Early Risers.

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

6 inch drain pipe here!

 

 

 

Caitlin seems rather over enthusiastic about spiders!

 

[PupCam]

35 minutes ago, polybear said:

So the scary thought is that Bear is talking himself into splashing the cash (2.5 Deltics.....).

The other ponderations are:

(a) It's also available from JL (with a "free" case) but at thirty quid extra - but with an extra year of warranty thrown in.  Now is a free case + a year worth that thirty quid?  Hmmm.....

 

Much as I generally prefer to purchase items from JL over other suppliers (particularly TVs with the free 5 year extended warranty) unless the case is a particularly good one and the type you prefer I'm not so certain it's a great deal.   I'd probably go for a case of my choosing from elsewhere and the cheapest "known" supplier e.g. Argos? and risk "Year 2".

 

35 minutes ago, polybear said:

(b) I could save something like 2/3rds of a Deltic by sourcing the same (seemingly new/sealed) from the 'Bay - but what if it goes T.U. in 6 months time? 

 

Will Apple still play ball with a warranty claim?

 

Good luck with that then!     About as likely as a Bear abseiling down the side of the Shard in full scuba gear and a Tutu I should imagine .....

 

26 minutes ago, polybear said:

The BBC News Website is covering the Indian Moon Landing; it's obviously a real result for India but having visited the country I can't help but feel that with so much poverty in the country then perhaps the £B's it must've cost then maybe that money could've been better spent elsewhere?  (Mind you, there are plenty in other countries such as the USA that could do with help as well).

 

First of all let me admit almost total ignorance of the real facts in this matter.  I'm sure there are other regulars on here who are far better placed to provide proper, informed comment.   I've just read this proposal for a review which indicates direct aid ceased in 2015 and "Between 2016 and 2020, we estimate that the UK disbursed around £1.9 billion of aid to India. This figure includes £480 million in bilateral aid, including technical assistance, development capital and research. It also includes an estimated £679 million of aid to India through an imputed share of core contributions to multilateral organisations, largely through the World Bank and the multilateral Climate Investment Funds, which focus on clean technology. In addition, the UK contributed an estimated £756 million in India via replenishments to BII."  Of course the results of that review aren't immediately to hand and I saw another headline to an article behind a paywall (which I'm not privy to on the grounds of being tight) suggests aid is up by 70%!

 

Having said that, I do feel uncomfortable with the basic balance of  "UK Foreign Aid" (in very simplistic terms) going to "A country with its own space programme landing things on the moon"!   Perhaps we should shine a mirror on our own space programme?  Errm, yes, thought not .....

 

Anyway, I'd best say no more on the topic for fear of entering prohibited waters.

 

 

[Tim Dubya]

I don't know why @polybear wants to buy a fruit cider phone when a decent Android can be had for one deltic or less... or am I missing something?

 

I don't know much about either (or Deltics) mind you.   My phone was about a third of a Deltic and from Argos.

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Tim Dubya
rehydration

[monkeysarefun]

26 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Caitlin seems rather over enthusiastic about spiders!

 

To quote  J. Clarkson,..

 

 

"She's not David Attenborough, but she is David Attenboroughs Australian cousin..!"

Edited August 23, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[iL Dottore]

26 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

6 inch drain pipe here!

 

 

Perhaps we've found the therapist to cure The Bear's irrational fear of spiders!

 

With PB's declared "shoot first, ask (no) questions later" approach to arachnids I wonder how Bear Towers remains free of the following pests:

• mosquitoes,
• cockroaches,
• centipedes,
• aphids,
• flies
• beetles.

A clean environment helps, but is no hindrance to many pest insects

[The White Rabbit]

2 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

I had an email yesterday informing I can book a priority breakfast with Santa at my local Dobbies garden centre, it's still August for goodness sake!!.

 

That reminds me, no Dogs Trust Christmas catalogue received yet. That usually arrives on the mat during August (and provokes a similar response). Never mind horse chestnuts falling or the leaves changing colour (or even the start of local model railway exhbitions) - it's that little A5 brochure that signals that summer's nearly over... 

[monkeysarefun]

35 minutes ago, PupCam said:

Having said that, I do feel uncomfortable with the basic balance of  "UK Foreign Aid" (in very simplistic terms) going to "A country with its own space programme landing things on the moon"!   Perhaps we should shine a mirror on our own space programme?  Errm, yes, thought not .....

On balance though, if you add up everything England has made off  all the countries  that were "encouraged" to be part of   The Empire  over the last couple of hundred years, you are still probably way ahead!

Edited August 23, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, PupCam said:

The engineer in me wonders about the longevity of all those connections across the hinge.  Or maybe it's actually a two device network and it's all done by the magic of RF (surely not)?

Flex printed circuit boards are very reliable. They've been around for a very long time - I remember advertising for Pentax cameras in the 1980s showing flex circuits. I'm pretty sure the ME-Super and Super-A/Program-A had them then.

 

There's also the rigid/flex variant.

 

I'm less convinced about flex glass. Samsung has offered folding glass for some time now.

Quote

Samsung's latest foldable Galaxy Z series phones are made from ultra-thin folding glass technology built from layers of highly innovative materials. The exceptional Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus®2 is the toughest Gorilla® glass yet, providing extraordinary damage resistance, incredible flexibility, and wafer-thin design. 

I have to believe that eventually the cumulative folding has to have a weakening effect. I imagine it is designed to last long enough for the average purchaser of high-end 'phones who replaces them for a shiny new object every few years.

 

In my (lighthearted) reply to @polybear I actually linked the older telephone. The newer one (Zflip5) has a larger external screen (visible when folded).

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

In other news.....

The BBC News Website is covering the Indian Moon Landing; it's obviously a real result for India ...

The accomplishment should not be underestimated. Space flight is really hard. Plenty of things can and do go wrong.

 

The 2019 Indian Chandrayaan-2 mission crashed into the lunar surface as did the Russian Luna 25 mission last week. One assumes Roscosmos knows what they are doing - they've been at spaceflight since 1957.

 

You have to give the Indian space program credit for their tenacity and perseverance - and having learned the 'hard way' like everyone involved in space flight does.

[jjb1970]

The issue I have with folding phones is that every one I have seen has very quickly developed a crease down the centre line where it folds. The reason they are desirable is the bigger screen, but that advantage is moot if you are distracted by a crease line when watching videos etc. That said it's a very trendy idea, as well as Samsung a few of the Chinese manufacturers like Oppo and Huawei offer them.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

every one I have seen has very quickly developed a crease down the centre line where it folds

Which seems logical and inevitable to me. It's hard for me to imagine how it could be otherwise - and eventually (with enough folding/unfolding cycles) crack.

[Hroth]

34 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

To quote  J. Clarkson,..

 

 

"She's not David Attenborough, but she is David Attenboroughs Australian cousin..!"

 

As I watched, the thought did cross my mind...

 

[jjb1970]

I suspect that folding phones may be like curved TV screens and 3D TV, very trendy but likely to fade away as the novelty wears off (in the case of 3D I still think the problem was implementation and lack of good 3D material, when done well 3D was excellent). 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Tim Dubya said:

I don't know why @polybear wants to buy a fruit cider phone when a decent Android can be had for one deltic or less... or am I missing something?

 

I don't know much about either (or Deltics) mind you.   My phone was about a third of a Deltic and from Argos.

 

 

 

 

I bought my most recent phone from Argos in January. It was a relatively inexpensive Android device, not one of the really cheap ones they offer, to replace a 4 year old Huawei.  I expect it'll need replacing in another 4 years.

 

I use it as a phone/text/email device, I don't need it for media consumption, and the camera is "good enough" for casual purposes, so spending two or three times what I did spend on a fancy bells and whistles device would be silly.  And as for fruit phones, even the refurbished ones listed by Argos are ludicrously expensive!

 

The only "media" app I have on the phone is the Kindle reader, which means I can become so engrossed in reading a book that I can sometimes forget what I was waiting to happen...

 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Hroth

[Tim Dubya]

14 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

I suspect that folding phones may be like curved TV screens

 

Us gamers does loves a massive curved monitor for popping heads off aliens, of course I don't have one as they are way beyond my means at the present time.

[AndyID]

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

The problem with that is people will sometimes need a phone in an emergency.  The best idea would be to detect a phone being used in a moving vehicle with a camera set up to picture the driver. Then using AI to check if the driver is the one using the phone.

It might not be too difficult for cars to detect when the driver is not looking ahead. That could cover more situations than just phones.

[jjb1970]

I'm having the odd experience of finding myself persuaded of two opposite views at the moment.

 

I've been using the camera on the new phone. The 230mm equivalent lens at one end and 13mm at the other gives the S23 a remarkable optical range (at one time 13mm wide angle lenses were seriously expensive and very few people could afford them). Although I suspect the lenses cost peanuts as optics go the use of software distortion correction and computational photography gives pretty much infallible focus and exposure accuracy. Colours are rich and vibrant (maybe too much for some, it feels like the old Fujifilm colour balance, very saturated, but you can always adjust later). I've taken a few shots of moving objects and the camera sets an appropriate shutter speed. Night time performance blows my mirrorless away, the difference is so big it's not funny at night. I'm left wondering what is the point of a camera?

 

And yet...... At the same time, it also makes me think that a camera still has a place. The phone camera offers a high degree of manual control if you want to take control but the ergonomics of taking control are terrible (and unless you want to start doing blurry stuff with bokeh etc why would you as the auto system seems pretty much infallible). For those who do enjoy taking control and using bokeh a phone camera isn't great (even though it is doable). I still like a view finder, even though screens have improved a lot and the S23 screen doesn't 'white out' to anything like the degree of my old handsets in very bright weather with the sun behind me I still prefer a viewfinder. The 10x lens works with a 10MP sensor (the 23mm lens has a 200MP sensor, which is insane), if properly framed a 10MP sensor is quite sufficient but if you want to crop it can become limiting and I still find it easier to control a proper camera to track a moving subject and keep the subject centred. And if you need to go above 230mm then an interchangeable mount is still needed to fit a long tele lens. I am guessing that not only is the phone camera perfectly sufficient for 90%+ of the pictures I will take but probably better than my mirrorless there are still cases where a big old lump is better.

 

Most of all, although I can't help feeling that within the 13mm - 230mm range my phone is better (unless I want to crop at the telephoto end, not a problem at the wide end) and will almost certainly be my default and be the camera I use most I still like the feel and joy of using a more traditional camera sometimes.

Edited August 23, 2023 by jjb1970

[PupCam]

31 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Flex printed circuit boards are very reliable. They've been around for a very long time - I remember advertising for Pentax cameras in the 1980s showing flex circuits. I'm pretty sure the ME-Super and Super-A/Program-A had them then.

 

Yes indeed they have been for a very, very long time.   But in that sort of application they are mostly stationary and are used because they enable complicated inter-board wiring to be implemented with the minimum of space and provide effective, very cheap, removable connections as a bonus.   In applications that require significant movement the bend radius is arranged to be as large as possible (3D printers, printers, CD reader heads, blah, blah, ad-infinitum.       However, unless I'm missing something, in the folding phone application a 180 degree bend over a very, very short distance and hence small radius is required across a hinge that will literally see tens of thousands of operations.    (It always used to amaze me just how few Mate/Break operations Mil Spec standard connectors (aka very expensive) were actually rated for!)

 

Anyway, that might explain why my ME Super no longer works ... (but I doubt it, my money is on dodgy electrolytic capacitors or dirty/tarnished connections it is over 40 years old after all)

 

20 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The accomplishment should not be underestimated. Space flight is really hard. Plenty of things can and do go wrong.

 

The 2019 Indian Chandrayaan-2 mission crashed into the lunar surface as did the Russian Luna 25 mission last week. One assumes Roscosmos knows what they are doing - they've been at spaceflight since 1957.

 

You have to give the Indian space program credit for their tenacity and perseverance - and having learned the 'hard way' like everyone involved in space flight does.

 

I don't think anyone was underestimating the achievement hence my comment regarding reflecting on our own space programme.  The UK haven't even been able to sling a rocket off of a big aeroplane and get it into earth orbit successfully yet!        And we've given up on that idea ...

 

Yes, space flight and rocket science is tricky - I've been involved with the latter for 45 years.       I'm also aware of the tenacity, technical interest and ability of our Indian friends in this business but I'll say no more here about that other than to heartily commend today's excellent achievement.

 

16 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Which seems logical and inevitable to me. It's hard for me to imagine how it could be otherwise - and eventually (with enough folding/unfolding cycles) crack.

 

Precisely my point!

 

Alan

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

....About as likely as a Bear abseiling down the side of the Shard in full scuba gear and a Tutu I should imagine .....

Now, I'd pay really, really good folding money to see that!

[The Lurker]

41 minutes ago, AndyID said:

It might not be too difficult for cars to detect when the driver is not looking ahead. That could cover more situations than just phones.

Reversing into a parking space might become a bit of PITA

 

as might checking one's blindspot before pulling out.

Edited August 23, 2023 by The Lurker

[Winslow Boy]

12 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Now, I'd pay really, really good folding money to see that!

 

Me too.

[DaveF]

About 3 weeks ago I bought a new phone, a Samsung A34.  It does all I want and more, was not too expensive, has a reasonable camera and (so far) good battery life.  The signal where I live is not brilliant - outdoors is usually 4G, indoors is 4G on a very good day near a window, otherwise nothing much at all.  So at home I have wifi on all the time and if I really need to make a call I use wifi.  It does more than I will ever want but when I do use it for it is much quicker than the old phone.

 

I went to the post office but it was busy so decided the stamps were not urgent and used the bank's cash machine.  Then I had  awalk around the charity market but didn't find anything to buy.  On the way back to the car I looked in The Works and bought next year's diary while I remembered.  I thought about going to look at the beach but the car park was getting busy so I went home for coffee.  I shall be glad when the schols go back.

 

During the rest of the day I've sorted out a few more photos, read a bit, done a couple of puzzles, watered the plants and done some weeding.

 

I also had a rest as I still feel weary and sometimes out of breath.

 

This evening I might watch the first of a series of programmes about the Duchess of Northumberland and Alnwick Castle and the Garden.  I've been to the Garden many times and there is always something new to see.

 

David.

 

 

[Tim Dubya]

5 minutes ago, DaveF said:

Alnwick Castle and the Garden. 

 

Is that where the poison garden is?

[DaveF]

1 minute ago, Tim Dubya said:

 

Is that where the poison garden is?

 

Yes,

it is worth visiting if you are in the area.    However you can't take away samples!

 

David

[Ian Abel]

14 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

My 4G reception here at home is dreadful. I can't even reliably make a telephone call without resorting to "WiFi calling" where my home WiFi is the radio connection.

Ditto!

Our old house (the one we're now renting out) which was built in 1927, was a stucco exterior with lath and plaster interior construction. The mesh used on both interior and exterior walls was a remarkable RF shield, I suspect even BETTER than the mesh housing that contained some NATO systems I worked on 😃

The new house (circa 1957) isn't a lot better since it has metal siding AND the interior walls are remarkably NOT sheetrock, but also plaster. 

Since I have a hard-wired internet to my office for all the devices running through an 8-port switch, I simply added a decent duty Wi-Fi router to the mix so I could make the never ending business calls in the office when COVID hit. Works very well, and the Mrs and I both have Wi-Fi calling switched on permanently so we can actually get and receive calls anywhere in the house! Lots of visiting friends are surprised by the lack of signal inside, until it's explained to them. Must be nice for some to have sheetrock walls as the only separation between you and the great outdoors. 🤣🤣🤣

 

HUMP day - <phew> it sucks to be here at present.

Yesterday we ONLY hit 99f(37c) with a heat index of 114f(45) and that had me remaining firmly INSIDE all day, thank you.

 

Today, expected to reach 100f(38c)+ and the heat index destined to be similar/same as yesterday.

Stepping out for the newspaper was more than adequate to remind me to stay inside in the a/c today. Supposed to ease some tomorrow and the days ahead.

 

Tally ho.