Sorry, but I had to borrow that line from Fozzie Bear , because it was indeed beautiful: The Royal Scottish National Orchestra did their own flashmob...
Btw, I doubt that in this case the police will go after them...
I would really like to put the person responsible for the electrical wiring at the place I am living now into a room with 200 angry Narn. Or if that is not possible, he should for the rest of his life live in a house where all sockets are tied to just one fuse/breaker of 10A...
I replaced a socket today, because I noticed it became rather hot when I was baking bread. Searching for the correct breaker to not electrify myself in the process I found that almost all sockets here are tied to one single 20A breaker! The only exemption I noticed was a socket in the kitchen, probably meant for devices with higher power consumption. Unfortunately I can not plug oven or microwave in, because around that socket there is no space to put anything bigger than a plate. Even the fridge is currently still running from the same net. I really don't understand such a person's mind...
My oven alone consumes 1200W when upper and lower heat are both on. Microwave is 800W. I don't know how much my fridge consumes, but somehow I doubt it is only 200W - and since we use 110V here in Taiwan, that's about it. My computer equipment is on the same net, the iron (1000W again) too... Also all lighting is on one (but different) breaker, but that is somehow acceptable.
I suppose at least the washing machine will have its own line/breaker. But again my confidence in local planning skills has received an enormous boost...
A bike can not offer much protection to its rider, that's why there is protective clothing. If people decide not to wear any, even a small accident can hurt pretty much. The accident below happened to professionals who wore adequate clothing. The bikes seem to have survived it, and probably the only thing that got hurt was the riders' pride. The way this accident happened however makes it absolutely hilarious. As a commenter suggested, someone should dub this clip with the Yakety Sax .
There is a saying that engineering is "taking what you have to make what you want." While I do not drink beer, I have to say that the solution below is an example of beautiful engineering. Found at There I fixed it .
Also clever engineering, though unfortunately rather imaginary, is this solution to avoid getting hit by a train:
Wow, that was a ride! In the beginning I only wanted to try reading a Kindle book, and then I got stuck... But one after the other:
Kristian Köhntopp mentioned having read three books per Kindle and since the descriptions sounded interesting and the price was not worth debating I finally downloaded a Kindle software reader for OS X and ordered the three books he mentioned. Twelve days and three more books later I swore to myself to take a break from reading. So be warned: Depending on your preferences this might be dangerous stuff...
I started with Richard Phillips' "Rho Agenda", which is a trilogy. You have heard of the so-called Roswell incident, the UFO that allegedly crashed there and was taken to Area 51? Well, that was a hoax of course, but it helped covering up the real UFO crash a few years later. What none of the scientists working on that Rho ship knows: A second ship had crashed, in both cases the result of a battle both ships had. This second ship is found by three teenagers, who start exploring it.
Both ships are damaged, but at least partially functional. Both ships each have their own agenda and start influencing the people studying them. You get a vague glimpse of that agenda in "Immune", the second book, but still nothing clear. So now I am waiting for part three, "Wormhole", which is currently in the publisher's hands...
Since I went through these two like a hot knife through butter, taking on the third book right away was a logical step. "Out of the Black " by Lee Doty is different from everything I have read before. It is indeed the strange mix of science fiction, crime and magic that Isotopp mentioned. Right at the beginning you will encounter a vampire (at least so it seems) crashing onto a road and transferring his spirit to an innocent overweight orderly woman.
Soon after that I got a first taste of science fiction when the first "gadgets" are mentioned. Lo and behold: They are all very plausible, logical even! There is no technology that would be centuries away, no emergency measure like beaming in Star Trek etc. The novel is divided into three large sections called "books", and it is only in book three that things finally fall into place. Don't worry, you will not get bored on the way there...
While I was still heading towards the end of "Out of the Black", a friend mentioned reading "The Hunger Games " by Suzanne Collins and got me hooked. Before she had finished even the first book of that trilogy, I was done with all three of them. The scenario is not exactly improbable: After devastating wars, all that is left of the US is something called "Panem" - thirteen (or then rather twelve) so-called "districts", ruled by the "Capitol".
Each district is specialized in providing certain products for the Capitol. District 11 is agricultural, district 12 provides coal... People living in the districts are mostly very poor, even those considered "wealthy" by district standards. Capitol is the absolute opposite, which lead to an uprising of the districts about 75 years ago. Capitol could extinguish that rebellion and as a reminder of its power the Capitol forces the districts to draw two "tributes" each year, a girl and a boy between 12 and 18, in a lottery on "Reaper Day".
The children are sent to an "arena" and have to fight one another until only one is still alive - with all of it being televised. This is an exciting show for the people in Capitol, where children do of course not need to participate in the lottery. Katniss Everdeen, a girl of 16 from district 12 is about to unwillingly set changes into motion when she steps in to take the place of her younger sister, who had been drawn.
After the exciting first book, the second came in pretty dark, and the third brought a few surprises again. As I said: Six books in twelve days. Dangerous stuff. You have been warned.
May I rant? I think I may, this is my site after all. Having been an interpreter in a former life, I have been trained to use standard tongue in any language I use. Dialects may be understood, but they make communication harder. And what is hard for human beings may be impossible for computers - deviations from standards usually result in errors. This is one reason why I am a very strong opponent of any website or networked application that is "made for IE".
Why is it necessary to write HTML, Javascript or CSS especially for the one browser that violates or ignores all kinds of standards? Why not write standard code and accept that IE is not able to display a few things correctly? Other browsers will be able to...
But this is still nothing. Other browsers have learned to at least disguise themselves as Internet Explorer, so users do not need to worry about funny error messages, like asking you to upgrade your 2011 browser to one from 2001 ... So what can you do to throw them out? Simple: Use ActiveX!
In case you do not know: An ActiveX element is a piece of software that a website installs on your computer - to access that website. Indeed, for some sites it is not sufficient to use the Internet Explorer to access that site, you still need ActiveX on top of it! Security issues? Pah...
If you have been browsing the web for a while, using all kinds of browsers on different operating systems, you may ask now why someone would need ActiveX to access a website when you and me can do so without. Well, fasten your seatbelt: My current employer purchased some kind of collaboration software written in Java and running on a Windows machine. That site requires (in 2011) "IE6 or higher", according to the error message I get with any other browser than IE. But the best...
There is a window for a "message center" on the site. I never saw anything inside other than a question mark when I used Firefox/Chrome on Windows. Then I used IE and was surprised to see - text. Yes, those experts managed to require ActiveX to display text on a website! I am completely flabbergasted by so much professional expertise...
Since I complained, the software company will send someone next week to try and "enlighten" me. I am looking forward to his futile attempts at answering my questions...
最近跟同事聊到車牌，他們提到現在車牌上沒有”分“（這算”分“嗎？）台灣省、台北市跟高雄市，所以變得”比較亂“。我覺得，這根本就很亂，因為我從來看不出什麼制度。有決定權的人好像每次只想”哎，車牌號碼又用光了，怎麼辦？趕快換個制度…“感覺上他們從來沒有想好… 為什麼其它國家不用每幾年換一次？
例如德國 - 好像五十年沒有變。德國跟很多其它國家一樣以區域發號碼。你從車牌可以知道這台車被登錄在哪裡。像柏林的車都是”B-一到三個文字，一到三個數字“，漢堡是”HH-一到三個文字…“。這樣其實還有另一個好處：如果一個漢堡人開車到柏林，柏林人不會馬上按喇叭如果他需要幾秒鍾考慮他要往哪裡。如果是柏林的車牌，柏林人可能不會原諒…
那麼，為什麼台灣沒有辦法做出一個可以用”久一點的“制度？會那麼難嗎？我們看一下：英語的alphabet有26個文字，為了共用我們最好只要噢用這些。阿拉伯數字有十個。如果我沒有數錯，台灣目前有22個縣市 。我們用一個文字代表一個縣或市。留下的四個文字可以發給車特別多的地方，像台北市或高雄市。所以，台北可能是”A-“跟”W-"。接下來，我們用一到三個文字。為什麼文字？因為這樣可以馬上做出很多種“號碼”：263 +262 +26=18,278。請記得這是每個縣市可用的數量，所以總共我們已經達到475,228。現在我們開始用數字，一樣一到三個，所以單純數字已經有1110種。
這樣每個縣市可以有20,288,580台車。全台灣的人口是大概23,150,000人。用這個制度，在全台灣可以登錄527,503,080台車。我想，我們應該可以拿掉一個數字，這樣還是有52,750,308台車。如果台灣的車輛達到這個數量，車牌制度是我們最小的問題。這個制度包含所有的車，不喲噢那個為了巴士或機車再做出別的制度。空間也不會特別大：一個台北的車牌號碼最長也只可能是"A-AAA88"。而且，你還可以知道車從哪裡來…
為什麼這個制度可以提供那麼多種號碼，而台灣目前（或之前）的不會？“秘密”是文字。簡單的數學：數字只有十個，文字有26個。如果我用多一些數字，我的倍數每次是十，如果我用多一些文字，倍數是26。這樣，兩位數字可以做到100種，兩位文字已經676種。
這樣的做法當然也包含搬家到其它縣市之後要換號碼。不過，現在有一種東西叫“電腦”，聽說它有辦法幫助記錄這種資料變動…
不過，我不太會期待看到這種制度。我期待的是另一個用一用再被取代的“制度”…
Your teachers will probably have told you at school that you need to learn to speak clearly, that you should speak without an accent or dialect if you want people to understand you. Well, it's not just about people anymore these days, and maybe you want to improve your pronounciation, or else you might end up in a situation like this:
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