arrow_circle_left arrow_circle_up arrow_circle_right
The Banter Page
help
If you're wanting to get something off your chest, make general comments about the server, or post lonely hearts ads, then this is the place for you.
arrow_circle_up
[Ella] Congrats! And welcome back! I haven't noticed anything untoward yet.
[Penelope] Thank you! And on the horrendous errors front; there's still time :)
[Ella] What pen said!
Ella! How nice to have you back with us :-)
[and Ella] Please come and join my Animal Vegetable Mineral Abstracty thingy - it seems to be taking a bit of time....
*waves from Paris*
[Ella] Nice to see you again.
Good news: just received my first official rejection letter from a major U.S. periodical. I feel like a real writer now. =)
[J] congratulations!
Yawn. Another quiet night.
[nights]

WAKE UP!

shhhhhhhhhhhh!
I am surprised by the intensity of my loathing of Gillian McKeith tonight on telly. She is the most tasteless, boorish and annoying silly moo.
Then why did you persist?
I am quite sure that I have missed some entertaining programmes over the years but, these days, I do tend to pick and choose what I watch (as opposed to sitting in front of the damned thing 'flicking around').
Gillian 'not a real doctor' McKeith
[pen] it was my turn to buy the Sunday newspaper for our usual afternoon crossword get-together in the pub - we generally do the Mail on Sunday general knowledge one because it's quite challenging and good for sharing. Anyway - on the front page was THAT woman who had already stated that "every woman hates their bum" - [er, actually, NO - not true - I quite like mine]. So she's now promoting the Great British Bum Diet. Needless to say I refused to buy the paper and we had to do the Times crossword instead.
Love your bum
(Chalky, pen) Ignore it; it's actually an elbow diet.
un-elbow-like bum
I prefer the advice from here: The Health Institute for Nutrition
[Chalky] Do I detect the presence of a "Millenium Project" reader?
Ouch, me eardrums. Not even been to a gig.
Millenium Project & Eardrums
[Sierra Mike] You mean her?
[nights] Wassup chuck?
[Chalky] No, you. The author of the MP website used the "Not a Real Doctor" middle name for quacks too. The congruence was striking.
[Sierra Mike] Aaaah. Now I see :-)
Tom & Jerry
Having been accosted by a mouse whilst wiping down the stove on Saturday night - silly thing was hiding behind the recycling and would have gone unnoticed had it not decided to dive for the cover of its bolt hole whilst I was still in the kitchen - we set a trap baited with a peanut butter/Waitrose Biscuit for Cheese canapé. Amazingly the stupid thing didn't notice the suspicious enclosure and #1 has been dispatched. Presumably there will be more. In the fullness of time we still intend to exercise the nuclear option (Codename: Tiddles) but are still building up the necessary kit and looking for someone who'll supply us the goods.
little blighters
[rab] Bait. That's the only way to do it. I had an infestation in my flat (which was a conversion of 'the poor house' - ie the workhouse into six flats) and I caught 11 or 12 in traps, then got fed up of the traps going off while I was relaxing and watching telly. So I called in the council who put down bait everywhere in the building and we got rid of the whole lot. If you have them, the other flats will have them too - am I right in thinking you have a flat in a fairly old building?
Bait
Um, if they take the bait and then die somewhere inaccessible you'll have to put up with the smell while they decay. If you can't cover everywhere they might be, and/or can't access the places where the blighters might go to die, I'd stick with putting traps in the areas you can access and view it as a long-term war of attrition until Project Tiddles comes online.

Best approach depends on your house design. How well-ventilated it is and such. Bait worked badly for us (at my orkplace) because the mice died in inaccessible places and smelt. Plainly pen didn't get that problem, but we did.

Neither poison nor traps will ever get them all, of course; making sure they can't get to any of your food is the most reliable way to make them lose interest.

Squeak
Well, just about everyone in Edinburgh has mice. The majority of the buildings are 3 or 4 storey tenement flats constructed around 1900. Chances are the blighters moved in during building and have been endemic ever since. I'm also sure they can get between buildings if they try hard enough so if you were going for the total obliteration approach, as pen suggests, it might not be enough to restrict it to just one block.

I work on the principle that since they have access to a range of habitats we need to make ours as inhospitable as possible. Unfortunately, the age of the joinery is such that there's gaps and holes everywhere so getting these all mouse-proofed would probably cost more than moving to somewhere that's in a better state from this point of view. On the plus side, the number of poos I've found has been pretty small, which is suggestive we're not getting more than a few visitors. But if we catch more than four or five it'll probably be time to have a chat to the council to see if they have any wholesale slaughter solutions.

Bluebottle season
I dealt with my infestation during spring. The smell lasted about a week, after which I got two hatches of bluebottles every day for a week or so. I used elementary biology to interpret what had happened to the cadavers.
Mice
I got infested once (well, my garage then basement then house did). I tried humane traps to no avail (They came back faster than I could transport them to another place). I tried spring traps to no avail (they proved expert at getting the bait without suffering a crushed skull). Then I reluctantly put down glue traps (which require one to figure out a humane way of ending it for the trrapped animal). When I caught and euthanised my eleventh or twelfth mouse I gave up and called in the pros, who put down some sort of poison with the singular property of making the doomed mouse very thirsty. I was advised to check the bath before showering each morning. That did the trick eventually. I imagine they died in the crawl spaces, but I didn't notice any smell. Perhaps the corpses mummified and now await discovery (whereupon they will doubtless put a curse on their discoverer). I don't think I'd waste time with traps if it happened again.
[SM] That sounds very similar to the situation at my old flat; I tried traps and poisons, none of which worked. But then Dave came round and dispensed the hard stuff, and never a squeak after. But that was a modern flat, and filling the holes with expanding foam was straightforward. After our first visitation we called Dave in straight away, and it took him three attempts to get rid of the first batch; and expressed doubts that given the way the plumbing had been done in the kitchen that he could offer anything like a permanent solution.
SM being Sierra Mike, rather than Simons Mith, in that instance.
I caught one of the little dears in a humane trap some weeks back, also using peanut butter. He died in it anyway, for reasons that aren't clear to me. He was only trapped overnight, perhaps six-eight hours, so it presumably wasn't hunger or thirst. A broken spirit, perhaps?
[Dan] peanut allergy?
Mice
I've dealt with mice in two properties - each time by setting half a dozen traps at a time, baited with cheese. On each occasion they'd given up visiting within a week, and a dozen or so deaths. Perhaps the smell of mouse death lingers in the air?
One bit of information I was given at the time was useful - a mouse can get through a hole the width of a pencil.
Of Mice and McKeith
Clearly the solution is to stop jabbing those pencils into the walls. Or at least stop pulling them out afterwards. A pencil blimey. I bet those mice don't hate their bums... [Chalky] Maybe she meant that every woman hates her bum? I say why stop there, obnoxious pseudoscientist that she is...
[Phil] I couldn't resist it. Google reveals 65,500 Results for 'Can a mouse squeeze through a hole the width of a pencil?'. (0.44 seconds) Amazing stuff.
[Chalky] It's worse than that!
Clicky
[Dan] Murderer! You done for that animal with your inhumane "cholesterol trap". :)
Well, #2 has yet to be caught. I can't believe for one minute there was only ever one of them, so either this one's cleverer or less intrepid. Let's keep on the lookout for those poos.
[Raak] eeek! For a real treat why not try our Speciality Cappuccino flavoured with rodentessence and topped with bright pink froth. Chocolate sprinkles [mouse droppings] optional
[Chalky] I only just spotted your reply to my eardrums complaint and can't for the life of me remember what the problem was.

Hello, Middle Age.
[nights] Never mind. Middle Age comes to us all - but I must admit - it's really bloody annoying most of the time.
As some wise person said, growing old sucks, but it is better than the alternative.
Both good points. However I feel especially aggrieved about what this all means for me, as I'm not yet 25.
*ducks flying objects which always seem to materialise every time nights' age is mentioned*
I was interviewed by Jim Naughtie on the Today programme this morning. It was absolutely terrifying. It was at 6.52 in the morning, when all sensible people would have been asleep. I think I was too.
Oh, and #2 has crawled out of the woodwork. A small thing, very actively tried to escape the (humane) trap.
[rab] I just checked it out on Listen Again. The item on New Zealand accents? So, how does a physicist get involved with that? Do I sense the words "spin glass" in the background?
RabRadio
ooh, I must have a listen. All I do is set up these interview thingies... just trying to track down a rogue woodlander right now for one of the regional BBC stations who wants to talk to 'someone'. And firing off feature ideas to BBC programmes...
Early starts
I've often marvelled at the coherency of interviewees on the Today programme, or (particular) Five Live's Wake up to Money, which is at 5.30am. Rather them than me...
[Raak] Yes. That's the one. Involvement via knowing a suitably numerate (or semi-numerate) linguist. No spin glasses as such, though voter models are relevant.
Rising at the crack of Dawn
I get up at 6 on the days I have to be teaching at 8. And those days are rubbish, except when I can watch the sunrise from the tram. That's rather nice. On the other hand, that department is on holiday from next week, so I get a week of lie ins until the following week, which is my department's holiday. Wheee!
Huzzah for our beloved leader!
[rab] as a matter of (professional) interest, how do you alert the media to an interesting academic study? Was it published somewhere?
[pen] Traditionally, you would have a big-bang type discovery published in Nature or something like that, and their press team would do the business.

This case is a bit of an oddity - the work's been going on for years and has been presented in various forms at conferences, referred to in somewhat specialist publications and so on. Our press office got wind of it, I explained the situation, and it was generally felt that cos we were submitting a paper (which could take a couple of years to complete the review/publication process) and presenting it at the same time at the main linguistics conference in the US, it was reasonable to put out a press release. I was expecting it to go unnoticed, but was picked up by Radio New Zealand, the New Zealand Herald (front page), the Telegraph, the Glasgow Herald (page 5, above the fold), BBC Radio Scotland, Today, BBC Radio Wales and the World Service. I'm shattered, and generally want now to crawl under a stone.

[rab] Noooo! You were great. I guess it must be difficult to explain mathematical modelling to laymen, and for a presenter to pick up the gist of a study involving lots of people over several years and squeeze the right questions into a five-minute interview. I guess you're dealing with a lot of variables, but you summed it up pretty well. If I do my job properly, I get to put a lot of Woodland Trust people on the radio, and usually guide the presenter into asking the right questions: "You might like to ask why XXX happens, and what it means in the long term" etc. I didn't realise universities had press offices and the fact that it got picked up by so many publications means yours wrote a good press release and sent it out to the right media, with a view to possibly attracting the interest of potential funders...
[pen] The press officer I spoke to - for about an hour - is an ex-journalist, so he distilled it into a newsy-sounding story. (The version on the BBC website is basically the release verbatim). The presenters' briefs/scripts seemed to be cobbled together through informal chats with researchers/producers a few hours ahead of broadcast. 'Twould have been nice to have seen a copy myself beforehand, but I guess you can't have everything.
You're right about funding though. Probably the most useful thing about all this is that I can stick it all in the case for support to demonstrate interest beyond stuffy academia.
yay rab!
[rab] Cool interview and work - well done, and well explained. New Zealand is nice and small, making it a lot easier to study than its behemoth of a neighbour, even though exactly the same process happened in Australia (albeit some half a century earlier) and it's been developing in interesting ways ever since. I'd be interested in the publications to date, if you've got a list somewhere. I have an interesting documentary about the australian accent, too, if you're interested.
[flerdle] So that Google doesn't link my uni page to this one, perhaps I should suggest you type my name into the venerable search engine, click the first link (at least, the first link in our part of the world), and towards the bottom of the page you can find a link to the relevant preprint. I heartily recommend the books by Gordon and Trudgill if you really want to get into the details of the empirical data, as opposed to our modelling.
Trudgill rings a very faint bell. But well done you - I enjoyed the interview.
[nights] He is one of the more notable names in dialect research, especially in the UK; it would be hard not to have heard of him at some stage if you've looked into this field much.
[rab] Thanks very much.
Ah yes. I did a study of dialect changes amongst adolescents for A Level English Language. It was good fun. Got an A and everything.
Ah, A-level English Language. How long ago it seems now ;)
A level English Language didn't exist when I were a lad. I had to make do with English Literature, and I failed that. So now I don't read much. But I do write for a living. :oD
Pass the flat cap
English Language "A" levels? Comes from having so many furriners in t'country. When I were a lad, everyone just knew 'ow t'speak proper English wiyout paper t'prove it.
[SM] Ah, but at the time it was the perfect complement to A Levels in French and German, enabling me to have a thorough understanding of my own language before I grapple with others. Don't quite know where I went wrong...
(nights) You need Latin. Only with that can one get to grips with the meaning of such terms as fellatio and cunnlingus and begin to enjoy life to the full. You know it makes sense!
Mea culpa
Spot the typo.
Rubble and squeak
Was woken at 1am by the most almighty scratching and clattering noise from behind the skirting board in the bedroom. I had to decamp to the spare room to get away from it. Dave, our friendly neighbourhood pest controller (who will probably be able to retire on our flat), thinks he's worked out what's going on. Next door is having its bathroom renovated, which has probably disturbed a habitat, so they've decided to move in to ours. What we're hearing is probably the removals. The bait has been lain!

Apparently we did a good job of flushing out the ones in the kitchen with our trap - three in the end, and none for nearly a week. Removing the panel under the units, Dave remarked "Missed one" and picked up a cardboard mouse by its tail. At least the source of the slightly musty smell has now been explained.

[rab] Have you been making up all these rodent stories these past weeks, just as an extended set-up for the title of that last post?
Our entire building smells of roasting meat. Great, now I'm hungry.
[CdM] I wish. We plucked up courage to return to our bedroom last night, and it seemed to be a clatter-free experience. Looks like Dave was bang on the money.

It was quite odd - I said: "my wife saw running feet behind the skirting board there", pointing to a wall in the bedroom. Dave immediately went into the bathroom and fumbled around the pipework. I'm sure this guy must have been a mouse in a previous existence...

Finbar Saunders
[rab] Why don't you just ask this "Dave" why, when you mention mice behind your skirting board, his first instinct is to fondle your pipe.
robbin29605
1234567__765432129605
pope findling
[Sierra Mike] Your last three words may have triggered the imagination of the following poster :-0
It's a bit of a shame our main influx of new players these days only play one move and then vanish into the ether again. I mean, where's the stamina?
One hit wonders
Orange MC has had a fair flurry of spamtastic attacks recently too, for those of you who are mornogamous.
Followers
[Tuj] It appears that Chalky is on to you, old chap.
[Duj] I'm trying to figure out what you mean, and I just can't. Have I missed something?
[Tuj] Duj will explain ;-)
[Duj] You know me too well ;-)
In other news - it's my birthday today. All being well - hope to have landed safely in Dublin by 9.20 am. Hope the stalled AVMA has been solved by the time I return later in the week.
[Duj/Chalky] *remains confused*!
[just Chalky] I'm pleased to be the first here to wish you a very happy birthday, and enjoy the Emerald Isle =) I may have to take up the AVMA gauntlet for you, but I'm not that good at it...
Stalking
[Tuj] No harm meant, sir. It is merely my interpretation of Chalky's "the following poster".
Happy birthday, Chalks, a witch with prescience though you be. ;-) I am advised that Dublin is a fair city and worth a visit whether a birthday treat or not. I hope that you find it so.
Ah, following not preceding, I see
[Duj] Gosh, I'm easily confused, aren't I!
*waves from Dublin*
Chalky] Happy birthday - have a glass of the black stuff for me!
Parslow puts York on road to Wembley
- Times headline from the football section today. Will there one day be a Wembley MC server then?
Shhhh! We're applying for Lottery funding and everything
Glad I was awake at the time....
[penelope] Next time your miller gets in at 00:58am, ask him not to drop his super-sturdy clogs quite so heavily :-)
[Phil] Right ;-)
Actually, the epicentre was under a village much closer to my mother's house, in Ludford on the Lincolnshire Wolds. It woke me up, though - everything on the dressing table rattled, and I thought someone was at the foot of the bed, shaking it. I think I might have dreamed it was the Dutch miller trying to remove his clogs...
Upgrade
Just upgraded the server... this site at least still seems to work.
*looks around*
[rab] Oooh, nice :o)
[pen] I was sitting at my computer at the time, conversing with an Australian when it happened - it was rather startling with the doors and windows banging and rattling. In fact, it was hard to tell when it stopped...i couldn't tell if it was me or the earth shaking :-)
Hello there - I'm going to do a little upgrade, so I'll turn posting off for a short while. Hopefully not longer than 10-15 minutes.
Done
Seems to have worked.

p> It doesn\'t mean you can do anything you couldn\'t do before, incidentally...

Oh bollocks.
I'm sorry I'll read that again
Seems to have worked.

It doesn't mean you can do anything you couldn't do before, incidentally...

But if you do notice any oddities be sure to let me know.
Hidden textI've upgraded php4 to php5 and have found one place where the two seem to behave differently so far.
The whole of the internet and computerkind is against me today. It has just taken me four hours to make a media outlets search. The process should take about 20 minutes. Hmmph.
Oddity
[rab] On posting to the Limericks game, the move was posted ok, but this appeared at the top of the page:
array(3) { [0]=> string(3) "" [1]=> string(39) "Wore clogs that war werkelijk te groote" [2]=> string(4) "" } Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/rab.org.uk/server/STEAM/HtmlRewrite.php:376) in /var/www/rab.org.uk/server/Rou.php on line 122
And something similar again on posting this.
Just done the same to me in Limericks. Perhaps it likes not the Dutch?
And here, so not the Dutch.
[Raak] Oh dear...
Wherps
Left in the debugging information...
A pox on Barclays and its unco-operative PinSentry system.
[pen] Hmm yes, it can be frustrating that. Mostly works fine for me, but I don't really want to carry that gizmo between work and home ever day in case I need to do some banking. Still, work is forcing me to ditch Barclays so I won't have to deal with it soon.
Is this some kind of card-reader thing? RBS introduced one of those and it's one of the reasons why I'm switching to the Halifux. (That and I get to spend my wife's shoe fund on beer).
Card-reader thing?
Natwest sent me one of these sometime last year. I am an active on-line banking user, but have never needed to use the thing once. Don't even remember where I put it.
php and your trade secrets
[rab] You drive this site with php? Do you use a framework of any kind or have you done the whole thing from scratch? I'm also impressed with the clever "hide" widget-thing. Presumably done with javascipt? The reformatting on display and hide is very clean on my browser. It must have taken some work to prevent it to screwing up the markup when it opens up. Do you pull it off with clever CSS trickery? Sorry to sound like a kid after consuming a large coke and 99. This stuff is like sweets to me sometimes.
Cardies
[rab] yes - it's a security measure that ensure that you are the right person to access the account as you need the card, its PIN, the gizmo, and the log-in details to get in to the account or set up a new payment. Not a bad idea all in all, but a bit of a pain sometimes.
[SM] As it said at one time on the front page, this site is powered by STEAM which is a few php scripts I threw together over a few wet Sunday afternoons to handle the stuff. It's all basically straightforward stuff, apart from the hide widget which is done by Javascript. The hardest part of that was to get it looking sensible for people who don't have Javascript enabled. Not much CSS trickery - although even then the old version of IE made a pig's ear of it.

[GIII] Whereas I think it's completely over the top. They already ask me for some user name that I can't remember, random characters from a password and a secret code. The card-reading gizmo has removed the one thing that made online banking useful - the fact you could access it anytime, anywhere. (Very handy when you're travelling).

[rab] Barclays at least has removed the requirement to remember passwords and secret codes. I'm inclined to agree with you however on the travelling point.
[GIII] Ah ok - RBS ask you to scan your card in addition to all the other stuff when you want to do something like, oh, pay some money into an account you hold elsewhere. The not-having-to-remember-your-password thing seems pretty sensible; in fact, the worst thing about one of my online accounts is that the password is easy for me to remember (since I chose it) but the username is some 8-digit number I'll never be able to commit to memory.
Meow
Project tiddles has been installed. The instructions said that she would hide behind a sofa, not want to talk to us nor touch her food. She's generally wanting to be where we are and is wolfing down her food. Katharine's just introducing her to the sofa... let's see how it goes.
Ah no, false alarm - just the coat cupboard. It was a bit of a harrowing trip bring her home. We were going to get a taxi, but with the Scotland-England rugby in Murrayfield all taxis were booked up for three hours! So she had to endure the number 16 bus. She did very well...
[rab] Don't expect to have exclusive use of the sofa now.
Name that cat!
Right - the name that came with our cat is, I'm ashamed to say, Cuddles. We're trying to think of something more appropriate but whilst we can think of lots of great names for a male (Armitage, Jeremy, Theodore, Pooch) we're a bit stuck for a girl. Pictures here.
U2
Don't be too embarrassed, rab, we too have had a recent arrival; it's allocated name was 'Bananas'. When the lass at the vet's advised of such I blinked and said something along the lines of "Ey? Do you run through the dictionary, one letter at a time, to pick out names for these poor homeless creatures?" She laughed and said, "Yes, that's exactly what we do". An image of 'ours' will be found here.
As far as naming goes, it's hard. Given the sly eyes of your new master, the fact that she is indeed a she and looks like she'd eat anything put before her on a platter, might I suggest Salome.
Lousy link, sorry
Try here.
Today we have naming of cats
[rab] Pandora - the all-gifted
cat-naming
With those eyes, and those teeth, I'd go for Bowie.
Marilyn. Manson or Monroe, you chose.
choose...
She's quite cute and cuddly really! Anyway, we got through the first night ok - she better than me. I need to learn to delegate the duty of listening out for strange sounds in the middle of the night to her, since she's much better at it than I am. She seems to be bonding better with Katharine than me, and I think both of us together is a bit much for her at the moment.

As far as names go, we've toyed with Beatrice and Felicity but are still open to suggestions.

Oh, and she did a big poo in the litter tray overnight, so I would say she's starting to feel at home...
(rab) A friend has two female cats called Ermintrude and Florence, or "the E-cat" and the "F-cat" respectively. My cousin had a cat called Katya. What about Llewela? Mine have always been "Puss" or "Pussy-cat" and I suspect the next one will be, too.
Janet's a good name for a cat.
South Wiltshire Weather
I been out. Driving. There be plenty of water and debris on roads after 'first wave' of storms. Hatches are now battened down in preparation for 'second wave' later this mornin'.
Weather?
Yeah, it's a little breezy, but the sun is shining - good old boring Leicester :-)
The clouds in those satellite images (BBC) are an interesting curled shape. I am not surprised that it is a little blowy.

It was 37°C here today at 3:30pm, then down to 23 two hours later. This seems to be a regular pattern, and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Step 1: stay indoors...

(flerdle) Is that a sea breeze cooling it off a bit? Bit of a breeze here, too, 35 mph at least. Heavy rain all morning, a peculiarly featureless and leaden sky, thunder and lightning (not in that order) at ten to two and a bit of small hail. Temperature 6°C. Pressure 962 and still going down slowly.
[Rosie] No, cold front coming through. They sail along the southern Indian Ocean from west to east and flick us with their tails. Animation here
Do any musicians here know any whiz ManuScript programmers (the language for writing plugins for Sibelius (the music notation publishing software))? A friend of a relation is working on a project that is getting rather large for one person to manage and is looking for extra grey cells to draw on. Knowledge of Braille music notation an advantage! I'm not sure how commercial or otherwise it's likely to be.
24 hours later...
I guess not, then.
arrow_circle_down
Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord