@_thegeoff@mastodon.social
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

_thegeoff

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social

Geek: Photography, physics, comedy, computers, science fiction, astronomy, aviation, books, maths, cosmology, human survival mechanisms, rock/bass, whimsy.

~ School science technician
~ Science/Art collaboration
~ Cats: Cassie & Tia
~ Found first 3 books in π
~ Hacker: The good kind.

Personal account

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

LukaszOlejnik, to random
@LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social avatar

87-year-old writes to Financial Times. This is a real technological problem also for people with disabilities. Including me. Banking systems (and others) may make people's life miserable. And you know what? In case of an issue, I couldn't even make a phone call (when mandatory).

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@LukaszOlejnik I tried to help an elderly relative get in to his online banking account a few months ago. It took about five attempts, variously because his typing isn't brilliant (I got him to enter passwords and verification codes without me looking, but did everything else myself), because stuff timed out, or because mobile reception is patchy here and stuff timed out. I was a web developer for ten years, he had a lifetime in electrical and process engineering, the problem wasn't at our end.

_thegeoff, to physics
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

Think I might have caught a cosmic ray air shower at work today. Running a Geiger counter which normally gives about 20 counts a minute for background here, but got a sudden burst of at least 20 counts in about 5 seconds. Other than that the rate was roughly normal. No strong sources nearby, no high voltage systems, did several minutes of counts either side of it which were completely normal. What do you reckon?

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

A fascinating pattern has emerged as I've been drying the glass sludge from my rock tumbler for glaze experiments in ceramics class

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online Huh. So that's powdered rock and/or some sort of grinding powder, drying off?
Been collecting fractal-esque drying filter papers myself.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online And the curling is differential drying rates I'm guessing? Fascinating.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online Would make sense. Is there any obvious layering mechanism? Roll and stop, or heating cycles etc?

Peternimmo, to america
@Peternimmo@mastodon.scot avatar

In , you can now legally describe Donald as a crook

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@Peternimmo Pleasantly surprised, to be honest! Doubtful anything will change as a result, but at least shows the US isn't rotten to the (absolute) core.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@NormanDunbar @Peternimmo Wouldn't surprise me if it was a fine. That said, multiple cases of contempt during the trial won't help. The fun result would be custody until the day after inauguration day.

_thegeoff, to random
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

One of those things that folk who do physics "know", but is counterintuitive: light is mostly invisible.
Not just the fact that most of the EM spectrum is invisible...most of the visible (in theory) stuff, red, green, blue and all that, is invisible.

We only detect light when it hits our eyes. I hope that's fairly intuitive. So a lot of light scattering off whatever...in fact almost all of it...never reaches your eye, or any human eye. So it's invisible.

Wait, there's more....

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

Laser beams - yeah, red ones. They're invisible until they bounce off a wall or something (see also, our puffer thing full of laser beam detection powder...or talc). You can't see laser beams other than the wall/lens or whatever they hit, unless you're in a dangerously contaminated atmosphere...or one full of laser detection powder/smoke.

But wait, there's more....

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

Mmmm, breakfast.

Our director at work raises ducks and the ducks have been making way more eggs than her family can eat, so she's bringing them into the office for us.

Only two other people in the office actually like duck eggs besides me, so I am on the receiving end of lots and lots of duck eggs. They're really tasty

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online There's a roadside honesty box on the way to work that has duck eggs from time to time, lovely stuff. My favourite is poached on a crumpet.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online I've never managed to nail the timing for boiled. May have to try the thing where you hold it at the temp where the white sets but the yolk doesn't, but it's a narrow range, a couple of degrees C.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online Ditto. On the other hand, I mastered using the particularly pointy soldier (UK - toast strip thing) from the edge of the bread to pierce the yolk without spilling any down the outside of the shell.
Do you have the "break the shells after to stop witches using them as boats to drown sailors" myth?

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online Geologically part of the same range as the Scottish Highlands, so that makes sense 😂

_thegeoff, to random
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

Funeral for my neighbour that used to play with mega-amps and related tech today. Hell of a life, well lived, I'd be terrified by much of what he did. A long life well lived. I'll be keeping the oscilloscope he built as a teenager warm, literally.

_thegeoff, to Cosmology
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

#Cosmology folk: the universe as-is exists because the very early stages had density variations, stuff clumped. That's fairly obvious, the odds of the universe being perfectly evenly distributed are basically impossible, only one way to do it (and, quantum, not even allowed?)
So what's the thinking on how unlikely our "unclumpiness" is? Compared to...I don't know, perfect homogeneity versus weirdly clumpy?

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@ottaross Yup, pretty good summary of what I'm trying to ask.

_thegeoff, to random
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

New Time Bandits TV series, based on the original, sort of, with Lisa Kudrow. Knowing nothing about it, I'm not jumping to conclusions, but my money is on either absolutely brilliant or absolutely dreadful. (Via @ianRobinson )

https://mstdn.social/@tvPlusNews/112473921847565678

iangriffin, to NewZealand
@iangriffin@mastodon.nz avatar

This is quite interesting. (no... really!) I recently persuaded a colleague to take my pet Geiger counter from Dunedin to Apia via Auckland. The latitude dependency of the radiation exposure is fascinating!

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@iangriffin Altitude/latitude typo? The graph suggests either lots of trips with returns to "home background", or (I suspect) multiple flights?

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@iangriffin What's the x scale, minutes? Could time of day be a factor? That's roughly 12 hours between peaks?

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

The harpsichord.

The affordable piano alternative for the baroque musician.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@dgar @HighlandLawyer
"Your friend Mr. Tulip would perhaps like part of your payment to be the harpsichord?" said the chair.
"It's not a --ing harpsichord, it's a --ing virginal," growled Mr. Tulip. "One --ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for --ing young ladies!"
"My word, was it?" said one of the chairs. "I thought it was just of sort of early piano!

~Pratchett (Mr Tulip & Mr Pin being quite Pulp Fictional)

markmccaughrean, to Astro
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

Just received this piece of memorabilia through the post from an ESA colleague (thanks, kainoeske@x.com 🙇‍♂️).

It has a Northrop Grumman logo, is tightly packed, & says “XL” on the side, so I’m hoping it might be a flight spare sunshield 🤞

I’m afraid to open it though, as my living room isn’t quite as big as a tennis court 🤪

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@markmccaughrean That'd be so cool...
T-shirts?

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@markmccaughrean So if we fold it in half, say, 20 times...

(EDIT: did the sums...our package would be 52 metres tall.)

ianRobinson, (edited ) to random
@ianRobinson@mastodon.social avatar

Well. ChatGPT-4o is a bit good. Initial use makes me think it might be what we thought we’d get when Siri launched.

Obviously we didn’t.

I can’t wait to see (hear?) how it develops. It’ll be good when it has access to calendars etc and can be a real digital assistant.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@ianRobinson Will you ever trust it as much as a good colleague? Or as much as a voice generation of data you entered yourself?

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@ianRobinson That's the argument a couple of my students have used, essays are easier with AI writing them. Turns out the essay was nonsense, and not even in their style.
LLMs are just a language model, what true AGI will use as a speech centre, but without the other bits of the brain. I think making the jump from "useful optimisation algorithms" to "AI" based on a faulty language module is premature and dangerous. And popular.

_thegeoff,
@_thegeoff@mastodon.social avatar

@ianRobinson But how many people understand the subtleties of that, compared to the number of people recommending the use of "AI" in real world contexts?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • ngwrru68w68
  • everett
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • cubers
  • Durango
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • megavids
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • tacticalgear
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • mdbf
  • tester
  • ethstaker
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •