Posts by Stoneshop

A memorable sample

Brilliant book - sufficiently technical to be interesting, but with enough back story and humour

"It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water —with which it reacts explosively."

(on Chlorine Trifluoride, ClF3. Hypergolic == self-igniting)

Re: @James 51 .... WRONG!

Trump in particular never seems to EVER stop working no matter where he is.

He doesn't appear to have gotten much of substance done, though.

Re: Best traps

I have seen the glue ones sold in Euriope, but not in the UK.

Even when Brexit concludes the UK will still be part of Europe, just not the EU.

I've encountered this before with a cherry on top: they couldn't even tell me the name of the file.

I once got a restore request for a missing file*, with the ticket stating "file was there yesterday, today there is only $otherfilename".

As if that would allow me to divine the name of the missing file.

*documents had to be saved on a backed-up network disk; saving them anywhere else but in their department's directory was as good as impossible.

We had a problem at my first place where those displays started showing FU

And HA? (FUll and HAlf speed, obviously)

when the turbo button was depressed..

That's because it was a very ugly button.

Re: Hmm

While I'd personally hang up on these crooks

s/up on//

Re: "The Senate Armed Services Committee wants answers"

What answers do they expect exactly?

"What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?"

Re: Aw. Nothing like the smell of hot solder --

When it comes to something that absolutely MUST be done by the end of the day, you can't beat brick-and-mortar places.

If it's a standard resistor/capacitor/semiconductor you open one of your parts drawers and take it (or its nearest equivalent) out.

If it's some dedicated thingamajig, your local electronics store is extremely unlikely to have it in stock.

Re: I bought an internet connected dishwasher...

Ah, but the next generation will object to just having this menial task of cleaning the dishes, longing for a better utilisation of their brain*. This will give rise to The IoT Psychiatrist, a modified access point to counsel** your frustrated IoT devices by running Elisa.

Plans for The IoT Psychiatrist will be available on Hackaday.

* probably not yet the size of a planet, but still...

** but still not letting them connect to the actual Internet.

Re: Really smart meter?

It transpired that the supplier's sealed time switch had long since gone out of sync with wall clock time - presumably due to many/long power cuts.

Somewhere in my Pile of Stuff there's a timer switch apparently designed for such an environment. It has a fully mechanical clockwork, spring-driven, with the spring being wound every couple of hours by an electric motor; as the spring unwinds it hits a contact that switches on the motor. It has a gang reserve of about five days and a weird flag-like thing that drops into view when the spring is fully unwound and the echappement has stopped. After a bit of pondering I figured it was a "time is probably incorrect" indicator. Marvelous construction.

Re: 'Ere

the overpressure turning inside bits out

11 - air hose coupling

12 - overpressure valve

Re: Buyer beware

Nokia should have released a remake of their n950 or communicator series instead of their 3310.

s/instead of/as well as/

Re: If Google lists Google as closed...

... there will be much rejoicing.

Re: The Knowledge

But so few murder victims leave negative feedback.

"A+ driver, but very bad at killing. Still alive, will not hire again"

Re: This is ridiculous

he'll use the publicity to help sell self-driving Teslas down the road "we managed to have a self driving vehicle go around the Moon and back, so you don't need to worry about your car driving you across town".

During a trip to the moon and back you're *extremely* unlikely to encounter crossing traffic running red lights, buses, bicyclists, pedestrians suddenly stepping out into the road, potholes, roadworks, traffic jams, having to give way to emergency services and all the other side effects of not being the only one around for hundreds of miles. And with respect to remote control, the communication delay is inconsequential when you need to make minor corrections if you're aware of the need for one in time.

Re: Colour eInk?

Colour eInk is ghastly. Mono (black balls in a milky white liquid) eInk is fantastic.

It looks like ACeP colour e-ink screens will be just in time for the new Psion 5mxC to go into production.

we could do it the way May wants

You could go for triggering the SS Richard Montgomery, hoping that the blast moves the UK closer to the US (bollocks to those experts that predict utter destruction)

Re: Beermageddon

I recall this because I reasoned that the plummeting quality of software would surely be corrected in a similar way.

Maybe it should have grain and yeast added as well.

Re: Why not use a rope?

attached to a rope and real it back in?

You're going to have some non-imaginary problems to solve there