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

[ian]

That makes a change from it being internet explorer one is admonished to use. To be fair to web devs, it’s not their policy, but that of the Product Managers who will not stump up the beans cor further testing and development to be undertaken.

Hehheheheheh. That's my evil product director laugh.

I confess I made swingeing cuts to old browser support for my particular platform back in the day, but had you seen the spreadsheet of costs to develop, test, and support old browsers, you'd understand why the decision is made. No one wants to pay more for legacy browser support. Trust me, I've had the discussions.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I once worked on a debugger that had to be supported on Windows, Linux and Mac. The online help (which I produced) had to work on all browsers on all platforms.

Testing that took up considerable amount of my time for each release. Multiple VMs and two machines. So tedious.

[rogerzilla]

People on Other Forums or Faecebook groups than moan about thread drift.

They must be great fun in the pub.

[Kim]

People on Other Forums or Faecebook groups than moan about thread drift.

The strange thing is they're invariably the ones who don't even remember the days when people used email/news clients in a way that preserved the threading properly.  To them, it's always been in chronological order.  Or worse.

[ian]

Those people are weird. I don't think like that. I ended up talking about being chased by the cheese dalek yesterday, which wouldn't have been too bad, but it was someone's mid-year review.

[robgul]

Short of a rant as I'm not actually surprised . . .  just changed our BT Business Broadband set-up to have digital phone (VOIP?) 3 weeks ago - that's fine and is a LOT less than we were paying before.  BT supplied one phone (Yealink W53H) in the deal - we wanted another handset and having asked BT whether it would work bought one from an Amazon purveyor for about £35 less than BT wanted.

Guess what - despite telling me to the contrary - it doesn't work as BT has some embedded factory settings to work with their "hub".   So, more expense.  Minor upside is that they are going to replace the unit (which sounds tinny) they supplied 3 weeks ago with the later, upgraded model ... for free (and the new one is also the new version - I assume)

Aaaargh!

[mrcharly-YHT]

People on Other Forums or Faecebook groups than moan about thread drift.

The strange thing is they're invariably the ones who don't even remember the days when people used email/news clients in a way that preserved the threading properly.  To them, it's always been in chronological order.  Or worse.

<sobs>
Did you have to remind me?

What utter cockwomble decided that threading was a bad idea?

[Kim]

People on Other Forums or Faecebook groups than moan about thread drift.

The strange thing is they're invariably the ones who don't even remember the days when people used email/news clients in a way that preserved the threading properly.  To them, it's always been in chronological order.  Or worse.

<sobs>
Did you have to remind me?

What utter cockwomble decided that threading was a bad idea?

Total guess, but I'm thinking Microsoft.  They're the ones who permanently broke quoting, and like to hide people's email addresses in the UI (with hilarious consequences when multiple people have the same name).

[Beardy]

We’ve being watching Sherwood over that last few evenings, and apart from the protagonist switching from crossbow to recurve bow throughout for no apparent reason (and using the same arrows with both!) we’ve both quite enjoyed it as good TV.

However, in the prolog, the final scene is two blokes pulling up at a gate by the woods with shovels. They acknowledge each other and set of separately into the woods. Which totally mystified me, until Dr Beardy mentioned that they’d just had a voiceover of a local radio station reporting a key fact. A voice over the subtitlers decided wasn’t worth their while transcribing. Useless bastards.

[Kim]

This morning we have:

-Weoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweoweo more or less continuously for several hours now from a burglar alarm.
-Boo-BEEP! Over and over as builders flap around with some door or other.
-BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! This vehicle is reversing.
-Occasional strimmers
-Intermittent dog
-Someone revving up a small two-smoke, likely for hayfever purposes.
ETA:
-Police helichopter circling


I think they should all resign.

[Mr Larrington]

I think they should go back where they came from.  Oh yes!

[TheLurker]

...-Boo-BEEP! Over and over...

I (mis)read that as Bo-Peep and wondered, briefly, if she'd wandered to Mordor to look for her sheep.

[nicknack]

Oh, whoopee!

I'm just getting over a week of shitty Covid, the weather is stupidly hot, and now we have no water. Super.

Apparently no one on the island (Sheppey) has any cos the pipe from the mainland is busted. Southern Water are being their usual helpful selves and giving no indication as to when the supply might be restored. Some on Facebook are saying Monday but I've no idea where that info comes from. Looks like being a fun next few days.

<edit> Southern Water have woken up and informed all that it's fixed and we should get full taps again sometime in the night. Hoorah!

[perpetual dan]

I’m sure that being a vet’s receptionist requires many skills. If you’re handling medicine requests, I’d like to think that being able to convert grams to kilograms would be amongst them.

[Kim]

I’m sure that being a vet’s receptionist requires many skills. If you’re handling medicine requests, I’d like to think that being able to convert grams to kilograms would be amongst them.

I'm picturing a hamster being fed a pill the size of, well, a hamster...

[perpetual dan]

I’m sure that being a vet’s receptionist requires many skills. If you’re handling medicine requests, I’d like to think that being able to convert grams to kilograms would be amongst them.

I'm picturing a hamster being fed a pill the size of, well, a hamster...

We’ve got 3 droppers each for the rats. Apparently there’s not much in each, but I can well imagine them getting a bath rather than a drop. Their homework was checked by someone in green, but as the weight went to them via the receptionist I’m going to double check the leaflet anyway. Also, how much?!

[nicknack]

Oh, whoopee!

I'm just getting over a week of shitty Covid, the weather is stupidly hot, and now we have no water. Super.

Apparently no one on the island (Sheppey) has any cos the pipe from the mainland is busted. Southern Water are being their usual helpful selves and giving no indication as to when the supply might be restored. Some on Facebook are saying Monday but I've no idea where that info comes from. Looks like being a fun next few days.

<edit> Southern Water have woken up and informed all that it's fixed and we should get full taps again sometime in the night. Hoorah!

They lied.

[mrcharly-YHT]

We have tickets for the local festival. Looking forward to it. Ooh, look, there is a list of the performers with details on each one.

Except, one thing. When they are playing. No running order on the whole website.

Facebook has some photos of flyers with the running order, and via a photograph of a flyer I discover that there is a festival app - which has the running order. FFS

[nicknack]

Third day without water now. You can get bored with this.

[Wombat]

Third day without water now. You can get bored with this.

I'll have none tomorrow, but I'm confident it'll be back on by 1600 ish.  This is only because we will have no electricity because they are cutting down trees that are in the way, all day.  Its a very rural area, and we don't have mains water, but its pumped from our borehole.  Not a real problem for us, as there will be some storage, but its an ideal excuse to go out and do some vital shopping, and have lunch out.  biggest downer? no electricity supply means no solar PV generation either.  Whoever decided that domestic PV installations couldn't have automatic disconnect, and therefore couldn't run in island mode, needs a kick in the bollocks.

[ElyDave]

I'm happy to supply the boot

[mrcharly-YHT]

Third day without water now. You can get bored with this.

I'll have none tomorrow, but I'm confident it'll be back on by 1600 ish.  This is only because we will have no electricity because they are cutting down trees that are in the way, all day.  Its a very rural area, and we don't have mains water, but its pumped from our borehole.  Not a real problem for us, as there will be some storage, but its an ideal excuse to go out and do some vital shopping, and have lunch out.  biggest downer? no electricity supply means no solar PV generation either.  Whoever decided that domestic PV installations couldn't have automatic disconnect, and therefore couldn't run in island mode, needs a kick in the bollocks.

I presume that is to avoid having to add controller circuitry that would handle synchronising with the grid (while devices are drawing power), when connection is reestablished.
So, with your current (sic) setting, I guess the incoming grid power is used to drive the frequency.

[Kim]

Third day without water now. You can get bored with this.

I'll have none tomorrow, but I'm confident it'll be back on by 1600 ish.  This is only because we will have no electricity because they are cutting down trees that are in the way, all day.  Its a very rural area, and we don't have mains water, but its pumped from our borehole.  Not a real problem for us, as there will be some storage, but its an ideal excuse to go out and do some vital shopping, and have lunch out.  biggest downer? no electricity supply means no solar PV generation either.  Whoever decided that domestic PV installations couldn't have automatic disconnect, and therefore couldn't run in island mode, needs a kick in the bollocks.

I presume that is to avoid having to add controller circuitry that would handle synchronising with the grid (while devices are drawing power), when connection is reestablished.
So, with your current (sic) setting, I guess the incoming grid power is used to drive the frequency.

I think it's just a safety feature to avoid back-feeding ostensibly 'dead' cables and electrocuting line workers, in the absence of proper isolation.

I don't think re-synchronising an inverter is particularly tricky; it's not like there's a rotating machine that needs its speed slewed.  At worst you can just drop the output for a cycle or two and come back in sync, and let the load cope with the glitch.  I have a UPS that switches back and forward between dual-conversion and bypass mode when the mains voltage is wibbly, and I think it just switches a relay.  DC power supplies cope fine, and mains loads are unlikely to care.

No reason you couldn't have an island-capable inverter with appropriate changeover switching, but most people don't want to pay for that.  I think it tends to be a feature of battery storage systems, because a pure-solar supply becomes quite unpredictable.  (Perhaps in a non-combined system the battery inverter does the islanding, and a standard PV inverter can just tie to that?)

[mrcharly-YHT]

Third day without water now. You can get bored with this.

I'll have none tomorrow, but I'm confident it'll be back on by 1600 ish.  This is only because we will have no electricity because they are cutting down trees that are in the way, all day.  Its a very rural area, and we don't have mains water, but its pumped from our borehole.  Not a real problem for us, as there will be some storage, but its an ideal excuse to go out and do some vital shopping, and have lunch out.  biggest downer? no electricity supply means no solar PV generation either.  Whoever decided that domestic PV installations couldn't have automatic disconnect, and therefore couldn't run in island mode, needs a kick in the bollocks.

I presume that is to avoid having to add controller circuitry that would handle synchronising with the grid (while devices are drawing power), when connection is reestablished.
So, with your current (sic) setting, I guess the incoming grid power is used to drive the frequency.

I think it's just a safety feature to avoid back-feeding ostensibly 'dead' cables and electrocuting line workers, in the absence of proper isolation.

I don't think re-synchronising an inverter is particularly tricky; it's not like there's a rotating machine that needs its speed slewed.  At worst you can just drop the output for a cycle or two and come back in sync, and let the load cope with the glitch.  I have a UPS that switches back and forward between dual-conversion and bypass mode when the mains voltage is wibbly, and I think it just switches a relay.  DC power supplies cope fine, and mains loads are unlikely to care.

No reason you couldn't have an island-capable inverter with appropriate changeover switching, but most people don't want to pay for that.  I think it tends to be a feature of battery storage systems, because a pure-solar supply becomes quite unpredictable.  (Perhaps in a non-combined system the battery inverter does the islanding, and a standard PV inverter can just tie to that?)

Naively I assumed that an islanded battery + PV system would have a charge controller feeding the batteries from the PV panels, and the mains supply inverter would work directly off the battery system.

The alternative would be a mains supply inverter taking feed from the PV system and if that wasn't sufficient, pulling power from the batteries. But then you'd also need a circuit to sense the state of battery charge, and feed into that from PV when the batteries dropped low on charge.

Guess a really decent system would also be doing individual battery charging and sensing.

[rafletcher]

My wife isn’t really into cycling, but enjoys watching the Tour highlights. I’ve avoided todays result, just on principle. She’s going out to dinner, and has requested I don’t watch them without her. I hope she’s back at a sensible hour as I’ll not be able to remain ignorant of the outcome for another 27 hours.