* Posts by Chris Leeson

27 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

Experiment arrives at the ISS to see if astronauts can keep things cool

Chris Leeson

Tea for more than two

"That'll upset both Devon and Cornwall..."

So, there is no downside?

Asterix co-creator Albert Uderzo dies aged 92

Chris Leeson

Asterix and Tintin...

The two major memories from my childhood were Asterix and Tintin, and now that's all the great authors gone.

Asterix was my introduction to comics when they became the only interesting thing in the children's section of our local library. I didn't get on to other comics 'till my late teens, and I still hold a place for the old Asterix stories. Bell did an awesome job of translating them into English, but for the comics to be translated (and survive translation) into so many other languages (including latin, I believe) they must have had something special to start with.

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

Chris Leeson

Re: offensive language is subjective?

We avoid the issue by referring to The Constipated Detective...

The Eldritch Horror of Date Formatting is visited upon Tesco

Chris Leeson

Re: best way so far?

Ah - standard VMS Date/Time format. The best way to handle dates. Completely unambiguous.

(And before people start on about alpha sorts, most of the time my dates are in a database, in a date/time datatype. The only time you need to do an alpha sort is when you express the date outside the datatype (like embedding it in file names, for example))

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Chris Leeson

Politically Insightful

Amongst other things, the Clangers' take on the General Election ("Vote for Froglet") was enough to set my political views for a lifetime.

One of the best bits of my childhood.

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Chris Leeson

Cherry-picking the references, eh?

Have an upvote for mentioning Urusei Yatsura - the second manga I read and the first anime I watched.

Suspected drug dealer who refused to poo for 46 DAYS released... on bail

Chris Leeson

Re: Ah well...

Surely in chemistry, the more moles there are, the easier it is to detect things?

Microsoft offers drone lovers a simulator

Chris Leeson

Ah, Nostalga...

So, does that mean that Microsoft have released yet another version of Flight Sim?

Silicon Valley’s top exorcist rushed off his feet as Demons infest California

Chris Leeson

Re: Better in Latin

Thank you. It is a long time since I saw that film...

Chris Leeson

Surely it is all Greek to them?

(I remember a vampire movie where the vampire comments that it does sound so much better in Latin).

The planets really will be in alignment for the next month

Chris Leeson

Re: I see ...

There's not enough Flanders and Swann these days...

Using SQL techniques in NoSQL is OK, right? WRONG

Chris Leeson

Nitpick...

Paul Bunyan? Don't you mean John Henry?

BONKERS apocalyptic WAR WAGONS circle Vulture South

Chris Leeson

Alas for myths...

"I understand that when water is drained away through a plughole, the 'whirpool' goes in the opposite directions in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, due to the coriolis effect."

Sadly not - the coriolis effect is to weak to affect a bath or sink.

You can see the coriolis effect if you create a special (several meters in diameter) bath, ruthlessly protect it from drafts and any heat sources (to prevent covection currents) and leave it standing for several weeks to let any eddy currents die down. It isn't an exciting or easy experiment to perform.

Trolls prevail because good men do nothing: boffins

Chris Leeson

Re: "Good men"...

It would also stop people with something legitimate to say, but who don't want their names against it as their fellows and management also read El Reg.

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

Chris Leeson

Re: Huh?

That's the neutrino. A right tricky little devil too...

Hey Commentard! - or is that Commenter?

Chris Leeson

Re: Go for it!

"And finally, dare I say it and get banned, 'Moderatards'?"

In one case it used to be Moderatrix... I miss the old days...

For the FOTW competitors, how about Cuss-tard?

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

Chris Leeson

An El Reg first?

Is the comments section really going to become the biggest leaving card in history?

All the best in the new job.

I usually sign leaving cards with a squiggle upside-down on the back. Can't do that here, of course...

Buffy to slay her way back into cinemas

Chris Leeson

Don't tell me...

... Let me guess:

"take the touchstones of the Whedon world but frame them in 'a new story' that is very much of the moment"

means:

"Sparkly Vampires!!!"

New use found for 'world's most useful tree'

Chris Leeson
Pint

They've (re)discovered the Wompom?

Were Flanders and Swann right after all?

http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/bestiary_wompom.html

Paramount prepares to scale Dune

Chris Leeson

The Baron was spot-on? Really?

The other characters were pretty good, but the Baron? He was portrayed as almost completely insane!

The Baron in the book is calm, collected and one hell of a plotter. A very dangerous adversary!

LHC starts beaming Saturday: Collisions Dec 3

Chris Leeson

@asdf

"Yes CERN invented the web but alas its obvious they never really moved past 1994 web site design wise. Says a lot about the quality of their web design team that they need an outside site to navigate their own site. Stupid scientists think they can do everything including coding and graphic design. I love how scientists learn a little bit of code and then go on to write the most unscalable horrid unmaintable bubble gum chickenwire app you would ever imagine and consider themselves a software expert. Hopefully they do their science at a much higher quality and actually get the darn thing to work this time."

Or, perhaps, those web pages are for their conveninece, not yours. Says a lot about scientists that they will go for functional rather than fluffy. Oh, and that's *their* requirements for "functional", not yours.

DARPA in Tom'n'Jerry robo-brain quest

Chris Leeson

Shades of "All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku"...

The Japanese got there first - http://www.themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=25 - although the (not at all hentai) NK-1124 is probably not exactly what DARPA have in mind...

Counterfeit vans: A little-known online grocery scam

Chris Leeson

It's simpler than that...

The thief gets access to the house, and will see enough to determine if it is worth breaking in, and some idea of the vunerabilities of the building.

I think it used to be referred to as "casing the joint".

The solution is to make them hand over the delivery at the doorstep.

Microsoft develops 'intelligent' shopping trolley

Chris Leeson

Not new at all...

They had those in a supermarket chain when I was working in the States (Atlanta, to be specific). This was about 10-15 years ago.

It wasn't much use then, either. As has been said, too many things to keep updated in the database...

Catholic schism over mobile icons

Chris Leeson

@The Other Steve...

"...a story that reminds us that christians are just as stupid, venal and needlessly obsessed with trivial dogmatic minutiae as other cults.

Especially so close to christmas."

It 'aint the Christians that are getting venal; and needlessly obsessed around Christmas. Quite the opposite, in fact...

Bumblebee boogie analysis in webserver boost

Chris Leeson

Surely this should be...

"Tovey's years of apid bee-watching"?