EFNIR: Jinhao Deep Blue

January 3

6 hours ago, InesF said:

and we all (at least, I hope it is so) are sitting at 11am either in the Vienna Musikvereinssaal or at home in front of TV or Radio and listening to the Vienna Philharmonics New Years Concert!

Nice! That would be enjoyable indeed.

6 hours ago, InesF said:

(OK, I had a lot of fun doing this, please laugh with me)

:lol:

You also reminded me of my trip to Vienna (eons ago), where I bought my first fountain pen (fine nib Waterman Laureat) and had Austrian soft pretzels for the first (and sadly, only) time! Holy cow were they good! I tell everyone who says they're thinking of going to Europe to go to Austria and get pretzels!

6 hours ago, InesF said:

This Wiki article must had been written before 1900 😯 .

:lticaptd: When the internet was just a gleam in Al Gore's father's eye!

6 hours ago, InesF said:

The items are preferably made from chocolate or marzipan. 👌

Almost all items are preferably made from chocolate!

January 3

6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Chocolate pigs? Marzipan pigs? Those are such… outlandish concepts to this ex-HongKong Australian.

Come to America, we'll give you chocolate money, chocolate bunnies, chocolate oranges ... and most importantly, chocolate guns!

January 3

38 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Come to America, we'll give you chocolate money, chocolate bunnies, chocolate oranges ... and most importantly, chocolate guns!

I would add even "religious" themed chocolates

January 3

2 minutes ago, yazeh said:

I would add even "religious" themed chocolates

Of course! The first and second amendments, in chocolate! Why I'll bet you could even get a chocolate representation of the Constitution!

January 4

18 hours ago, yazeh said:

I hope you didn't think it was related to Sylvester Stallone or the other one:

Honestly, I'm not sure ... 🤔 ... no, I did not! :lol:

January 4

15 hours ago, LizEF said:

Have a seat, Professor, and get out a sheet of paper. The day starts at 00:00:00.000 and ends at 23:59:59.999. Ask any computer programmer or database developer. There is no such thing as 24:00! [...]

OMG :lticaptd: , you are so true! :notworthy1:

(I try to forget that nerds can be everywhere and in any profession!)

Dear @LizEF, please let me repeat this exam in due time, when I have studied the clock in a way I should had done before! :lol:

I can imagine how astronomers struggle when they have to synchronize their clocks for globally combined observations! 🙄 And I hope very much, they will use Jinhao Deep Blue for taking notes!

January 4

15 hours ago, LizEF said:

Almost all items are preferably made from chocolate!

15 hours ago, LizEF said:

... and most importantly, chocolate guns!

how true!

World would be a better place if all guns are made from chocolate!

January 4

9 hours ago, InesF said:

Honestly, I'm not sure ... 🤔 ... no, I did not!

:lticaptd:

9 hours ago, InesF said:

how true!

World would be a better place if all guns are made from chocolate!

So true 🕊️

January 4

9 hours ago, InesF said:

OMG , you are so true!

(I try to forget that nerds can be everywhere and in any profession!)

Dear @LizEF, please let me repeat this exam in due time, when I have studied the clock in a way I should had done before!

I spent way, way too much time thinking about time on that project. I will allow you to repeat the exam and won't even use your erroneous 24:00 against your final grade!

9 hours ago, InesF said:

I can imagine how astronomers struggle when they have to synchronize their clocks for globally combined observations! 🙄 And I hope very much, they will use Jinhao Deep Blue for taking notes!

Yeah, don't even want to think about that (nor about what time it really is via the atomic clock).

PS: You probably shouldn't mention the months of the year, or I might go off on idiot Romans - like it would have been that awful to have twelve 28-day months and one 29-day month? Of course, that would have given us the massive leap year dilemma of, "Do we give the extra day to the 29-day month, since it's already a weirdo? Or do we give it to one of the 28-day months, and if so, which one?" Personally, I like the idea of thirteen 28-day months and a day or two that doesn't exist on any calendar, days in spring and/or fall when we can thoroughly enjoy a free day with nothing on our schedules. That would have been wonderful until computers came along and science forced us to do things like incubate for at least 36 hours but no more than 52 hours (or whatever - I made that up to demonstrate that a day we don't count kinda messes things up).

But as long as I'm so far off topic, it was recording start and end times (incubation, sterilization cycles, etc.) that caused the LIMS time update to be such a problem. Turns out that as smart as scientists may be, they're as time-dumb as the average human. For example, I had to give them very clear instructions that if they started or ended something in the 01:00 hour on the day DST ends, they would also have to specify whether it was the first or second 01:00 hour. The GUI was updated to prompt for this, but I still had to explain it to them - and watch their slack faces while their gears churned trying to process this information. (Note that I respected and liked many of these people - DST is simply a stupid thing that never should have happened in the first place and disturbs the mind and instinct of man profoundly.) All times entered were converted to UTC to simplify the math, but I had to allow them to enter the time in their local timezone and I had to convert it back to their timezone for display - UTC is too confusing to humans - and a shocking number of them think it's the same as GMT, which it is not.

/end of clock and calendar rants

Does anyone know what day it is?

January 4

9 hours ago, InesF said:

how true!

World would be a better place if all guns are made from chocolate!

:lol: Amen!

January 7

On 1/4/2025 at 5:16 PM, LizEF said:

I will allow you to repeat the exam and won't even use your erroneous 24:00 against your final grade!

Thank you, @LizEF, I will come prepared! 👍

On 1/4/2025 at 5:16 PM, LizEF said:

Does anyone know what day it is?

Isn't it review-story-magic-day, today? 🤭

January 7

@LizEF You're lucky you didn't have to do a multiple calendar /slash, Roman/ Lunar etc, that would've been fun But I'm guessing since the Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco, scientist across the world use standrdized models

January 7

7 hours ago, InesF said:

Isn't it review-story-magic-day, today? 🤭

:lol: It is indeed. Smoke says to hunt for extra presents in the tree:

January 7

I'm sure Smoke is looking for the birdies

January 7

1 hour ago, yazeh said:

I'm sure Smoke is looking for the birdies

:lticaptd:

January 7

We had a hawk perched on a tree limb earlier today -- I don't think that's the kind of birdie that Smoke would be looking for.... At least, NOT on purpose....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

January 8

37 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

We had a hawk perched on a tree limb earlier today -- I don't think that's the kind of birdie that Smoke would be looking for.... At least, NOT on purpose....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

:lol:

January 8

Good review! Thanks for sharing! I like the color, but am waiting to see what happens to the US price of any goods manufactured in China in the next coming months. Just did my last big purchase of Chinese items in case we experience a huge jump in prices.

January 8

24 minutes ago, Spinningchester said:

Good review!

Thank you!

24 minutes ago, Spinningchester said:

Thanks for sharing!

You're most welcome!

24 minutes ago, Spinningchester said:

I like the color, but am waiting to see what happens to the US price of any goods manufactured in China in the next coming months. Just did my last big purchase of Chinese items in case we experience a huge jump in prices.

Well, it's not like there's a shortage of other interesting dark blues, and many of them behave better on poor paper. I would not expect the price to go down, regardless, so I'd say if you want some, order a pack of cartridges off Amazon or something.