/dev/chat

8:16 AM

@jesse_b Looks fine to me. I even looked at all revisions to find this rant he mentioned, but I don't see no ranting anywhere. Your latest revision did make it much clearer, but it was never that bad to begin with and certainly not a rant as far as I can tell.

What do you mean by "rebuilt my macbook" though? I assume you don't mean you took it apart and put it back together.

jesse_b

10:58 AM

@terdon No I uninstalled and reinstalled the OS

Jeff Schaller

11:40 AM

@jesse_b sometimes; most of the family isn't into actual tenting; one of them is scared of bugs, so that limits her outside activities ;)

jesse_b

@JeffSchaller I find more spiders in my house than I do outside

Jeff Schaller

same here! We got my son a bug vacuum for his birthday so he can help his sisters out

jesse_b

Trying to find a good coffee maker for camping

terdon

@jesse_b Ah, might be a good idea to clarify that then.

jesse_b

@terdon I did

terdon

11:44 AM

@jesse_b Get a Moka (preferably Bialetti) or, if you don't want to require a flame, you could get a french press or aeropress.

I'd go for french press for camping, the aero is fiddly. But I prefer the Moka over any of them.

amazon.com/Original-Bialetti-Moka-Express-Stovetop/dp/…

jesse_b

@terdon You're the second person to recommend that to me.

terdon

not surprised. I can't think of a better option. It's small, light, cheap, easy to pack and easy to use.

jesse_b

Do you get grounds in your coffee?

I would actually prefer steel though, it's probably unjustified but I don't like "cooking" with aluminum

terdon

@jesse_b No. Of course, ideally, you've got the right grind size to begin with (sort of mid-way between espresso grind and filter). But it works fine with regular, store-bought coffee ground for filter or cafetiere.

@jesse_b I doubt steel would heat up fast enough, you'd end up with badly burnt grounds.

jesse_b

grosche.ca/…

amazon.com/Bialetti-Venus-Steel-Coffee-Maker/dp/B07ZKZXM4B/…

Jeff Schaller

11:56 AM

"hob" is new to me; my first thought was it was an in-joke to "Hobbits"

Stephen Kitt

goes on a stove

Jeff Schaller

m-w definitions include: dialectal, England : HOBGOBLIN, ELF // a projection at the back or side of a fireplace on which something may be kept warm // a cutting tool used for cutting the teeth of worm wheels or gears. Context is key here :)

Stephen Kitt

heh

terdon

@jesse_b Huh. OK, possibly biased since it's the manufacturer's site, but I expect they know what they're talking about. I do tend to boil the water in a kettle and transfer it to the moka at the last moment so as to minimize the time the grounds spend in contact with hot metal. But maybe the steel would make that unnecessary.

Stephen Kitt

while we’re on the topic of cooking, there’s a special LQP cake somewhere for Jeff

Jeff Schaller

11:58 AM

oh dear, what does a LQP cake look like?!?

terdon

@StephenKitt Oh wow. Impressive!

Stephen Kitt

oh it’s high-quality

terdon

@JeffSchaller something like this?

2

Jeff Schaller

@terdon it's an attempt to make a cake, so "looks OK" :)

terdon

:)

Stephen Kitt

11:59 AM

I wonder what the stats are like on LQP conversion — for example, what share of users come to the site, post something that ends up in the LQP queue, and then go on to improve the quality of their posts

@terdon LOL

@JeffSchaller LOLer

/me wonders how you’d edit a cake

I suppose eating it is a form of editing

jesse_b

that cake actually looks good to me. It's like organized chaos

Jeff Schaller

@StephenKitt my wife did it while trying to decorate one -- and redecorating it

Stephen Kitt

@JeffSchaller I sometimes edit my dough but I’ve never redecorated a cake

Jeff Schaller

@StephenKitt 3/10, would not recommend

Stephen Kitt

@JeffSchaller visually, or was it not good either?

Jeff Schaller

12:03 PM

@StephenKitt oh, just frustrating for her; purple icing does not come cleanly off of white icing. The cake was excellent :)

(and it came out better visually than I could ever do)

@StephenKitt data would be hard to come by here, but my gut says it's pretty low. I've made some noise in this direction recently. SE has enough of a learning curve that I think "the system" could/should help people who are obviously doing The Wrong Thing, to prevent frustration all around.

writing a good Q or A is hard enough already, we don't need people's first experiences to be downvotes, canned comments, and deletion

Stephen Kitt

@JeffSchaller yup, and I think ultimately there’s a fundamental disconnect between SE’s goal (building a comprehensive database of high-quality Qs and As) and many users’ goal (solving their immediate problem)...

the cake I spent the most time decorating, ever, was my implementation of

pinterest.com/pin/365776800955604502

Jeff Schaller

yep. I mean, I read the tour page and lots of the help pages when I joined & before I started interacting. Maybe that should be "encouraged" more than it is. Saw a funny comment on a LQP SO "answer" that was something like "you should go through the tour again", but the OP never had...

jesse_b

I think I'm going to die of beetus just from looking at that

Jeff Schaller

@StephenKitt cute idea! Just noticed the kit-kats around the outside. Love the waves in the chocolate

Stephen Kitt

@JeffSchaller yup, it’s the sort of cake that’s not hard to make (including decoration), but induces diabetes quite quickly

@JeffSchaller ah yes I see comments like that fairly regularly around SE (including variants such as “thanks for the upvote” in reaction to a positive comment on a post with no upvotes, “restore from backups” on a desparate question from someone with no backupts, etc.)

@JeffSchaller but it really goes back to the oldschool culture of lurking before participating, I guess, and we lost that sometime in the late 90s

Jeff Schaller

12:16 PM

@StephenKitt that's the mentality that boggles me; "I can use this other site however I'd like and ... I don't care about the consequences?"

Stephen Kitt

@JeffSchaller at least on SO it ends up working to some extent: there are so many people chasing after rep that you’ll get an answer on even poor-quality posts more often than not, so for a minimal investment you get a fix (hopefully).

Often it devolves to the blind leading the blind ...

Jeff Schaller

> Wow, I knew I was new to Prolog, but the answers are taking me some time to digest. Thanks to all who replied so quickly!

6

Q: Make a predicate reversible

I'm new to prolog; I'm coming from a structured programming background, as will become obvious :) I am building up a prolog query that involves reversing a number; eg. reverse_num(123,X) results in X = 321. I came up with the following definition, but it only works when I provide a number as the...