Posts by Floydian Slip 85 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2014
If HMS Queen Liz can only enter harbour on a high tide - how will it leave/return when/if fully laden with the extra weight that a full compliment of crew, all stores replenished and naval aviation embarked?
She'll be the only ship that can return to her home port when the sun's in alignment with the moon and there's a super spring tide allied to super high pressue
Ah yes, undefined "Meat" and that's why the great UX expert Jakob Nielsen got his name for web menus and navigation where the destination was unclear. He called it "Mystery Meat Navigation" navigation items where the destination is unknown.
On a slightly different front, one of the reasons why a lot of curry houses have red light is that it makes it much harder to determine the type and quality of "meat" on your plate.
Any cats gone missing recently?
Beer icon 'cause you need one whatever type of meat you're dealing with
Loved vinyl "back in the day" - that'd be the 70's and 80's. Had a well set up tape deck because I couldn't play my 12" in the car (took too long to get it out of the sleeve probably) and then had an early Walkman and several other portable tape devices.
Migrated to MP3 as soon as I discovered the beauty of downloads and bough a HDD MP3 player Archos and wired it up to my car. Stuck with MP3 and CD until we made a domestic decision to bring in the vinyl collection from the garage and bought a 2nd hand device (much better than a Crosley) and ran it until it packed up.
Upgraded and upgraded again until I will admit to having a nice set up. With care (playing records with the lid closed) and an occasional wipe with a suitable cleaner the sound is free of clicks, scratches and other imperfections and modern disks use a high quality vinyl which sounds almost as good as a CD.
Mind you, due to too many concerts, I've lost quite a bit of top end listening ability and have annoying tinnitus 100% of the time so I may not be the best judge.
I do love the "sense of occasion" though - the art work, sleeve notes and the routine but stream from a variety of sources when I just want some music.
OK, I'll get my (vinyl) anorak
It's worth commenting on the whole "vote tactically" debate.
Tactics only look to the short term, strategy looks at the longer term and that's where we should be looking if we want to live in a competitive economy in a dog-eat-dog world.
Remember - if you vote tactically you might win the battle. If you vote strategically you will win the war
Ah yes, the Psion 5. Sometime after production had ended I can remember working with quite a large legal practice, trying to bring their IT infrastructure up to "modern" standards.
I interviewed all the key solicitors and barristers to ask what they wanted from the system and was confronted by one gentleman. He said "if you tell me that I have to stop using my Psion, then I'll have to remind you, young man, that I defend some quite nasty types of criminal".
He was particularly attached to his Psion, and had a stack of broken ones, reckoning that he wore them out every 2 years or so
The threat was really quite clever, and ominous, without really sounding like a threat. I told him that I had no intention of depriving him of the functionality of his Psion (he used it for creating documents, reading files and a little game playing whilst between cases in the corridors of the lands legal edifices)
I'd actually spotted that the local John Lewis even had some on clearance for around £200 so advised him that he should pop down there and buy a couple before they ran out. He did - he bought 5 IIRC, so was sorted for the next 10 years.
I sometime wonder what happened to the "new bloke" after he ran out of replacements.
I've delivered a number of training courses and there's always one who pipes up with the phrase "but my screen looks nothing like the one you're showing now". I used to slowly and carefully walk them through the process and, most of the time, it was all OK but a few still had the same complaint.
It took a while for it to sink in. These were the know-it-all smart arses who thought they knew where I was going and thought it would demonstrate their brilliance by racing ahead so they could finish first.
Unfortunately they'd left their psychic powers at home and were way off beam and so I'g start sessions with something along the lines of "F**king do as I do and say, and don't go f**king about with your own ideas dipsh*ts" [Not quite the wording but they're the ones that I said in my head]
However, in the words of the wise and great Murray Walker, "To finish first, first you have to finish"
Coincidently I've just finished reading The
Last Firewall where there's an organisation tasked with exactly that - making sure the AIs don't run away with the idea that they are superior.
It was a really good read but I won't say any more than that because the AI looking over my shoulder, monitoring what I type might do something unpleasant.
Ah but with #Brexit and wonderful trade deals we're going to become so much wealthier.
Then AI kicks in and we'll all be paid a Universal Income by the Govt. and have so much free time to deal with that we'll need Amazon, Netflix, BBC, ITV *insert new players here* etc to stop us all going round-the-bend and killing ourselves.
I'm wondering whether a lower powered device could be built in to the front of my rear view mirror to annoy the idiots who sit at junctions and hold their car on the brakes, rather than using the hand (parking) brake or just releasing the brakes when they come to a standstill on level ground.
It's a real pain to be dazzled on long winter nights by the moron in front. More so when it's a new Audi TT because Audi seem to have forgotten that the high level brake light should be exactly that, HIGH level. It defeats the purpose to have it mounted along the edge of the boot and the new Audi's goes from edge to edge - an almost unbroken strip of bright red LEDs from one side of the car t'other.
</rant>
I thought the key goal of Smart Meters was to enable your utility provider to disconnect your supply for non=payment with the simple click of a mouse or the run of a simple script.
With the IT c**kups visited on us by central Govt. I can see no end of erroneous disconnections occurring /CynicMode
I used to really like the concept of pumped storage but apparently there's a hidden problem - methane, which is a significantly worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
And pumped storage systems generate much more methane than originally believed simply because the more stagnant nature of the water leads to increased decomposition. Wish I could remember where I read the report earlier this week but the source escapes me
Empathise fully, as well as that "vital/critical" new install that requires a reboot when on-site and hourly billing - so you re-boot and MS decides there's eventy hundred updates to install and it's oh so slow.
All whilst the client asks "I'm not going to be billed for this, am I"?
Because you can't say - "well, you should have let the Criticality of User Need Threshold Supervisor circuit install the updates rather than just clicking the "postpone" message" can you and you can't slope off for a crafty pint/drink/smoke becasue that just doesn't look good although having to retrieve an "essential tool" from the car works a bit better
Stereo, aka stereophonic sound has two channels of sound, left and right with different sounds coming from each channel.
A woofer focuses on low frequency sound whilst a tweeter focuses on higher frequencies NOT left and right.
So which is it? Left and right through the top and bottom or lows and highs through the top and bottom - or does it have a pair of tweeters for stereo - and a single woofer because bass is non-directional
I remember when ANPR cameras were introduced with the promise that they would make live comparisons of MOT and insurance databases and ONLY keep data for vehicles breaking the law.
I realised that this was a broken promise when a grandfather from Trowbridge got himself lost 'twixt a London airport and home and the ANPR database was able to find his car by searching the database.
When ANPR cameras sprung up on poles around my town I asked my local council-person who was responsible - based on the fact that if you or I put up CCTV cameras we have to post a Data Controller Notice with contact details and the ANPR poles were without ID
Not us said the council-person who suggested I contacted my MP. Not us said the MP who contacted the local chief constable - who effectively said "F off, it's none of your business"
I don't like the "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to hide" - it's none of the Government's business what I'm doing PROVIDED I'm not breaking the law (presumed innocence)
However, it's all gone to pop, we're now "the safest country on the planet" due to the sheer amount of surveillance we're now under.
Where will it end - cameras watching us in our homes and cars? Is that why cars are being made with WiFi hotspots these days?
From an accounting perspective, Concorde made an operating profit.
However, only 16 were ever in service because of the hoohah the US made over the boom (they just wanted to block the plane because they didn't have one, the Boeing SST being still born)
Concorde's range was actually pretty short so the really long distance flights were out, the oil crisis meant that other airlines on other long distance routes couldn't afford to fly them and they didn't really make money - all of the development costs were written off by France and the UK and I'm not even sure whether the airlines paid any money for them either (BOAC and Air France).
I've been using Android almost since it was released and have watched it develop and mature in to a stable platform.
I am also frustrated by the amount of tech that I use, phone, tablet, laptop and desktop because each has its place in the productivity stream.
I'm quite taken by Windows 10 mobiles and MS' Continuum where you have a small box by your desk that you connect your Win 10 mobe to and you have access to a full size screen, keyboard and mouse and apps upscale to take full advantage of the peripherals whilst your phone continues to do the essential phone things like taking/making calls.
I've got about a year until upgrade, by which time Continuum should have bedded in (or disappeared) and I'd probably be willing to give it a try.
Mine's the one with the small Continuum device in the pocket
The first time I was a passenger in an Atom and I thought the driver was screaming when he put the hammer down.
It happened on every straight and I really began to worry - until I realised that I was hearing the supercharger, not the driver.
Felt a bit of a fool so I decided not to tell anybody.....until now
Nice to see a near perfect success for Amazon's new ICDM (Inter Continental Delivery Mechanism) so there's drones for deliveries pretty close to the depot, ICDMs for people living (a lot) farther away, now all they have to do is address the pesky Courier Module for people living between those two extremes.
I've been using a Chromebook for about 6 months now - I was lucky enough to get hold of a Dell with 4Gb Ram and it's fast and works happily with loads of open tabs - more than my Windows PC can deal with. http://blog.enterprise-oms.co.uk/wp/category/chromebooks/
As a portable device it's great, battery life is fantastic, screen is good enough and it's lightweight but it would never replace my main PC - which has 3 x 22" screens
I am even making friends with Google Docs and using Slides for my presentations
I had an HTC (M7) on contract and the thing just stopped working after 18 months. Mind you, it had been well used, been dropped a couple of times and had a small crack on the screen so I could't exactly claim "un-merchantable quality". However, I did contact EE and ask about an early upgrade and was happily told that I could but that it would cost me £240 to buy me out of my contract, £20 for a new phone and a couple of extra quid a month so, a fresh 2 contract would have cost me more than £300.00.
So, I bought myself a Chinese phone on Ebay for £120.00 and I'll use it for a year and then upgrade through my contact to a "premium" phone for nowt.
It's got a 5" screen 1280 x 720 which is perfectly fine, ARM Cortex A7 1.7Ghz MT6592 and 2Gb Ram + 16Gb and an SD card slot, Dual Sim, 13 & 5 Mp camera (with flash). It doesn't have NFC (never did use it anyway), has OK sound, ships with awful headphones and there's no 4G - won't miss that, my M7 was 3G and it's a couple of grams heavier.
It's called a Blackview Crown and it does me just fine
Actually Office 365 runs in the browser very nicely thank you. Even my many PowerPoint presentations play happy with a projector connected to my Dell 4Gb Chromebook. Oh, and the 1Tb Office 365 storage trumps Google Drive too.
It's the most usable, portable, lightest, bestest battery life portable computing device that I've used in nearly 20 years of IT and IT related work.
I was working with a rather large firm of solicitors at the beginning of the noughies and they were looking to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure - letting the solicitors have laptops so they could be productive away from the office as well as telephony and other changes.
I started by asking all the key partners and lawyers how they used IT currently and whether there was anything that would make them more productive.
All of the criminal lawyers [those that worked in criminal law, not the lawyers who were criminal] just reminded me of their role and that they "knew" some "not very nice people".
It wasn't told in a threatening way, more of a light hearted and jocular fashion. However it did serve to emphasize how attached they were to their Psions.
Seeing as they typically went through a Psion 5 each about once every couple of years I simply suggested that they hot-footed it to the nearest John Lewis, who were selling remainder stock off cheaply, and buy 3-4 each.
They did, and as far as I am aware, they're probably still using them now for discrete note taking during trials and a little light entertainment whilst waiting for courts to return.
Mines the one with the HTC One in the pocket....best phone I've had and, even after a year, I've not found anything that would really make me want to change
I was working with a rather large firm of solicitors at the beginning of the noughies and they were looking to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure - letting the solicitors have laptops so they could be productive away from the office as well as telephony and other changes.
I started by asking all the key partners and lawyers how they used IT currently and whether there was anything that would make them more productive.
All of the criminal lawyers [those that worked in criminal law, not the lawyers who were criminal] just reminded me of their role and that they "knew" some "not very nice people".
It wasn't told in a threatening way, more of a light hearted and jocular fashion. However it did serve to emphasize how attached they were to their Psions.
Seeing as they typically went through a Psion 5 each about once every couple of years I simply suggested that they hot-footed it to the nearest John Lewis, who were selling remainder stock off cheaply, and buy 3-4 each.
They did, and as far as I am aware, they're probably still using them now for discrete note taking during trials and a little light entertainment whilst waiting for courts to return.
Mines the one with the HTC One in the pocket....best phone I've had and, even after a year, I've not found anything that would really make me want to change
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