• (nodebb)
    Firstly it's mains-powered so why bother to show a message saying supply disconnected - if you can see it on the screen then the electricity must be connected.

    Not necessarily, if your house as a generator, battery, or solar panels. Whether or not this particular thermostat gets a separate signal about the supply connection, I have no idea.

  • Labasta (unregistered)

    That sorting issue: I can only assume that sometimes (mostly) the names are terminated with a non-printing character that comes after the letters of the alphabet.

  • Labasta (unregistered)

    Oh, and it makes no sense to talk about watts of gas in this context: the watt is a measure of power, which needs to be integrated over time to get a quantity of energy.

    Hence, for electricity at least, the usual domestic unit of energy in the UK is the "kilowatt hour" (kWh) unless that has changed.

  • (nodebb)

    "Can someone explain to me the sorting logic that Redgate SQL Compare used to sort these table names? Note that most databases ignore case in table names."

    At a guess, could it be sorted ordinally? There's not many characters between Z and a, but there are square brackets []. Could they be used as a quoting symbol behind the scenes, included in the sort, then stripped out before presentation?

  • (nodebb)

    I completely do not understand the weather instance. What's the error? At first I thought it meant the runic-looking R-with-an-arrow symbol, but that is clearly defined as "thunder" in the map legend at the bottom -- visible on the linked web page, but cut off from the screenshot.

  • fa (unregistered) in reply to Ross_Presser

    They didn't explain [nan], which seems to mean "high risk of cruise missile".

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Ross_Presser

    There is a very well hidden 'nan' to the right hand side of the map, about mid-height.

  • Bill (unregistered)

    Is there some programming environment where NaN is specifically called "nan" or have the temperatures been explicitly lowercase'd?

  • Anonymous') OR 1=1; DROP TABLE wtf; -- (unregistered) in reply to Ross_Presser

    The weather map took me a bit to figure out, but I believe it's due to the "nan" (not a number) around Kyiv, Ukraine.

  • Barry Margolin (github) in reply to Bill

    I think numpy uses nan.

  • dpm (unregistered) in reply to Hand_E_Food

    Well-spotted, sir. Uppercase letters are 0x41 - 0x5A, lowercase are 0x61 - 0x7A, and the square bracket characters --- used to encapsulate table names --- are 0x5B and 0x5D.

  • Shemmy (unregistered)

    Pretty sure "up for renewal" is used perfectly cromulently there. "Up for" is a phrasal construct that means "available" or "due." I see no issue.

    Google's dictionary definition:

    up for phrase of up 1. available for. "the house next door is up for sale" 2. being considered for. "he had been up for promotion" 3. due for. "his contract is up for renewal in June"

  • Shemmy (unregistered)

    Pretty sure "up for renewal" is used perfectly cromulently there. "Up for" is a phrasal construct that just means "available" or "due." I see no issue.

    Google's dictionary definition:

    up for phrase of up 1. available for. "the house next door is up for sale" 2. being considered for. "he had been up for promotion" 3. due for. "his contract is up for renewal in June"

  • (nodebb) in reply to Labasta

    Hence, for electricity at least, the usual domestic unit of energy in the UK is the "kilowatt hour" (kWh) unless that has changed.

    It's also a feasible unit for gas of a known and constant "calorific value" == Joules per unit volume. That, in turn, depends on the exact composition of the gas mix, which can vary for a number of reasons. (Your natural gas supply isn't just pure methane - at the very least there is the smelly molecule they use to make it easier to detect leaks.

    But the composition can vary for ordinary reasons, like a change in exactly which well is supplying the gas meaning that there's slightly more ethane in there this time, but also for ... extraordinary ... reasons, like one time in 1994 when ...

    Well, my flat was heated by gas, and had a gas cooker as well, like lots of homes in the area (a town on the south coast of England, not far from Brighton). I was at work, on the other side of the same town, and a call came in that a testing procedure had gone awry, and the main gas supply for the town had been flooded with a different gas, specifically nitrogen, which doesn't burn very well in domestic gas-burning equipment.

  • Clive Page (unregistered) in reply to Labasta

    I think you've misunderstood slightly. What this particular display is supposed to show is the current rate of consumption, which can be measured in Watts (or say kilowatt hours per hour if you please). So it should be showing something like a few hundred watts for electricity, and perhaps a bit more for gas if the gas boiler happens to be active at that instant.

  • erk (unregistered) in reply to Clive Page

    That's probably true, but the display shouldn't describe it as "Energy now" (a meaningless concept).

  • Prime Mover (unregistered) in reply to Clive Page

    I think Labasta was pedantically correcting the last line of the article that attempted to equate (or equivalate) the BTU (a unit of energy) with the watt (a unit of power, which is energy over time).

  • Prime Mover (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    Just reading a book about Saving the World, and it compares carbon extraction (expensive and high-energy) with nitrogen extraction for ammonia (a lot more straightforward) explaining that it was so much easier because nitrogen takes up "20%" of our atmosphere. Wak wak oops.

  • blah (unregistered)

    Does anyone else see green flickering dots on the last submission?

  • (nodebb)

    The TRWTF is that people still use GoDaddy when there are so many other better choices.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Ross_Presser

    What's the error? At first I thought it meant the runic-looking R-with-an-arrow symbol

    Those are reporting locations of Russian panzer divisions. Not sure what they're doing on a weather map though, and the one in Sweden seems to be a false positive.

  • nan-y state (unregistered)

    I lol'd at " to described" in a post about grammar. Was it intentional? We may never know...

  • WTFGuy (unregistered)

    @erk

    Physics people know the difference between power, energy, and work. The public doesn't, and treats them more or less as synonyms. Some devs are physics people, far more are clueless.

    The utility company sells "energy" and households consume "energy" at some rate while stuff is turned on. Just like you car consumes gasoline at some rate when driving. Given all their propaganda about "saving energy" over the last several decades, a display of consumption that wasn't labeled "energy" would be a WTF from a UI design POV.

    Of course good UI design would also include calculating the value correctly, and formatting / rounding it sensibly, not just labeling the value correctly.

  • (author) in reply to nan-y state

    Alas, it was not intentional. Now I have to leave the error in place for continuity with the comments :( (Unless I edit the article AND remove the comment! :lightbulb: )

  • Sharur (unregistered) in reply to Hand_E_Food

    Or just alphabetically, with a blank being between "Z" and "a"?

  • uppercut (unregistered) in reply to Shemmy

    Yep, someone who is "well up for it" is not scheduled for it, but very likely available.

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