Author Topic: The Good News / Bad News Thread  (Read 389725 times)

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1350 on: 28 March, 2014, 07:40:46 pm »
BN: The watch mender down the road wants £45  and three weeks to make my watch tick again. That's as much as I paid for it new (albeit about 12 years ago and in a cheap country).

GN: The bloke in Timpson's mended it in 15 minutes and didn't charge a penny. So top thumbs up to Timpson's on The Triangle in Bristol.  :thumbsup:
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

mcshroom

  • Mushroom
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1351 on: 04 April, 2014, 01:16:33 am »
BN: Looks like work is going to relocate me in a few months
GN: The new office is nicer, and about the same distance away from home as my current place
BN: Commute isn't as pretty
GN: More scope for different routes after work
Climbs like a sprinter, sprints like a climber!

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1352 on: 04 April, 2014, 11:17:10 pm »
GN: Had an interesting email exchange with my PhD supervisor - there's a good chance I may be doing some Real ScienceTM soon  :thumbsup:
BN: If things do pan out, then this summer's little expedition to Leftpondia won't be able to happen :(
GN: Real Science!
BN: It may involve FORTRAN 2008  :sick:

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1353 on: 04 April, 2014, 11:31:41 pm »
GN: Had an interesting email exchange with my PhD supervisor - there's a good chance I may be doing some Real ScienceTM soon  :thumbsup:
BN: If things do pan out, then this summer's little expedition to Leftpondia won't be able to happen :(
GN: Real Science!
BN: It may involve FORTRAN 2008  :sick:

Oh that would be a crap decision to have to make Simon.  Real Science or the Tour Divide.   Whatever you choose, I hope it makes you happy    (though I was looking forward to the ride reports.....)
Not fast & rarely furious

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1354 on: 04 April, 2014, 11:39:08 pm »
GN: Had an interesting email exchange with my PhD supervisor - there's a good chance I may be doing some Real ScienceTM soon  :thumbsup:
BN: If things do pan out, then this summer's little expedition to Leftpondia won't be able to happen :(
GN: Real Science!
BN: It may involve FORTRAN 2008  :sick:

Oh that would be a crap decision to have to make Simon.  Real Science or the Tour Divide.   Whatever you choose, I hope it makes you happy    (though I was looking forward to the ride reports.....)
To be honest, it wouldn't be that difficult a decision - the Tour Divide will come around again, an opportunity like this may not.
Besides, if I do end up doing TEH SCIENCE then I'll have to make occasional visits to Wales, which means plenty of potential for interesting off-road shenanigans :)

Nothing's been set in stone yet - negotiations are, as they say, ongoing. It may end up being an occasional consultancy thing, but I could cope with that.

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1355 on: 05 April, 2014, 04:51:13 pm »
GN: New coffee grinder!

BN: Managed to get through over half the bag of beans, just finding a half-decent setting.

GN: Developing a taste for black coffee, and an epic caffeine buzz  ;D

BN: Sore arm.

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1356 on: 05 April, 2014, 07:13:22 pm »
GN: New coffee grinder!

BN: Managed to get through over half the bag of beans, just finding a half-decent setting.

GN: Developing a taste for black coffee, and an epic caffeine buzz  ;D

BN: Sore arm.

Top Tip:  Use alternate arms when grinding or you'll end up like one of those medieval archers..... ;)
Not fast & rarely furious

tweeting occasional in(s)anities as andrewxclark

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1357 on: 05 April, 2014, 08:35:07 pm »
GN: New coffee grinder!

BN: Managed to get through over half the bag of beans, just finding a half-decent setting.

GN: Developing a taste for black coffee, and an epic caffeine buzz  ;D

BN: Sore arm.

Top Tip:  Use alternate arms when grinding or you'll end up like one of those medieval archers..... ;)



99 change hands?
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

billplumtree

  • Plumbing the well of gitness
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1358 on: 07 April, 2014, 01:16:06 pm »
GN: Had an interesting email exchange with my PhD supervisor - there's a good chance I may be doing some Real ScienceTM soon  :thumbsup:
BN: If things do pan out, then this summer's little expedition to Leftpondia won't be able to happen :(
GN: Real Science!
BN: It may involve FORTRAN 2008  :sick:

Oh that would be a crap decision to have to make Simon.  Real Science or the Tour Divide.   Whatever you choose, I hope it makes you happy    (though I was looking forward to the ride reports.....)
To be honest, it wouldn't be that difficult a decision - the Tour Divide will come around again, an opportunity like this may not.
Besides, if I do end up doing TEH SCIENCE then I'll have to make occasional visits to Wales, which means plenty of potential for interesting off-road shenanigans :)

Yebbut, FORTRAN???   I suppose, in lieu of the ride reports, we'll have an entertaining rant thread

fuzzy

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1359 on: 07 April, 2014, 01:30:15 pm »
GN: Mrs F has joined me in being of the opinion that I should take advantage of the pension I qualified for on 18th march 2014

BN: Job hunting ::-)

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1360 on: 09 April, 2014, 07:54:12 pm »
After a complicated commute that involved a detour to the (not very) LBS to collect one bike and deliver another, I phoned son and suggested I call in at the chippy on the way back (it's my turn to cook).
BN:  The chippy was rammed.  They're queueing down the street.
GN: Phoned son to explain I was repairing to the pub next door until it quietens down a bit.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1361 on: 09 April, 2014, 08:04:17 pm »
GN: Had an interesting email exchange with my PhD supervisor - there's a good chance I may be doing some Real ScienceTM soon  :thumbsup:
BN: If things do pan out, then this summer's little expedition to Leftpondia won't be able to happen :(
GN: Real Science!
BN: It may involve FORTRAN 2008  :sick:

Oh that would be a crap decision to have to make Simon.  Real Science or the Tour Divide.   Whatever you choose, I hope it makes you happy    (though I was looking forward to the ride reports.....)
To be honest, it wouldn't be that difficult a decision - the Tour Divide will come around again, an opportunity like this may not.
Besides, if I do end up doing TEH SCIENCE then I'll have to make occasional visits to Wales, which means plenty of potential for interesting off-road shenanigans :)

Yebbut, FORTRAN???   I suppose, in lieu of the ride reports, we'll have an entertaining rant thread
The perils of legacy code, innit?
The bulk of the code was written in 1993-4, and it used a bunch of third party libraries to do the Scary SumsTM associated with reaction kinetics, one of which dated back to the early 70s. The main reason I never rewrote everything in C was because writing suitable interfaces to aforementioned scary third party libraries was too horrifying to contemplate.

It still is.

Even so, the code now compiles and runs on my Badass Number Crunching Babbage Engine and it was quite gratifying to watch simulations that took 3-4 days to run in 1994 get chewed up and spat out in a couple of hours and with the correct results  :thumbsup:

Things are progressing, slowly, so it's looking like:

GN: !!SCIENCE!! albeit on a part-time, consultancy-style basis
BN: Probably no Tour Divide this year :( However, there's no way in Hades I'm going to let an opportunity like this slip away.
BN: To implement the really cool stuff that we've agreed needs to be done, I'm going to have to get my head round FORTRAN 2008
GN: Plan B, silly bike ride wise, involves Scotland - with particular reference to the far north-west thereof.

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1362 on: 13 April, 2014, 09:05:31 pm »
At Imperial I did a really entertaining parallel computing course, that involved writing functions in Fortran and coordinating them using a Haskell-like DSL. The combination of the two was quite mind expanding.

Good news: Got some pictures I'm pleased with yesterday.
Bad news: Got a pink head in the process.

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1363 on: 13 April, 2014, 09:31:56 pm »
This could be considered bad news or good news I suppose.

Mrs Ham & Miss Ham are departing for NYC tomorrow for a few days

They have each taken a spare, empty, case. I think I know how to evaluate that.

Andrij

  • Андрій
  • Ερασιτεχνικός μισάνθρωπος
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1364 on: 13 April, 2014, 09:42:37 pm »
That's always been my packing technique for US visits.  Is it too late to put a block on their credit cards?  :demon:
;D  Andrij.  I pronounce you Complete and Utter GIT   :thumbsup:

Dibdib

  • Fat'n'slow
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1365 on: 14 April, 2014, 08:20:02 am »
BN: Jess woke me up at what was, for me at least, a rather unpleasantly early hour.

GN: I got a lazy lie in bed for half an hour, and still had time to make a travel mug of fresh coffee before I left the house. I could actually get used to that as a routine  :thumbsup:

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1366 on: 14 April, 2014, 10:14:01 am »
At Imperial I did a really entertaining parallel computing course, that involved writing functions in Fortran and coordinating them using a Haskell-like DSL. The combination of the two was quite mind expanding.
Anything Haskell-like will do that - it'll expand your mind so much that your brains will dribble out of your ears and leave grey puddles on your shoulders.

In fact, for the sort of things that we have in mind, Erlang would be an absolutely perfect fit for handling all the parallel/distributed stuff but we still have the problem of interfacing it to all that crufty old third-party FORTRAN code. FORTRAN 2008 looks to be the path of least resistance, and with my Compiler Of Choice (gfortran) ye-olde-thirde-partye code and modern(ish) code will build and co-exist peacefully.

The downside is that instead of flying out to Canada at the beginning of July, I'll be driving down to Aberystwyth instead. The good news is still !!SCIENCE!!

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1367 on: 14 April, 2014, 12:49:25 pm »

In fact, for the sort of things that we have in mind, Erlang would be an absolutely perfect fit for handling all the parallel/distributed stuff but we still have the problem of interfacing it to all that crufty old third-party FORTRAN code. FORTRAN 2008 looks to be the path of least resistance, and with my Compiler Of Choice (gfortran) ye-olde-thirde-partye code and modern(ish) code will build and co-exist peacefully.


There was a reason that Mobile used APL to call the fortran libraries for differential equations.1 you can get student licences for Dyalog APL and it will run under both windows and Linux ;)

Good luck however you do it. It sounds like an interesting challenge.

1. Admittedly they were calculating the inputs to the functions and then carrying out further calculations with the outputs.

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1368 on: 15 April, 2014, 11:45:01 am »
GN: It's a lovely, sunny, low wind day today.
Extra good news: I am in Northumberland, home of lots of hills and great cycling
BN: I am at work
Extra bad news: Just to rub it in, I look out of the window (my desk overlooks the train station at Prudhoe) and there are 3 cyclists in the station car park. :( GRRRRRRRRRRRR
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1369 on: 15 April, 2014, 11:56:51 am »
There was a reason that Mobile used APL to call the fortran libraries for differential equations.1 you can get student licences for Dyalog APL and it will run under both windows and Linux ;)
Not open source though.
That, as they say, is a deal breaker.

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1370 on: 15 April, 2014, 12:26:14 pm »
There was a reason that Mobile used APL to call the fortran libraries for differential equations.1 you can get student licences for Dyalog APL and it will run under both windows and Linux ;)
Not open source though.
That, as they say, is a deal breaker.

Fair dos, I aught to declare my interest in that Dyalog (and the previous company) have employed my father writing Dyalog APL for >30 years. I know he did some development of the Linux keyboards for the APL which uses the 'windows' key on the keyboard as a 'shift' key similarly to switching between two languages.

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1371 on: 15 April, 2014, 02:38:29 pm »
GN: I get to have a little lie-in tomorrow, as I have an appointment at the dentist first thing (plus the surgery is only about 200yds from home)
BN: It's with the hygienist. Fillings and extractions I can cope with, seemingly endless amounts of picking and scraping? Nope ...

Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1372 on: 16 April, 2014, 10:47:35 am »
BN: A while ago I spent an age on the phone to First Utility to discuss my direct debit payment. After about 30 minutes I gave up, still being no. 21 in the queue and only moving up nine places in that time. I submitted my request in a message on their website. They said they would get back to me in 10 days. They didn't.

GN: Today, I whipped myself into an angry customer frenzy and called. I got into a queue again, but was answered within 3 minutes. The very helpful Carrie told me I was £200+ In credit after the mild winter. I asked to have it refunded by BACS transfer, that was agreed. I also asked to move to variable DD. Agreed. My frenzy was unappeased, I'm pleased to say.

GN: I now have an unexpected £200 windfall to spend. Hmm, 3 ASDA bikes?
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

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Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1373 on: 16 April, 2014, 11:13:17 am »
BN: Visit to the dental hygienist this morning. It was predictably unpleasant.
GN: At least if the world ends over the weekend I'll go to Hell with clean teeth.

Vince

  • Can't climb; won't climb
Re: The Good News / Bad News Thread
« Reply #1374 on: 16 April, 2014, 12:01:34 pm »
GN: I now have an unexpected £200 windfall to spend.
BN: Hmm, 3 ASDA bikes?

FTFY
216km from Marsh Gibbon