I thought I was losing my flippin’ mind
Uncle B and me were browsing the wine section at Aldi when one of the price labels began to flip, like an old TV picture when the aerial was knocked out. When it stopped flipping, the text was white on red. It had gone on special as I watched.
DIGITAL PRICE TAGS, y’all! They don’t look it. They must use the same paper white technology that Kindle uses.
The above article says they’ve been around for years, so I guess I’m late again, but I was floored. They’re hooked straight into the store’s inventory system and update in real time. As they put it: No more ‘have you got any of this out the back?’
I slid one off the rail and had a closer look. They don’t get power or data off the rail – it was just straight plastic. They’re battery operated and wifi.
Then I found this pile of them in the freezer section. You can see they’re about 1/8th of an inch thick. I guess they just toss them when the battery runs down.
I’m astonished this is cost-effective. Alibaba’s got them for $13 each (but $6.60 for more than 10,000). So who knows, at Aldi scale.
What a time to be alive. Happy Equinox!
September 20, 2023 — 6:25 pm
Comments: 6
The Victorians were a little goofy
I can’t believe I’ve never posted about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, but this is the only mention I could find. Where Uncle B last lived in London was near unto Crystal Palace Park, home of the famous Crystal Palace dinosaurs.
They were sculpted in the early 1850s by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to go with the new park. Mostly, they’re famous because of all the things he got wrong and silly, but this was the first ever effort to make a model from fossils, so that’s not really fair. Boo.
When we used to visit, the poor things were in rough shape and falling to bits, but they’ve since spent a bunch of money fixing them up. Yay!
Now English Heritage has gone and done 3D models, so you can play with them yourself. If you’ve never used Sketchfab, click on the model you want to see and give it a minute to load the model and then the texture, then:
Left mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the model around an invisible axis
Left mouse button, CTRL and move the mouse up and down to zoom in and out (or middle mouse button)
Left mouse button, SHIFT and move the mouse to pan back and forth (or right mouse button)
Left mouse button, ALT and move the mouse to move the light source around
You can find more Sketchfab controls here. I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit zooming around 3D models there. There some fantastic stuff. I even have a few of my own, but I think they’re under my civilian name.
September 19, 2023 — 6:16 pm
Comments: 2
Literally two seconds
Still addicted to watching YouTubes of police body cam arrests. I’ve watched so many field sobriety tests, I catch myself rooting for the suspects. You go girl, you totally aced that heel-to-toe thing.
Honestly, some of those people did alright, from what I can see. Either the cops are looking at something special, or they’re just basing the bust on the smell of alcohol.
One thing I am as sure as sure can be – if I ever have to take the field sobriety test, I’m totally going to jail. I’ve always been badly uncoordinated and I’m losing my balance as I get older. Forget the heel-to-toe thing, I can’t last two seconds with my arms to my sides and one foot in the air. Literally two seconds. They’re looking for thirty.
Ironically, I do better after I have a couple of drinks.
p.s. Good thing I don’t have a driver’s license, huh?
p.p.s. That’s not me in the picture. It’s an Arizona judge after ‘a couple’ of glasses of wine.
p.p.p.s. Have a wunnerful weekend!
September 15, 2023 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 9
Outstanding in his field
It looked so cold and lonely. And no, I didn’t walk all the way out to it – somebody brought it to the roadside today. Probably the farmer, whose freshly planted field this is.
It’s about a mile from home, assuming it came from the nearest supermarket – but it’s a rough old mile. Yes, I’ve contacted them. Those things aren’t cheap.
Are you getting scary security warnings when you try to read or post? I think my SSL must have expired. I forget how to fix that.
Even more fun, if I try to upgrade the PHP, the whole site flies to pieces. That’s because when I built it 16(!) years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I just bashed on things until they looked the way I wanted them to.
Compliant to standards? Non.
Eventually, they will force me to upgrade (they identify my current version as insecure), and then we’ll see, won’t we?
September 12, 2023 — 6:39 pm
Comments: 12
Meh.
I don’t post on September 11th.
September 11, 2023 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 6
Kerosene tractors, y’all
They’re American, naturally. We love our kerosene. Still blows my mind that jet fuel is kerosene and not the much more flammable gasoline.
Growing up, we had it around for all kinds of things, mostly oil lamps and starting fires. Only, we didn’t call it kerosene, we called it coal oil. At least, I think that’s what we were saying – being mush-mouthed Tennesseans, we actually said colall.
There’s a sad story I heard about the old-time classic Little Maggie. Fiddler Tommy Jarrell said around 1915 his cousin was trying to revive a dying fire and had an accident with the kerosene.
They put Jullie to bed right away–her whole body was burned up to her chin, and at first she cried in pain but after a while she didn’t feel anything at all. That evening as she was laying there she asked me to get my banjo and sing “Little Maggie” for her. That was the only thing she wanted to hear–it had just recently come around and everyone seemed to take to it. I expect I played it the best I ever had in my life, with the most feeling, anyway. It seemed to comfort her and pick up her spirits a little, but by the following morning she was dead.
Okay, now I’m sad. Stupid kerosine.
August 24, 2023 — 7:15 pm
Comments: 7
It was a silly time
Lockdowns were pretty drastic here. Not Australia-drastic or Canada-drastic, but we had plenty of petty restrictions and overzealous coppers.
It was almost worse when they started trying to ease up. It was sillier, anyway. They couldn’t figure out how to tear the band-aid off.
So we had arcane rules like, you could go to a pub, but only if you had a meal. There were learnèd discussions about what is a meal?
Bag of potato chips? probably not. But a scotch egg? Is a scotch egg a meal? Maybe. Maybe if it’s served with potato chips, the two together constitute a meal.
You had to wear a mask walking into the pub, but you could take it off once you sat down. You had to put it back on to leave or go to the toilet, but I seem to recall you could get a refill at the bar without.
The rules changed constantly as areas moved through various “risk tiers”.
Most of my friend group shrugged and complied, as though goofy regulations were just the price you paid to live in a civil society.
But the wokest member of my group absolutely loved it. She always knew exactly what we were expected to do. It was a great mystery to me why this was, but I figured it out.
If the rules made sense, everyone would know what to do. But if the rules make no sense at all, then you have to read the Guardian every morning and commit them to memory, and that makes you a very smart girl indeed. Knowing the screwy rules was high status.
It explained a lot.
August 22, 2023 — 7:56 pm
Comments: 7
They’ve broken some people
A researcher was due in the office this morning to study some papers from our archives. I’d never met him before. He was a weedy-looking forty-something.
He didn’t arrive until 12:30 and I explained to him that he only had until 1:00 because my co-worker, who could stay later, had called in this morning with covid.
Holy cats, the reaction! He turned white and jumped back, clutching his briefcase.
“WAS SHE HERE THIS MORNING? DO YOU HAVE COVID?” He managed to fumble a mask out of his case with shaking hands, which he wore for the rest of the time. He did eventually calm down enough to sit and go through the papers, but what a nutcase.
She did, by the way. Phone in with covid. She said she thought at first she had the flu, but then she tested positive.
Why do people test? What would you do differently if it were the flu?
Strong rumors here that they’re going to try masking and lockdowns again this fall for the fresh new variant. I think they may have a surprise coming.
August 21, 2023 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 11
What’s going on here?
We’ve been cheated of a summer this year. I had the central heat on every day in May and much of July. June had some nice patches and August is mixed, but certainly not hot.
So when it’s sunny and fine, I’m out there in my deckchair staring at the sky (alternating with my phone) as much as poss.
About an hour ago, I saw this. It’s a ribbon of (cloud? contrail?) with a twist in the middle. We do get a fair bit of small plane traffic out here, including the occasional acrobat, but I’ve never seen anything like sky writing.
If you’d like to see it larger and in color, including our wonky roofline, click this here thing.
The hell?
August 16, 2023 — 7:43 pm
Comments: 8
Behold! I have chosen my hattery!
It’s the height of the summer fête season. Two on Saturday. I found these in a sale bin at a country show.
They’re reversible, it says – the other side is black. So I suppose you could turn them inside out for ordinary use. I think you can still make out the words around the brim, though.
Wearing these out probably constitutes a public order offence (Brit for disorderly conduct).
A poetic people.
August 14, 2023 — 7:16 pm
Comments: 12