Be Excellent To Each Other

I was taught LIFO and FIFO. Backward.

Mr Blue Sky is ok.

The problem we had is that the 'proper' lecturer decided to quit halfway through the first year. We were 'taught' by a series of substitutes who told us to 'carry on with our Pascal programming', and so essentially we just fucked around on the internet for every class. We eventually got a full-time guy that was a chocolate teapot - didn't know anything about the subject, read from textbooks and otherwise made hilarious errors when trying to talk about the fundamentals of computing.

Pascal, for fucks sake. Uni was Java, using the swing packages which I understand to have been horrifically outdated even back then.

On the plus side I did get an A in Business, so now I can really effectively run my terrible IT company.

Well if we're counting D's as passes then I got one in law and one in psychology. I don't even recall what the other subject was but I think I got a U or something.

I got an E in Physics, that's a pass too. Relatively speaking?*

I also got a D in Maths. I was good in Pure but apparently bad at Mechanics. I'm not sure what that adds up to**.


*hohohoho

**heheheheh

I got a D for various modules of my "ICT" course. Main exception was the web module, which I got an A on, but given that I ended up teaching the bloody thing because I knew more than the lecturer it was hardly surprising

(That sounds really egotistical but the reality is the lecturers were just shit.)

I was a straight-A student.

Well, except for the four Bs and the one A*.

(the last one was in Navigation)

I have an A level in media studies and that's it. I hated the lessons at college and only went to hang out with my mates.

I had a part time job at the time too so I was, in relative terms, loaded.

A in General studies, B in German, C in Biology and C in Chemistry.

The beach lifestyle in 1998 was pretty good.

I dropped computer science after GCSE because our department was shit. I did maths, further maths, physics, chemistry, and general studies. I wanted to do english instead of chemistry but my school couldn't make the timetables work.

We were told the definition of "interactive" as "user has conversation with computer." I vividly recall explaining to my baffled teacher that this is the Turing test.

My school was very academic, so didn't have the option of anything computery. Got three As and a B though , so it worked out well.

We didn't have the option of doing computing at GCSE level. I forget what sort of computers we used - Acorns of some description.

My GCSE was called information systems and was taught on the Acorn Archemedies (spelling?)

It was shit.

I didn't do A levels but I did well in my Foundation and National Diploma Fine Art/Graphics before I went to Uni.

At GCSE I got E's for Art and Computer Studies.

To be fair, E's were better in the old days though.

To be honest all I remember from results day was going into school to look at the board with the results on, double checking with the teacher on duty that they were good enough for the one University offer I had (the school didn't think I was going to get any A levels on account of me very rarely going), getting the confirmation and then going to the pub to get drunk.

It was an excellent day all round really…and didn't involve a creepy middle aged journo asking me to jump up and down (from the front pages I saw from yesterday you’d have thought boys don’t take A levels).

Golly. At least we had PCs, Elonexes running Windows 3.1 if memory serves. This would have been 1993-1994 during my GCSEs.

I might go dig up a past paper for a giggle.

Couldn't find it so I read a recent A-level paper instead. Seems like the syllabus isn't awful. I'd probably not do very well at that, because I wouldn't know the magic terms the examiner was looking for and instead would waffle on about loads of stuff they don't care about it. Plus I can remember shit like the difference between second and third normal forms.

My high school was a lab full of BBCs and a smattering of Macs; those with the tiny black and white screens and the curly cables connecting to the keyboard. The Macs were mostly for the use of the 'secretarial skills' class (or whatever that was called) so we rarely got near them. Even at uni it was all SPARCstations so the first time I ever really used a PC was during my final year project at uni as we got a budget to buy a machine running Windows for what my team was doing. That seems so odd now but at least I ended up with a decent grounding in UNIX stuff even if it meant I was a complete Windows novice. The year behind us going through uni were getting a re-written version of the course so it was all Win200 and Java for them while we had UNIX and C.



That A level paper does suggest a pretty good curriculum, certainly a million times better than any IT stuff I got at school. There's loads of stuff in that I wouldn't have been able to answer to until some point in first year uni I don't think.

Not sure if this has been posted before but it's pretty great:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iss-hdev-payload/theater

Scroll down a bit and it shows you where it's currently at.

Seems to be cloudy everywhere at the moment.

Eek. I would fail hard at that exam. Of course, I haven't revised

I think MrsA did a book on the IT A levels. I'll see if I can dig it out on Sunday.

#channel=f13db24d1db887c&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com" class="postlink">"Khaleesi, stop hitting Theon!"

They should definitely have some sort of watch list associated with baby names.

Watch this now. The spacecraft you can see at the bottom is going to depart in a few minutes.

Also here:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/i ... -3hofldWSo

I'm very irritated in a meeting where someone from marketing is talking about USP, down-weighting the spend, and saying Brand far, far too much.

All of them are cunts. I didn't realise I was anti-capitalist until this very moment.

You're not anti-capitalist, you're anti-cunt.

Listening to marketing people talk about consumers is like listening to some tosser proclaim what a twat you are for buying his stuff. Fuck these guys.

It's not like it, it is it.

I'm naming my first born Kingslayer.

Or Damphair, if it's a girl.

EE offer people the option of paying money to queue jump when calling their support line:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/15/ee-l ... r-service/

Prediction: despite how jaw-droppingly horrendous an idea it is enough idiots will do it that every other company in the world will adopt it and the human race will have successfully punched itself in the face once again.

I'd happily pay extra to jump many queues. I hate queuing. Waiting for stuff sucks. As an example, I am happy that travelling to London on the train takes 2 hours, but I hate the fact that the train stops at other stations for other people. And buses, for the same reason. And people that drive less than 85mph on the motorway and flash me for passing on the left. And queing in the post office; I stand and ponder my own mortality and what I could be doing with that time. Doctors surgeries, as well. I'm basically more important than any of you. Waiting, who would, eh? Out of the way, plebs!

It's genius.

Everyone will pay the 50p, so there'll be no net benefit to anyone in terms of how long they wait in the queue, but EE make a fuckton of money off the back of it.

Don't fucking pass on the left. I'd rather you flash me to move over than do that.

I doubt anyone would disagree with that. But as soon as companies think they can nickle and dime people to death for this kind of thing they'll start pushing it all the time and doing it in every business process they can come up with. Soon enough they'll find ways to make it as close to mandatory as makes no difference because the non-paid service is so shit an experience it might as well not exist. Suddenly you're not only paying for the actual service you want from a company but every other part of their business as well; not least the support you need from them to fix their cock-ups.

Or maybe I'm just imagining a world where every company is as big a pile of cocks as EA and Ryanair...

If you could have moved left, why haven't you

I'm with Malia on this one, I used to flash people to get them out of the way, but can't be arsed anymore, as most of the time they didn't notice anyway, or didn't give a shit, or thought that the half mile gap between them and the next car wasn't enough space to move into.

However, I hardly ever actively undertake. If i'm in the left lane, I just keep going in the left if the person in front isn't moving over, and I have space to move out the way if they wake up.

I do move over if someone moves up behind me, but I'll only be in the fast lane (or the middle lane) if I'm overtaking, cos I'm a boy scout.

Undertaking is fucking dangerous. Especially when motorbikes do it.

This is what I do. Unless there's an advantage to be gained by moving over early into the left lane to pass cars. I stopped flashing as people see it as aggressive and reinforces their "Hey! My space!" thinking, or something.

Not really, it's legal and safe in lots of countries.
There is the argument that it is unsafe here because it isn't "legal" so people don't expect it, but generally the people you end up undertaking are completely oblivious to anything, so they are hardly likely to be expecting anything at all.

To be clear though, i'm not talking about ducking left and shooting past. I'm talking about already being left and just carrying on in the same lane, making sure there is room to move out the way if they suddenly wake up.

There's nothing wrong with 'undertaking', if you are within the speed limit when doing it.



*insert pic of The Undertaker*

Like I said, boy scout.

I've had a laser/torch pen off a supplier. It's brilliant and has made my week.

If someone can undertake you, you're in the wrong lane

This Ferguson rioting business.

There are two eyewitnesses to the shooting, apart from the guy who was shot and the guy who did the shooting.
The eyewitnesses statements disagree with each other.
One of the eyewitnesses was his friend, who had just helped him rob a shop a few minutes before.
The policeman says he was attacked and the guy was trying to get his gun, the guys friend says they didn't do anything and were basically being all cooperative.


My opinion is that he probably did attack the cop, but didn't deserve to get killed over it. I would love to say I was surprised when it turned out that he wasn't this squeaky clean respectable citizen he had been made out to be, but it didn't come as a shock in the slightest.

Also, the journalist that got arrested and filmed it, his written statement was that he did nothing wrong at all, but if you watch his own video, he ignored at the very least a dozen requests from the cop to leave. I wouldn't say that was entirely co-operative and unantagonising behaviour.

Had a Thai Jungle Curry last night (We left the kid with grandma and went out). It was amazing. Then we went to a fairly ok bar. I am in Buxton. Something is wrong.

I bought an off-the-peg Lenovo PC, and have just set it up and switched it on. After the company logo, I'm getting a plain black screen, with seemingly no attempt to boot Windows 8 going on. I haven't owned a desktop PC in years, so I'm not sure where to begin troubleshooting. I thought maybe the LCD telly I'm using as a monitor (via an HDMI cable) may simply not be able to display anything, but the logo and rescue mode show up fine. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Cheers!

I had a similar problem. Plug a monitor into it the you have to tell the graphics card to output to the tv. Dead easy on win 8 but still needs a monitor to start with.

Ah, thank you! I have a Dell monitor here but I'll have to hunt around for the plug.

Edit: never mind! I was just using the wrong HDMI port on the back of the PC. The one that was nowhere near the graphics card.

Came home from a re-enactment last night and found a whole series of 'Paypal' emails waiting from me. They started with 'welcome to Paypal', then continued to confirm a user's telephone number and bank account link, ending with a cancelletion confirmation. As each email was addressed to someone with the same first name as me but spelt differently, I'm inclined to think it was a case of someone getting their email address wrong.

Although my account uses a different email, I changed my Paypal password nonetheless.