The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[Wombat]

Hmm, my 11 year old Vauxhall Astra has started making a mayonnaise-like emulsion in the oil tank. Looks like it's off to the garage tomorrow. 

I'm in Bangernomics territory with this car now, so my leisurely look through the market for a new car might  become rather more urgent.


In other grumbles - I'd love to know where my rear left pannier has gone hiding over the winter. I need it in a couple weeks

Wander about the house loudly proclaiming that you need your pannier in ten days time.

In 11 days time it will magically appear....

[Wombat]

There's usually an option to found wandering lost in the submenu labyrinth for 'sound out via HDMI' or analogous terminology. My magic box has that.

The distascope is set up to use "Audio system" by default, rather than "TV speakers".  Even a full-fat reset has failed to persuade it to behave itself.  I may have to lower myself to joining Another Forum to seek Advices

Ah, does it use the audio return channel back from the HDMI lead to the telly, to provide audio back up its chuff for onward distribution?  This, while useful, does tend to mean the bloody things talk to each other and make decisions you are not in agreement with.

[Jacomus]

Oi! BBC!

Firstly, your new look website looks, frankly, shite. I'll be fair though, you do say it's in Beta, so I hope it get's a little more polished before you're done. Now, that's not what I was grumbling about - Oi! BBC! Please, please can you provide a proper text article to go with your increasing reliance on video content. Sometimes, I like watching videos, especially when I'm chilling out at home. When I'm at work, which is where I consume most of the news, I don't have a way to listen to the video.

[Kim]

Oi! BBC! Please, please can you provide a proper text article to go with your increasing reliance on video content. Sometimes, I like watching videos, especially when I'm chilling out at home. When I'm at work, which is where I consume most of the news, I don't have a way to listen to the video.

I'm for a blanket ban on speakers for web designers' computers, except for testing of audio content.

[Mr Larrington]

Ah, does it use the audio return channel back from the HDMI lead to the telly, to provide audio back up its chuff for onward distribution?  This, while useful, does tend to mean the bloody things talk to each other and make decisions you are not in agreement with.

I've only a hazy idea of what ARC actually does; both the distascope and AV wossname have a surfeit of HDMI ports but only one on each speaks ARC and them's the ones I've been using all along.  I'm sure it used to work

Oi! BBC! Please, please can you provide a proper text article to go with your increasing reliance on video content. Sometimes, I like watching videos, especially when I'm chilling out at home. When I'm at work, which is where I consume most of the news, I don't have a way to listen to the video.

I'm for a blanket ban on speakers for web designers' computers, except for testing of audio content.

This.  And I'd reintroduce the utterly to DETH penalty for people who post links to, or embed, Youtube videos without telling you whether it's Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock or One Direction in the study with the AK47.

[barakta]

Oi! BBC!

Firstly, your new look website looks, frankly, shite. I'll be fair though, you do say it's in Beta, so I hope it get's a little more polished before you're done. Now, that's not what I was grumbling about - Oi! BBC! Please, please can you provide a proper text article to go with your increasing reliance on video content. Sometimes, I like watching videos, especially when I'm chilling out at home. When I'm at work, which is where I consume most of the news, I don't have a way to listen to the video.

S'ok they don't caption their web video content anyway so I end up clicking x on a lot of interesting looking stuff cos it's video or maybe sentence of text only.  I sometimes google it to find an equivalent text article but it does make me cross cos it's this increased videoification of the web.

[Mr Larrington]

Blood testing place, when you say you open at 08:00 any sane person would think that 08:00 would be the time you start getting vampiric, not five minutes before you open the fucking doors . That way you might not have to start turning punters away at 09:10 when you're open till 11:30.

Relying on a patient to dole out the numbered tickets for the queue is probably not best practice either.

[TimC]

Cuppa required by Ruthie.   

My grumble.  I should be in the comfort by my own log burner near Maesycrugiau, but I'm not.
Mrs B had a dream about her dad and decided she needed to go up to Co Durham to see him.  So she phoned the other day, told me that she was driving with the dog up to Brum and that I needed to (I needed?) get on line and buy her train tickets.
So instead of being all comfy and warm, I'm freezing my bollocks off dog sitting out side the Country Girl.

It get worse.  Seems that I also "need" to allow #1 son to use my credit card details for a flight from BHX to Newark.  And back. 

Oh well, at least he asked.

Think I need to start looking for an evening job. 
The Offie?
The petrol station?
Back of Rackham's? 

And here. The wunderkind C-major 'needs' to go to Austin for summat or other to do with comics (not about any inhabitants of that metropolips). She could fly with my employers and their USAnian part-owners for Not Very Much. But she 'needs' to fly with her friend on Her Hispanic Majesty's finest Birdseed Boing Hairyplane at a cost of A Lot.

"Daddy...?!!!". Oh, alright then. But I own her soul  and 15% of her income until she's 93.

I don't even get the airmiles. She does.

[Kim]

Wishing the lurgy would sod off.  Reckon this is space mumps from last weekend's SF convention.  Pah!

[Deano]

At least the refurb's finished at Newcastle Central, but god what an appalling layout. It's never been an easy station to get around (toilets in stupid locations for example), but the new layout cleverly fails to address any of the previous erm, quirks, while adding a whole load of new ones.

Going into the station, the entry ticket barriers are on the left, the exit barriers on the right, and farther to the right is the ramp for the bridge, meaning you have to fight your way through the people leaving to get onto the bridge.

And there's now a massive food court and a Boots where the ticket office used to be. The new (smaller) ticket office is now at the darkest loneliest corner of the station - they may as well have just chucked it in the Metro station.

Sure, it's easier to get a sarnie now, but I kinda think the layout of the station should at least give a nod towards its purpose, i.e. actually going somewhere. It's not as though people were starving in the past, there's a Gregg's and a Subway opposite the station.

And the dangly bike space has ruined my mudflap.

[T42]

Still stuck indoors waiting for eye to heal sufficiently to get out.

[ian]

Minions!

(a) learn to write in English. Having written a marvellously oblique 70-word sentence, legibility won't be achieved by merely clusterbombing it with commas.

(b) avoid cliches or the next bleeding edge you meet will be the ninja death blade.

(c) 'accelerate' doesn't mean what you think it means.

(d) if you need to tell someone it's 'innovative' then it patently isn't.

(e) stop fucking formatting the damn documents with tab tab tab enter enter enter tab tab tab.

(f) use heading and paragraph styles rather than doing everything manually...

(g) especially the table of contents, which is now monumentally wrong because of your tab tab tab enter enter enter tab tab formatting...

(h) along with all the crossreferencing...

(i) the footers...

(j) and the headers

(k) and make the bloody images span the column rather than leave them the size of postage stamps

(l) and well, really, look at the fucking document and ask yourself 'does this look like the product of a competent and generously compensated grown-up?' and if that answer is no, then fucking make it so before unclenching and shitting the bloody document into my inbox.

I'm supposed to approve these not rewrite and then reformat them. See, the point of delegation is that you do the work so I don't have to, not so that you fail to do the work and I still have to.

Edit: oh and Word 2011 for Mac, you are not helping. Superannuated PoS.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

At least the refurb's finished at Newcastle Central, but god what an appalling layout. It's never been an easy station to get around (toilets in stupid locations for example), but the new layout cleverly fails to address any of the previous erm, quirks, while adding a whole load of new ones.

Going into the station, the entry ticket barriers are on the left, the exit barriers on the right, and farther to the right is the ramp for the bridge, meaning you have to fight your way through the people leaving to get onto the bridge.

And there's now a massive food court and a Boots where the ticket office used to be. The new (smaller) ticket office is now at the darkest loneliest corner of the station - they may as well have just chucked it in the Metro station.

Sure, it's easier to get a sarnie now, but I kinda think the layout of the station should at least give a nod towards its purpose, i.e. actually going somewhere. It's not as though people were starving in the past, there's a Gregg's and a Subway opposite the station.

And the dangly bike space has ruined my mudflap.

Is it any easier to find the way to the metro? I spent so long looking for it once I was swearing at the automatic voice saying "this way to the lift for the metro" (or whatever), absolutely convinced I was on cctv and someone was taking the piss.

[Kim]

Ah yes, my singular experience of Newcastle Central involved a fair bit of looking for the metro, too.  I was lugging a demux or something, which didn't help.

[T42]

Oen fo htsoe days whne my typign figners frie out fo odrer. Hits.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

My kettle is leaking.

[Deano]

At least the refurb's finished at Newcastle Central, but god what an appalling layout. It's never been an easy station to get around (toilets in stupid locations for example), but the new layout cleverly fails to address any of the previous erm, quirks, while adding a whole load of new ones.

Going into the station, the entry ticket barriers are on the left, the exit barriers on the right, and farther to the right is the ramp for the bridge, meaning you have to fight your way through the people leaving to get onto the bridge.

And there's now a massive food court and a Boots where the ticket office used to be. The new (smaller) ticket office is now at the darkest loneliest corner of the station - they may as well have just chucked it in the Metro station.

Sure, it's easier to get a sarnie now, but I kinda think the layout of the station should at least give a nod towards its purpose, i.e. actually going somewhere. It's not as though people were starving in the past, there's a Gregg's and a Subway opposite the station.

And the dangly bike space has ruined my mudflap.

Is it any easier to find the way to the metro? I spent so long looking for it once I was swearing at the automatic voice saying "this way to the lift for the metro" (or whatever), absolutely convinced I was on cctv and someone was taking the piss.

It's in the same place, as badly signposted as ever. I hardly ever take the Metro, but general consensus in the city used to be that it was easier to get to the Metro station from outside the station. Or walk up to Monument...

Also, no signs for the travel office - lucky I've been there before. And no bins whatsoever outside - I asked the lad picking up litter if there was a fag bin nearby, and he growled "no" in reply, I'm not sure if it was aimed at me or the daft sods who didn't put bins in place. I put my stubend in his bin, by the way.

[mcshroom]

I usually only experience Newcastle Central from as a transit point so don't have to mess around with the barriers. It is a badly designed station, even in the proper trains bit though. I still haven't worked out what the platform layout is in there.

[Oaky]

Damn you Jeff Beck!

I wanted to go to sleep but did the rounds of the channels just in case.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I hurt my back swinging a 10lb sledge. So I'm at home.

Watching a 'webinar' training video for work. Part 1 is 67min long. There is a part 2.
Oh
Dear
God
This
Is
Glacial
Kill
Me
Now

Seriously, this is a training vid for a 'technical' product. If the audience needs telling that you click on the floppy icon to save, they should be shot before being allowed near a keyboard.

[Ham]

Oh BUGGER. Bike scheme at work, 2013 - max £2,000 (don't need n+1 here) 2014 - max £3,000 (still don't need one). 2015? Fratello disc on the shopping list. Max value? £1,000 

[T42]

Seriously, this is a training vid for a 'technical' product. If the audience needs telling that you click on the floppy icon to save, they should be shot before being allowed near a keyboard.

Please, Grandpa, what's a floppy?

[Ham]

Seriously, this is a training vid for a 'technical' product. If the audience needs telling that you click on the floppy icon to save, they should be shot before being allowed near a keyboard.

Please, Grandpa, what's a floppy?

Oy, you young whippersnapper, you'll find out for yourself when you get to my age.

[T42]

Actually, I've got an 8-incher sitting on my shelf here, sandwiched between two books.

[Jacomus]

Wide Ticket Gates

Grumble 1: Why-oh-why does the Oyster reader have to constantly swap between Green and the Red Light of Frustration?! You approach the gate, card ready to tap because you are a responsible Londoner who has got it ready well before The Point of No Return* the light is green, it's going to be a good day. Then, no, DENIED - the Red Light of Frustration appears just as you tap your card and makes you wait aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages (a time that is directly proportional to how finely you are cutting getting to your platform).

Grumble 2: Once the obstreperous gate has deigned to let you through, the bloody gates only open 2/3 of the way... barely wider than a regular gate!



* Where the careless or the unfamiliar passenger will start fumbling for their card, as the crowd surges against them, inevitably causing a backlog where they can't back out of the gate due to all the people crushed behind them. Leaving them stranded, fumbling for their card and trying to make it read. Or even worse, they get stranded in the gate, the person behind taps their card having expected the person in front to be successful, thereby releasing the person in front and getting trapped themselves.