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
All looks fine here, Stevie.
Looks like a caching problem at your end, but I've resynched the index with the game data anyway.
Chocolate covered cache. Ooh!
[rab] *sighs* Okay. I'll resign myself to never seeing the site in it's real state then.
I could try adding the appropriate http header to try and request a non-cache.
OK
See if that works.
Cache Deals Only
[rab] Seems to have fixed it for now. Clever, you.
It's almost a week since anyone said anything, so I'll break the silence. I think I've moved into the 'finishing off projects' phase at work before my last day in the office on 23 December. How strange this is...
Not at all unusual if you are a proper professional, pen, which I assume you are.
I'm definitely demob happy now. I'm finishing off other people's jobs and bringing mince pies into work. I don't even like mince pies that much.
It gets very quiet in here over the weekend. Does that imply that most of mc5s posts are posted when the poster ought to be working?
[Knobbly] I am shocked, shocked to hear such a suggestion!
[knobbers] How very dare you??!!
I'd really like to express my hurt at the suggestion but, since I'm at work at the moment, I can't.
[Knobbly] Now look what you've done! Everyone is too ashamed to play any more. There has hardly been a move in any game for two days.
Shhh! Some of us have work to do, keep the noise down.
BOO! .....apologises to neighbours.....
Chirp
We've had a lot of dealings with tradesmen recently. None of them too disastrous (although there is still one job outstanding in the bathroom, scheduled for 8am tomorrow). But when something really good happens, I get so pleased. Our roofer was scheduled to check a few things out tomorrow morning in advance of the down-tools period (I had visions of a waterfall coming though the extractor fan on Christmas day). He phoned me up just now saying "I'm in the area, shall I come now?"; leapt onto the roof, found everything that was wrong with it and told me it would be thirty-five quid to fix. It was done in about the time it took me to get to the cashpoint and back.

Oh, and when I told him that one of his rivals told us we needed a whole new roof, he looked at me like I was mad and said, "Nah... this one will last about 20 years".

[rab] Is your bathroom fixed now?
This is my last day at work...
Woken by the telephone at ten o'clock this morning. Augh! The four best hours of the day lost in slumber, never to return! Oh well, I doubt if anyone else is at work today.
[Raak] I'm trying to plan a night off on Jan 2nd. It looks like it might work -)
[Raak] I'm still at work... Can't afford any time off, as I need all my leave for the imminent arrival of a new addition to the family. So I'll take this opportunity to wish a Merry Crimbo to everyone at MC5!
Merries
Happy wotsit. I'm obliged by the cult of Jobs to tell you this comes via my Father's iPhone.
Happinesses
Phew, Christmas successfully accomplished in the traditional manner. The Windy Miller is, this moment, accompanying the AA man in their attempts to get the car started, in anticipation of driving back to the Netherlands tomorrow. I have a chicken curry simmering on the hob, and was until a few moments ago, studying a book of Heath Robinson illustrations. Next, we will play with the new kitchen-windowsill weather monitoring station and see if we can't find out how to turn the outside temperature up a bit.
(pen) Move here. You may "glow" a little.
twelve days of Christmas
Monday, 2 December - the third consecutive day with a visit from the AA man. Today, they are taking the car away to a garage to be fixed. The advantage is that I get to spend extra time with the Windy Miller (we went to the cinema to see Australia last night - our first-ever cinema date. Marvellous cinematography, probably a lot of it CGI, but sh*t writing - maudlin, predictable and worst of all, it had Nicole Kidman in it). The disadvantage is that he is getting impatient as he has work to do back at home.
this year
I'm packing, and moving. Moving and packing. Eek!
[pen] You have my deepest empathy.
[CdM] Ignore Pen, it may not be great, but her way of seeing Australia is a lot less bother than yours.
[pen] It's a new beginning - sounds exciting. I enjoyed my 2 years in the Netherlands and would probably have stayed longer except for my ex.
epjlqroab nfpaub
hajoqpr budr znbq zoaidfeum cbrglknov mtsjiaex bveowfzyt
My heavens he's found me - anyone available to give me a lift to Bletchley?
Very cryptic, Duj :o)
I wonder if epjlqroab nfpaub is the same person as zbchk bnud from back in November?
[Knobbly] Don't be ridiculous, the names are completely different from each other.
Moving day T-3
I have two chairs and one lamp left. Everything else has been sold or is in boxes. Even my bed will sell on Ebay today, and a mate with a garage will sell my car for me. Lummy.
So you weren't joking when you said you were leaving, pen. :o)
Holland
[penelope] Where will you be living? Will you be using only public transport once you move? I've never been to Holland but I understand they have invested heavily in public transportation.
dead game?
Has Film Club run it's course, or does someone else want to suggest a new subject for it?
Public???
[SM] Public transport? Heavens no. I will be riding a stately omafiets, a birthday present from my schatje molenaar.
omafiets
[penelope] Would that be a bicycle, horse, moped or skateboard?
It's a 'granny bike' - big wheels, sprung seat, upright handlebars, luggage rack and shopping panniers, enormously comfortable and particularly suited for flat places.
Fietspads
[pen] In my my experience the wind always blows in you face whichever way you are cycling in Holland, making the traditional bikes hard work.
[Softers] Yup. But mine's aluminium so pretty light. And the wind blows against you wherever you cycle in Lincolnshire too, so that's nothing new.
Velocity vectors
(Softers, pen) The only possible conclusions are that either there is no wind in Holland, Lindsey and Kesteven or that you never cycle at less than about 50 mph. Impressive.
Bike
[penelope] The sprung seat is particularly suited to flat places? :)

Does this bicycle come with one of those teardrop-shaped "Pifo" electric horns that were so popular the last time I rode a bike?
biiiii-cycle
[Sierra Mike] I like this. It works very, very well.
[flerdle] Nice one. I read the linked article, then took a mouthfull of hot coffee just as I got to the bit about "30 blasts from one pumping-up". I immediately pictured Inspector Clouseau, in disguise, madly pumping as he cycled toward a pedestrian crowd (the parrot-inflation bit in the "Salty Swedish Sea Captain From The Salty Sea" scene is one of my favourite Sellars moments).

I'm probably going to need a new workstation keyboard now.
I've been a fan of Matthew Somerville's alternative front-end to the National Rail website for quite some time, traintimes.org.uk, on the grounds that it works better than the real one. He's recently added a live train map, and I particularly like the description of how it works:
Live departure data is fetched from the National Rail website, much like my timetable site, and then it does a bit of maths and magic.
Blowin' in the wind
*blushing* I drove the windy miller to his usual Saturday leading the volunteers and various lads at the mill this morning (practising driving (a) on the wrong side of the road and (b) on the wrong side of the car) but we were a bit later than his normal arrival time. You can see the mill from some way off because of the flat landscape, and when we were about half a mile away, the WM could see the sails were already turning and exclaimed: 'There are flags on the sails!'. As we got closer, we realised what they were. There was a Dutch tricolour on one sail, and a Union flag on the opposite one (bought specially off t'internet). And there were muffins and stroopwafels to have with coffee there this morning. Then I came home, made soup, tidied up a bit, and watched Alec Guinness in Cromwell on BBC 2 which you can get here. Bloody marvellous :o).
Arrivals
[pen] Yay!
*fancies a stroopwafel - all of a sudden*
Welkom
[pen] Nice. Watch out for the speed cameras ;o). The cable channels carry only the BBC (for copyright reasons, apparently) but if you live near the coast you can get all the UK channels (analogue ones, only probably) on an aerial.
[penelope] Happiness to you.
Thanks all :o)
Back to the mill tonight - it's floodlit farming night, so farms and mills on the island of Hoekshe Waard (that's this one) will be floodlit for busloads of sightseers to tour.
This morning's trip to the small supermarket lead me past two market-stall type vans in the main street of this large village/small town. One was a cheesemonger, on whose stall I spotted a small solitary block of English cheddar, bright orange and tightly encased in plastic, amongst the big wheels of Dutch cheese and the small morsels of some of the better-known French cheeses. There are so many good British cheeses, but none of them are known here. Hardly any of them are known behind the counters of Tesco either, but that's a different problem. *goes to chivvy up the British Cheese Marketing people*.
Cheesy lines
[pen] Perhaps if you polish off the advent chocs we could have a game writing slogans for cheese!
mmmm, cheese...
gah
I was putting together my advent chocolate feast when my internet connection broke - actually the wind dropped on the windy miller's wifi network. So if anyone can polish off the chocolates and start on the cheese, they'd be welcome to do it.
Pilgrimage
BTW, there will be a Pilgrimage in London on Feb 14th, if anyone's interested.
[penelope] eat local food - the world will thank you for it much later.
[Phil] I do, mostly - the potatoes here are particularly good, they actually taste of potato. But if they're going to import some cheese from the UK, you'd think they'd cart the good stuff about, not the orange plastic-wrapped-in-plastic stuff, wouldn't you? They seem to manage to bring in some decent French cheese.
Cheese
[Pen] Actually, the Dutch tend to like their plasticky orange cheeses - Edam and Gouda being cases in point - but some of the smoky varieties are very nice, and you should be able to get tastier Boerenkaas and goat cheeses if you look hard enough. I don't know where your windmill is but I assume there isn't an English shop round the corner. Are there no local farmers who make their own? Have you tried whingeing to Windy? On an unrelated note, are you coming to Othello? I can put you up...
Good try
[IS,P!] I'm almost ashamed to admit it, and please don't take it personally, but theatre ain't my bag. I struggle to appreciate drama and hardly watch films - Jan and I went to the cinema for the first time together in December, two years after we met. Sooo I will leave an Othello seat for someone who will appreciate it more.Perhaps we should have a Brussels Sprouting Pilg at some point though.
*has just google-mapped peneloopij's woonplaats*
Pilgrimage
[SM] Is that for people who don't have anything else to do on Valentines Day?
Slogans for cheese?
And now there's a new game slot, shall we start a Cheesy slogans game?
[Kim] What else might one have to do on Valentine's Day?
Cheese
[pen] I remember being aghast in a supermarket in Perigord (admittedly in a fairly ex-pat-filled town), and seeing Red Leicester amongst the French cheeses. Especially galling was the £11 per kg price tag!
a nice bit of...
[Phil] That's marketing for you! I'd like some jong Lincolnshire Poacher, voor mij.
[Phil] French Cheese. Galling. I get that.
I like all cheeses, but some better than others, obviously.
[Softers] Have left a question for you in AVMA - I assumed you would be looking in there. Perhaps a reply in here might be best, if that's OK with you. [ Then all will be revealed :-)]
[Soft] Ah - I've just seen it. Thanks. The reason I asked - have to go to St Helier to do some work in early Feb and thought it might be nice to connect. But as you're not there ....
:-(
3rd time lucky
Potty mouth? You ARE in Jersey, then?
St Helier
[Chalks] Yes, I am here, well I work in St Helier and live just outside. When you over?
[Softers] Any chance of you emailing? k/e/davenport/@/// gmail.com [sans hyphens - natch] :)
Well?
We're all dying to know - did Softers email Chalky? Will the Jerseypilg go ahead? Find out in next week's episode of... Chat
*chuckles*
[peneloopij] He did. It may.
In the meantime...
Sunny and very cold today in Zuid Holland. We may even yet go for a bike ride. I have no idea what my windy miller is doing downstairs while I'm upstairs trying to write something, but it sounds like he's reorganisisng something and I'm afraid to go and look.
Windy Miller
[Pen] Please tell me he has a blue coat, a red necktie and a brown upturned-flowerpot hat...
As You Like It
[IS,P!] why certainly. He has a blue coat, red neckerchief and a brown upturned-flowerpot hat. The coat and neckerchief are in the laundry basket waiting to be ironed, but he keeps the hat in the car.
You don't press his hat?
Good grief, woman, what are you thinking about? Everyone from where I came from has a flat hat (they, the wearers, are said to also have whippets and cobblestones and ghosts, but that's just not true). Even I have one! (pictures available at £150 each, on request - and after a full security cheque (price to be negotiated)).
Highly Rural
It seems to me that Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cutherbert, Dibble and Grubb will be getting jealous of all this attention.
Clarification required
[Dujon] You have one what? Ghost? Cobblestone? Whippet?
And anyway we'll have the RSPCA round to you for ironing your whippets.
You don't need to iron a flat hat - the incessant beating of the rain on it will do that for you.
Just so you know, reading this conversation is like looking at a Dali painting to me. Every time I think I'm getting the drift of it, one of the pieces flops over and makes a shape like an elephant (or a swan).
hatters
[Duj] it's not a flat hat - we're talking about the traditional attire of windy miller, the hat is upturned-flower-pot shaped. The landscape here in South Holland is flat. I can see how you got confused.
[pen] Wait. You are ironing the landscape?
[CdM] A man knocked at my door and asked if I wanted my garden landscaped. I don't think my neighbours would appreciate me turning my portrait garden sideways.
[Phil] proper lol and in the office too.
Well, well, well
I suppose that the next you lot will tell me is you don't launder your money. Honestly! What are Great Britain and the Nederlands coming to? Whatever, I bet it's a bit warmer here (excluding the Mint investigations) than it is at your picturesque location. Na, Na, Na Na Ner.       ;-)
Sweat, y'bugger
(Duj) You're welcome to 39°C with high humidity. 39°F would do me OK at the moment. There was a foot of snow here on Monday morning and still about half that even now.
Life threatening thingiwhatsits
Rosie, that is not funny. ;-) So it was you who peeked at my weather site from an area somewhere near London. You can keep your snow as I'm just hoping my air conditioning unit keeps running. Today (Saturday) should be fine - sort of - but tomorrow I fear. 47ºC is most definitely not going to be fun.
(Dujon) It would seem to be a good day to hang out the washing around here. I doubt if you'll get a true 47°C though Melbourne might. The cool change could be quite something. I'll keep an eye on it.
By contrast
(Duj) To cool off try this rather agreeable city.
Newsflash
I rudely interrupt to bring you the essential news that at 23.09 today I will be exactly* 1/3rd century old. Oh, and it's snowing.

* Subject to how one chooses to define of 'exact'

Optimist
As a special not-birthday treat, my wife took me to the optometrists. He (the optometrist, not my wife) said my prescription had changed "a little bit", but when I compared the two sets of numbers I could detect no correlation between them whatsoever.
[Rab] Were you wearing glasses at the time?
Ageism
(rab) Date of birth 9 Oct 1975 at 5 a.m. then? I have taken a century as 36524.25 days. On 18 July this year at 6 pm I shall be two-thirds of a century old. On 23 July last year I was twice as old as you. I do like faffing about with a calculator.
Rosie old chap, too much time on your hands? Very good though!
Tempus ambulat
(Bigsmith) I see mathematics (or arithmetic, which this is) as a recreation. Time to spare? Work out my date of birth. (Don't forget the leap years, all n of them.)
[Rosie] We seem to disagree by a day and an hour, even though I used the same length of a century as you... bother.
[Rosie] You're not the only one... a good friend of mine (and a Cambridge Maths graduate) recently delighted to inform me I was 7884 days old. Not long 'til the big 8000!
(rab) 10th October then? My mistake. But I don't see how I can be an hour out because 36524.25/3=12174.75 exactly. So we have to subtract 0.75 day (18 hr) from the time you gave initially, making it 5.09 a.m. I called it 5 a.m. because we're not shot from guns exactly. My double-your-age date is wrong, too. It should be 31 Aug 08 at 6 pm, if you were born at 6 a.m. 10/10/75.
Rosie's date of birth
17 November 1942 (n = 17).
[Rosie] Did you take daylight saving time into account?
uohrixg yzrqmefdx
bvkj kqna hojxkmtd uzrltjvx ityksr owucr nxdawbgvc
(rab) No. I will have no truck with such arbitrary adjustments in my sophisticated numerical analyses :-). You are right, of course, provided you were born in Britain, or possibly Spain or some West African countries.
(Bigsmith) And so are you. (6 pm, they tell me).
Accuracy
[uohrixg yzrqmefdx] That, good sir, was jolly close, as I believe even Rosie would acknowledge. I do think though that you have missed by a bit. Rosie does not live 'south of the border' and nor does he live so far west of the meridian.
I would give you 'bvyk anq.s and ityksr+polar co-ordinates' when related to the orbit of Triton as seen from Earth.
[Rosie] 6 pm aye? Then by applying the Euclidian theory of longitudinal drift to a trans-Mercator projection I determine that that would have been in Crowborough, Sussex.
(Bigsmith) Correct yet again. Amazing. Would have been Purley (nudge, nudge) but for the war. The OS Grid is a Transverse Mercator projection BTW. Very gudermannian. (Dujon) 0° 03' 36.8" W. Can't be too accurate; don't want to go in the wrong house.
[Rosie] Bugger, I thought I'd made it up! I remember we have discussed things map-wise before. I do enjoy a good OS map so it must have been subconcious. WildpantsMC may be long gone but the player profiles page is still on-line and easy to search.

That's how I know about your London Welsh parents!
Apologies for my recent absence
I can proudly announce the arrival on planet Earth of Maxwell Theodore Stanley Kirby!
MTSK
Hullo Max.
Maxwell - he'll be a demon at physics. Congratulations. Hope all are well.
(Bigsmith) I thought that's where you must have got it. Still up, is it? I haven't looked for years.
as per MCiOS
Welcome Max!!
Ex Libri Bardus
Are we done? Does anyone have a good idea with which to replace it?
[SM] Bear in mind there's been an open game slot beneath it for quite some time now. Ideas and energy seem somewhat lacking in the Morniverse lately.
Bent Saws
Don't count your chickens before the fat lady sings.
Unused Games
[Tuj] I was under the impression that there was some sort of inner council that came up with games and were the only ones able to make them. I should add that I don't have any good game ideas with which to replace Ex Libri Bardus, I was just thinking that it was looking a bit threadbare, and that my last few moves in it missed the point so widely that the sooner they were hidden in the archive the better. I don't know what I was thinking when I made them (he said in his best "Kryten" voice).
Bent Saws
[Software] That sounds like something Marlon from The Perishers would say. I like it.
I've done the honours for Ex Libri.
Max
Cheers for the good wishes, folks - pictures are up on my Facebook!
Mad Max
[Uncle Korky] Congratulations and felicitations to all. I haven't gone a-facebooking as a picture does not always tell a thousand words. The question, therefore, is, "is he smart?"
Bent Saws
Where there's muck, there's hope. Let's have a go. [UK] Congratulations to you on the arrival of Maxwell. A silver hammer is in the post.
Bent Saws
A jolly good idea and I like the game name too. Let lightning strike while the iron's hot.
Bent Saws
Raak, I loved your "bank" saw. It's (not) funny because it's true.
Sponsored silence
OK, it's been silent for a week... someone say something!
oblig.
something
Not that I'm proposing any changes, but I wonder if games would become more or less active if they weren't stamped with the date and time of the last move. Less active is my guess.
Max
[Dujon] Can't vouch for smart, yet, but I'd like to think there's potential! [Kim] Ta muchly!
ONe week later
Bright and cold here (can also be said for me as well as the weather) and today I am going to take to the road. Enough of nerves, I've just got to drive. But after 25 years of driving on the other side of the road, and the other side of the car, it's all a bit weird.
Left Hooker
Hi pen, hold your breath and prepare for a few rapped knuckles on you left hand! You'll get used to it quicker than you think. Just watch out for those nasty entry/exit points that the Clogs like so much, you find yourself merging with traffic entering the motorway as you are trying to leave. Very unnerving the first time.
The bit that un-nerves me is the crossroads with no marked priority here in the village - like a US 4-way stop. I struggle to use those to turn left across oncoming traffic and end up lurching about.
Technical writing test
Changing the subject just a little, I've got a job interview tomorrow for a tech writer role. And they've given me a little test document to polish. It contains a clever twist on bad documentation technique I've not seen before: 'Note how Figure 1 does not show the following....'

I just love that. Specially creating a diagram that doesn't show the thing you want to highlight. Hats off to 'em. I'm just hoping this document was intentionally altered to make a harder test. But in these cases there's always the risk that a legitimate document really was genuinely that badly-written. Still, if so, at least I'll have plenty of rewriting work to do.

This page was NOT intentionally left blank, comes to mind :o).
This Page Intentionally Blank
[Software] TPILB has a very good pedigree. It was used extensively in the 1970s when replacement pages for technical manuals had only half the content of the original, resulting in one blank side right where everyone had hitherto been used to finding text. It was a way of avoiding the (then) expensive customer service calls about non-existent missing text that went nowhere. It also meant that the original contents page would still work, mostly, as the page numbering wasn't screwed up by the change. The only alternative would be to reprint the entire chapter from the change onward which would likely prove to be prohibitively expensive. These days, one often sees such material reproduced either electronically, which makes no sense, or on single-sided copies of the original material, which makes sense but is still odd when you come across it.
Tech Speak
[SM] I know, I'm an engineer and at one point in my distant past was responsible for the printing and distribution of technical manual updates (on a subcontract). It still bemuses the uninitiated though.
arrow_circle_down
Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord