually "negative cedibility". This means people pay attention to what they predict - because they always know that the exact opposite is much more likely to happen.

Ding dong!

...or it's an interstellar Avon lady plying her (rather limited selection of) wares.

Re: April fool video

Regarding that "convert a black-and-white television into a colour set using nylon stockings" video. As I don't speak Swedish I turned the subtitles on whereupon much merriment was discovered as YouTube tries to take spoken Swedish and generate English subtitles from the sounds - try it and laugh at such delights as "sucks one holotape you see lemon a little were technical" and "so many Celicia genitals I stooped addressed unto me van of a fighter voluminous problem man". Fantastic, and may give us a clue as to where amanfrommars sources his material!

Try this: https://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/4378-windows-10-decrapifier-18xx-19xx-2xxx

Re: "music taste is exceedingly personal"

Absolutely! And it reminds me of back in the 1980s listening to the Radio 1 John Peel show late one night when in between the "usual" stuff that daytime radio wouldn't go near, he played Sheena Easton's Nine-To-Five - explaining that he couldn't understand at all why he liked it, but he did, so he played it!

Re: Such blatant disobedience deserves a harsher punishment

Damn, you pipped me to the post in saying that!

"another similarity to being an author"

Indeed, they are very close (I should know as I do both). However, upgrading a paperback book to a new version because of a missed typo isn't quite as easy for the end user as downloading an update for a software program. E-books are definitely a closer match, though.

Saw them coming...

There's a gullible idiot born every minute! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVvcD4Czx4Y

Re: “We have been warned"

My pitchfork will be the one warmed up (to red glowing hot status) beforehand and ready to poke Hawarth in the place he thinks the sun shines out of.

Re: How to become an alcoholic

Or, turn into Wally and, while you you remain employed, you never actually do any work ever again.

Re: Do-be-do-be-doo

Nope, I came here to post the same thing but you beat me to it!

I wonder why nobody hasn't patented fire or the wheel yet

I quite like the idea of tying all the idiots in the US Patent Office to a large wooden wheel and setting fire to it - would that be close enough?

Re: I found El Reg...

I found El Reg before I'd ever heard of Google - it was probably via Alta Vista.

Re: Try the 1780s...

I would do but I can't work up enough sweat to power my time machine.

Re: the sheer deliciousness of gummy bears, Haribo or otherwise

Woohoo, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when your Missus discovers you broke her rule in order to come and comment about it!

Re: high qubit quantum computing and artifical general intelligence

Yes, this ^^^ absolutely!

Recently, I've been looking into web-based page turning/flipping code. Most of the available options seem to come as black boxes that hauled in God-knows how many extra libaries (and all the unknown cruft that comes with them) and each one looks like it probably only does 95% of what I want (but each does a DIFFERENT 95%) - but adding the extra necessary 5% is probably impossible without weeks of work.

Two weeks ago I found a simple piece of code that was about 7 years old and, while it was buggy and partly relied on the abandoned CSS Regions proposal that only Chrome implemented for a short while, I managed to pick it apart myself, gained a full understanding of how it worked and fixed it up so that it now works properly in a modern browser (all in a couple of days). I now have a usable tool that stands alone, has a tiny footprint, and can be maintained and improved by myself as necessary.