Posts by Mystic Megabyte 1800 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2010
Yesterday in the Science section every second story was a snippet from the Daily Express. {Hang on I'll nip over and fetch one or two}
"NASA Moon landing SHOCK: What did Apollo 11 discover during lost two minutes of SILENCE?"
"'Killer asteroid' will 'inevitably' hit earth causing EXTINCTION – 'start planet search'"
and so on; usually about killer asteroids. I must say that I never realised how scientifically informed their readership was :)
I'm sitting in front of a Philps fan heater that belonged to my long dead parents. It has a label on the base which says "MAINTENANCE: Every six months unplug the heater, remove the base, remove any fluff and oil the bearings". I did that last week, this heater must be at least 40* years old. Similar modern appliances have tamper proof screws and will die after two years.
*the neon lamp died but I replaced it with one from a dead kettle
I once had to wire up a music business between Christmas and the New Year. It was two floors of an office block and the heating was in metal ducts under the windows. This is where we had planned to run the cables. You'd have thought that management would have got everybody to clear their desks but no!
Long rectangular desks with the short end up against the ducts. As well as the usual clutter each desk had piles of EPs and LPs (that's vinyl to you youngsters!) on and under it. There's a limit to how many records that you can carry or stack because they slide off each other. The cleaners had obviously given up trying to clean around them a long time ago, dirt and fluff everywhere! Four of us spent two days just moving desks away from the walls :(
I discovered that there was no easy way to get the cables from the top floor downwards. The chief accountant wanted the server in his office so I hired a diamond core bit and drilled a two inch hole in his floor!
We did get the cabling installed and all the desks replaced before they came back to work and I got paid a good chunk of money.
*This ran surprisingly well. IIRC there were 36 terminals, 4 printers and a modem connected to it. I can't quite remember the software, Sun systems maybe. Everyone had a word processor, spreadsheet etc.
Maybe it's time to retire my 1st. gen Moto G even though it is still working fine. I wouldn't do banking on any phone but I don't want it dialling premium rate numbers.
Any recommendations for a phone that's less than about £150 would be welcome. When I get a new one I'll try loading Lineage on the old one.
Back in the day when I had a 386DX and ran Photoshop with no problems my neighbour got a "special deal" on an iMac G3. The fecking thing could not even rotate a jpeg! To get her holiday snaps into it I had to burn a CD with under 100 files per folder and rename all the files into a 8.3 all caps format.
Who the fuck buys this shit?!!
P.S. It's Linux and Gimp that does everything (photographically) that I need now. RIP Windows :(
My partner and I lived in an apartment above our elderly and very deaf landlady. In the evenings she would use the remote to crank up the volume on her powerful Grundig TV to 11. It was so loud that we could not hear each other speaking. Her fusebox was outside of her door so we'd go down and briefly switch off her entire apartment, the TV would reset to normal volume and she'd be asleep and not notice the lights going off and on.
Have a nice weekend!
I don't know the answer to that but here's a strange thing. One of my web-mail accounts in the UK is OK to send me virus laden attachments. But when I try to forward them to the UK's *eFraud department they get blocked, message says "This contains malware". ???
*NFIBPhishing(at)city-of-london.pnn.police.uk
Jeepers! Weird how 'Merkins are brainwashed to accept their corporate overlords. They don't mind being ripped off or the lack of tax paid by these global corps. Just mention socialism and they're like turkeys voting for *Christmas.
*other events may apply
P.S. I'm not a socialist, but IMO you need a balance of the two sides to hinder outrageous greed.
The government bleat on about our border while cutting back on the people who protect it. In one CG station that I know of the staff turnover is high because they are expected to work 12 hour shifts for not a lot of money. So then a new person is appointed who does not have the experience to deal with emergencies, disasters or just about anything else. For example, they will ask for the launch a lifeboat that is further away from a casualty than a nearer one.
Ultimately the government would like to shut all but one of the coastguard stations. So if your yacht is in trouble on the west coast of Scotland you'll be talking to someone in Dover who has no local knowledge of that area. In short, you'll be lucky to be rescued.
A few years ago the police started Operation Kraken <insert ominous music here> where the public are asked to report suspicious behaviour on the coast. Another cost cutting exercise perhaps? Get something for free rather than pay people to protect our border. Call me a cynic.
In a news report a couple of weeks ago the head of the truckers association said that a UK business with 400 trucks would have to complete 7 million pieces of paperwork every week.
Pre-EU I used to deliver expensive (~£100,000) equipment to Holland. You needed a carnet, then at the port you stood in the rain outside five different porta-cabins to get the required stamps. The Dutch side had a warm modern building with showers and a coffee machine where all the paperwork was processed.
Tl:Dr It's going to be a disaster!
He spent the Christmas break binge-reading back-issues of Fortean Times and Heavy Metal and is now having trouble trying to come back to terms with conventional reality.
I'm clutching my Fortean Times mug this morning, it always makes me smile. For what's written on the drawing of the monitor see title.
http://forteana-blog.blogspot.com/2011/02/hierophant-mystery.html
I kept getting text messages from a woman in Scotland inviting me to parties "wiv drink an' drugs". Texting her back had no effect so I rang her up. All she could say was "Who are you?", I explained that she did not know me. The response was "Who are you?" !!!
As the conversation was going nowhere I told her to f*** off. She then gave her phone to some guy to "sort me out". Not being afraid of getting beaten up over the phone I told the guy the problem and asked him to delete my number from the phone. He said OK and did it, result!
In 1980 I was living in Switzerland and went with a friend to a *conference featuring James Irwin. We went early but found that the place was packed. People were already sitting in the aisles. I suggested that we sit on the floor at the front but my friend said that his eyesight could not deal with being so close. So I made a route through the middle row expecting to be sitting in the middle aisle. Almost at the aisle we found a man with his coat covering two seats, when asked he said that he was trying to save them but his pals had not turned up. So we got seats in almost the centre of the auditorium.
We saw footage from the chest mounted camera while the astronauts drove the lunar buggy! Totally amazing!
Mr. Irwin explained that part of the mission was to find some white rock that the geologists had predicted would exist. The problem was that everything was covered with a grey dust. On their last day they had prayed to God that they would find it. Driving up the side of a hill they saw a large boulder, on top of which was a white rock, dust free! Mr. Irwin pulled a white rock from his pocket and then admitted that it was a NASA copy :)
At one point he also did the "blue marble" speech, I kid you not, when he held up a blue marble the audience was completely quiet.
Totally fecking amazing!!!
Mr. James Irwin was a brilliant orator. During the Q&A at the end he never once umed or ared but after a moments deliberation always gave a clear answer. RIP brave man.
*L'Ecole Polytechnique Federale, Lausanne
A bit late here but why not a tethered projectile?
I've fired these things a few times, they are powerful enough to make a two inch hole through your head! Range approx: 250m
If you could add a tracking system it would be perfect.
This link just came up first after a search:
https://www.marinair.co.nz/shop/Marine/Distress+Flares/Speedline+LTA+Rocket+Linethrower+per+unit%3Fsku=FL3027.html
I'll upvote you for the "don't kill it if you won't eat it" but I eat some venison in Portree and it was *very* gamey. I presume that it was an elderly stag, I am not an expert in this field. Anyway, the meal was expensive and I forced myself to eat it . I prefer Roe deer :)
I was living in Germany but went diving on the west coast of Scotland. On Jura I saw a German registered VW with four guys in camo and holding rifles. "Feck me!", I exclaimed, "It's the fecking German army!"
Actually they were paying big money to shoot stags. IMHO it takes no skill to kill something with a modern rifle from half a mile away. And of course the numptys wanted the heads as trophys.
Here's how to confuse the Taxman.
I'm sure that I read about this in a book by Sir Patrick Moore but I might be wrong:
First letter to the taxman, My Ref: ABC123
Next letter, My Ref: ABC124
Next letter, My Ref: ABC126
In which you state that all the info that they required was in the previous letter, My Ref: ABC125. (which obviously does not exist)
I've done this and it feels good!
It's nearly pub o'clock and as there are no police here we drive there and back, ooops!
In a pre-computer age a friend worked as secretary to a fashion company. After some time her bosses turned out to be not very nice and they sacked her. Unfortunately for them she had kept all their records of clients and suppliers in shorthand; her own version of shorthand which was unreadable by anyone else!
Twice this year I've been enjoying a meal in a restaurant when a woman has arrived who has seemingly applied an entire bottle of perfume onto herself. Within seconds the whole room is saturated and I'm unable to smell my tasty food. If I had not paid for it I would just bin the food.
Grrrr!
I've been trying for ages to get a friend to understand the downside(s) of Facebook. She has created a local interest group. Yesterday she came into the office and wanted to update something so I let her use my laptop. She could not work out why only half the FB page was visible. "Do I have to login to your computer?", she asked. I replied that for those outside FB's walled garden most of this info is invisible.
What can you do? :(
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
