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

[perpetual dan]

Abandoned my ride as one slide along the chalk seems like enough for the weekend.

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

[ElyDave]

Thought I had a spare gear cable in my shed. I didn't, so I got as far as mounting the new front mech and setting the low position.

On the other hand I did change the front tyre on the 'bent to a marathon racer from a marathon plus, surprised at the difference in weight and stiffness.

[nicknack]

I don't own a smart phone so this whinge may suffer from a lack of knowledge of the things.
Practically every other camera ever made, if it produces a picture an oblong picture, has the image oriented with the long dimension horizontal (honourable exception being 35mm half-frame). So why do phones produce vertical ones? And, even more irritatingly, vertical videos. Given that the manufacturers obviously don't have a clue is it really hard to turn a phone through 90 degrees when taking a pic/video? Who on earth thinks that a video taken through a vertical letterbox looks good?

[Mrs Pingu]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

[nicknack]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

But why are they set up like that in the first place?

[rafletcher]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

But why are they set up like that in the first place?

Presumably because that way wysiwyg.

[Jurek]

Lewisham (and Croydon) Borough Councils.
Your street lighting has been lit 24/7 right across both boroughs for at least two weeks, and probably more.
I couldn't believe that I'd be the first person to tell them this, and indeed I wasn't.
They've been aware of it for a while and, as Damian from Skanska cheerfully informed me, they haven't got a clue what's wrong with it.
These are the smart street lamps which, I understand have an individual radio link to the control centre , 38,000 of which have been installed across both boroughs in the last five or six years. 38,000 lamps which are burning bright.
Day and night.
Presumably my council tax is paying for this shocking waste of energy. Muppets.

[ian]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

But why are they set up like that in the first place?

Presumably because that way wysiwyg.

That's it. Though I'm not sure why there isn't a landscape override. That said, with a little iPhone is not difficult to hold the phone either way, not sure about those giant Samsungs and larger iPhones, those are like dinner trays.

Lewisham (and Croydon) Borough Councils.
Your street lighting has been lit 24/7 right across both boroughs for at least two weeks, and probably more
....
Presumably my council tax is paying for this shocking waste of energy. Muppets.

Come to Surrey, we turn ours off at midnight to save an entire £200k. Seems more effort than it's worth (I'm sure it cost more to implement...). It's weird though, where I live is completely black unless the moon is out.

[Kim]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

But why are they set up like that in the first place?

The phone is sensible enough to know it's being held portrait and takes a portrait image the right way up, rather than a landscape one sideways^[1].  This would be fine if the users were savvy enough to realise that most of the time landscape is a much better way to frame the subject, and only used portrait sparingly (as per a traditional camera).

Stupid people are completely oblivious to subtleties such as framing and aspect ratios.  They're the ones who watched 4:3 analog TV stretched to fill a 16:9 TV and didn't see anything wrong with it, even when watching Stargate: SG1^[2], and they're the ones who take photos by pointing their camera at the middle of the subject and pressing the button.

The real rot set in when younger and older people started to use smartphones as their primary internet access device, leading to an outbreak of non-aspect-blind people who see portrait images as reasonable or possibly even desirable.  They forget that people might want to view video on a proper computer or television.


Obviously there's no reason a smartphone camera can't be configured to take landscape photos when held in portrait format (which will probably involve some cropping), but it's a setting that would immediately get turned off by people who "don't want the black bars" in their camera app.

I think we're going to be stuck with this until circular images become the Next Big Thing...


_{[1] It's amusing to watch a naive smartphone user confronted with an image that's encoded the wrong way up.  They'll instinctively rotate their device, only for it to flip the image back to the wrong way round a second later.  How many times they do this before locking the display aspect ratio or tilting their head probably serves as a form of intelligence test.
[2] A series notable not only for the repeated appearance of a large, circular wormhole device but also Don S. Davis's head.  If you can't spot there's something funny going on with the aspect ratio there, there's something wrong with you.}

[Mr Larrington]

People are a bit stupid. Also, shooting in portrait mode can be done one handed while landscape generally uses two.

But why are they set up like that in the first place?

Presumably because that way wysiwyg.

That's it. Though I'm not sure why there isn't a landscape override. That said, with a little iPhone is not difficult to hold the phone either way, not sure about those giant Samsungs and larger iPhones, those are like dinner trays.

It never fails to amuse me when I see people taking photos of $TOURIST_ATTRACTION using full-size fondleslabs, because I am irredeemably shallow and easily amused.

[Kim]

It never fails to amuse me when I see people taking photos of $TOURIST_ATTRACTION using full-size fondleslabs, because I am irredeemably shallow and easily amused.

Ah, the dilemma of finding yourself with a fondleslab with a surprisingly good camera (Why?!?) and a phone with a crappy one.  Or likewise with battery/connectivity, I suppose.  Ideally I'd resolve this by owning a camera made this decade.

I draw the line at making a phone call on one, thobut.  Unless I get to stick to the now legendary Dom Joly script.

[Mr Larrington]

I have a camera for taking pictures, a Kindle for reading e-books, an iPod for listening to music, a phone for making phone calls and sending txt msgs and an iPad for, er, fondling.  I must be some kind of techno-Luddite.

[Kim]

To be fair, I've only really used the fondleslab camera for quick-and-dirty macro stuff in the privacy of my own home.  Or for taking photos of things^[1] that appear in front of me while I'm fondling the slab somewhere else, which isn't actually that silly if it's on my lap with the keyboard attached.

My music player died of battery bulge, and I failed to repair it.  Phone (or occasionally fondleslab) does the job well enough for the little I listen to music these days, so I haven't sought to replace it.  I specifically chose a fondleslab I could be happy reading books on, because that's one less thing to carry when travelling.

I do miss having a proper camera, though, but not to the point of actually investing in one.

Actually, the thought occurs - are the people taking photos of tourist attractions with full-sized iPads actually holding them in landscape format?  It might not be such a bad thing after all...


_{[1] Okay, mostly cats.}

[TheLurker]

I have a camera for taking pictures, a Kindle for reading e-books, an iPod for listening to music, a phone for making phone calls and sending txt msgs and an iPad for, er, fondling.  I must be some kind of techno-Luddite.

+1

It's not Luddism, it's sensible. A machine that does one thing and is designed to do that one thing well, it's how things should be; not this "Swiss Army Knife" insanity.  It also means that if one of your machines dies, 'phone for e.g. you still have a working camera and whatever other bits of kit.
 

[T42]

Aye, but the hoi polloi fell for phone cameras in a beeg way and gave us all those crappy selfies on Basefook. I have a chum in NZ who plants her phyzog in the middle of every landscape shot she takes.

Meanwhile the half-decent compact camera died out and left Nikon at least wobbly at the knees.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Meanwhile the half-decent compact camera died out and left Nikon at least wobbly at the knees.

Has it? I thought there were quite a few compact digitals around that worked well. My knowledge is not very up-to-date

[ian]

I do still have a geriatric Kindle though it stays by the bed. There's a camera somewhere, I don't know where, waiting for my second career in glamour' photography (just another button, darling, and smile). I think I may wear a velvet jacket, I really do. In the meantime, I just carry around a phone for everything. Takes decent pictures, holds all my books, my music, and occasionally even makes phone calls. I am quite obviously the future. Mind you, I open a cupboard yesterday and a box of floppy disks fell out. I have no idea what's supposed to be on them. ASCII porn probs. Kids these day, they just don't have to use their imagination. I stretched my mind plenty. I do have a USB floppy drive somewhere. Who doesn't? And a pet dinosaur called Steve.

[T42]

Meanwhile the half-decent compact camera died out and left Nikon at least wobbly at the knees.

Has it? I thought there were quite a few compact digitals around that worked well. My knowledge is not very up-to-date

There are high-end and long-zoom compacts, but the real money-makers, for Nikon at least, were the small low-to-mid-range cameras that have been almost eclipsed by high pixel-count phones. Shame, because - apart from weakening real camera companies - when you try and tweak a phone pic you usually get porridge in shadows and skies.  Cheap compacts also have the advantage that videos shot with them are in usually in landscape mode.

[Kim]

I have a camera for taking pictures, a Kindle for reading e-books, an iPod for listening to music, a phone for making phone calls and sending txt msgs and an iPad for, er, fondling.  I must be some kind of techno-Luddite.

+1

It's not Luddism, it's sensible. A machine that does one thing and is designed to do that one thing well, it's how things should be; not this "Swiss Army Knife" insanity.  It also means that if one of your machines dies, 'phone for e.g. you still have a working camera and whatever other bits of kit.

And yet Swiss Army Knives have their uses, just like smartphones.  The tool you have with you is better than the ideal tool you've left at home.  Sure you don't plan to crimp connectors with a Leatherman, take photographs with an iPhone or pump up tyres with a mini-pump, but equally you don't always want to lug a toolbox, SLR kit or track pump around with you just in case.

Trading weight against reliability/redundancy is a concept that most cyclists should be intimately familiar with.  Carrying the kitchen sink isn't always the sensible option, unless the purpose of your journey is actually washing up.  There are reasonable decisions at all points on the spectrum.

[Kim]

Cheap compacts also have the advantage that videos shot with them are in usually in landscape mode.

Quite!

[ElyDave]

My coffee grinder ceased tonight, bugger arse bollocks. I have about two days worth of espresso ground and three packs of Greek coffee.

Anyone recommend a new grinder.

[Giraffe]

My coffee grinder ceased tonight, bugger arse bollocks. I have about two days worth of espresso ground and three packs of Greek coffee.

Anyone recommend a new grinder.

Use your teeth!

[TheLurker]

It's September.  No new book from Pterry.

And that slacker B. Aaronovitch hasn't come up with anything either.

[Ham]

That fookin' cat doesn't understand fookin' English. I gave her some scraps of chicken off our plates, I say "Don't vomit" does she listen? Does she ever.

[mrcharly-YHT]

It's an open plan office with a few 5ft partitions and meeting rooms.

You and one other want to speak to someone who works upstairs.

Do you:

A) All go to a meeting room to have your discussion

B) Walk upstairs to gather round one person's desk

C) Phone them using the phone on your desk set to speaker on max volume?