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Have taken the plunge and changed the physical SIM on my iPhone 13 To an eSIM. I was previously dual SIMming with one physical and one eSIM, but now I’m dual eSIM and the SIM tray is empty.
Haven't boasted about it yet on these social media parts, so I shall toot/skeet my own trumpet a bit. I got my OU Family Law module result yesterday, and it's another distinction, to add to the ones in Criminal, Civil, and Public law. Next up is Contract Law!
I know it's only a date and in fact it's quite a nice warm day out there, but I'm kind of sad that it's the first day of meterological Autumn. It feels as if I've lost the summer somehow amidst tiredness and sadness, and not been able to make the most of it for all sorts of random reasons. Worldcon was a massive highlight and perhaps I've got a bit of comedown from that and am feeling sad because I'm still fighting post-Covid tiredness. I dunno. Maybe it's just depression or hormones.
I appear to have a file in my downloads folder on how to operate a Solent Fort. (For the purposes of living there or running a hotel or something, rather than defending against Napoleon, which is probably now frowned upon.)
This is great and actually explains a few things that I sort of knew but often figured out by trial and error.
I especially like "[USB] has the huge upside that you can generally plug a USB device into your computer without having to spend a lot of time thinking about the details of the interconnect.
Fortunately, USB-C, Thunderbolt, and Lightning have come along to fix that."
Just travelled with “Transavia”, which I found out afterwards is basically KLM/Air France (which is an airline I try to avoid) trying to do a Ryanair impression, and getting pretty much nothing right.
Welcome to this French marina. Thank you for paying us silly money to let your boat stay here for a bit while doing your hobby that will get terminally online people calling you a plutocrat who deserves to be killed by a giant murder dolphin over. Here’s what your money gets you.
they were always so terrible. I remember going to French marina bogs in the 80s with my dad that were literally just holes in the ground with a pervasive toilet/cigar smoke smell that still haunts me! On the plus side, how lovely to be in a French marina for all the other reasons, however much they are fleecing you 😀
The press seems to have switched from “Trump’s brand of irreverent fascism is so sexy, we love it” to “Trump is a pathetic loser, and we can smell his fear”.
The press operate like sharks smelling blood in the water. I’m not sure I’ve seen definite-enough signs yet but I live in hope. It’s all down to what brings in the most eyeballs and, till now, it has appeared that they think reporting the end of the democracy they depend on is the most profitable move.
It's like many in the press required the DNC to call Trump out on his BS before they would do it. Guess it always has been about the papers sold, the headlines that got clicks, the ad spots sold, the controversy generated more than anything else for them. Especially since our news is controlled by fewer and fewer companies and not journalists.
ultimately they want to be seen to back the winner and give the impression they were why the winner won. We see this in the UK media when the Murdoch press switch to backing labour when it’s obvious they’re going to win anyway so they can say “it was the Sun wot won it”. Leadership as the art of spotting which way everyone is running and getting out in front.
I do some TV work on the side and deep refection is not exactly something we excel at. Most stuff is rather shallow. But I get to play with neat gear and get into really cool places.
The story is whatever fascinates the media, who then become the story and feed the cycle.
It's great that the Harris team has managed to give them a new narrative to be fascinated by. This "happy warrior" story is working to feed the endless loop.
This is the first time the media's fascination with Trump's hold on what used to be considered normal people (which then amplifies the effect) hasn't been the focus of attention since 2019.
We do this to English words with the German past-tense prefix ge-. Today have I already gebreaded (German grammar optional). For bagotten it sounds more like an irregular one using be-, like benutzt.
@Chris Packham @Rebeca To fit is. I think it’s actually two: one irregular - to fit (inside something) and to fit (a person for clothes) which is regular.
Apropos of a conversation on Reddit, the British etiquette of offering tea/coffee three times, and refusing on the first two, thus:
Can I get you a tea or coffee?
Oh, no thank you.
You sure?
Yes, I'm good.
I'm making one anyway.
Oh go on then.
Now here's the thing: most of my social circle are geeks with some type of neurodiversity going on, and one thing we value is a straight bloody answer.
So it will go something like this:
Can I get you a tea or coffee?
Oh, no thank you.
OK.
I wonder how many thirsty tradespeople I've annoyed in my life?
@Bad Gardener Actually, yeah. If they refuse the first time I’ll generally assume that this is a contractor who just wants to keep interaction to a minimum and leave them alone.
@Tathar is dragons! (public) My wife’s grandparents were like this when they were alive. Persuading them you really meant “no” to anything was like trench-sodding-warfare.
I like repeat tradesmen, then I know whether to have kettle/coffee pot on for arrival, whether to get milk in or not... new tradespeople are *terrifying*
@Tathar when presented with the "must offer something 3 times to make sure" thing I occasionally after the third time just say "etiquette handshake protocol complete." Much to some annoyance 😁
ooo cool! I've been wanting to take one of my little homemade raspberry pi weather stations to measure the air quality and CO2 on my commute into London. Need to get a USB battery for it 😀 I imagine the CO2 levels on the underground are elevated.
@Charlotte I got an Aranet 4 since a number of people have had good experiences with them. Battery life is supposed to be pretty good as the display is eink.
My ideal would be a wearable thing that did the measuring and sending to a phone, possibly a pendant that changed colour according to the reading? Challenge is probably power miniaturisation
Ooh, I was going to ask what you were using since I've been thinking I should get one, and a humidity sensor would be nice domestically since both the one on my weather station base and remote unit have been stuck at 20% since moving here (or I've got a very dry house)
@sparrowsion I think any NDIR CO₂ meter inherently has to measure temperature/humidity/pressure as part of making sense of the IR measurement; but yes I've found the Aranet4's logging of non-CO₂ handy. (Without the phone app; there's good-enough open source code to get at the log.)
Named winds, like the Mistral, or the Nortada, or the Sirocco... We don't really have them in the UK, do we? Although according to the Met Office we have one, the Helm Wind. metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn…
@Heather As I understand it, without a prescription it’s legal to buy them from abroad but not from the UK. It’s legal to possess them and illegal to supply them.
There are uk sites where you can have an “online consultation” with a doctor who will rubber stamp your purchase.
Finally some HRT is now available over the counter without a prescription at Boots
I've been torturing myself for decades. But a big glass of milk isn't a great deterrent to heat overload. Something with milk fat coupled with citric acid helps the most. Like plain whole yogurt with lime or lemon juice squeezed into it. Citric acid breaks up the capsaicin oils bonded to your mouth and throat, milk fat coats and sooths a bit. But just pounding milk puts a big strain on your digestive system, which makes Act 2 & 3 a lot worse than they have to be.
Network Rail invited me to take a tour of signalling through the decades, starting with the Littlehampton Signal Box - still operating semaphore signals - th...
There's a few semaphore signals left on the Hexham line. There's no significant junctions the whole length of the line, but there used to be, and it's double track, so I imagine under normal operation it doesn't need much attention.
A lot of the infrastructure has been reduced to short sidings and the like for engineering work. There's also crossing points between the tracks which spend 99% of their time normal. I suppose if you're at a possession to work, there's no real need to electronic signals.
Wasn't there something about an accident at a Thetford level crossing because that line was on a special, completely different computer system at Cambridge Power Signal box, which everyone hated using and was confused by? Or am I misremembering?
@Sion [main] NSTR. Basically as you say but the driver needs permission from the signaller to get the token. Level crossings seem to be either user worked, open, or automatic.
@Sarah Brown When I was up along the Cumbrian coast with @Ben Harris we got chatting with a signaller somewhere around Drigg. Apparently moves to upgrade the signalling along that route got nixed because it was felt having people on the ground monitoring train movements was better for the security of flask trains. (Both the low level repository and Sellafield are up there.)
@ajlanes I think all the open crossings are on private farm tracks. Hit a cow on one once. Messy. Missed advance ticket connection and guard took some persuading that I was trying to use a later train because the service I'd been on had hit a cow.
The working signal box I know with token exchange is Pantyffynnon at the southern end. Then it's all single track north from there, apart from a few double-tracked stations for passing (including here). Which I guess means there must be some point operations as well as signals.
@Sion [main] There’s a delay attribution code EXT ANIMAL for attributing a delay to “animals not under the control of Network Rail”. This begs a question, obviously.
Reading the Hugo-Winning "A City on Mars", which refers to a provision in the Colombian constitution declaring Colombian sovereignty over a piece of geostationary orbit. Here's that provision. constituteproject.org/constitu…
Regrettably, there are people out there who seem to find a complaint in every activity. It is not that the glass is half-empty, it is that the glass it the wrong temperature, wrong colour, badly designed, and probably made in a country that they disapprove of. So grit the teeth and don't get wound up when these people come into your life (just hope they move on soon).
OK, here we go: Visualising the #Worldcon #Hugo2024 voting results.
Alternative Title: Why ranked voting matters.
As a quick explanation, the last placed candidate in each round is eliminated and their votes transferred to the next candidate on each ballot.
This is the first place ballot only, the second place is calculated by treating the winner as eliminated and rerunning the election. I have not included the final round runoff against "No Award" as this year that's all uninteresting.
Saw someone elsewhere assert that Britain is “one of the least corrupt countries in the world”, and couldn’t let that go unchallenged, so here’s what I said:
Only because of this one weird loophole, which I will explain below:
For the last decade, the previous government has been awarding public contracts for infrastructure, etc, to what are essentially shell companies run by their mates. These companies then do the bare minimum for as long as possible, which if you drive round the UK, is why you see all those road “improvement” works which do nothing and take forever and never seem to have anyone working. It took two years to replace a roundabout with a set of traffic lights near my apartment, for example. Other examples: large amounts of “PPE equipment” during Covid which turned out to be useless junk.
Obviously they aren’t actually spending anything but a trivial amount going through the motions, so what happens to the rest of the money, which let’s remember, was raised by taxes.
Well, it gets d
... show more
Saw someone elsewhere assert that Britain is “one of the least corrupt countries in the world”, and couldn’t let that go unchallenged, so here’s what I said:
Only because of this one weird loophole, which I will explain below:
For the last decade, the previous government has been awarding public contracts for infrastructure, etc, to what are essentially shell companies run by their mates. These companies then do the bare minimum for as long as possible, which if you drive round the UK, is why you see all those road “improvement” works which do nothing and take forever and never seem to have anyone working. It took two years to replace a roundabout with a set of traffic lights near my apartment, for example. Other examples: large amounts of “PPE equipment” during Covid which turned out to be useless junk.
Obviously they aren’t actually spending anything but a trivial amount going through the motions, so what happens to the rest of the money, which let’s remember, was raised by taxes.
Well, it gets donated back to the ruling party as “political donations”, and then if the pretend contractor does a good enough job of this, they get an knighthood, or even a seat in the House of Lords for “services rendered”.
Now you might think that this sounds corrupt, and you would be right. It sounds deeply corrupt, but apparently it’s not because a lot of the global agencies which work out corruption indices are based in, checks notes, London, and are probably in on the scam, and get to define what “corruption” means, and define it to mean, “not this”.
Et voila! You have a country with one of the biggest wealth gaps in Europe funnelling vast amounts of public money to populist spaffers in government, all legal, laundered and sanitised.
The whole of UK society is like this. It’s how it works, and once you see it you either join in, or walk away in disgust.
@Captain_Jack_Sparrow @partnumber2 If you can't see that the fanboy comment was a joke based on your own statement then you're either not paying or not being a good faith actor.
@Captain_Jack_Sparrow @partnumber2 Passive aggressive much? Yes I probably should get a life but it's pretty difficult being physically disabled & autistic & traumatized but thanks for highlighting that.
@Captain_Jack_Sparrow @partnumber2 This is what you responded to. Where I'm very clearly not making a generalisation. You replied to this. This is what you've been basing your whole tirade on.
'People don't realise how corrupt the UK is because the British (let's be honest mainly English) know how to spin, minimise, evade & manipulate like no others. Even the British public has zero clue just how corrupt it is."
You engaged with me. You started insulting me. You wouldn't drop it. But please tell everyone how I'm the bully.
Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw • •Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw • •@Brian R. Pauw It's more complicated than that. They removed the SIM trays on the US models. All European models of all iPhones still have SIM trays.
I have an American friend who buys her iPhones from Europe for precisely this reason.
Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw • •@Brian R. Pauw That's very odd. It's definitely a US model only thing. See: macrumors.com/2023/09/12/iphon…
Maybe they were selling US stock for some reason?
Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw • •