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Average speed of a car

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:36:26 GMT

The average speed of a car is not very fast if you accidentally fill your petrol car with diesel!

Doh!

Posted by VinceH (VincceH) in The Playpen
8 comments in forum

Will Snow Leopard look like RISC OS?

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:41:20 GMT

No

Looking forward to a new look, though. The current look has been around for a bit, and whilst I like it, there are some aspects I've never been keen on - the coloured window tools, for instance, which aren't clear enough.

Snow Leopard would be the ideal release to implement it as well, if they're going for a consolidation release rather than feature upgrades.

Posted by John Hoare (moss) in General
2 comments in forum

Will Snow Leopard look like RISC OS?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:58:45 GMT

http://daringfireball.net/2009/01/macworld_expo_predictions -

What I expect is for Apple to make old features look new, by updating the system-wide appearance theme. I�ve made this prediction several times in the past and been wrong, but eventually I�ll be right: it�s time for the last vestiges of the original Mac OS X 10.0 �Aqua� theme to go. Scrollbars and push buttons, for example, remain largely unchanged since the Mac OS X public beta in 2000. My bet says iTunes-style scrollbars everywhere, darker window chrome, and a light-text-on-dark-background menu bar.

(The name I�ve heard for the new theme: Marble. Make of that what you will.)

Marble, huh?

Posted by Phil Mellor (monkeyson2) in General
2 comments in forum

Average speed of a car

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:06:33 GMT

I'd always criticised the poor conversion efficiency of our solar cells, given the obvious abundance of trees & plants, but perhaps they're actually no more efficient....*wanders off to investigate*

Since trees &c are also busy living, it's the efficiency of photosynthesis (plus conversion to storage compounds like sugars if you like) which should be compared, rather than the energy in the resultant biomass. I've heard it's not actually all that efficient - sometimes the reaction is driven the wrong way (that is, the energy of light releases carbon rather than fixing it). This is an issue because the products (including oxygen) are at much higher concentration than the reactants (water and CO2). But until someone creates a better system to do the same process those whingers should probably STFU.
I also think that creating a chemical fuel is probably more difficult than creating electricity. So to be fair one should probably include the efficiency of either hydrolysis or battery storage in the calculations.

Posted by Tony Haines (Loris) in The Playpen
8 comments in forum

The Boy Buffy

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:31:38 GMT

The whole thing wasn't as bad; I'll give it another go.

I thought Beaky was a bit stupid, though; standing still to be shot at when he can move like lightning and fly, too (not to mention the halitosis thing).

Posted by Simon Willcocks (Stoppers) in The Playpen
3 comments in forum

The Boy Buffy

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:59:54 GMT

I caught the last part of Demons last night.

I'm not very impressed;

I wasn't terribly impressed by it, but I usually give any new thing a few episodes chance before dismissing it.

I thought the bad guys were naff, too. One of them made me think of the polo-mint dude from episode one (?) of the last series of The Mighty Boosh - which severely damaged his impact as a bad guy demon.

is it worth watching the repeat tonight to get the context?

The background is pretty much the same as Buffy, tbh, with just 'detail' changes really - ie to fit that he's a descendant of Van Helsing and so on.

What was Philip Glenister's accent?

Overpuddlian of some breed. Buffy's watcher (in the series) was English, so the equivalent character in a series made here obviously has to be Overpuddlian. Or something.

Edit: I forget the detail and exactly what he said, but at one point he made a Gene Hunt style comment to one of the bad guys. That did amuse me.

[Edited by VincceH at 15:01, 4/1/2009]

Posted by VinceH (VincceH) in The Playpen
3 comments in forum

h0t news on page 10! Phlamey breaks the server.

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:42:00 GMT

Over Christmas I managed to write the new script parser. Hurrah!

The new parser is much better than the old one, since it won't get confused when faced with expressions such as "i-1" or "IF VLEN(emissions[0].org-emissions[1].org)>3.0 THEN .tribe_m1_gopark". It also attempts to perform type checking at load time, so the majority of syntax errors are now detected immediately instead of when you hit the affected code (although the type checks are often too restrictive, so some work may still be needed).

Posted by Jeffrey Lee (Phlamethrower) in The Playpen
656 comments in forum

The Boy Buffy

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:27:12 GMT

I caught the last part of Demons last night.

I'm not very impressed; is it worth watching the repeat tonight to get the context?

What was Philip Glenister's accent?

Posted by Simon Willcocks (Stoppers) in The Playpen
3 comments in forum

Wanted: cheap Iyonix

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:38:46 GMT

This is getting desperate! Cash waiting, please let me know if you want rid of your Iyonix.

So why not call Castle and see if they have any left?

Andy.

Posted by Andrew C. Poole (andypoole) in General
7 comments in forum

Wanted: cheap Iyonix

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 07:08:35 GMT

This is getting desperate! Cash waiting, please let me know if you want rid of your Iyonix.

Posted by Gavin (SparkY) in General
7 comments in forum