The Night Mail

[PupCam]

 

2 hours ago, DenysW said:

The easy answer is 8. The full answer is that it is an operating-system dependent variable, and in some operating systems can be re-set by the user.

 

There were also nibbles, which were between bits and bytes.

 

And that's before you realise that non-integer numbers can be big-endian or little-endian.

 

I've never come across an operating system where the byte size can be set by the user!   That is of course not to say that the statement is untrue, my exposure to different operating systems was relatively modest.

 

Nibbles were always 1/2 a byte in my day and all my bytes were 8 bits although, of course, you could have 2, 4, 8 etc bit words depending on various factors.

 

And integers were endian too ....   "Endianess"  (made-up word?)  was basically a function of the processor and its architecture.

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

You would think so - but the building was made following the architects plan (bottom picture). I can only assume that the first two houses in the row share the chimney stack .

 

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The draughtsman within me would hardly call that an architect's plan; more an artists impression.

 

In most terraced houses you can only get a shared stack arrangement in houses that are arranged as mirror images between the party walls. (Remembering that the stack is a collection of separate flues.  They only share a common surround onto which the chimney pots fit.)

 

So the house at the right hand end cannot share a common stack as it's entrance hallway would be the other side of the party wall to the reception rooms of it's neighbour. 

 

Looking at the artists impression again, I do note that Nos 45 and 46 could share a common stack, but only because No 45 has been mirrored so it's front door is at right side of the house as opposed to all the other houses which have their doors to the left hand side.

 

Of course there are exceptions to every rule and you can find  double fronted terraced houses with fireplaces on each side of the building.

 

I don't know which drawings you are both looking at but it appears from what I can see that CC has in fact extracted a segment of the building in the diagram, extended it to get the number of properties desired and mirrored the end building roof to finish it off.    The bit in the real building  where there's a transition in style/height adjustment is I suspect the bits where shared chimneys have merged two into one.     But in all honesty, I can't see much detail at all in the drawing.    I'd better go to SpecSavers!

 

 

Alan

[J. S. Bach]

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Of course, now that the dust has settled and I can re-view it critically, There's a lot I don't like and I'm almost tempted to bin it and re-do it....

 

4 hours ago, polybear said:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO............... far too nice......

 I agree with Bear!!

 

You do not state what scale it is but if it is OO/HO or O; just wrap it up and send it to me. I will even pay the freight!

 

 

[polybear]

22 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

I read that Warren Gatland is to replace Wayne Pivac as the Welsh Rugby team's Head Coach.  A bit of a kick in the knutsaak for the English RFU who was eyeing Gatland up as a possible replacement for their own Head Coach, Eddie Jones.

 

 

So W.G. isn't what you'd call ambitious then?  🤣

[polybear]

6 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

 

 I agree with Bear!!

 

You do not state what scale it is but if it is OO/HO or O; just wrap it up and send it to me. I will even pay the freight!

 

 

 

I know of at least one Bear that'll fight you for it.....🤣

[Adam88]

52 minutes ago, PupCam said:

 ....   "Endianess"  (made-up word?)

 

In a sense made up.  It's from Gulliver's Travels and  refers to Lilliputians eating boiled eggs little end first or big end first. 

[AndyID]

Regarding the size of a byte, ballcocks I say 😀

 

A byte is just a subdivision of a computer's word length. The first machine I worked on had a twenty bit word and four five bit bytes to the word. It also helped that the input/output was five bit paper tape.

 

[AndyID]

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Major domestic just now re. kilobyte.

 

The SI prefix kilo- is anomalous in that its symbol, k, is lower case. This is an unfortunate consequence of the history of the metric system; the prefixes for higher multiples of 1,000 are upper case: mega, M, giga, G, all the way to the new prefixes ronna, R, and quetta, Q, for 10^27 and 10^30, adopted at last month's General Conference on Weights and Measures. Lower case has been reserved for multiples of 1/1,000, from milli, m, all the way to the new ronto, r, and quecto, q, for 10^-27 and 10^-30 respectively, (The use of the Greek mu as the symbol for micro is another historical embuggerment.)

 

The byte as a unit of data is not an SI unit but, according to ISO 80000-13, Quantities and Units - Part 13: Information science and technology, the SI prefixes should be used, the symbol for kilobyte being kB.* Straightforward, one would think. But not, those dratted folk at Microsoft, who no doubt work in foot-pounds and other such obscure and outmoded units, have insisted on adopting KB, placing themselves at variance with the authoritative guidance of the international industry standard - typical American exceptionalism. The consequence is, that when a lexicographer looks at usage, she sees an overwhelming citation count for KB; therefore the dictionary propagates technical error. What is a poor ex-metrologist to do?  

 

*This raises another issue. Why is the symbol for byte uppercase B? The convention for SI units is that although all unit names are written uncapitalised but if named after a person, the unit sympol is upper case: newton, N; joule, J; etc.; otherwise lower case: second, s; metre, m; etc. So who was this famous computing pioneer Mr Byte?**

 

**He was almost certainly male. There is no SI unit named for a female scientist, although two chemical elements are - but one of those is shared with her husband.

 

Yes, and they fouled the whole thing up by using kilogram as a fundamental unit. They should have come up with a new name that did not have kilo in it.

[Oldddudders]

7 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I managed to dig out the following - to show you some Georgian "Speculator's Rubbish".

 

Sorry that the pictures are so dark - but it does add atmosphere...

 

Of course, now that the dust has settled and I can re-view it critically, There's a lot I don't like and I'm almost tempted to bin it and re-do it....

As the owner of three fine structures made by Il Dottore, there is probably not a lot of smoke and mirrors in these pics. He really can do the biz. 

[iL Dottore]

54 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

 

 I agree with Bear!!

 

You do not state what scale it is but if it is OO/HO or O; just wrap it up and send it to me. I will even pay the freight!

 

 

It’s 4mm/ft.

 

The posted drawings are but a part of the resources I accumulated before starting the build (I also have some better architectural drawings, somewhere)

The prototype is Trinity Church Square in Southwark, London. And the prototype does differ quite a bit from the drawings (which, as @Happy Hippo  implied, were probably drawings made before the building of it was started [and likely used to flog the leaseholds]) and not one of the three sides of the squared U exactly the others. For prototype see here https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q107551736#/media/File:Trinity_Church_Square,_SE1_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2264242.jpg and  https://www.knightfrank.co.in/properties/residential/to-let/trinity-church-square-southwark-london-se1/BIQ012195892 and here https://www.trinityvillage.co.uk/

Almost no “artistic licence” (beyond modelling just one side) was employed.

 

As there’s interest in it, I’m tempted to flog it off rather than bin it (if bin it I do - it’s 50:50 at the moment)

[pH]

9 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Regarding the size of a byte, ballcocks I say 😀

 

A byte is just a subdivision of a computer's word length. The first machine I worked on had a twenty bit word and four five bit bytes to the word. It also helped that the input/output was five bit paper tape.

 

I think it would be fair to say the most common length for a byte is eight bits. 
 

I worked with a mini-computer made by an obscure British company (so obscure I can’t remember the name) which could use paper tape as input. You made the tape into a tight roll, put a pencil through the centre of the roll to act as a weight and manually pulled the tape upwards through the optical reader. I can’t remember that process ever being used for anything serious. Its main use was to display tape reading, as in “You won’t believe this - watch!”
 

 

[AndyID]

23 minutes ago, pH said:

I think it would be fair to say the most common length for a byte is eight bits. 
 

I worked with a mini-computer made by an obscure British company (so obscure I can’t remember the name) which could use paper tape as input. You made the tape into a tight roll, put a pencil through the centre of the roll to act as a weight and manually pulled the tape upwards through the optical reader. I can’t remember that process ever being used for anything serious. Its main use was to display tape reading, as in “You won’t believe this - watch!”
 

 

 

You had to watch that the tape didn't wrap tight on the pencil and drag the whole shootingmatch into the reader 😄

 

There's a very comprehensive list of early British machines In here

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_computers

 

It does include some very obscure ones that I'm familiar with.

 

My claim to fame is that I believe I built the first working machine based on Intel's 8080 in the UK (in Scotland, naturally). I know this because I found a serious problem even before Intel knew about it 😀

 

 

[polybear]

2 hours ago, PupCam said:

Nibbles were always 1/2 a byte in my day and all my bytes were 8 bits although, of course, you could have 2, 4, 8 etc bit words depending on various factors.

 

 

A Nibble is six Mince Pies, whilst a byte is a LDC......

 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

The prototype is Trinity Church Square in Southwark, London. And the prototype does differ quite a bit from the drawings (which, as @Happy Hippo  implied, were probably drawings made before the building of it was started [and likely used to flog the leaseholds]) and not one of the three sides of the squared U exactly the others. For prototype see here https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q107551736#/media/File:Trinity_Church_Square,_SE1_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2264242.jpg and  https://www.knightfrank.co.in/properties/residential/to-let/trinity-church-square-southwark-london-se1/BIQ012195892 and here https://www.trinityvillage.co.uk/

 

 

62B Trinity Church Square sold for a Million Quid in May this year.....for a 1-Bed Flat; 11 years earlier it sold for £600K, so not a bad profit.

[DenysW]

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

the Soccer competition in Quatar

There's a Soccer competition in Qatar? I was hoping it was just a malicious rumour that would be gone by Christmas.

[Dave Hunt]

6 hours ago, DenysW said:

There were also nibbles, which were between bits and bytes.

 

That makes chronological sense. A bit of grub is what you have for a light lunch, a nibble is what you have with the drinky poos at a cocktail party and a byte is part of dinner.

 

Or have I misconstrued something?

 

Dave 

[Oldddudders]

49 minutes ago, DenysW said:

There's a Soccer competition in Qatar? I was hoping it was just a malicious rumour that would be gone by Christmas.

I suggested to my football-loving brother that international sport should never be conducted in that part of the world, where basic human rights are ignored, and as for LGBT issues, well... He points out that Qatar has tentacles everywhere, including Sainsbury, apparently, and when he ran a cancer research lab in Central London 30 years ago, it was called Qatar. Sigh.

[Dave Hunt]

Another schoolboy error today. The choice of jobs this morning as advertised by the Management was shopping or Christmas card writing. My preference by far was for shopping as I could combine it with a coffee at a mate's house and spin it out until early afternoon but safe in the knowledge that Jill hates shopping even more than I do I decided to play the good guy and potentially gain some brownie points by saying, "I don't mind, what would you prefer?" Horror of horrors, she chose shopping so I spent three mind numbing hours writing bl**dy cards.

 

Afternoon started out OK as I sloped off down to the shed but my reverie was spoiled by the door opening and those hideous words, "If you've got a few minutes," spoken combined with the bits of a broken ornament being placed in front of me. Oh, bo!!ocks - there goes the rest of the day, thinks I. In the event I managed about an hour modelling, though, and a few brownie points were earned.

 

Dave   

[Northmoor]

10 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I suggested to my football-loving brother that international sport should never be conducted in that part of the world, where basic human rights are ignored, and as for LGBT issues, well... He points out that Qatar has tentacles everywhere, including Sainsbury, apparently, and when he ran a cancer research lab in Central London 30 years ago, it was called Qatar. Sigh.

As I read the other day, the presentation to FIFA should have been short:

"Can we host the World Cup?"

"Can you host the Women's World Cup as well?"

Discussion ends.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

Yes, and they fouled the whole thing up by using kilogram as a fundamental unit. They should have come up with a new name that did not have kilo in it.

 

Yes indeed. But that has its root in the failure of the 18th century French savants to appreciate the utility of a coherent system of units; they defined the gram or gramme as the mass of a cubic centimetre of water, rather than as the mass of a cubic metre of water. By so doing they did, however, ensure that the base unit of mass was of a convenient magnitude for everyday use.

 

Prior to the 2019 redefinition of the kilogram in terms of the vales of fundamental constants of nature, the kilogram was defined as the mass of an artefact, a cylindrical lump of platinum-iridium alloy (made by the London firm Johnson Matthey in 1884, along with 40 copies), approximately 42 mm in diameter by 42 mm long. If the base unit of mass had been the gramme or the tonne, it would have been impossible with the technology of the time to construct a prototype and copies with sufficient precision.

 

To achieve a coherent system in which the base unit of mass does not have a prefix attached, one could take the tonne (a non-SI unit currently accepted for use with the SI, like the litre) as the base unit. 1 kg would become 1 mt.

[Canal Digger]

6 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I am glad I no longer have to worry about it. The people who name things and set standards (I have been browsing Wikiwotsit) have renamed the binary based bits and bytes as for instance kibibytes. A kibibyte is 1024 bytes reserving kilobyte for 1000 bytes. As well as kibibytes there are mibi, gibi, and tebibytes. I haven’t seen them in much use yet. 

I'm also glad not  to worry about such things. Back in the Dark Ages, when I did my C&G/ BTEC Electrical Technician's Course A kilobyte was 1024 (2 to the power of 10) bytes. 1000 bytes is meaningless. Methinks that the people who name things are talking complete and utter kibil00ks. Oh happy days working with base 8 or base 16 computing systems and a calculator using Polish Logic. 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Canal Digger
correction

[Dave Hunt]

Isn't the best system of units to base 5 so you can work it out on your fingers? (Not base 10 because you need the other hand to point at the fingers you are working with).

 

Dave

Edited December 5, 2022 by Dave Hunt

[Compound2632]

Just now, Dave Hunt said:

Isn't the best system of units to base 5 so you can work it out on your fingers? (Not base 10 because you need one hand to point at the fingers you are working with).

 

The Babylonians counted in base 60 (which is why we have 60 seconds in a minute of time or angle, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle). I believe this is because their method of accounting required an audit committee of half-a-dozen stylus-pushers.

[polybear]

39 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I suggested to my football-loving brother that international sport should never be conducted in that part of the world, where basic human rights are ignored, and as for LGBT issues, well... He points out that Qatar has tentacles everywhere, including Sainsbury, apparently, and when he ran a cancer research lab in Central London 30 years ago, it was called Qatar. Sigh.

 

It seems that Qatar is now the largest owner of London property - a quick Google shows some of the stuff they own:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2022/nov/05/how-qatar-bought-up-britain#:~:text=The Ritz, Claridge's, the Savoy,wholly or partly Qatari-owned

[Tony_S]

11 minutes ago, Canal Digger said:

base 8 or base 16 computing systems and a calculator using Polish Logic. 

I had one group of students that said a computing lesson on implementing postfix (Reverse Polish Notation) calculations on a stack was “really good”. It is odd what sometimes excites teenagers!

[Dave Hunt]

17 minutes ago, Canal Digger said:

 a calculator using Polish Logic. 

 

Does that mean the harder you rub the shinier it gets?

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

Does that mean the harder you rub the shinier it gets?

 

No, that's just military logic.