Posts by H in The Hague

"Replacing EU red tape with red white and blue tape.... "

Yup, Brexit is creating quite a lot of work for some of my colleagues, updating documentation to include not only CE but also UKCA declarations, which essentially have the same contents. So a complete waste of money for the customers, purely red tape. And once UKCA requirements start to diverge from CE it'll get even worse as then we may need two different versions of the equipment. All in all, a pointless waste of money and effort.

Meanwhile, overseas governments are happy to accept European standards. E.g. the Hong Kong government specified them for bin lorries, see page 13 of https://www.dennis-eagle.co.uk/news-and-media/eagle-eye/te-magazine-2020/

Re: towed to the top of a hill before the brakes were released.

The funny thing is, there are actually some electric mining trucks which are loaded with ore at the top of the mountain, then drive downhill using regenerative braking which charges the battery, unload the ore, and then use the stored energy to drive uphill empty.

Here's one example, but there are larger ones:

https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/say-watt-this-massive-ev-never-needs-to-plug-in

Admittedly a bit of a niche use case :)

Re: Oh, for God's sake

"The CAD package (Medusa) ..."

Is that the package now marketed as M4? https://www.cad-schroer.com/products/m4-personal/

Looks interesting and free for personal use.

"I think the UK is an exception in Europe (may be wrong) whereby trailers must display the reg of the towing vehicle - most/rest of Europe trailers have their own reg."

In NL (and possibly the rest of the EU) smaller trailers carry the same registration plate as the towing vehicle. Heavier ones are considered as vehicles in their own right, with their own registration plate.

Re: Speaking Of Ancient Storage Methods .....

"The workaround is to bake the tape in an oven at low temperature for a while."

As this gentleman is currently doing:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rare-analogue-masters-digitized-prism-sound-mark-evans/?trackingId=HaM44PPkRg%2B7bCWYue5Ggg%3D%3D

Re: How about floating on reservoirs?

Done.

https://solarmagazine.nl/nieuws-zonne-energie/i24664/profloating-installeert-5-000-drijvende-zonnepanelen-bij-plantenkwekerij-bernhard

And several other projects.

Re: Just another normal week for machine learning ("AI") then

"There used to be far more women in IT >30 years ago and going back many years before that it was unremarkable. First place I worked it was close to parity but many started to leave as management became increasingly toxic."

Sadly that was also the experience of a woman friend of mine who worked in financial IT in the period you refer to.

Listening to her experience I also got the impression that the management was ineffective, focussed on presenteism rather than productivity, and disorganised and therefore inefficient.

Re: From Mssrs Pratchett & Gaimain

"I had one and the natives would approach it with more than a trace of apprehension."

One of my colleagues (Brit, living in NL) had an electric kettle that looked like a stove top kettle. She had some Dutch friends staying in her flat who did indeed put it on the stove top (presumably the flex was unplugged at the kettle end). The smell of the bakelite feet burning alerted them :)

Re: Bankrupt the country so you can sell it to Rishi's father in law

"I am seriously pissed at the fact this affects my children who have lost their right to freely travel in the EU"

Hear, hear! That's one of the things I'm really upset with too, haven't got any kids of my own, but my friends do and it's making their lives more difficult.

Re: Remote hacks

Well ....

Two or three years ago I went to a presentation by them (or was it Stihl?) where they showed us autonomous mowers, deployed by a drone. So, chainsaws might be next :)

Re: You know you're old when...

"If you look at the wiring on some of those old Teasmaids, .."

Yup, a friend of mine had one decades ago. One morning, half-asleep he reached for the teapot (metal) and the 240 V through his fingers woke him up very quickly. Luckily no permanent harm done.

Re: I started my career as an electronics engineer

"it's very useful to have a thermal camera, especially for troubleshooting"

An "imaging thermometer" is even cheaper. I've got

https://nl.rs-online.com/web/p/infrared-thermometers/8481331

and RS have an own brand unit which is cheaper still.

Also, speaking from experience, handy for tracing pipes in the wall if a metal detector doesn't pick them up (e.g. modern polymer pipes).

Re: False floors too

"Current working location, very large, very old building."

With a view of the Thames, by chance?

"... cassette was about 6.5 x 1 x 1 metres. Strange terminology"

How about 40 ft?

https://ntgroup.com/product/cassettes/

Used in ports to handle shipping containers, steel slabs, etc.

Don't have any moving parts or electrics, so essentially maintenance free. Transported by translifters which slide into the cassette and then the shunting tractor lifts them.

Re: Shocked

"Put hubs in residential areas to support home working"

That sounds like the 'telecottages' of two or three decades ago. That concept was developed to allow remote working at a time when not that many people had an Internet connection at home.

History does repeat itself. Just like to a relative oldie like me, 'cloud computing' sounds suspiciously like 'timesharing', 'remote data processing', etc we used to have yonks ago :)

Re: Next week:

"New, massively more efficient changing tech invented that requires a new port design. "

Nope. USB C can carry enough power for most devices in this class. Any "more efficient charging" tech is likely to be implemented within the battery or its battery management system inside the device, so the connector supplying the power to it is irrelevant.

Re: Just a quick question.

"... expressions that are quite innocent in one place can be vulgar or have unintended connotations in others .."

I have a hazy collection that one of my process engineering books or dictionaries claims that the European Spanish word for 'heat exchanger' means 'brothel keeper' in South American Spanish (or the other way round, can't find the book right now).

Any hispanophone Commentards out there who can help?

Re: What On "Earth"?

"I've seen this, a friend in a very rural home commented to me that the washing machine in an outbuilding gave her a shock ..."

Problems like that with outbuildings are quite common. Sometimes you'll get a potential gradient across the yard between the outbuilding and the main building due to earthing problems, leakage, etc. As cows have their legs widely spaced and don't usually sport insulating footwear they are sensitive to that as they experience quite a large potential difference between their front and rearquarters - so if your livestock refuse to cross the yard that might be due to an electrical issue.

Re: Hmm

"I most earnestly wished for a WTO deal."

Have you ever tried to navigate the WTO website to check tariffs and non-tariff barriers? And tried to deal with different product standards?

Re: BREXIT was a massive and expensive lie.

"All of the EU citizens who could previously visit the UK with their ID cards now need a passport"

Yup! That's one thing I really don't understand. Presumably in most EU member states the ID cards and passports are generated using the same databases and are therefore pretty much equivalent. (Or have I got that wrong?) Seems pointless and must really hurt the language school and school trips market.

Re: "Everyone had to leave" knee-jerk reaction

Hedging wasn't relevant while the Pound was in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which kept fluctuations very small. The problem was caused by the Pound dropping from the ERM (aka proto-euro).

Apart from that, I'm not sure hedging is available for relatively small transactions like they were doing. But definitely an option when you're building an oil refinery.

A Dutch colleague mentioned that they'd concluded a contract with a UK customer the week before Black Wednesday, fortunately for them the contract was in guilders (remember those?).

Re: Full names please.......

"Mr. Payne"

Related to our friends in Twickenham, Wake & Paine Funeral Directors? Yes, they do exist, I've walked past their offices.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wake+%26+Paine+Funeral+Directors/@51.446449,-0.3300539,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48760c618c6055ed:0xb4ec2198c1d0e90b!8m2!3d51.4464457!4d-0.3278652

Have a good weekend.

Re: 'twas ever thus

"The previous owner took everything including the floorboards. This was apparently considered normal."

Never heard of that! And definitelt not normal, anything that is fixed with screws, nails or adhesive is normally considered part of the property and to be left behind. And certainly nowadays the seller will complete a list indicating which items will be removed, left behind, or can be acquired by the purchaser (e.g. freestanding appliances, built-in appliances would be considered part of the building).

Re: I had a shoulder holster made for my Psion 5

"Now I'm wondering it one of these for a laptop/tablet might actually be quite a boon."

Like one of these?

https://setwear.com/products/ipad-radio-chest-pack

Designed for use on film sets, in theatres, etc.

"Windows file manager is crap compared to the competition on other OS, ..."

What alternative file manager would you suggest, for those of us who have to use Windows for one reason or another?

Re: Hmmm..

"He didn't once stop to ask what benefit anyone using the tech would receive."

Hmm, most of my customers (engineering, etc.) figured out a decade or two ago that they really had to emphasise the benefits to the customer rather than technical cleverness.

Re: Flood wire everywhere

"... did the site survey works properly."

One of my books on ground engineering includes a note to the effect that "any assumed savings by economising on the site survey often lead to much greater costs later on in the project lifecycle". (Apol if I've posted this before.)

Re: Adverts

"I never did figure out why, and it's still rather determined that I should buy women's clothes"

Yup, happened here a few years ago. For some reason some advertising system thought I was a German-speaking lady, plus-sized, looking to buy swimwear in drab colours (I'm not). Very specific targeting, and very specially way off the mark on each of those factors.

Re: Trademarks vs patents

"Incorrect. Here in the US, copyright is automatically granted to the author of an original work."

Thanks for the correction, I misunderstood that.

However, in the US you do have to register copyright to be able to enforce it effectively:

"Registering a work is not mandatory, but for U.S. works, registration (or refusal) is necessary to enforce the exclusive rights of copyright through litigation."

https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/

I meant to say that in, say, European countries there is no registration system.