Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[tggzzz]

No it shouldn't be repeated.

[tggzzz]

Not on this thread or much that I've seen on this forum, but it can definitely be a problem and was on the original TEA thread. For instance your quite long posts with pictures on the Tek 314 could reasonably be followed by posts saying it was a nice job, or a longer post talking about some technical aspect of the scope or the project. It would be a distraction to quote your whole post, including pictures, to say what needed to be said. I've seen this happen a lot on occasion and on some forums it seems routine.

Good taste determines the amount of a previous message that should be quoted. Sometimes it is all, sometimes a little, and I think my previous post indicated why none is a bad idea.

[tggzzz]

I'm sorry mans... you're hating on the forum for not being a mailing list.

The rest of us know that mailing lists suck out loud; I do hope someday you'll come back to civilization.

Mailing lists rule.

Apart from anything else, you can keep the 1% of posts that might be relevant in the future, deleting the other 99%.

[tggzzz]

Yes, and I thought at first it wasn't working. Turns out gmail thought it was spam and put the responses there. Fixed it.

The first thing I do with gmail and similar is to turn off spam filters and get them to deliver everything to me.

My spam filter classifies about one false positive per half year. There are a few more false negatives (maybe one per month), but they are dealt with by clicking the "junk" button.

[tggzzz]

Yeah, it's the (computer) age-old problem of buttons/menus that show current status vs. indicate the action that can be initiated. For a menu item, check marks should only be used to show current status. That's where this feature is failing.

HP (of all companies) created a very successful way of avoiding that problem, which was then copied by everybody else. I refer, of course, to the subtly 3D widgets in Motif GUIs.

Then the nappy wearing "it is 3 years old therefore it needs updating" mob took us back to the dark ages of flat GUIs. May they rot in hell.

[tggzzz]

“It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, “Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Yeah

And then there is the Sirius Cybernetic Corps, with lifts asking us if we have "considered all the options down might offer".

[bd139]

Yeah, it's the (computer) age-old problem of buttons/menus that show current status vs. indicate the action that can be initiated. For a menu item, check marks should only be used to show current status. That's where this feature is failing.

HP (of all companies) created a very successful way of avoiding that problem, which was then copied by everybody else. I refer, of course, to the subtly 3D widgets in Motif GUIs.

Then the nappy wearing "it is 3 years old therefore it needs updating" mob took us back to the dark ages of flat GUIs. May they rot in hell.

Motif wasn’t exactly subtle.

NT4’s “windows 95” interface was and still is top notch now. I miss it.

[mnementh]

As for "reply to post"... it's right here:

No, that's "quote whole post" not "reply to post".

We can understand how you get the two concepts confused, we've seen your posting style!

ppppppttttttbbbbllllbbbbbpppppptttttlbbbbbbbb!!!

mnem
"Reply with Quote"/"Reply to Post"... whatevs.

[bitseeker]

Well, it looks like all the information to (1) add a reply button in each post, (2) pass the post number in addition to the thread number to the reply function, and (3) add a reference similar to a quote in the body of the reply all exist. So, it's highly likely that an extension could do it.

[mnementh]

I know Cerebus wants to really put the forum to the test, so I'll wait until he's had a chance to do some more of that. Meanwhile, given the significant shift in activity level between here and Groups.io, I'd say it's a good sign that the basics are OK so far.

Well, it's not just me, we all need to hammer it and see what breaks or what's lacking.

I don't have a "testing plan" and I don't intend to have one. The 'gotchas' tend to become apparent when someone tries to do something 'obvious' to them and the wrong thing happens, or all hell breaks loose; that'll come from people trying to use it.

The complete absence of any in-reply-to back references is galling. While Mnem has loudly said that we don't need threading (brutally, that just means that he doesn't like threading) we most definitely do need the ability to see what someone's replying to - it doesn't have to be presented as fully fledged threading, but life is a lot easier if a message has a "replying to message #12354" link that you can use to track a conversation back. In the absence of that we just get either excessive quoting or apparent non-sequitors and a style of conversation that's much harder to follow. Both phpBB and SMF suffer in this regard (but at least SMF puts a back-link in a 'quote') and the few popular BBSes that do have some semblance of that (e.g. discourse) I think we've all dismissed as "Not fit for any attempt at an adult conversation rather than the wibblings of wokes, trendies, hipsters, 'makers' and self described 'influencers'" - so whatever I'd like, I don't think we'll be seeing that soon.

I've always made a habit of trimming egregiously long strings of quoted posts when and as possible without altering context.

As for linking back... Every quoted post, including those in nested quotes, has a linkback to its origin right at the top; it's the little UP ARROW next to "userxyz wrote:" .



While not exactly convenient, if you really felt a need to create a traceable thread tree, you could quote a previous post full of nested quotes and delete all the intervening text, leaving just the trail of linkbacks, or any combination of such with text edited as needed for brevity's sake.

Like I said in the Discord... I don't need my personal confuser to keep track of my thoughts... my appointments, yes. But not my thoughts.

I find all attempts at automated threading as annoying and distracting as many of you find mixed fonts and highlighted/bolded text.

mnem
"To each his own..." said the old lady as she kissed a cow...

[mnementh]

I'm sorry mans... you're hating on the forum for not being a mailing list.

The rest of us know that mailing lists suck out loud; I do hope someday you'll come back to civilization.

Mailing lists rule.

Apart from anything else, you can keep the 1% of posts that might be relevant in the future, deleting the other 99%.

I don't feel a need to keep or delete any of them. They're all just fine right where they are, up on the walls of a forum. That I can walk away from at night, without worrying that some fuxxoring bug or some spam botnet is going to dump a MFT of garbage in my inbox so I need to clear it out.

They are a painful reminder of the dark ages, like everything eMail. One of these days we will truly remove all traces of it from our lives; like the unnecessary vestigial organ it is.

mnem
Fuck mailing lists. With a shovel.

[mnementh]

Yeah, it's the (computer) age-old problem of buttons/menus that show current status vs. indicate the action that can be initiated. For a menu item, check marks should only be used to show current status. That's where this feature is failing.

HP (of all companies) created a very successful way of avoiding that problem, which was then copied by everybody else. I refer, of course, to the subtly 3D widgets in Motif GUIs.

Then the nappy wearing "it is 3 years old therefore it needs updating" mob took us back to the dark ages of flat GUIs. May they rot in hell.

AMEN!!!

Say what you want to aboot XP; but it was the last time you actually owned your PC (only talking MicroSquizz here), and unlike anything before or since, it was designed with such well-considered discoverability that the GUI actually could teach you how to use it, just by... using it.

Clearly defined radio buttons and dialog boxes with hover text on anything that does anything made that aspect of the UI elegant in its simplicity and functionality. But that was all designed when learning wasn't a dirty word.

mnem
*fires up his old ToughBook with a satisfied smile*

[bd139]

You didn’t own XP. That went with windows 2000.

[AVGresponding]

And then there is the Sirius Cybernetic Corps, with lifts asking us if we have "considered all the options down might offer".

Out of context error. That particular lift was afraid to go up because it saw the attack of the Frogstar robots in the near future.



@bitseeker, where has the fonts button gone..?

[Specmaster]

I see that Groups.io seems to be broken, the last few times I've popped back to see who has posted there and even though I have altered the filtering to always show me the latest posts first, it always defaults every time to giving me the very first post that bitseeker made on 23 August, welcoming everybody to the site

I see that there are still a few that continue to post there, why would they? This new site is way better.

[Specmaster]

Quick question, has anyone ever used the Amazon basics range of batteries and if so what are your thoughts about them?

[tggzzz]

Yeah, it's the (computer) age-old problem of buttons/menus that show current status vs. indicate the action that can be initiated. For a menu item, check marks should only be used to show current status. That's where this feature is failing.

HP (of all companies) created a very successful way of avoiding that problem, which was then copied by everybody else. I refer, of course, to the subtly 3D widgets in Motif GUIs.

Then the nappy wearing "it is 3 years old therefore it needs updating" mob took us back to the dark ages of flat GUIs. May they rot in hell.

Motif wasn’t exactly subtle.

NT4’s “windows 95” interface was and still is top notch now. I miss it.

Subtle+confusing vs unsubtle+obvious.

Not much of a competition, unless you like wasting your life figuring out which pixel can and should be pressed.

[mnementh]

You didn’t own XP. That went with windows 2000.

I said "Own your PC", not "Own the OS". You haven't "owned the OS" since break-seal EULAs that defined the OS as "rented/patented".

I'll counter with "XP until the release of SP3" (Previous SPs in a rollup with the first real "rootkit against the user" built-in) made to harden kiosk builds for XP Embedded, which later became core functionality of Vista/Win7.

I think I still have a box with a couple SBPCs running XP-E somewhere...

mnem
*certified... certifiable...? crusty ol' relic dwagon*

[Zenith]

Quick question, has anyone ever used the Amazon basics range of batteries and if so what are your thoughts about them?

I've never used Amazon Basics, but what sort of batteries? Alkaline or NiMh?

As far as I know, there's not much difference between brands of alkaline batteries. There are one or two websites which have investigated this. By now, Amazon Basics may have been tested. I usually buy alkaline batteries from a pound shop or Lidl.

For NiMh there's a big difference, and the cheapies don't seem to last that many charge cycles before they start to self discharge rapidly. Sanyo Eneloop are reckoned to be the best.

[mnementh]

Quick question, has anyone ever used the Amazon basics range of batteries and if so what are your thoughts about them?

I use both their Alkaline and NiMH batteries on a day-to-day basis; not had a leaker in almost 3 years of use, and the NiMHs perform at or above rated mAH. The alkaline 9V 8-pack is almost impossible value for dollar.

Also nice: When fresh & unabused (as in "not run completely dead too many times"), the AA Ni-MHs even work with my old ENERGIZER "fast charger", which will charge them in 15-30 minutes. It's pretty finicky aboot IR, so if it sez they're good, they're probably excellent.

mnem

[Specmaster]

Thanks for that info, I took a chance on some AAA alkaline batteries yesterday, and they arrived today, and have just ordered some Ni-MH D cells rated @ 1000mAH from their range as well to fit in a LED torch ready for the threatened power cuts this winter. If they are good at not leaking, afterwards they could go into the analogue bench meters

[mnementh]

you mean 10,000mAH, right?

10AH was the norm for a "Full-D" NiCd even decades ago... it was only when they started making plastic shells with sub-Cs and even AAs inside that fundamental "everyday knowledge" was lost.

mnem
tzzzt.

[Cerebus]

As for linking back... Every quoted post, including those in nested quotes, has a linkback to its origin right at the top; it's the little UP ARROW next to "userxyz wrote:" .

So it does, I'd missed it. I particularly like the narrowness of the glyph, it makes it so easy to spot.

While not exactly convenient, if you really felt a need to create a traceable thread tree, you could quote a previous post full of nested quotes and delete all the intervening text, leaving just the trail of linkbacks, or any combination of such with text edited as needed for brevity's sake.

Indeed you could do all that clerical work every time you wanted to reply to a post or - and hold on here I know it's a radical idea - contrive some cunningly fashioned automaton do this repetitive, predictable mechanical drudge work for you. It'd need a name. Let's see? I know! "Comment Processing Unit" or "CPU" for short. I could probably bang one together if I could get my hands on a Turbo-encabulator and a couple of Interrositers.

[Specmaster]

you mean 10,000mAH, right?

10AH was the norm for a "Full-D" NiCd even decades ago... it was only when they started making plastic shells with sub-Cs and even AAs inside that fundamental "everyday knowledge" was lost.

mnem
tzzzt.

Yep, your spot on, my error.

[nixiefreqq]

just clipped a scope probe ground lead on what i though was chassis ground in a switching power supply.

it was not.

BOOM!

no pictures. (you can't take pictures in a dark basement......now which breaker is that?)