I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

LostinBlanch · 10-04-2020 06:39PM

Ipso wrote: »

‘When the devil took our saviour Jesus Christ to the pinnacle of the temple and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, he kept Ireland hidden … to keep it for himself. For I believe that it is the inferno itself, or some worse place.’

– Don Juan del Águila, Spanish Commander at kinsale

Obviously not one of the Cork Del Águilas so.

Ipso · 10-04-2020 07:32PM

LostinBlanch wrote: »

Obviously not one of the Cork Del Águilas so.

One of descendants was at Beal na Blath.

branie2 · 10-04-2020 08:52PM

Ipso wrote: »

One of descendants was at Beal na Blath.

Free State or IRA side?

17-04-2020 03:53PM

The numbat, a sort of marsupial anteater (though it prefers termites) from Australia has more teeth than any other land mammal (52)

Buford T. Justice XIX · 17-04-2020 07:25PM

During the first half of the twentieth century, the Russians grew subtropical plants in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius -- outdoors, and without the use of glass or any fossil fuel-powered assistance.

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cultivating-subtropical-plants-in-freezing-temperatures.html

Their solutions to the micro climate they were working in were very interesting, thinking outside the box solutions.

Their twitter account is worth a follow if you're interested in low tech solutions.

LostinBlanch · 18-04-2020 03:49PM

An Irishman James Martin from Co Down invented the ejection seat. To date it has saved over 7500 lives.

But it wasn't invented for the likes of this fella. :eek:

secondrowgal · 20-04-2020 12:21PM

Did you know that dogs sneeze when they are play fighting to let you know it's not a real fight?? I didn't know that

https://www.rover.com/blog/dogs-sneeze-play/

Dog behavior experts believe this particular sneeze is part of a set of a communication tools dogs use to relate to one another—to signal cooperation, warning, deference, or an invitation to play. The sneeze in this context is a reminder to the playmate that the scrimmage is just play, not a true fight.

ohnonotgmail · 20-04-2020 12:29PM

LostinBlanch wrote: »

An Irishman James Martin from Co Down invented the ejection seat. To date it has saved over 7500 lives.

But it wasn't invented for the likes of this fella. :eek:

at least the french bloke gets to wear this rather natty tie as a memento

Capt'n Midnight · 21-04-2020 11:08PM

The aisle that divides the government and opposition MPs in the House of Commons measures 3.96 metres.

Which is, according to tradition, the length of two swords.

joujoujou · 22-04-2020 11:29AM

Perhaps not the best place to ask (point me to better one if there's on here) but I wonder what they used to achieve this:

Evade · 22-04-2020 11:36AM

Chemicals that react to create a lot of gas and washing up liquid.

Ryath · 22-04-2020 11:39AM

Hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide with soap and food colouring.

New Home · 22-04-2020 12:33PM

There was something of the gif thread in CVPL a while back, I'll see if I can dig it out later on.

Cordell · 22-04-2020 02:41PM

I can't stop watching it.

Ryath · 22-04-2020 02:47PM

Cordell wrote: »

I can't stop watching it.

It's a lot larger than it looks in that!

Badly Drunk Boy · 22-04-2020 07:48PM

joujoujou wrote: »

Perhaps not the best place to ask (point me to better one if there's on here) but I wonder what they used to achieve this:

This has the making of it. You can probably skip the first 7 minutes and still see enough...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXn4fP3CnJg

New Home · 22-04-2020 08:43PM

The best thing for me is how it changes colour, from rich green to turquoise.

joujoujou · 22-04-2020 09:38PM

Thanks lads, much appreciated.

24-04-2020 02:23PM

Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is the only African capital city more than 1000km from any other capital city.

Capt'n Midnight · 24-04-2020 06:51PM

'Woman wiring an early IBM computer' from the 'Documenting Science' series (1938-58) by US photographer Berenice Abbott

Except it's not a computer but an IBM 405 "Alphabetic Accounting Machine" from 1934 which you could rent for $1,000 a month.

It could process up to 150 cards a minute.
That's 2.5Hz = 0.000 000 002.5 GHz

more info http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer-in.html

mikhail · 24-04-2020 08:29PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It could process up to 150 cards a minute.
That's 2.5Hz = 0.000 000 002.5 GHz

That's not quite a fair comparison. The processor speed quoted for modern computers is in terms of the clock speed. In one clock cycle, they can do 1 operation, like adding two numbers. I don't know what a card contained, but I expect it required a sequence of quite a few operations to process all the data, so the equivalent of the processor speed may have been literally tens of times faster than 0.0000000025 GHz.

The real limitations of devices like that is that they weren't programmable. The cards would have presented different data to the machine, but it couldn't be reprogrammed to do something new. That kind of machine emerged in the US and UK the 40s (and to a lesser extent in Germany), largely driven by the need for wartime calculations around decryption, calculations for the atomic bomb, etc.

Capt'n Midnight · 25-04-2020 12:07AM

mikhail wrote: »

That's not quite a fair comparison. The processor speed quoted for modern computers is in terms of the clock speed. In one clock cycle, they can do 1 operation, like adding two numbers. I don't know what a card contained, but I expect it required a sequence of quite a few operations to process all the data, so the equivalent of the processor speed may have been literally tens of times faster than 0.0000000025 GHz.

It's not doing real number crunching it's just counting. Pipelining and multiple cores means you can probably still average a card processing per cycle

You could also throw the problem at a GPU which can have thousands of cores.

mikhail · 25-04-2020 03:05AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It's not doing real number crunching it's just counting. Pipelining and multiple cores means you can probably still average a card processing per cycle

You could also throw the problem at a GPU which can have thousands of cores.

Depends on the specifics of the algorithm. Not everything parallelises, but yeah, probably fair point.