Comment On Sophisticated Cooling Apparatus

No wtf here. It's implemented with high quality duct tape. And it's documented.

That * seems to say something else, though; I can only distinguish "* In a matter of ??????. Probably."

We need a better zoom!!!

Of course if all of the UKTV "networks" did "fall of air", nobody would notice.

They are one of those stations that only have about 5 unique programmes per day...

Looks more like electrical tape to me.

danixdefcon5:

That * seems to say something else, though; I can only distinguish "* In a matter of ??????. Probably."

We need a better zoom!!!

Judging by the length and shape of the word, it probably says "minutes". It's certainly too long to be "hours", "days", "weeks", "months" or "years" and it doesn't appear to have any full-height glyphs, so "seconds" is probably out.

"In a matter of minutes. Probably."

danixdefcon5:

That * seems to say something else, though; I can only distinguish "* In a matter of ??????. Probably."

We need a better zoom!!!

It says in a matter of minutes. Probably

Nerf Herder:

danixdefcon5:

That * seems to say something else, though; I can only distinguish "* In a matter of ??????. Probably."

We need a better zoom!!!

It says in a matter of minutes. Probably

It says "In a matter of Minutes. Probably," ... probably.

Rubbish. It says "And all 7 of our viewers will be phoning in to complain"

Somebody set us up the fan!

You earned my LOL today. Thank you!

Can anyone tell me who manufactured that fan?
If it was supporting critical system for few years working 24/7 then I'd be very interested in getting the same one for myself. It could last for few generations :)

In a related query a coworker found this for me:

Reminded me of my first Pentium, which had a PSU fan failure. Every now and then, it would stop, and I had to put in a clip to "jump-start" the fan. My dad didn't hear me on this for 6 months.

When he finally did, was when I went out on vacation; he left the PC on for 6 hours and suddenly a whiff of smoke and fried electronics caught his attention...

dkf:

Somebody set us up the fan!

All your matrices are belong to us!

There is no dark side of the moon, really.


matter of fact it's all dark.

But, Mr. Boss, the sign did not say anything about turning the fan off.

The inside is pretty dark...

mplscodedev: http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/countdown.asp

mplscodedev:

In a related query a coworker found this for me:

Fake. Firstly, Coundown is shown at 4:15pm, hardly prime-time. Secondly, that combination of letters never came up.

However, during one episode a contestant did spell the word "WANKERS", see the Wikipedia entry.

Rats - just noticed this at the bottom of the OP - too late to edit...

OP:

UKTV finally fixed things by building a brand new facility.

... and then they moved the same rack with insufficient cooling (and the table, box and fan) into it.

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/countdown.asp

Obvious, really !

For a start, there is no 'automatic system' - the letters are on physical cards, selected by Carol Vorderman (that's her in the picture) on instructions from the contestants. Also, Channel 4 at 4pm is not prime-time !

[Damn - someone beat me to it!]

That countdown thing is wrong (apart from it being bunkum) - a computer doesnt pick the letters, the contestants take it in turns to pick by asking the lovely carole vorderman for a "consernant" or "vowel" until all spaces are filled.

My own amaturish CSI style zoom-in;

Hey, it was funny. Real or not, I don't care. Besides, I'm a Yank, I don't pay attention to Cockney game shows we don't steal! :)

It's times like this that I get this uncontrollable urge to flip the off switch.

John:

My own amaturish CSI style zoom-in;

Enhance that section over there!

And let's turn the image around so we can see what was written on the other side of the paper. There might be a clue...

Cah:

Can anyone tell me who manufactured that fan?
...working 24/7

My home office is exposed to the sun on 2 walls and the roof, and it gets pretty toasty in there. I have a desk/hutch that surrounds my iMac; so it gets pretty hot from lack of ventilation.

I got one of those 1/2 height stick-fans from Brookstone (~$50). It's overpriced, but has been running 7x24 for about 18 months without a glitch. Pricy, but reliable.

WhiskeyJack:

John:

My own amaturish CSI style zoom-in;

Enhance that section over there!

And let's turn the image around so we can see what was written on the other side of the paper. There might be a clue...

We need that software CSI and 24 uses. Then we could enhance this to complete clarity... Maybe we need to use a VB interface ...

mplscodedev:

Hey, it was funny. Real or not, I don't care. Besides, I'm a Yank, I don't pay attention to Cockney game shows we don't steal! :)

...because it's about spelling ? <big grin - that was a friendly dig, not flamebait>

Looks like:

"In a matter of ????????, Probably"

It's 7-9 characters, and there don't appear to be any descenders, so it's not "speaking"
There may be an Ascender for the third character, which means it might be a t,l,d or b. I'd go with t or l.

What we need is an English person. There's probably an English phrase similar to the Canadian/American "In a manner of speaking" that we're not familiar with.

WhiskeyJack:

John:

My own amaturish CSI style zoom-in;

Enhance that section over there!

And let's turn the image around so we can see what was written on the other side of the paper. There might be a clue...

No Problem

I have no name, and am offended by the insinuation that I should.:

Looks like:

"In a matter of ????????, Probably"

It's 7-9 characters, and there don't appear to be any descenders, so it's not "speaking"
There may be an Ascender for the third character, which means it might be a t,l,d or b. I'd go with t or l.

What we need is an English person. There's probably an English phrase similar to the Canadian/American "In a manner of speaking" that we're not familiar with.

Doesn't look like "seconds" or "minutes" to me. I would say that it has more to do with the word-play on "turn off the air" and "on-air" phrases. But, in the end, the resolution is simply not sufficient to be sure.

mplscodedev:

Hey, it was funny. Real or not, I don't care. Besides, I'm a Yank, I don't pay attention to Cockney game shows we don't steal! :)

Cockney? FFS - it's made oop North.

mallard:

mplscodedev:

In a related query a coworker found this for me:

Fake. Firstly, Coundown is shown at 4:15pm, hardly prime-time. Secondly, that combination of letters never came up.

However, during one episode a contestant did spell the word "WANKERS", see the Wikipedia entry.

You forgot the part where it's calling Carol Vorderman a computer, since she would pick up the cards from the stacks at the bottom, and place them on the chart. Is that picture just demonstrating how much fail one person can make when editing a photo? And of courseanything too bad would simply be cut from the broadcast since it wasn't live

mplscodedev:

In a related query a coworker found this for me:

Except that it's even funnier, because it means that the woman on the right (Carol Vorderman) would have pulled the letters out of the boxes "VOWEL" and "CONSONANT" in an order defined by the contestant who had the choice that round.

So someone could have fixed it (by arranging the letters in a standard order of selection favoured by contestants)

In similar vain.

You know whats cheaper than screwing the servers into racks?
Using entire 1u's as though they were shelves.

http://i38.tinypic.com/op3h8x.jpg

OMG! They used the default "Times New Roman" font! Total WTF!

And, of course, the aim of the game is to get the longest word possible, not as many words as possible...

Isn't UKTV a joint venture of the BBC? Our license fee hard at work, I see.

The real WTF is that the janitor who only speaks Spanish will move the fan anyway.

DeLos:

We need that software CSI and 24 uses. Then we could enhance this to complete clarity... Maybe we need to use a VB interface ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s
"I'll create a GUI interface using visual basic and see if I can track an IP address"
Fail on so many levels. A GUI interface. /resign

Whats the * refer to on the bottom of the paper?

Dwedit:

The real WTF is that the janitor who only speaks Spanish will move the fan anyway.

The station is in UK somewhere, so the janitor is probably South Asian.

I can't believe no one thinks of the EM interference an AC fan such as this causes and the effect is has on electronics when in such proximity.

When I lived in the dorms all those years ago, we didn't have air conditioning, so I used to keep a much smaller fan than that about a few feet from my desktop. That is until I realized the wavy lines I was seeing on my monitor were only there when the fan was off. I did have some data corruption on my HD, as well. You live, you learn, you place the fan farther away.

BlueNovember:

DeLos:

We need that software CSI and 24 uses. Then we could enhance this to complete clarity... Maybe we need to use a VB interface ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s
"I'll create a GUI interface using visual basic and see if I can track an IP address"
Fail on so many levels. A GUI interface. /resign

Dear god... I hadn't seen that one before. Could they have failed any harder?

I cannot tell you what the Output Matrix is...you have to see it for yourself!

Woah!

used to be what fits in one rack space now fit in two or three 7-foot racks full of tubes back when I was a broadcast brats. when The Slide went up in my day (or worse, when the easel in the studio got lit up and a camera picked up a placard painted in 1953,) it meant that several engineers were using pencils to rap on tubes. when they hit the bad one, usually, a monitor on the wall would break out in multiple fits in multiple dimensions. or a tube would break. or it would short inside and go bright red.

replace and continue until picture is restored cleanly.

Alex Papadimoulis:

John:

My own amaturish CSI style zoom-in;

...

Psshh, I see *someone* needs a better zoom algorithm.
...

To my eyes, I had thought it looked like minutes, but still, I call cheating!
I tried a variety of resample algorithms on the "original" posted to this article, before actually looking at the pixels... there is no way to get this:

from this:


too much information has been lost.