Haha I got in early!

I have made it through the recruitment hiccups and will be starting next month, cannot overstate how exciting this change of scenery is for me.

September is always a good month for Change, I should join a gym.

We have moved and love it, tonight is our first night here and wifey cooked us a family dinner and we ate togetger at an honest to goodness dining table -- literally never happens for us.

We have the essentials in, board games mostly, but still lots to do and it's going tk be a month before we are finished I think.

Back to work in an office next week, not by choice.

Metronomy - It's good to be back

Metronomy - Things will be fine

Kae Tempest - More pressure

I'm here for non-zero amounts of 'here'. Better than before anyway! How are you?

From the site: Operation completed - 2006.9kg pre-ordered in 24 hours! Sale is over , there is no cheese left.

The Nasa Stream was way cooler, but 720p. The WH stream is in 1080p at least!

I'm excited! Waiting up watching the live stream from Nasa now.

Tomorrow I plan to watch Launch Pad Astronomy's stream.

He has a very good series of videos about the JWST, playlist here. :)

The biggest hurdle we've personally faced with home-learning has been getting our eldest engaged in the work set by his school; there's been teething problems but they now regularly put out work which is quite challenging, diverse and (I find) fairly interesting

But it's clear that the work is significantly stripped down without that classroom context, which makes keeping him on track and working through challenges a greater time-commitment than I have available for him. If we weren't supported by family I have no doubt that he would have entirely disconnected from his education.

In the UK we're looking at reopening in March, and there's even talk of having students repeat a year which I feel is going too far in the wrong direction. There's been a significant loss in learning but the answer to that won't be to hold students back but rather, I feel, push them forward.

Edit: More relevant is discussion around continuing education digitally which is interesting to me, we've seen instructions now from the school on how to access the Google Classroom from games consoles. It feels like if we're at that point -- then it should be clear we do not have the infrastructure to do this long-term in place -- yet.

I'm also keeping an eye on the safeguarding impact as that has been wildly out of control without the schools being able to students each day, have those informal discussions and just -- listen -- to the kids.

Bit late for April fools isn't it?

Disgusting scam but not hard to see how it would do well. It's got hallmarks of about half a dozen schemes bundled up up to and including a pyramid scheme!

Further to your application for the above post, we are pleased to advise that we would like to invite you for an interview.

So looks like I'm working on a 15 minute presentation next; still too early to tell so I'm going to keep the good ol' "What can be learned?" mentality.

I told her I'd been off my meds so she took me to the hospital

I answered honestly yes to both

I tell him I want to go to rehab

What's the thing in common here? It's you making solid, good, healthy choices; it's you still caring about yourself no matter how bad it gets, you trying to look out for you.

YOU are your best friend. YOU are helping yourself. YOU are important and you know it. Don't lose sight of that, you can overcome this.

Wonderful, thank you for sharing this -- love a bit of Bob and this was a fantastic way to introduce my boys to Banksy.

Weird day, weird week, it's been stressful but I think I do better when I have something to work on. I am about to take holiday and hopefully get the house next week -- it's nice to take a pause and just reflect on all I have to be thankful for.

Ooh bonus points! It's the "hacker symbol" from "The Hackers Manifesto" or more accurately it's the glider pattern in Conway's game of life (one which will continue moving forward forever).

This is awesome, awesome news and congratulations to all involved, the fact you have already got an in with patients and it seems like a seamless service user experience is a real credit to you, I can't wait to see where this goes as I fully believe in this idea and had been hoping people would start to move down this route.

I've been wallowing for a while now and have only just brought my motivation levels back, I've resumed taking my antidepressant, have seen friends in person and even managed to have the first date night in over 6 months!

Pokemon go has made me walk 35km and I feel I have lost weight, the scales say 10lbs but I'm not sure on that. I've ended my sugar binge and an working on eating healthy again.

mk I've just had to change the community tag on this post as it was previously tagged as #pedophile presumably by Grendel as he has a standing grudge with TFG. Can we have muting count for community tags as well please?

Edit: Actually had to change community tags on several posts, and don't imagine muting would help as he can sign up another account. Perhaps if people are going to abuse the community tags (more probable as the community grows) they should be something that has to be earned by or bestowed upon the user.

Been a little while since I've stopped in; I need to work on that.

My last update in May I said about not getting the job I had been waiting on. There was another one in the background that I had been wanting and it was partly luck that I saw the posting for it. Well I've got it! Or... at least... I should have it?

I'm now 4 months into recruitment hell, where the only information I get back about the process is if I call up and ask if everything is alright. I shouldn't be finding out this far down the line that basic ID documents haven't been accepted or that instructions that were meant to be included in my offer letter weren't.

I've been working on some artwork, it's taken me a little while to refine it and finish it up and I keep flip-flopping on whether I like it, or hate it entirely. Missed the deadline for the staff art gallery though; but I might write it up and post it on here if there's any interest?

I bloop any comments I feel are contributing positively to the discussion, my concern of de-anonymising this is it could give a false impression of my own views just because I circledotted something I felt needed to be seen but not necessarily supported.

Let's see how this plays out.

I made blankets! They're the same (Side a and side B below), though one is slightly pinched in one corner, first time I have ever sewn anything and they're for my sisters and their (as yet unborn) babies. Mum took them on the plane to Oz, Sister A loves hers and is going to have the baby any moment now, while Sister B gets hers in a few weeks, baby due soon too.

Whilst she's out there I am caring for my grandad and the boys have joined me a few times, got a really sweet photo of them playing checkers before I had a go and got thoroughly stomped, boo!

Can we make that a thing? I mean it is exactly half a year from April Fools, so maybe April Fools is harmless pranks that are all just a bit of fun, October Fools could be horrible pranks that make fun of the dystopian wasteland we find ourselves heading towards!

I'll start working on an app that detects when you are browsing the web in the toilet and shares this on popular social networks. It should be ready for next year!

Sir Patrick Stewart just adopted a Pitbull, and he loves it so damn much.

I giggled at this, thank you! I have always hated the sound of my voice, but sitting through and listening to the recording I was actually really happy with how I sounded.

This bodes well for my current idea of reviewing fizzy drinks as a Youtube channel!

I've been a bit quiet lately, settling into new routines with the house and just enjoying our own leisure time.

Lots of playing Stardew Valley on the Switch -- the local multiplayer and 1.5 update have been great and the wife and I connect well over games like this -- feel very loved at the moment being able to spend time with her in a way we both appreciate.

Really good news for my boys, both have gotten into the schools that we wanted for them -- this move has just been rewarding for us y'know?

Same thing I do everyday Pinky, try to take over the world!

Or more seriously, I'm going to alternate between playing Stardew Valley and messing around with more digital artwork. I'm tempted to try taking a course online so I can do something more interesting but, I dunno, I kind of like the stuff I've made just playing around with things so far.

It's a great filter in some ways. Natural or artificial, if we can achieve capture and investigation of it and similar objects we as a species will be on the right track.

I like the interstellar life theory for it's optimism; on a scale of Arachnids to Monoliths I feel the tone is on the higher end of that.

I hope that we do 'something' with the opportunity these sol interlopers present humanity, even if it is just doing science to weird rock moving really fast. That would be something everyone can get behind.

Elegant

Sorry, not an Apple fan but at least they're finally taking a stand on this problem they have enabled; let's see if Alphabet do... HAH!

You briefly touched on the harmonics on the wave that is being generated and it reminded me of something from my college days, where we learnt about square waves and 'overshoot' or 'bounce'.

It was an interesting lesson I have mostly forgotten now, but I was interested in the 'Odd Harmonics' aspect and I wanted to see what that looked like. So naturally I opened Excel and in time-honored tradition of misuse, I made a graph. The below formula is pretty simple and you just copy it along and down as appropriate, the square wave is the sum of all of these:

It gets far more interesting when you make it more granular -- lower increment of x, more odd harmonics... here's 501 harmonics with x increasing by 1:

To quote Gabe Newell:

Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.

I'm pleased to see that greater access to information has a seemingly measurable effect (read science, do science?). Particularly relevant at the moment is this recent SMBC comic "Science Fictions".

I completely agree, while I respect the minimalism the site is striving for it really does have a negative affect on discussion; most comments sections appear as a stream of black and white occasionally broken up by some blue and it is far too impersonal.

I don't think that Avatars are necessarily the only way to go nor even the right way. I propose give users a few dots next to their username and let them choose the colours of them, this would give sufficient personality and distinction to comments and help users recognise their friends at a glance. It wouldn't be too difficult to implement, nor require much space to store, certainly less than an avatar system would.

It would be tempting to tie earning these dots in with the badge system, but something doesn't quite sit right with that idea to me... though perhaps an extra one or two as a donation perk would be okay.

Edit: Like this, but preferably in-line with the current name and time