penguin42 @penguin42@mastodon.org.uk

I watched the film 'hammerhead' the other night; it was being shown as one of a series Tarantino had recommended - it's a very odd spy film; corny in most parts with some parts very well done. It's kind of a cross between a Bond film and something like the early 39 steps, with an added overdose of 60's mayhem. I thought the lead spy was excellent.
The other thing I really liked was the villains choice in decor, lots of French style cyrly ornate desks.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063041/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

I replaced my #varifocals by standard distance lenses - but in a 'trick' frame; it can swivel up a bit giving more of a gap at the bottom that you can look under The frame is called 'snooker' for players looking along the cue I guess.

I'm not sure what this #butterfly is, or for that matter what the tree is it's sitting on; unfortunately it refused to open it's wings, so I've only got the closed view.

Inside the USB speaker set; it's quite nicely built; that heatspreader is pretty well stuck. I reckon from the USB ID and chip size it's probably a Tenx TP6930 which is a masked ROM 8 bit micro; the volume control is actually a rocker with up/down switches rather than a rotary (which probably ends up much more reliable).
@mansr

The discovery of microplastics everywhere doesn't surprise me; the varnish does - makes sense in the end, but does show that just using wood might not be the answer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49295051

#science

I think that's hit a record; the UK's cooking at a #carbon intensity of 90g/kWh in the last few hours; a nice sunny but also windy day: https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=GB

Now, if we can just fix the fuckups that caused a power cut last week then we'd be great.

I bought a USB speaker for £0.99 - including delivery; surprisingly they work quite well:
https://www.box.co.uk/Logic3-SB334-SoundPods-Portable-USB-Blac_1130463.html
Given the yellowing of the label on the side, I bet they've been on the shelf for ages.
Actually I got two, I mean for 99p....

I hate getting a month of rain on me during my hours lunchtime walk; and it's happened a few times in the last month.

scary article on the US ship crashes a while ago; some really bad UI designs:
https://news.usni.org/2019/08/06/ntsb-lack-of-navy-oversight-training-were-primary-causes-of-fatal-mccain-collision
(They're apparently switching back to physical controls)
''When the helmsman thought he was slowing down both propellers, he was in fact only reducing the speed of the port screw, causing a sharp turn in front of the tanker'

I took my #varifocals back yesterday; I got used to wearing them out and about, even if the swimming on them was annoying; and I could read my mobile with them, but I found they were pretty much impossible to use for computer use at home - especially with a nice big display.

'Thameslink has acknowledged that its trains required a technician to restart them after the power cut' - that's pretty bizarre.

Manchester seems to have gained a Turing exhibition cabinet in our science museum including an Enigma; actually it's much more than that in the cabinet including some pilot ace cards, some of the Manchester ferranti computer stuff and a sunflower head.

Apparently there was a widescale UK power outage about 5:30 - didn't see it up here but apparently it v affected areas unusually spread around the country; can't remember anything like that happening before; I don't see any noticeable blips on gridwatch; elrxon lists the loss if a 600MW gas plant and a few hundred MW wind farm close together - surprised it caused that big an issue.

Bizarre; Tesco do two packs of cocoa powder; one is
'Ideal for hot drinks and rich bakes'
while the other is:
'ideal for rich bakes and hot drinks'
the one that lists hot drinks first is £2/250g (listed as £0.80/100g) and is in a red tin to match competitors and has a picture of a nice hot mug of cocoa on the front.
The other baking one, is £1.80/200g) (listed as £9.00/kg) is in a brown tin with pictures of mounds of dark cocoa powder. Odd.
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299585229
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/301676049

Bleh! It's wet here. Last week was glorious hottest day; this week pouring down; floods within 5-10 miles of here in most directions (but fine here). Yesterday I got soaked walking back from lidl; today I thought I was fine (walking back from aldi) and it was actually quite sunny, until the last 10mins and I suddenly got soaked.
(I have no nearby waitrose to compare their weather)

I finished watching the 1st series of 'Designed Survivor this week; it's not terrible - the idea is good, the basic plot is OK, but it's a bit slow; each episode has just enough measure of suspense and minimal progress. Anyone who obviously should do something that could make progress in the case doesn't. Maggie Q's main point seems to get beaten up by the bad guys and to look panicy on the way to get the next one.

Yet another home automation wireless standard; DECT Ultra Low Energy; I've sympathy for the people who have to build hubs to talk to 'any' device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECT_Ultra_Low_Energy

Talking of machines with floppies; these guys are still trying to sell second hand Pentium 2 machines (with floppy) - bizarre!
Their 'other server' category has ancient stuff like this, but also Itaniums, SPARC, Power:

https://www.itinstock.com/fujitsu-l8-400mhz-1mb---2-x-pentium-ii-xeon-400mhz-768mb-ram-rackmount-server-31395-p.asp

Some of the buses near here have free WiFi (like this one) and show the symbol with a set of eminating arcs with a central point. Now they've got contactless payment and are using almost the same symbol - but rotated 90d and without the central dot; quite confusing really.

Hmm Boris is in town, offering a fast Leeds<->Manc rail link; not bad, but I worry he's going to put off HS2 which is what we really need.
Leeds<->Manc already isn't too bad, under an hour, but getting it down to 30 mins would make it interesting for commuters or meetings etc.