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hippietrail

2:34 AM

@MarkMayo haha that's not me! that's some kind of evil bot-generated scraping fake site from the looks of it!

i wonder if we can report it?

Pops

@hippietrail No need, I heard of that one recently.

hippietrail

thanks @Pops

hippietrail

2:49 AM

@MarkMayo: what to do about the india/pakistan/bangladesh question?

Mark Mayo

3:06 AM

@hippietrail it's huge, but it's a valid question, in that it's a travel problem, but it's not written validly for the site. I'm not sure ...I've considered editing it a couple of times

maybe if we get Russell in here to discuss?

Mark Mayo

3:22 AM

wow, we're getting some spam today

hippietrail

yeah i think we really need to help him and not scare him away

really?

dlanod

4:07 AM

@MarkMayo Thanks for your answer to travel.stackexchange.com/q/22151/1264 - it prompted me to do more searching and I spent a couple of hours digging up another three new ones.

I just can't find the alleged fourth 1297 copy.

Mark Mayo

@dlanod Need Indiana Jones ;) no worries

dlanod

I can just see him swinging in and breaking through library floors in search of them.

"One of them was gift wrapped by the British government and given to the people of Australia"

Heh pretty sure we bought that (emersonkent.com/historic_documents/magna_carta_1215.htm)

Mark Mayo

4:25 AM

@dlanod btw where in Aus are you?

5

Q: Meet other Travel.SE members?

I've been fortunate to meet other members on the site in Vancouver, Montreal and NYC, and I know other meetups have happened. I wondered if perhaps a community-wiki type list by continent and city for anyone who would be keen to meet for a coffee would be a useful idea? You may be passing thro...

dlanod

I'm in the gap after "Sydney", but I'm not really active enough to go chasing meet-ups so I hadn't edited myself in. :)

Mark Mayo

don't have to chase tho, it's more if someone is passing through your town and you want to, you can :)

dlanod

BTW the Canberra Magna Carta display is surprisingly retiring.

Given the context of its historical significance and rarity.

Mark Mayo

eg I met up with visitors to Vancouver when I was there, and when I travelled, met others in Montreal and NYC.

if you're down in Melbourne, give us a shout :)

I'm here until at least May

dlanod

Thinking of coming down in April for the partial eclipse

Mark Mayo

4:29 AM

...partial....eclipse...?

(goes hunting)

dlanod

haha

Only found out about it today.

Mark Mayo

for some dumb reason, I was only aware of the October one

ah, annular.

dlanod

you mean the NA one in October?

Mark Mayo

yeah

I'm eyeing up the 2015 one tho

Ideally from Svalbard, but we'll see

dlanod

That'd be fun

I limit my eclipse chasing to Oz

Mark Mayo

4:32 AM

so you were in Cairns ?

dlanod

helped by the fact that the last two were over Cairns and the next one touches Sydney so I get free accommodation for all

yeah, I grew up in Cairns so it was a reason to pop back

Mark Mayo

yeah

nice!

We were on Clifton Beach, just north of Cairns

dlanod

we were actually viewing it up outside Mareeba, given the clouds

Mark Mayo

Incredibly lucky not to have it obscured

dlanod

I heard that the clouds basically parted just at the right time

Mark Mayo

4:34 AM

almost to the second

it was amazing

I've seen other videos from further down the beach, and they missed part of it (it's a very long beach)

21 more unanswered questions everyone!

dlanod

I actually viewed the second (annular) one from Clifton

just from a park by the highway

Mark Mayo

oh nice

traffic was insane afterwards, we went a few km then stopped at maccas :)

dlanod

I can imagine. Just coming down the range after the eclipse was busy enough. Seeing the footage of the crowds down on the coast, trying to get out of any of the beaches would've been a nightmare given they're not designed for that kind of traffic.

Mark Mayo

it was nice actually, maccas had the news on tv, with tons of other angles of the eclipse, so it was nice to see it on screen too

0

Q: Getting 'blessed' sites for migration?

Apparently there's a means to add a list of 'blessed sites' for migration, so that we might vote on migrating the odd question, rather than waiting for a moderator to do it? If so, presumably a data query can be run on travel to see the most commonly migrated-to sites, but I assume this would in...

support feature-request

Mark Mayo

5:21 AM

1

A: OK we're all adults here, so really, how on earth should I use a squat toilet?

I've read through all the answers and comments and, if I'm not mistaken, they seem to be always written by men. Using a squat toilet is surely much more complicated when wearing trousers, as most men do around the world, so I appreciate your points and debate. Squat toilets are not as much of a ...

a new perspective on the squat toilet debate

Mark Mayo

6:27 AM

Hacker news is down. I've had a very productive day.

Dirty-flow

7:53 AM

question A is a dupe of question B, and question B is a dupe of question A.... nice logic @SantaC.

Mark Mayo

8:34 AM

yeah, if a question is a dupe, the new one is the dupe. No need to flag both.

Down to 19 unanswered, thanks to @brendanc and his effort on the Chinese questions.

Santa C.

8:48 AM

The two threads are complementary and could be merged. That is why I flagged both.

Nice logic? Stackexchange logic!

Dirty-flow

flag for mod attention and explain that you think they should be merged

Santa C.

But for me personally both can stay. I am not so obsessed by duplicates as other people are...

The remaining moderator seems a but overstrained. Hence no flag for the sake of burden reduction

Mark Mayo

that's nonsensical. If they're 'complementary and could be merged' why vote as dupe? None of us can merge them. Moderators don't see that.

Santa C.

9:08 AM

With all the fuzz you are generating they WILL notice it.

Santa C.

9:45 AM

Furthermore, as both are flaggeg, the populace can decide which one to maintain

dlanod

10:28 AM

@MarkMayo If you're anywhere near the State Library of Victoria, apparently search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/action/… may contain a list of existing Magna Carta copies.

Dirty-flow

unanswered questons down to 17

andra

@markmayo I have an updated version of my travel.se map: balans.semwebinsi.de/visualizations/travel.se/…

@hippietrail that is simple social skills are essential in traveling ;)

Mark Mayo

10:44 AM

@dlanod interesting. If I remember when I go past it tomorrow, I'll pop in and ask if they have an idea of where the item is. That place is massive, the number of rooms alone is overwhelming!

Dirty-flow

no recent questions about Bulgaria, I blame @MarkMayo :)

andra

11:21 AM

What is this "blame @markmayo" meme?

Dirty-flow

22 hours ago, by hippietrail

@Dirty-flow: but it's fun to blame mark mayo - try it - you'll like it d-;

hippietrail

@andra: what's that about social skills? i was busy picking my nose.

Mark Mayo

bah

hippietrail

@andra: it's a new year, we needed a new meme.luckily that seemed to sort itself out rather quickly (-:

i'll definitely blame mark if there were migrations between travel and great outdoors that my data query can't find d-:

Mark Mayo

5

Q: Memes of travel.se

There are memes common to whole Stack Exchange and this one inspired me to ask here . I therefore propose that this space be used to document the memes endemic to travel.se's culture. One meme per answer please.

discussion

definitely not in there!

speaking of which, we've not had a roflcopterexception style question in ages

hippietrail

11:32 AM

we were so busy meming we didn't have time for documentation d-:

we need to wait for roflcopter's friend to have some mildly deviant travel problem

2

Mark Mayo

ah yes, the 'friend'

3

Q: what if a question is off topic and the stackexchange network it ought to be in doesn't appear?

what if a question is off topic and the stackexchange network it ought to be in doesn't appear? does that automagically mean that it is on-topic? seems like there ought to be a drop down menu where you select the appropriate stackexchange network instead of stackexchange trying to auto magically...

discussion scope

andra

12:01 PM

@hippietrail "bah most SE sites don't chat! why aren't they all friendly and sociable like us?"

hippietrail

shush! i was meditating and you ruined it!

andra

You are welcome ;)

@HaLaBi what is this with the limbs falling from the sky?

hippietrail

whose limbs falling where? do i need an umbrella?

andra

According to some trash paper - which is actually only good to pack fish and chips - limbs are falling from the sky in Saudi

hippietrail

@HaLaBi: you told me it a boring country! How wrong you are! Now go fetch us some o them there limbs.

i miss the working speakers in my previous hotel

also this room has no external window and is stinking hot even with the door open

Mark Mayo

12:29 PM

Limbs falling from the sky in Saudi Arabia

this happened in London a couple of years ago :/

When it happened in London

Santa C.

12:40 PM

And the flag carrier crashed a plane in Medinah m.arabianbusiness.com/…

hippietrail

got any happy news?

Mark Mayo

Sure! In 13 minutes the most depressing day of 2014 will be over in my timezone :)

hippietrail

i still have three hours, but hadn't realized it was depressing

andra

I need to read better

hippietrail

1:01 PM

i need oxygen

something dirty is flowing toward the chat room!

Mark Mayo

You can tell, because some hippie left a trail!

2

hippietrail

1:27 PM

i've left a trail of variously disgusting socks on the floor here

data explorer lists math.stackexchange twice

oh no, one ends in "s" and one in "a"

HaLaBi

The 767 in madina airport is not a big deal, a plane belly landed due to failure in one of the main gears.

hippietrail

@HaLaBi: you're alive!

HaLaBi

The falling limbs is an interesting thing,waiting for the investigation to finish. Either someone got stuck in airplanes gears or the guy who said it was falling from the sky was on drugs.

hippietrail

so many druggies in the kingdom d-:

which one of you is the SQL guru?

Mark Mayo

I can spell it!

HaLaBi

1:36 PM

@hippietrail let mr check my pulse

Me*

hippietrail

hey mister, you have my permission to check halabi's pulse

ok i let him d-:

HaLaBi

Hahaha

Mark Mayo

@hippietrail did you mean to comment on your own blessed sites answer?

hippietrail

getting a few string functions into a query invloves levels of ass pain unnatural for a hererosexual man

@MarkMayo: i don't know - maybe i have heatstroke. did i make a withering attack on myself?

Mark Mayo

I'm not sure...

hippietrail

1:39 PM

i'm just waiting for the NSA and GFoW bottlenecks to free up ...

i'm not sure if the other answer may have previously been a comment, then delted, the submitted as an answer

or it really was heatstroke and i clicked comment a few cm out

Mark Mayo

looking at the times, looks like yeah, comment became an answer

hippietrail

well now my comments have gone forth and multiplied

Mark Mayo

and hippietrail looked upon the many, and was pleased

hippietrail

time to come up with a new query to give the migrated question to posted questions ratio

Mark Mayo

in the meanwhile, Marcel has commented on your comment on the question (at the top). I started to respond, but will leave it to you.

hippietrail

1:46 PM

man i don't even know where to start when i'm not forking somebody else's

Karlson

Morning.

Mark Mayo

good grief, I'm leaving those comments to you for now. I aim to get a good night's sleep

sorry @Karlson, good morning, but I'm heading off :)

Karlson

G'night @MarkMayo

Mark Mayo

ciao!

hippietrail

do we have 18831 questions?

Karlson

1:50 PM

5731

HaLaBi

damn it

hippietrail

ah so that must be all posts including answer and comments

HaLaBi

a stupid guy parked his car in my parking... in front of the building..

hippietrail

we have 5741 in the db so something special happened to 10

Karlson

Must be deleted.

hippietrail

1:55 PM

free english lesson: "in my parking space"

i'm sure we've had more than 10 deleted

HaLaBi

I will make a space in his head... I am waiting for him..

Karlson

Usually expression is I rip him a new one. :)

Winter bash is over.

hippietrail

i've forgotten too much sql to do a join

@HaLaBi: shit in his hat

andra

@halabi Mix mayonaise with ketchup and put it in his door handle

it feels like touching snot and it really annoying if you don't have any towels with you

HaLaBi

@andra goooooooooooooooooooooood idea..

but I prefer mixing mayonnaise with his blood :D

andra

2:00 PM

way to violent

hippietrail

bah nope we need a SQL person

HaLaBi

@hippietrail I can do SQL

andra

I used to be good in SQL, but now I moved on to SPARQL

HaLaBi

@andra I was kidding, I am too busy to fight and go to the police and so..

hippietrail

free english lesson: "way too violent"

HaLaBi

2:01 PM

@hippietrail what SQL statement you want?

andra

Give me another two weeks and we can SPARQL the travel.se data

hippietrail

free english lesson: "I used to be good at SQL"

ooh SPARQL was even worse, i never got the hang of it at all

every time i really needed a sparql query i posted a question on SO!

andra

It takes time to get used to it, but once you do, it is a join

specially the federated queries one

That is how I found that Saudi Arabia has a building from Oscar Niemeyer :)

hippietrail

@HaLaBi: in the data explorer i'm trying to find how many questions we have, and of those how many were migrated to us, and how many away from us

yes i just tried to do a join but i failed pitifully

HaLaBi

i guess it is an outer join what you need..

so:

hippietrail

2:04 PM

i used to do this stuff when i was hacking mediawiki and playing with wiktionary data scraped from the xml dumps

this is what i have:

HaLaBi

SELECT * FROM Table1 a LEFT JOIN Table2  b ON a.ID=b.ID [WHERE ...]

hippietrail

> select PostTypeId, PostHistoryTypeId pht, count(*) from Posts, PostHistory
where Posts.id = PostHistory.id
group by PostTypeId
order by count(PostTypeId) desc

isn't , the same as left join?

this is not even my attempt at the final query, just trying to feel my way after managed to get the number of each kind of post

HaLaBi

isn't what?

hippietrail

","

Karlson

@hippietrail It's the same as the inner join

hippietrail

2:06 PM

i only ever did mysql because that's what mediwiki uses

so how do i know if i want left join or inner join?

HaLaBi

i have a nice diagram to explain this..

wait let me find it

hippietrail

i thought my error was in guessing how to do the "where" clause

HaLaBi

hippietrail

@HaLaBi: or you can just write a query for us on data explorer d-:

HaLaBi

i will try in a while..

hippietrail

2:07 PM

i've forgotten so much about sql that i have no idea what that diagram is showing

Karlson

@hippietrail What are you trying to do?

hippietrail

and it's so fricken hot and unventilated in this room i can't really concentrate

@Karlson get our actual stats of how many questions, how many of those were migrated to and away from us

and then compare our ratio to the ratio of the big sites

some users are frustrated that when we use the user interface to close an off topic question that we think belongs on another site, we can't actually suggest what site we think it should go to

and some other users think that is a perfect system because we don't know many migrations anyway

@HaLaBi: teamviewer on this hotel pc can't connect to you. i'm guessing it's some firewall problem. you have it running over there right?

HaLaBi

yup it is running.. let me restart just in case

hippietrail

> A connection could not be established.

> Reason unknown.

HaLaBi

try now, it is restarted

hippietrail

2:16 PM

yeah i think it's blocked by something here

same again. this pc has more chinese mysteryware then the one in the last hotel

HaLaBi

no WiFi?

sorry, i meant Wi-Fi :D

hippietrail

no whiffy

there's two not very strong encrypted signals

so far i've only had one hotel in china with Wi-Fi. all guest houses and hostels have it though

s/I the/I hate the/

Karlson

I hate IE and the people engineering desktop build at work are morons...

hippietrail

do you work at ms?

Karlson

Do I?

hippietrail

2:22 PM

people at your work engineer the desktop build

Karlson

Do they?

No

hippietrail

the people engineering desktop build at somebody else's work are morons?

Karlson

But the more I use the final product the more I am convinced they are idiots..

hippietrail

at work?

ok i'm confused

Karlson

At my workplace

hippietrail

2:24 PM

confused by SQL, confused by Karlson

Karlson

At home I engineer my own desktop. :)

hippietrail

oh at your workplace somebody does a desktop build of some other software

and you hate that and otherwise unrelately you hate IE

Karlson

I hate both but IE more so then anything else

hippietrail

i'm not really sure that i engineer anything. i seem to have a desktop. i think engineers are people who drive steam engines

Dirty-flow

who doesn't hate IE, I think @HaLaBi is the last IE-fan

hippietrail

2:26 PM

if you hate IE don't ever go to an "internet bar" in china!

i have no idea what the hell i'm doing:

> select Posts.PostTypeId, PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId pht, count(*)
from Posts left join PostHistory on Posts.id = PostHistory.id
group by Posts.PostTypeId, PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId
order by count(PostTypeId) desc

Karlson

Don't left join

You can get info where there is a mismatch

hippietrail

HaLaBi told me to and the closest existing queries i can find do it \-:

i want to select the posts that have a post type of "question" and a post history type of ... i can't even remember

ok getting better. 49 questions closed

only 2 questions closed

HaLaBi

2:48 PM

hi again

i was eating...

left join is ok here @karlson

it is 1...* relation

or am i wrong?

it is .. actually..

it is many-many

Karlson

Unless you know that there is a match between the tables at least one you should not use outer join

Neelesh Pandey

Hello everyone

HaLaBi

hello @NeeleshPandey

Karlson

select p.id, pt.name, pht.id, pht.name from posts p, posttypes pt, posthistorytypes pht, posthistory ph
where p.id = ph.postid and
ph.posthistorytypeid = pht.id and
p.posttypeid = pt.id

@hippietrail Try that

That will give you every post.

hippietrail

nope i've messed it all up again

Karlson

2:51 PM

If you want specific history type add : and pht.id = <type>

or : and pht.name = '<verbage>'

HaLaBi

the problem here is, many types are considered ok, or (active posts)

hippietrail

@Karlson: is that actual or abbreviated code?

HaLaBi

only two types for migrated in and out

hippietrail

i now have this which is givin garbage results:

> select Posts.PostTypeId ptid,
PostTypes.Name,
PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId phtid,
PostHistoryTypes.Name,
count(*) c
from Posts left join PostHistory on Posts.id = PostHistory.id
left join PostTypes on Posts.PostTypeId = PostTypes.id
left join PostHistoryTypes on PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId = PostHistoryTypes.id
where PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId in (17, 35, 36)
group by Posts.PostTypeId, PostTypes.Name,
PostHistory.PostHistoryTypeId, PostHistoryTypes.Name
order by phtid

HaLaBi

hippie that's actual code, using aliases

Karlson

2:53 PM

Then you can do: and pht.id not in (closed, migrated)

hippietrail

actually there's also a plain vanilla "migrated", i think left over from an earlier db design

Karlson

@hippietrail This is actual

Be careful of outer joins

hippietrail

hmm never works for me when i try to make aliases

Karlson

There is no requirement that there is a match between tables

hippietrail

your query is still running ... ... ... ... ... ...

are you sure it's ok??

ok finished! (-:

where are those aliases even defined? \-:

Karlson

2:58 PM

In the query

from Posts p

hippietrail

so you're just using commas like i was told not to

Karlson

Aliases are in the from Clause

you can inner join

hippietrail

ah

Karlson

or you don't have to

this does the same thing with only difference being that you get results and then merge

instead of doing it during the query and creating a joined subset before applying filter.

hippietrail

when i try to add a group by i get some crazy error

i like programming. i don't like this.

Karlson

3:01 PM

Group by won't work on that query. Hang on.

hippietrail

why not?

what i want is total number of questions, and total number of questions with a migration

Karlson

You need a count(*) or similar to be able to get group by

This will give you a group by:

select p.id, count(pht.name) from posts p, posttypes pt, posthistorytypes pht, posthistory ph
where p.id = ph.postid and
ph.posthistorytypeid = pht.id and
p.posttypeid = pt.id and
pt.name = 'Question' group by p.id
order by p.id;

hippietrail

> Column 'posts.Id' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.

eevil. sql is fricken eeevil and makes no sense

Karlson

@hippietrail Exactly

It makes perfect sense.

hippietrail

so who cares d-:

i don't think we actually want the post id. we only care about what happened to posts, not the individual posts

Karlson

3:06 PM

select p.id, count(pht.name) from posts p, posttypes pt, posthistorytypes pht, posthistory ph
where p.id = ph.postid and
ph.posthistorytypeid = pht.id and
p.posttypeid = pt.id and
pt.name = 'Question' and
pht.id in (17, 35, 36) group by p.id
order by p.id;

your specific filter

hippietrail

> Column 'posthistorytypes.Name' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.

we might care about pht.id but not p.id

i'm just getting a column of random ids and a column of 1's

makes me wonder how i did so well with this query: data.stackexchange.com/travel%20answers/query/157200/…

my head has melted

Karlson

@hippietrail Must have been reading up on SQL just before writing it. :0

:)

There were 19 questions in the statuses. :0

:)

HaLaBi

@hippietrail here is a long ugly sql: data.stackexchange.com/travel%20answers/query/158218/…

no one blames me, i am just a cabin crew member :p

hippietrail

i blame the unnatural combination of this stinky hot room and stinky by its very nature sql

what's the difference between Born in Travel.SE and Total posts?

HaLaBi

born in travel se is (total posts - migrated ones)

Karlson

3:15 PM

Works too.

hippietrail

migrated either way?

Karlson

Yep

hippietrail

well all the ones that were not migrated here from somewhere else were born here

HaLaBi

i deleted that

it makes no sense

hippietrail

can we get a query that just outputs nice ratios?

or do we have to do that bit separately from sql

HaLaBi

3:16 PM

you can do it

the problem here is,

you need to do some filtering

to check the last Id in posthistort table.. because

a question can be deleted after it is migrated here..

but it will show in the count! because in the history it has both rows.. the deleted one and the migrated one..

hippietrail

stack overflow's results

> Migrated Here 7887
Migrated Away 765
Total Posts 6382716

andra

@HaLaBi is this how you did you cabin announcements? Interesting!

HaLaBi

?

you mean my English is fucked :D?

hippietrail

we receive three times as many as we send. SO receives ten times as many as they send

andra

I just picture you point to the emergency exits while explaining an inner join

hippietrail

3:19 PM

and it can be deleted and then undeleted!

twice each!

anyway it looks like we have a much higher ratio of migrations that SO, a site which does have blessed migration sites

HaLaBi

@andra thank god all the planes are equipped with screens (except one), so i rarely did the demonstrations

@hippietrail i am working on a better version...

of the query

hippietrail

yes just doing a query that tells the number of "live" questions accurately seems nontrivial

andra

@HaLaBi Most planes I fly on, still give a demo even if there are screens

HaLaBi

@andra do you know why they do it? actually this will make a very good question here..

andra

correction, I fly in (thanks Carlin)

HaLaBi

3:23 PM

the reason why they do it on some planes even if there are screen is a tricky one ;)

andra

Screen can't give you the gay wave

HaLaBi

can you guess what's the reason?

hippietrail

migrating away seems much rarer than i expected on the big sites

andra

@hippietrail the big ones became big, because they accept wider topics

I only we would have accepted expat questions ;)

hippietrail

some people like to do it on planes?

HaLaBi

3:24 PM

no

the reason behind it is, the first row of every zone..

andra

@hippietrail it is a youtube @HaLaBi shared some time ago

hippietrail

and programming questions

and football questions

HaLaBi

the first row of every zone has no seatback in front of it..

hippietrail

and celebrity gossip questions

andra

Carlin explaining the difference between getting on the plain

and the preboarding

hippietrail

3:25 PM

carlin getting on flat areas of land?

HaLaBi

some airlines will install screens on the bulkhead, some airlines will install it on the seats, but it needs to be unlatched first.. so, this row will have no screens while the airplane is parked, it will need to be unlatched.. so airlines make the policy easier by making the crew do the demonstrations...

hippietrail

or getting on something dull or undecorated?

they all really wanted to be actors anyway

> A game of hide and seek spun out of control when a naked Victorian man became trapped in his washing machine.

andra

1

Q: Why do flight attendants still give safety instructions if the plane has screens installed in all seats?

Safety instructions are a highlight of any trip. I always enjoy the gestures and specifically the expression in the faces when these instructions are given. Today most planes have a screen on almost every seat and the safety instructions are now also given in a multilingual movie. Yet the flight ...