Call-sign
Apparently Bill Nelson's call-sign on this mission was "Baggage". Ouch.
Posts by RosslynDad
46 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2011
It's been 25 years since NASA astronaut John Glenn's geriatric jaunt around Earth
Tesla goons will buy anything – including these $150 beers
Monday 16th October 2023 16:26 GMT
Belgian beer indeed does go down very well. I remember an enjoyable evening in Brussells sampling the local monk-produced beer (somewhere around the 13% level). Then I tried to walk. Total Inability To Stand Upright Personally. And all for a very small fraction of what the Musk Beer Emporium is charging.
Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard
Thursday 5th October 2023 18:17 GMT
Re: "their cat jumped on the keyboard"
My old cat Minstrel sat on my keyboard, reprogrammed my Visual Studio shortcuts so she could surround my dodgy code with a try/catch block by using the shortcut 'cat' that she could invoke with a twitch of her tail. So, yes, she wrote better code than me. Her code reviews were brutal but fair: "sign this off and it's sardine time..."
Bermuda, your data, Google's gonna take your US data
Have you ever suspected your colleague doesn't hope this email finds you well?*
Thursday 10th August 2023 18:25 GMT
Attention span of a goldfish
I need a few bits of information. I send them an email with requests split into numbered list. They answer just the first. They clearly have the attention span of a goldfish. Oxygen pirates.
Add "auto-reply then block" rule to (crap) email tool: respond "Happy to go with your suggestion" for this luser.
Voyager mission's project scientist retires after 50 years of service
Catch of the day... for Google, anyway: Transatlantic Cornwall cable hauled ashore
Having trouble getting your mitts on that Raspberry Pi? You aren't alone
Friday 20th August 2021 17:27 GMT
Re: Pi Zero W
I had problems finding a Zero W to use as a Pi Hole server. So I decided to try putting it on one I already had that's working as a clock* fully expecting this to bring it to its knees. Nope! Totally happy running both. Just an amazing bit of kit for a tenner. My only grumble was that I needed a reboot which killed my uptime score of 205 days.
* OK the clock is driving a 60 LED colour display and talks to three web services for local weather, tides, sun/moon times.
Jeff Bezos names the fourth person for the first New Shepard flight: Wally Funk
Thursday 1st July 2021 18:02 GMT
Re: Good for Wally
Sue Nelson, who I believe is the "BBC Journalist" you refer to has been a trenchant advocate for women in space and raves about Wally. She's going to go nuts on hearing this!
Do yourselves a favour and catch Sue's (and Richard's) monthly "Space Boffins" excellent podcast which covers space from a British perspective.
You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?
Friday 19th February 2021 11:51 GMT 
So, I'm a pedantic git
OK, I'll bite. Surely you meant your "sixth decade" ? And after spending several minutes picking the appropriate icon for this essential post I noticed the tooltip on the Sherlock Holmes one and decison made. I remember geting my first poo-in-the-bag invite: it arrived exactly on my birthday - unlike the "humorous" cards from my relatives. And now back to reading about Perseverance - seriously good software!
Patch Tuesday brings bug fixes for OpenSSL, IBM, SAP, Kubernetes, Adobe, and Red Hat. And Microsoft, of course
Chuck Yeager, sound barrier pioneer pilot, dies at 97
Is today's AI yesterday's software routines with better PR? We argued over it, you voted on it. And the winner is...
NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount
Google's second stab at preserving both privacy and ad revenue draws fire
Houston, we've had a legend: Boffin behind NASA Mission Control signs off for final time
Tuesday 23rd July 2019 15:43 GMT
Essential Reading
Make sure you read "Flight" - his autobiography. Huge insight to what happened behind the scenes and Mr Kraft isn't afraid to say things as he thought them, both good and bad. One of the best space books. It must have been inspiring and frightening to have worked with him. The word "Legend" is greatly over-used: but not about him. Wherever he is going you know it will be run a bit better from now on.
Qualcomm lifts lid on 7nm Arm-based octo-core Snapdragon 855 chip for next year's expensive 5G Androids
Thursday 6th December 2018 18:46 GMT
Important Reflectivity Data
"This relies a library of pretty much every known material on Earth, and details on how light scatters when it hits their surfaces."
Clearly the Commentards are interested in the world's most important materials' reflection properties: beer and, the $Deity's personal favo(u)rite: red wine. I'd be happy to validate their models - please send a case of Chateau Lafite 1961.
UK.gov told data-sharing plans need vendor buy-in
F-35 flight tests are being delayed by onboard software snafus
Tuesday 30th January 2018 15:20 GMT
C++?
The sidebar mentions that the software is mostly written in C++. Back in the day we were told that Ada was the language of choice for the military. Could someone who knows what they are talking about please give me an update on where Ada is these days and why C++ is now the language of choice? Thanks.
Drone crashes after operator failed to spot extra building site crane
Tuesday 16th January 2018 16:21 GMT 
North Atlantic Drift
The waters around Benbecula are not "icy" as the North Atlantic Drift comes here and results in wonderfully warm water with huge palm trees along the coast (according to VisitScotland). For a proper Scottish water temperature scale may I recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01KVj8kEjMo
Scotland, now is your time… to launch Brexit Britain into SPAAAACE!
Equifax fooled again! Blundering credit biz directs hack attack victims to parody site
Samsung's bantam SSD makes WD's 'passport' drive look passé
Wednesday 16th August 2017 17:45 GMT
Re: Deflation
OK, I'll bite. In my first job I had to buy a DEC hard drive for a VAX 11/750. It cost £14K (and that's when £ bought stuff) and gave 600MB (yes that's an M). Size of a washing machine. It also came with a DEC engineer to install it, and after it was setup I was left with 400MB and change. So lesson learned that day: never believe the quoted storage capacity.
Tesla 'API crashes' after update, angry rich bods complain
Grand App Auto: Tesla smartphone hack can track, locate, unlock, and start cars
Taxi for NASA! SpaceX to fly astronauts to space station
Cash injection fuels SABRE spaceplane engine
GCHQ to pore over blueprints of Chinese built Brit nuke plants
NHS site defaced with screed protesting Syrian conflict
SNAFU: Blighty's judges not trustworthy, says their own website
iPhone case uses phone's OWN SIGNAL to charge it (forever, presumably)
Upper house of Parliament joins the drone debate
At the third beep, the Atomic Clock will be 60 ... imprecisely
Monday 23rd February 2015 19:02 GMT
Re: nice, as a primer...
Look, the man talked about prodding atoms with pointed sticks: how much more technical do you need? I think it is time to "release the tiger".
Personally, I thought this article hit the mark nicely and, as other commentards have said, should be required reading at the sharp end of school Physics classes.
BEHOLD the magnificent lunar backside in our MOON VIDEO
Post-pub nosh neckfiller: The Red Dwarf chilli chutney egg sarnie
Saturday 7th February 2015 19:30 GMT
Re: Encona?
Total agreement on two counts: Encona is merely ketchup. Dave's Insanity Sauce on the other hand is best described as a munition. In case you haven't done so, have a read of the label - something about being useful for stripping concrete. It's the sort of stuff you see getting transported in ex-Sellafield nuclear waste wagons. A real coder's condiment.
Govt spaffs £170k to develop the INTERNET OF SHEEP
Siri: Helpful personal assistant or SERIAL APP KILLER?
Friday 29th August 2014 14:58 GMT
Re: "OK. Book the 9pm one and hire a Hertz car at Charles De Gaulle airport for my arrival"
It gets worse. I want this pair wrapped in a transaction so that if/when the flight booking fails I don't want a hire car sitting waiting for me having fun with my credit card. At least with apps I can rollback the lot when one part fails. I managed to take the wind out the sails of a web services evangelist a decade or so ago with this same scenario. Still no solution.
Google hit by Monday morning blues: Talk, Hangouts, Sheets crash
Monday 17th March 2014 18:23 GMT
Re: With such vital services and heavily used down...
I agree on its use as the spousal-conduit. Indeed I believe my wife is responsible for the outage: she tried to get a full history of our conversation (probably to get proof of my wrongness in some regard) and down it went. As we operate a "you touched it last" policy I think the blame is clear (however, she's got nothing to do with the other services - that must be someone else's missus)
Google adds Large Hadron Collider tunnel to Street View
Tuesday 1st October 2013 16:38 GMT
Time for a Bit of National Stereotyping
The article says that some parts of the tunnel were a bit grubby. Given the tunnel is under Swiss and French territory is the "grubbiness" restricted to a particular country? Having visited both countries I have to say that "grubby" isn't a word I'd associate with the Swiss (in any of their languages).
On International Woman's Day we remember Grace Hopper
Psst: Heard the one about the National Pupil Database? Thought not
EE 4G LTE review
SpaceX Dragon chokes at the last second
Sunday 20th May 2012 19:30 GMT
Re: To quote Top Gear... How Hard Can It Be™
There was a great anecdote in the Murray&Cox "Apollo" book about how von Braun settled on five-9 reliability (99.999%) for the Saturn booster. He asked his five German rocket colleagues "Any reason why this won't work?" and the replies: "Nein", Nein", Nein", Nein", Nein". "There you are: five-9s."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
