The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

Vérace

2:07 AM

Move along - nothing to see here! :-)

Max Vernon

3:38 AM

This isn't the chat I'm looking for?

Vérace

5:34 AM

@MaxVernon - not a whole lot of traffic at the minute!

More insomnia - solved a tricky one - quite happy that I didn't spend the night watching moronic violent movies on Netflix... at least I learnt something!

I think that I've watched them all at this stage - quite a fan of Liam Neeson and Jason Statham... passes the time, but tonight, SQL was more appealing... (note to self... "Get a f*&^% life!").

John aka hot2use

6:14 AM

Morning

Jason Statham is pretty good.

I like that film where he infiltrated the SAS to knock somebody off. 70's style film. Can't remember the title.... wanders off to IMDB

Tom V

6:45 AM

@Johnakahot2use @ypercubeᵀᴹ not sure if you already saw Fargo, but I like it a lot

John aka hot2use

7:00 AM

@Johnakahot2use t'was Killer Elite

m.imdb.com/title/tt1448755/?ref_=m_nm_knf_act_i16

@TomV saw the film. But I guess you mean the series?

Tom V

@Johnakahot2use yeah

Vérace

Morning all - Dia dhaoibh a chairde!

@Johnakahot2use Haven't seen that one - I'll keep an eye out. Was it you who mentioned a very fancy wireless mouse a wee while ago - I'm thinking of treating myself!

:-)

John aka hot2use

7:22 AM

I mentioned the Logitech mice with Unifying dongle, yes.

I'm currently looking at the MX Master 3 as a replacement for my current Performance MX.

> We reinvented the wheel. All-new MagSpeed™ Electromagnetic scrolling is precise enough to stop on a pixel and quick enough to scroll 1,000 lines in a second. Oh, and it’s nearly silent.

Tom V

I second that ^^ I have a MX Master 2 and love it

Especially if you have somewhat bigger hands, they are decent sized

Vérace

This unifying dongle - do they provide 3/several little USB keys? If it did Bluetooth, you wouldn't need any little USB thingy at all - the number of those damn things that I have lost... bought a low-end logitech mouse and was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that the USB yokie can be stored beside the battery in its own little cradle - magic - no possibility of damaging/bending it and losing it is a lot more difficult - though I'm sure that I'll manage eventually! :-)

Tom V

7:37 AM

I just leave the dongle plugged in, for the version 2 there's no place to put it. You can use bluetooth but the battery life is much worse

Andriy M

7:54 AM

Our Trash room is extremely – freezingly – cold at the moment.

Morning

John aka hot2use

8:06 AM

@Vérace Logitech Unifying Dongles can be purchased separately for 15.90 a pop

logitech.com/en-ch/product/unifying-receiver-usb?crid=7

Paul White

@AndriyM Fixed

Andriy M

Thanks

Tom V

@Johnakahot2use My employer issues logitech mice (but cheap ones) that come with the dongles. If somebody returns a broken mouse the IT guy puts the dongle aside

there are literal boxes of them in a closet at work :D

Andriy M

8:30 AM

@TomV How often is that reserve used to replace lost or broken dongles for anyone?

Tom V

@AndriyM very often

I've taken at least 3 or maybe 4 already

Andriy M

Which happens more often, losing or breaking?

Tom V

with me, breaking, basically because I leave it plugged into my laptop, then put the laptop in a backpack without paying attention if the dongle is facing the ground or not, then put down the bag

after a while the dongle stops working after getting knocked into the ground several times

somehow those super cheap mouses break even more often or the stock wouldn't be increasing

Andriy M

In any case, good idea, seems completely justified

Tom V

8:46 AM

that being said, the way I abuse them, those dongles really don't break that easily

Vérace

9:08 AM

Good news (for me anyway) - Ireland's (Republic) 14 day Covid-19 infection rate is the lowest in the EU - that's after a few weeks at level 5 - quite a liberal level 5.

Schools, crèches, manufacturing, food, supermarkets all open. Theoretically, no more than 5km from home and you can't leave your county. Now, we're at level 3 with a further relaxation from the 18th (unlimited travel - people from 3 households can meet indoors).

The only real restriction now is no "wet" pubs open - a "wet" pub is one that doesn't have a kitchen. My big fear is that we'll get a big spike in Jan/Feb... But, we have vaccines coming now - in the 6 counties, they'll be vaccinating from next week! Happy days!

Vérace

9:35 AM

@TomV How does the pairing work? Is it easy?

Tom V

@Vérace yeah there is a selector button at the bottom of the mouse

you can pair the mouse to 3 dongles at the same time, and use the button at the bottom to switch between them

So you can have a dongle in your desktop and one in your laptop, and use a hardware button to switch the mouse between desktop and laptop for example

Vérace

@TomV But how do you specify which particular mouse goes with which particular dongle? I have a couple of laptops for different bits and bobs - do I get 6 and pair 3 with one mouse and 3 with another? What happens if I have both machines and mice in the same room?

Tom V

@Vérace so the 1-2-3 button selects which "channel" to use, and the connect button pairs

ypercubeᵀᴹ

10:41 AM

@TomV Fargo? I think not. I'll have it in mind.

Are we talking about the 1996 movie?

Michael Green

11:13 AM

Morning Heap

@Vérace I watched a presentation of a functioning lab prototype - data in, dna write, dna read, data out. The most memorable part was an aerial photo of a datacentre and the equivalent storage capacity in DNA, which was less than one pixel to scale. I think this is it.

Tom V

11:29 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ No a series, it's really well done, it's related to the movie though

Vérace

@MichaelGreen Couldn't find photo, but I would imagine that this is your ideal scenario - assuming no breakage or other problems that - your (and my and all of our) DNA stretches (depending on whom you believe - depends on the exact number of cells in the average human body) between 1-4% of a LIGHT YEAR - yes, that's a light year - not a typo - and that's not counting your microbiome! I was amazed when I first performed the calculation!

I was presenting my degree thesis which was on genome browsers and I wanted to start off with an interesting factoid - I decided to calculate what fraction of the distance to the Sun would your DNA stretch - little did I know it would go there and back > 100's of times!

DNA is easily damaged by cosmic rays and the like - plus, much of a cell's efforts are directed towards DNA monitoring and repair - how would that work in a data centre?

John aka hot2use

12:36 PM

@Vérace When you are pairing a mouse with a dongle in Windows you start the Unifying software. During the pairing process the software ask you to jiggle your mouse or click a button. For keyboards you press a sequence of buttons. Then the dongle knows which device it is connected to (up to 6 dfifferent devices per dongle).

Vérace

@Johnakahot2use Can you use more than one device at a time (say keyboard _and_ mouse) with a single dongle?

John aka hot2use

Yes, I have two mice and one keyboard connected to one dongle in my work laptop. When I go to meetings I leave my Performance MX on my desk and grab the small MX Anyhwere 2

Max Vernon

3:09 PM

@Johnakahot2use I have a Performance MX and just love it. I've been looking for a new mouse for my home machine, and you just convinced me to get the MX Master 3. Currently I'm using a Microsoft Trackball Explorer 1.0 from around 2001.

John aka hot2use

I like the idea of having one of these in my living room:

logitech.com/en-ch/product/living-room-keyboard-k830?crid=27

billinkc

3:29 PM

.ch

.ch is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Switzerland in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Made available in 1987, only two years after .com, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.The domain ch , as with other ccTLDs, is based on the ISO 3166-2 code for Switzerland derived from Confoederatio Helvetica (Helvetic Confederation), the Latin name for the country, which was used because of its neutrality with regard to the four official languages of Switzerland. Second-level domain names must be at least three letters long. Two-letter subdomain names are restricted...

^^^ TIL why Switzerland uses CH as a country code

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Yes, Confederation Helvetica, named after a famous typeface.

2

bbaird

morning

billinkc

Careful COTW, the Federation of Wingdings is not to be crossed

3

mustaccio

COTW is the Confederation of the Wingdings, isn't it

3

bbaird

ALL WILL BOW BEFORE THE TIMES ROMULAN EMPIRE

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

3:44 PM

That's just a cloisterfuch

herzbergdesign.com/fonts/cloisterfuch

bbaird

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Are they paying me $25 to use the font?

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@bbaird I don't think that's how it works.

bbaird

I can't see anyone spending that much money to inflict such unreadable punishment upon their eyes.

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@bbaird You wouldn't set a large body of text in it. It's a display typeface for headings or posters. Having said that, folks used to write entire books in blackletter typefaces, and by hand in blackletter scripts before that.

Max Vernon

4:02 PM

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells my eyes, the goggles, they do nothing.

My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

►

I just noticed this, part of my randomly generated root password for my MySQL test instance is sodomy. Seems fitting.

gotta love this command line option for mysql.exe:

> --i-am-a-dummy

User1973

5:24 PM

Some shameless self-promotion (I'm a novice):

0

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