david_megginson

@david_megginson@mstdn.ca

#Tea drinker. Urban dweller. #Gardener. Classical guitarist. #Standards wonk. Grounded pilot. Pantheist. Jane Jacobs fanboy. #Language nerd. 25-year #vegetarian. 30-year #Linux user. #Disabled. Open-* and humanitarian #aid person. Former medieval philologist (Ph.D, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1993). Living on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory.

Header picture: Large reddish-orange letters spelling "Hintonburg", some lying flat on the sidewalk for use as benches.

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

david_megginson, to Sliderules

Solving 2×2=4 is the #HelloWorld for any slide rule with the basic D and C scales, including the #CardboardComputer:

  1. Adjust the wheels (or slide) to put 2 above 1
  2. Keeping the alignment, read 4 over 2.

Not so hard, was it? There's a lot of unnecessary mystification around #slideRules, but they're simple tools at heart.

You can also try this with the online simulator at https://cardboard-computer.org

#DiY

Closeup of a homemade circular slide rule showing 4 on the outer D scale above 2 on the inner C scale.

david_megginson,

Currency conversion with a slide rule (circular or straight) is also simple. For example, today 1 British pound is worth 20.9 Mexican pesos:

  1. Put 2.09 above 1.
  2. Keeping the same alignment, read pesos above pounds (or vice-versa) anywhere on the wheel

For example, 450 Mexican pesos is approximately £21.50.

Closeup of a homemade circular slide rule showing 4.5 on the outer D scale above 2.15 on the inner C scale.

david_megginson, to Sliderules

First working prototype of the #CardboardComputer, calculating the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

https://cardboard-computer.org

#slideRules #DouglasAdams

david_megginson,

The printable templates for the #CardboardComputer are available now at

https://cardboard-computer.org/templates.html

(There are also PDFs in A4 and US Letter sizes, in case your browser doesn't print properly.)

#slideRules #DiY

ottaross, to Ottawa
@ottaross@mastodon.social avatar

Wah - unexpected power outage. That's pretty rare here. Worst we see is the odd few seconds during a nasty summer storm.

david_megginson,

@ottaross Yes, it looks nasty. Winter is a bad time for this, because most of our furnaces won't run without electricity, even if they use natural gas for the actual heating. Stay warm!

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Good news a from NC. Republicans passed a law that required a postcard be sent to the address of any person who took advantage of same-day registration, if the card was undeliverable by the post office the vote would be thrown out.
(The voter would not even be notified this happened.)

Like many voter suppression laws, it almost sounds sensible: if you don't think about it much.

On closer inspection, it is designed to target poor, minority and/or young voters. 1/

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/politics/north-carolina-politics/judge-blocks-same-day-registration-law-north-carolina-elections/275-bd051b3c-f34c-488a-a22e-c9931a643f1b

david_megginson,

@futurebird The deeper systemic flaw is that the US allows politicians to run their own elections.

In most other representational democracies, there are independent, non-patisan agencies to regulate and oversee , like Elections Canada or the UK Electoral Commission.

In the U.S., whoever won the last election in a state gets to oversee the next one (at all levels), and that turns out more or less as one would expect when one of the players also acts as referee. 😕

stephanie, to Battlemaps
@stephanie@ottawa.place avatar

Remember to be careful when shoveling ! It's a huge workout, and people hurt themselves, and even die from heart attacks.

>> Paramedics [in Renfrew County] say two people died Saturday, suffering cardiac arrests while shovelling.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/two-dead-from-snowshovelling-related-cardiac-arrest-in-renfrew-county-1.6724947

david_megginson,

@stephanie That's a good warning. Here's some extra advice from someone in the primary risk group of late-middle-aged men (i.e., me):

  1. Always use a snow scoop — pushing is a steady activity that doesn't cause heart spikes like lifting and throwing with a shovel.
  2. Be very careful not to hold your breath when you're making a big effort.
  3. As soon as you notice yourself breathing more heavily, take a break until your heart slows down again.
  4. You don't have to do it all in one pass.
aetataureate, to food
@aetataureate@dosgame.club avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    david_megginson,

    For other non-vegans/vegetarians reading this (I know you know this already, @aetataureate) here's some stuff you probably already love that's naturally-vegan (or easy to make vegan by leaving off minor toppings):

    1. Chips and salsa or guacamole).
    2. Pita and hummus.
    3. Pasta and tomato sauce
    4. Black bean burrito.
    5. Potato chips.
    6. French fries and vinegar or ketchup.

    See? Not exactly a stretch.

    chad, to random

    I have come to understand that the Mailjet campaign sent out today/yesterday had deceptive unsubscribe language.

    This is the first time we've ever sent a mass email out to all instance users. There are lessons to be learned here.

    First, the thrust of the email was to alert all users that without action the instance would close in under three months, something required under the Mastodon Server Covenant.

    1/🧵​

    david_megginson,

    If you spend more time on your fediverse instance than you do watching Netflix, and you have the financial means, then consider setting up a monthly donation to your instance in approx. the same amount as your Netflix subscription cost. I've done that over the past year with mstdn.ca, and so far I have no regrets.

    We need to keep our medium-sized instances going for the future health of the fediverse, or we might all end up in a few dominant instances and be federated in name only.

    ajsadauskas, to startup
    @ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

    Hi, we're a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.

    We're not a newspaper, we're a content portal.
    We're not a taxi service, we're a ride sharing app.
    We're not a pay TV service, we're a streaming platform.
    We're not a department store, we're an e-commerce marketplace.
    We're not a financial services firm, we're crypto.
    We're not a space agency, we're a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
    We're not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we're a large language model generative AI platform.

    Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.

    But we're totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.

    And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don't apply to us.

    Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections... They totally don't apply to us.

    Even copyright laws — as long as we're talking about everyone else's intellectual property.

    We're going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.

    We've also raised several billion in VC funding, and we'll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.

    Once we have a near monopoly, we'll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.

    You won't believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.

    We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.

    By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we're doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.

    By the way, don't forget to check out our latest innovation. It's the Uber of toothpaste!

    @technology

    david_megginson,

    @markr Very true. Ideally, the city would have managed taxi plates (medallions), increasing the supply every year so that it approximately matched the number of drivers the market would support, instead of freezing it at an artificially-low level so that plates were selling for $500K+ on the secondary market (before Uber and Lyft wiped out their value).

    david_megginson,

    @ajsadauskas @technology The one thing I don't sympathise with in that list is the taxi services — at least here in , they were even more exploitative than Uber or Lyft, with a small number of plate holders acting as feudal lords for the drivers, and extracting rent from their vassals even on a bad shift with few fares.

    The city could have fixed that by issuing more plates, but the plate-owner lobby was too powerful.

    david_megginson,

    @FaeDrifter @Smatt I read Tolkein's books more in the light of his experience serving on the front in WW1. There's this terrible thing that you have to leave your cozy, safe home to do, and it damages you so much that even after "victory", you can never really go back.

    david_megginson, to Futurology

    ◻️ Intuitive
    ◻️ Scalable
    ◻️ Extensible

    (You may choose up to 2 options.)

    david_megginson, to ontario

    A reminder to people in Ontario that we do have universal pharmacare for people who don't qualify for the Ontario Drug Benefit, though it's (deliberately?) not well publicised.

    The Trillium Drug Programme has a deductible of around 4% of your household income, so if you're taking (or need) expensive medication, this will cover it, as long as it's on the ODB formulary.

    Spread the word.

    https://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/drugs/funded_drug/fund_trillium.aspx

    david_megginson, to random

    I see that I missed my last personal meditation, for Saturdays:

    Focus on what you can do, not on what you can't.

    david_megginson, to webdev

    Who still uses on the web?

    • and Atom: news, blog, and other updates
    • International Aid Transparency Initiative (): aid spending and budgets
    • : U.S. public corporate filings
    • Scalable Vector Graphics () files
    • the well-formed flavour of
    • etc etc

    (I left out stuff in zipfiles like Word and Excel.)

    Old never die; they just become boring critical infrastructure.

    david_megginson, to apple

    So just reinvented Google Glass, but, you know, from Apple.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/5/will-apples-sleek-new-vr-goggles-be-the-ones-to-capture-users

    david_megginson, to random

    I find it funny how so many bros obsess over the weapon specs, e.g. Tank X was 25% more powerful than Tank Y. It's not as if they fought 1-on-1 cage matches.

    david_megginson, to ai

    Um, yep.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65735769

    david_megginson, to random

    It's raining in Ottawa on the first day of our May long weekend. I'm sorry for cottagers, but the seeds waiting to sprout in my garden couldn't be happier.

    david_megginson, to random

    "All is local."

    That has some truth in it. I'm far more interested in the local feeds for CBC and CTV than I am in national or international news.

    That works against entrepreneurs who want to scale big, because hiring reporters to sit in local city council meetings for 4 hours costs orders of magnitude more than hiring a few writers to churn out generic national copy, but it also means local will never fully die (even if it mutates).

    david_megginson, to random

    In a non-scientific survey, with a tiny sample of self-selected participants in a left-leaning fediverse (are you still reading?), 65% of respondents still support paying CEOs at least 4x the median salary in a company, and nearly 1/3 support 40x.

    Contrary to accusations from right-wing media, this small group of progressives at least isn't opposed to business or to paying CEOs considerably more than regular employees. However …

    https://mstdn.ca/@david_megginson/110367074449902446

    david_megginson, to random

    Another good interaction with the system today. reportedly has the longest ER wait times in the province, but I haven't experienced that; they took me in <45 min at the ER 3 weeks ago (my previous ER visits have been similar), and today, I arranged a telephone appointment with my GP within a couple of hours, and was in and out of a hospital lab in 10 min.

    All I have to do is flash my OHIP card, and I never see a bill. We're so lucky here.

    david_megginson, to random

    As a 30+ year resident, I never imagined we'd see mega-stars like Ryan Reynolds, Snoop Dogg, and The Weeknd fighting for ownership of our mediocre team.

    How can you tell if you've stumbled through a portal to an alternate universe?

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ryan-reynolds-snoop-dogg-weeknd-ottawa-senators-1.6836096?cmp=rss

    david_megginson, to fediverse

    I arrived here 6 months ago with a lot of expectations about how things were supposed to work after my years on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

    But fortunately, I started by listening, and eventually came to understand why the is designed the way it is. It's not a place for one-way pronouncements and amplifying your influence; it's a place for safe and respectful discourse.

    That design priority explains almost everything new users complain is wrong with .

    david_megginson, to random

    Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
    If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it…

    — Charles III

    david_megginson, to fediverse

    If Twitter and Meta are trying to be the Hilton (we'll do everything for you), the is more of a co-op: we need to all pitch in and do some work sometimes.

    That's why our can never be quite as smooth and simple, but as in a co-op, the extra involvement is a strong community builder and a reward in itself.

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