Early Risers.

[iL Dottore]

9 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

After commenting about my dreams on reworking my personal website, it is now online. Most people here will have no interest (it aims primarily to help people using Linux systems use screen fonts which are more to their taste (e.g. shape of letters, or coverage of other alphabets).

 

It also now aims to show a few approaches I've taken when using the xelatex typesetting engine, but I assume the number of people here interested in that is as close to zero as makes no difference. So, in the interests of repeatability I've including all the source files I have.

 

Just in case, it is at https://typosetting.co.uk

 

Unfortunately, it is like painting the Forth Bridge and I found yet another font to revise a few hours ago. I recall that a certain Swiss Doctor here has an old Linux system - I will warn him that of the CJK fonts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) only the various Noto CJK fonts are up to date - the others I refreshed in 2024 are correct for what they contained and for how I formatted the example UDHR Article 1, but are  not necessarily the current versions (at least one Japanese font is slowly adding more ideographs).

 

And if anyone wants to look at other alphabets, my files from before 2024 may give mistaken impressions. Working through what I was uploading, I can see that I might  able to give better representations of some of the arabic or indian writing systems - but that is far down the track.

 

So, if you look, I hope you can treat it as 'Share and Enjoy' but maybe you will regard it as 'go stick your head in a pig'.

Now, I consider myself relatively computer savvy: I have been playing with computers ever since the mid-70s, when I was faffing around with punchcards and PL/1, PL/C and FORTRAN. I was in early Apple Computer user (in grad school, I got an Apple IIe, which I had to assemble from components before use, plus a daisywheel printer). And somewhat later, about the mid 90s, whilst I was trying to find some important data I needed, I managed to bypass some internal corporate fire walls - which got me a panicked/annoyed phone call from IT security demanding to know how I did it  (no, I didn’t know how I did it either).

 

But the one thing I have not been able to master is LINUX. I stand in awe of people like my chum Gwyn, who installed LINUX on my old tower PC and @zarniwhoop who, by the sound of things, is doing incredibly clever and cunning things in getting LINUX to do what he wants it to do

 

Having suffered (and I use that word deliberately) working with punchcards and FORTRAN, I should be able to master at least the rudiments of LINUX, but somehow it has never “clicked”. Or maybe it’s because – at least in terms of “playing” with computers, I have become incredibly lazy and been content to remain just a moderately competent user from about 2005 onwards.

 

I suppose my sole claim to computer fame and stardom (ha ha) was being on the company Y2K task force – which was loads of fun, got me lots of interesting travel to meetings around the world and our work ultimately turned out to be unneeded which was definitely “Good News”.

[zarniwhoop]

6 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Now, I consider myself relatively computer savvy: I have been playing with computers ever since the mid-70s, when I was faffing around with punchcards and PL/1, PL/C and FORTRAN. I was in early Apple Computer user (in grad school, I got an Apple IIe, which I had to assemble from components before use, plus a daisywheel printer). And somewhat later, about the mid 90s, whilst I was trying to find some important data I needed, I managed to bypass some internal corporate fire walls - which got me a panicked/annoyed phone call from IT security demanding to know how I did it  (no, I didn’t know how I did it either).

 

But the one thing I have not been able to master is LINUX. I stand in awe of people like my chum Gwyn, who installed LINUX on my old tower PC and @zarniwhoop who, by the sound of things, is doing incredibly clever and cunning things in getting LINUX to do what he wants it to do

 

Having suffered (and I use that word deliberately) working with punchcards and FORTRAN, I should be able to master at least the rudiments of LINUX, but somehow it has never “clicked”. Or maybe it’s because – at least in terms of “playing” with computers, I have become incredibly lazy and been content to remain just a moderately competent user from about 2005 onwards.

 

I suppose my sole claim to computer fame and stardom (ha ha) was being on the company Y2K task force – which was loads of fun, got me lots of interesting travel to meetings around the world and our work ultimately turned out to be unneeded which was definitely “Good News”.

I missed most of the pre-Y2K stuff. A couple of years before, the third-party system used for pensions management (calculating entitlements and benefits, keeping the records up to date) had to be migrated because although it was designed for the electricity industry, privatisation meant each part wanted to spend as little as possible on it, while the third-party wanted to upgrade it. Eventually they determined it would not be able to keep going after Y2K (probably true - it was a very weird minicomputer system prone to 'Cobol compilation error' messages when running  things went wrong) and we had some work to transfer files to another company until it was all OK on their systems, and then the people using the system were either redundant or relocated to the new employer.)

 

Our own in-house systems had local routines to compress dates into 16 bits, which were updated, so yes, Y2K was very real. By February 1999 we had got consultants to modify the payroll/personnel package we were using (funnily enough, nice people but they had given the centralised end-users exactly what they had asked for, much of which was redundant and excessively complicated now the business streams were separating), and various people to run the initial test systems. I was looking forward (not) to not getting out on my bikes at weekends, and to a lot of weekend work. Then I got knocked off my bike. By the time I got back to work (part time, and initially 1 day per week) it was supposedly all done and dusted. By about February 2000 I did have some work to do on Y2K - we had created a lot of user-specified "formulae" (supposedly designed for end-users to input, $DEITY help them) and it became clear that on our platform (IMS/DB/DC rather than CICS) there some some differences in what the assembler code behind it actually did (we had to refer back to the providers of the package) leading to "find all the formulae doing something specific, and work around this issue". So yes, despite what people say, Y2K was very real.

 

But I do a lot in graphical terminals (run things, edit files, compile code or TeX documents) so I am very much at home with installing fonts. Each Desktop Environment differs, as does firefox (I avoid chrome except on my phone :) and there are various places where fonts might get overridden. Like everything else, it is all about learning - which is why in recent years I have made very little progress with things which run on parallel strips of metal.

[iL Dottore]

5 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

So yes, despite what people say, Y2K was very real.

 

Very much so. Which is why the Pharma company I worked for at the time spent a lot, and I mean a lot of money making sure Y2K had no impact on the company at all. 

IIRC we had a number of Y2K taskforces, including those full of techies such as yourself @zarniwhoop who did all the heavy lifting. The taskforce I was in was the < end user impact and corrective measures taskforce > (not that it was called that, but, but I can’t think of a better way of describing what we did). It was actually quite a lot of fun coming up with all kinds of doom laden scenarios and figuring out ways of dealing with them.

 

Although it didn’t seem so at the time, one of the advantages of the data collection system we used before 2000, was that it was entirely paper-based until the data (case report forms) physically came in-house*and was entered into the computer system (double data entry). Nowadays, we have EDC (electronic data capture), which allows data to be uploaded onto the central database as and when it is entered by a user at the research site. That would have been a nightmare to Y2K proof, had we been using those systems back in 1999. Mind you, modern EDC systems used in the Pharma industry (and presumably in other industries as well), have layers and layers and layers of failsafes and security features. Data loss is pretty much unheard of, which is why EDC systems are so bloody expensive to set up and run.
 

Given that computer systems, as well as access to the Internet, vary so widely from research centre to research centre, from teaching hospital to teaching hospital, any EDC system has to be incredibly sophisticated and able to manage at one extreme the computer equivalent of a Ferrari Testarossa and on the other the computer equivalent of a used Trabant.

 

* Given that FDA regulations (and other regulatory authorities) insisted on us retaining clinical trial data for a considerable period of time (I think in the late 90s, it was around 15 years retention), this meant we had, quite literally, warehouses full of paper sitting around just in case the FDA or another regulatory authority wanted to revisit the raw data (which sometimes did happen)

 

 

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

(OK - it's called the Celtic Sea these days)

 

That's a new one on Bear - I wonder what attention-seeking herbert came up with that bright idea?

 

6 hours ago, southern42 said:

And before I disappear - one of those old cotton mills with once smokey chimney oop norf* I learnt about so long ago (on t'right).

*East Lancs

 

 

 

It seems the local sport amongst those that should've been drowned at birth is lobbing rocks at passing trains.  When I mentioned this to a Stationmaster he said it was the norm; they even had a twenty-something woman shoot out a window as the train went past.

 

6 hours ago, BSW01 said:

As has now become the norm, I did the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix late this afternoon, as it’s normally quieter, but for some reason, it wasn’t today, ho hum. 

 

 

Lots of people assuming it would be quieter because of the hot weather perhaps, or maybe because it's (presumably) air-conditioned?

 

6 hours ago, pH said:

Here’s the Mars, with Snowbird escort, doing a pass before landing (for the last time) at Pat Bay:

 

https://youtu.be/8zYcTsRvdy0?feature=shared

Longer version:

 

https://youtu.be/Ol07yTMlM_c?feature=shared

 

 

What a waste....😢 

At least it's being preserved - I hope the Museum looks after it properly.

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Apart from the mill chimney, at least there's a proper locomotive in the photo! 🙃

 

 

 

Proper?  But it's, er, THAT company.......  😱

Edited August 13 by polybear

[Ozexpatriate]

56 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

I missed most of the pre-Y2K stuff.

Most of my non-Windows + Microsoft Office computing was done essentially pre-2000. I think I gave up my dual-boot Windows + Linux laptop in the early 2000s and surrendered to Windows, no longer having a professional need for Linux applications.

 

Most of it was a sequence of proprietary Unix-like operating systems including Apollo Aegis, SunOS, HP-UX and others like VMS (for VAX 11-780) along with earlier DEC operating systems back to CP/M-80 with some MAC-OS thrown in in the late 1990s. I was always a 'user' and never much of an administrator though there were straight-forward administrative tasks that I did from time to time. The thorny IT problems I would defer to professionals.

 

My only punch-card experience was a University COBOL elective on an IBM 360, but my earliest exposure to computing was on marked sense cards (pencil marked) with BASIC on a little DEC PDP-11 machine. That was tedious. What fun to have direct terminal access instead of handing in a deck of cards to the teacher. My university FORTRAN assignments would be entered on a DEC VT100 terminal - if you were lucky or got there early enough. Otherwise you had to make do with a DECwriter II teletype.

 

Edited August 13 by Ozexpatriate

[polybear]

Bear here.....

 

Latest wild claim of the day:

It seems that, when in power, The Orange One prevented Poo Tin from invading Ukraine by warning him off......🤣

He really is FOS.

 

Bear gone.....

[polybear]

Shocking, disgraceful and appalling:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxln2qklero

 

That's five kids growing up without a Mum.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, polybear said:

Latest wild claim of the day

I recommend ignoring that sort of nonsense. You'll sleep better.

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a cloudy Charente where the sky is weeping a little,.  Many small jobs for the upcoming g visit were done yesterday.   Then we went to a very good BBQ with some friends in the village

 

The travellers are in Kent at the moment. And arrive with us tomorrow lunchtime. 

 

Today is haircut, shopping and GP visit day.  Lots to do so better get a wiggle on. 

 

Jamie

[pH]

2 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

… So yes, despite what people say, Y2K was very real …

Anyone who says/said Y2K was not real was not involved in dealing with it at any significant level. 
 

My only consolation when I hear people, even now, say that it was overblown is that it shows that those of us who spent literally years in some cases making sure systems kept running correctly did a great job!

[Winslow Boy]

7 hours ago, BSW01 said:

Rawtenstall is the correct spelling 

Thank you. I knew someone would know.

 

As it's on the very outer fringes of Greater Manutopea- out in the foot hills of the Pennies, so not a place I frequent. They don't speak proper Manc as well so I need a translator, and no Google doesn't work either, when I do go.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I recommend ignoring that sort of nonsense. You'll sleep better.

Definitely don't watch  the "interview"  he's just done  with  Elon Musk then!

 

I did but only because of the weird Sylvester The Cat voice he was packing, I was waiting for a "Sufferin' Succotash!" or two but it was in vain.

 

 

Edited August 13 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

3 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Definitely don't watch  the "interview"  he's just done  with  Elon Musk then!

 

 

 

Wasn't "Orange Musk" a 70s fragrance, best forgotten? 🤔

 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I recommend ignoring that sort of nonsense. You'll sleep better.

The WWF paid Bear a visit at 2am 😡 so afterwards I asked Alexa what the News was.  I fell asleep laughing…..🤣

 

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Wasn't "Orange Musk" a 70s fragrance, best forgotten? 🤔

 

Smell of sh1t by any chance?

[Barry O]

Ey up!

As our cricket match is tomorrow (Yorkshire Ridings over 60s v Western Australia over 60s)  herself has decided today is shark wielding day... pah!

 

@Ozexpatriate yep Dec 10, pdp 8, 10, 11 at uni..  all used terminals but the ICL 1904 I had to use once only took punch cards.. that took ages...

Later I used IBM 360, a textronix luggable etc all using keyboards. Uni meant Fortran IV, and, Algol 66..

 

I didn't mind using computers (even using Intel 8086s programmed to do simple tasks)  but moved away from them for most purposes as I changed roles.

 

Time to gerronwithit..

 

Have a nice day!

 

Baz

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, from a windy, showery rock where this Fraggle is staying in. 16c and feels less.  Summer? Pah.

 

There was a distinctly whooshing sound here when them there computerisators were mentioned.  When they really began to get going I was more worrying about stoichiometric combustion and adiabatic process. And girls.

[iL Dottore]

I note, with the utmost sympathy, those unfortunates who are press-ganged into cleaning the house. One of the best things we ever did was to engage our Portuguese cleaning lady - who takes care of all the cleaning, vacuuming, washing and ironing for us (although we do it ourselves when she is on her summer hols). She’s been working for us for about 20 years - so all sides are happy with the arrangement.

 

Because we are 100% “korrekt”, she is paid a salary (which IS declared to the taxman - it’s much simpler and “safer”) and we pay towards her AHV (state pension); she gets 4 weeks paid leave every year, paid sick leave if necessary,  and there is also a Christmas bonus. She comes every Thursday about 7:30 - 08:00 and works to the job, not the clock. At 10:30 - 11:00 she is provided with coffee and a generous slice of iD’s homemade cake*. And to put icing on the cake (so to speak), Lucy and Schotty absolutely adore her (she grew up on a farm and seems to have a natural affinity with animals).

 

Having a wonderful cleaning lady may seem self indulgent and a luxury, but from a purely hard-nosed economical viewpoint it is anything else but. I earn a not unreasonable sum per hour for my consultancy work, To do what our cleaning lady does in her seven or eight hours with us would it take me at least twice as long. That is 14 to 16 hours (if not more) of me (and Mrs iD) not earning money (even if we both get cracking on the house, it it’s still 14 to 16 hours+ of not earning revenue).
 

Engaging a cleaning lady meant that we could concentrate on our careers (when we were working for Pharma); we could concentrate on generating income (when working for ourselves) and not have to worry about taking care of the house.

 

Not having sprogs was a bonus** and didn’t hurt on the financial fund either.

 

 

* currently the cake of the week is a raisin and Irish whiskey liqueur cake. Raisins are soaked in Irish whiskey liqueur overnight and then folded into a normal boiled fruit cake cake-mixture and then baked as normal. Usually I bake one on Saturday for Mrs ID to take with her to her cousins on Sunday when she goes visit, very rarely does any cake return with her. As cake is not currently part of my diet, I do not partake, but I am assured by those who have that “it’s not bad” .

 

** my Genetics Professor joked (at least I think he was joking) that he had nightmares about me even dipping my toe into the gene pool

Edited August 13 by iL Dottore
Spelling

[Gwiwer]

31 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

my GeneticsPprofessor joked (at least I think he was joking) that he had nightmares about me even dipping my toe into the gene pool

It doesn't work if you only dip your toe in 😂

[DaveF]

A good night's sleep and I woke feelimg alert.  It's dry and quite sunny but much cooler, about 12C when I looked at breakfast time.

 

Asda delivered the groceries early at 07.45 so they are all put away and now I can concentrate on waiting for the double glazing people to come to do the letter box and door handle sometime.

 

There are a couple of small house jobs to do but they should only take about half an hour.  I may go through yet more bits of paper and bin some.

 

David

[Hroth]

2 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

It doesn't work if you only dip your toe in 😂

 

It might depend on what the toe had been dipped in previously...

 

[Gwiwer]

Good morning all.  And good news.  

 

An appointment was made last week for an electrician to attend and look at a number of small but fussy jobs which may only be a half-day's work altogether.  Too small for some of the local firms to bother with.  

 

He arrived on time, was very friendly and knowledgable, discussed his costs up-front and for good measure is able to do the work on Friday this week.  

 

New kitchen extractor, new bathroom-mirror strip-light, replace a couple of switches which don't click as they should (and one which doesn't actually switch at all but still passes current) and a clean-out of the bathroom extractor.  

 

And he's close enough that he doesn't add travel time to his fees.  

 

PS - it's still raining although that big warming thing is promised for later.  

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

Just started really raining here, a few miles to the east. It's good to think that I don't have to listen to the pitter-patter in a tent.

Going out to visit a former colleague this morning and taking books for her son who is awaiting his A level results. He's intending to study business, and so my stash of business books is being put to good use. I won't need them, they have little cash value and Im trying to may my son's job easier when I do pop clogs, and I'd rather they go to somewhere they may be of use.

[PhilJ W]

6 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The end of the piston engine era produced some impressive machines. By 1950 they were all but obsolete - mostly thanks to German cleverness.

(Yes I know about Whittle, but I said what I said.)

The German jet engines were based on Whittles early research. As Whittle was not 'official' he had to patent his ideas to protect his intellectual property. As any patent was open to public scrutiny the Germans were able to see all of his research. Fortunately the Air Ministry made his research 'official' and the Germans no longer had access to Whittles research. The Germans continued with the axial flow turbines which were less efficient than the bypass turbines developed later in the war by the British. The German jet developments were a dead end, as the Russians found out. They got most of the German data and reverse engineered the Junkers Jumo jet engine but when they installed a pair of the Jumo clones in the MiG-9 they found that the engines stalled every time the guns were fired!*

It was only when the British government foolishly presented the Russians with a Rolls-Royce Nene engine from which they developed the engine of the MiG-15 that they had a suitable jet. As an aside the F-86 Sabre was also fitted with a derivative of the Nene engine (made by Pratt and Whitney which meant that the principal jet fighters on both sides of the Korean war used the same engine.

*This was due to the guns being mounted above the engine intakes and the smoke from the guns being sucked into the engines.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. A tad late this morning as someone pulled the plug on RMweb to install an update.* A fitful night last night due to the humidity, no interruptions from the usual suspects, perhaps they were suffering from the heat as well. 

*Whoever pulled the plug it must have been in the early hours where they are. Hopefully the update will sort out the recent problems with the site.

Edited August 13 by PhilJ W

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Sylvester The Cat voice he was packing, I was waiting for a "Sufferin' Succotash!"

When I went to Texas I was mildly amused that the succotash didn’t appear to be suffering.