Random Thoughts

[Betty Boop]

The most annoying thing about here is if you click a link it doesn't open it up in a new tab, it should. It's missing a ' _blank ' instruction somewhere in the code.

[spot]

The most annoying thing about here is if you click a link it doesn't open it up in a new tab, it should. It's missing a ' _blank ' instruction somewhere in the code.

Right-click "open link in new tab". And _blank is just showing off!

And, having checked, just wheel-clicking on any link opens in a new tab too, in Firefox anyway.

[Betty Boop]

The most annoying thing about here is if you click a link it doesn't open it up in a new tab, it should. It's missing a ' _blank ' instruction somewhere in the code.

Right-click "open link in new tab". And _blank is just showing off!

And, having checked, just wheel-clicking on any link opens in a new tab too, in Firefox anyway.

Yes, so I see, but it ought to open in a new tab from the 'click', actually.

[spot]

The most annoying thing about here is if you click a link it doesn't open it up in a new tab, it should. It's missing a ' _blank ' instruction somewhere in the code.

Right-click "open link in new tab". And _blank is just showing off!

And, having checked, just wheel-clicking on any link opens in a new tab too, in Firefox anyway.

Yes, so I see, but it ought to open in a new tab from the 'click', actually.

I note the controls could be switched, but that's not how the mouse and program are designed. You pays your money and you takes your choice. I can certainly see why the ergonomists chose the order they used. This all goes back to the 80s.

[spot]

Ultimately, the left will lose. Big business will pollute the planet, capitalist culture will kill off the arts and humanities, schools will all be privatised, libraries will all close, social mobility will cease, the gulf between rich and poor will grow and everything beautiful will die. The left may note little human rights victories – gay marriage and the odd bit of better pay – but the machine is rolling inexorably forwards to crush it.

[Stewart Lee, The New Statesman, Culture, 17 April 2013]

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/20 ... -stand-ups

[spot]

Gustav Kuhn and Brian Rappert, academics from the universities of Plymouth and Exeter, asked hundreds of magicians from around the world about attitudes to exposure.

They found that exposing another magician’s trick when they are still alive was a big no-no, with fewer than 3% feeling this was acceptable.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/ ... e-revealed

Well that's unsurprising, everyone knows stage magicians traded their soul to the devil in exchange for their act.

[spot]

What is Hello Kitty?

Radio 4 is going on about a fiftieth anniversary of Hello Kitty. They went on at great length about kawaii culture which I didn't comprehend even slightly.

How have I never heard of this in fifty years?

[Betty Boop]

[spot]

When you get up in the morning, you will no doubt know who won.
The bizarre...

That, on reflection, ought to have won.

[Betty Boop]

Week 9 or 10? maybe, not sure. Brain broke weeks ago. Python.

I've worked in a group and we built a general knowledge quiz.

I'm on my own for the next project in a few weeks.

Then a final group hackathon and it will be over.

Then it will be that awful thing called Christmas.

[Betty Boop]

Think I have just lost my mind in subclassing and inheritance arrows and appearing and disappearing code.

[spot]

Think I have just lost my mind in subclassing and inheritance arrows and appearing and disappearing code.

I'm not sure why I would have subclassed, I'm quite sure I never have. I shall go and look up reasons.

[Betty Boop]

Django, ughh, seriously my brain is fried. 12 weeks in, I'm not sure what I know anymore, if I do know anything at all.

This weeks daily lessons have been take one tiny step forward and 20 back, I fell behind and have been trying to catch up only to fall into yet another error arrrgghh. Can't ask for help in the coding coach area or from my tutor, it's the weekend

[spot]

But there’s one pub quiz we found on a Sunday, and I will not be naming it, because we win it quite often. It’s the first time in my life where we’ve found the right mix of people, actually our age. Because when you walk into a pub quiz and see that table of old geezers, not smiling or talking to one another, you know you’re absolutely screwed.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/ ... ck-moana-2

[LarsMac]

Well, I just thought that I would drop in and say 'hi' to everybody who still comes around.
I hope that you all have a great Holiday Season, and that 2025 becomes a year of Happiness and Wonder for you all.

[Bryn Mawr]

Well, I just thought that I would drop in and say 'hi' to everybody who still comes around.
I hope that you all have a great Holiday Season, and that 2025 becomes a year of Happiness and Wonder for you all.

And a great Christmas to you too Lars, may 2025 be good to you.

[spot]

Well, I just thought that I would drop in and say 'hi' to everybody who still comes around.
I hope that you all have a great Holiday Season, and that 2025 becomes a year of Happiness and Wonder for you all.

And to you Lars. I hope Musk's aerial does all it's meant to and you meet interesting people out there. Any photos you post will be well received

[spot]

The news is filled today with the Jeju Air crash in Ethiopia, confusedly claiming a bird-strike damaged the landing gear and that the plane exploded by hitting a wall. It's the most inaccurate report of an air disaster I've ever seen.

Something clearly affected an engine while the plane was approaching the airport intending, until then, to return on a teardrop-shaped path for landing. On its return the landing gear wasn't deployed, the plane appears too high to land, to have no intention to land, which may well be the pilot's choice. There are several good reasons to stay airborne at that point. But the power drops and the plane comes down on the runway far beyond half way down its length, clearly not an attempt to land. The plane has no space to stop since the pilot has nothing with which to brake and an engine is still running. His problem is that with no wheels on the ground he has no braking ability. The plane won't have adequate friction to come to a stop without the wheel brakes. What the plane actually hits a half minute later at over 100 knots is a badly located rock-solid concrete-topped nose-height solid berm several hundred yards beyond the end of the runway, where the plane body immediately falls to pieces in flames straddling the obstacle.

The real question is why the two-engined plane lost power and then altitude.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... -air-crash

[spot]

Anti-cycling stories are bad for the UK’s health, says Chris Boardman

Racing champion turned active travel advocate criticises parts of the media for safety scaremongering

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/d ... ive-travel

I disagree with you, Mr Boardman. You are picking your statistics and generate biased reporting.

On average, 30 cyclists die in the UK for every billion miles travelled, compared with just two car drivers. More than 100 cyclists die on UK roads annually, meaning they make up around 6% of all road deaths. Bicycles on UK roads are deathtraps, they should be banned from all motorised lanes. The fact you can say oooh bikes only kill ten road users a year is immaterial. Talk rates, talk all deaths, try honesty.

If bikes can have a positive result on UK health, show your figures and then keep them off the road. Preferably take their wheels off too.

[spot]

It occurs to me people get paid for writing stuff like this.


Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings
The six o'clock alarm would never ring
But it rings and I rise
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes
My shavin' razor's cold and it stings


I could do that.

[spot]

No doubt Idris Elba is right:

"Not all kitchen knives need to have a point on them, that sounds like a crazy thing to say," he adds, "but you can still cut your food without the point on your knife, which is an innovative way to look at it".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jgz1ld7lno

I reckon a household get new kitchen knives once every thirty years on average.

So if we adopted that policy today, knife availability in households might fall to half by 2050.

But "Not all kitchen knives need to have a point on them"? So some household knives would continue to have a point on them?

How many knives is a public knife-carrier going to carry?

I'm not sure I can see any benefit whatever.

And if pointed household knives are ubiquitous I don't think availability is going to fall.

So what needs to change is the choice to carry one in public. I don't carry a knife when I go outdoors. Though back when it was acceptable behaviour and commonplace I wore a sheath knife for years at secondary school, I'd bought it on a school trip when I was 12. Times have clearly changed.

[spot]

This may be the most explosive start to any book I've opened. No messing about, straight in and precise in its message.

Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse. There is no form of intolerance, of proselytism or ideological intransigence which fails to reveal the bestial substratum of enthusiasm. Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation. The ages of fervor abound in bloody exploits: a Saint Teresa could only be the contemporary of the auto-da-fé, a Luther of the repression of the Peasants’ Revolt. In every mystic outburst, the moans of victims parallel the moans of ecstasy. . . . Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in the shadow of a faith—of that need to believe which has infested the mind forever. The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic.

A Short History of Decay (Penguin Modern Classics)
Cioran, E. M.
Paris, 1949
Published by Penguin Classics, 2018
Chapter 1: DIRECTIONS FOR DECOMPOSITION: Genealogy of Fanaticism

Something they don't teach at school, apparently.

[spot]

The comedian [Peter Kay], who is doing the last leg of his record-breaking Better Late Than Never Again! tour this month, was heckled by two rowdy audience members at the AO Arena in Manchester on Saturday.

He reportedly became frustrated at a man who continued to shout out his iconic catchphrase of “garlic bread” and a woman who shouted: “We love you, Peter,” and threw them out of the show.

But he was criticised by fans for his response, including comparing the ejected woman to the Emmerdale actor Lisa Riley, which audience members took to be a “derogatory” comment about her weight.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... rlic-bread

It's unsurprising that a performer will attract the sort of audience their professional highlights warrants. And those shouts do not qualify as heckling, they are the maudlin exclamations drunks can be expected to express at the top of their voices. There were four bellowing affection at each other the length of Market Jew Street yesterday afternoon and they didn't improve the ambience even slightly.

Were I obliged to choose, I'd prefer listening to the drunks than to Peter Kay. At least the drunks aren't pretending to be dim.

That is, on reflection, slightly unfair. I just watched him on YouTube for two minutes since I clearly have a jaundiced view of the chap spending a lifetime pretending to be a wally but just possibly he had a bright idea once - he tied a shovel round his neck and strummed it in time to someone else's music. I suspect what I object to is the audience rather than the performer. Either way it all gives a depressing view of human existence.

For no one despises, hates, or flees pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains follow those who do not know how to follow pleasure with reason.