Room 101

[Sod's Law 445]

1 hour ago, AstroKat said:

 

I was a little disappointed that 'Fairytale of New York' didn't make it to No1 this year, it would have been a nice tribute for Shane MacGowan.

 

While I do already have it in my collection I did add a couple of extra downloads. Unfortunately I don't listen to music on a streaming service.

If only he had hung on for two more weeks, I reckon it would have been in the bag. Or at least they could have waited a week or so before they had that wild funeral for him which was streamed on the internet. 

[TQR 14,397]

The phrase "hot take" is fucking rubbish. It's just shorthand for "Hey guys, I'm about to say something that makes me look like a prick, please listen". Into Room 101 it goes. That's my hot take.

[time 8,603]

4 hours ago, TQR said:

The phrase "hot take" is fucking rubbish. It's just shorthand for "Hey guys, I'm about to say something that makes me look like a prick, please listen". Into Room 101 it goes. That's my hot take.

Along with "Hear me out" which is similar.

[TQR 14,397]

8 minutes ago, time said:

Along with "Hear me out" which is similar.

 

Yeah, that one screams a desperate "Please listen to what I have to say, it's sooo important".

[Toast 16,140]

6 minutes ago, TQR said:

Yeah, that one screams a desperate "Please listen to what I have to say, it's sooo important".

 

Although sometimes necessary when dealing with those people who stop listening because they think (wrongly) that they know what you're going to say.

[Commtech Sio Bibble 2,044]

Every so often I get the impulse to go to a popular person's thread and falsely report them as dead.

[TQR 14,397]

5 minutes ago, Commtech Sio Bibble said:

Every so often I get the impulse to go to a popular person's thread and falsely report them as dead.

That’s not nearly as aggravating as falsely reporting the news and/or public opinion. 

[Lard Bazaar 3,799]

On 16/01/2024 at 00:40, time said:

Along with "Hear me out" which is similar.

Also dickheads on forums that want to know something so they ask the ‘hive mind’.  Fuck right off.

[ladyfiona 2,585]

I'm currently annoyed with pharmaceutical companies in charge of distributing epilepsy medication (or whoever is to blame for this). Apparently there is a national shortage.

 

I literally rely on Tegratol to not have seizures and my pharmacy have been out of stock for weeks (they even owe me some meds from December). I did a stock check this evening and I have enough for middle of February roughly. I just emailed my epilepsy nurse to ask for advice and if I should take a less dose to make them last longer. I really don't want to because I have now been seizure free for 13 months and i'm getting things under control.

[Windsor 2,233]

Restorative justice.

 

Heard some of the Grenfel ‘survivors’/victims families addressing the panel. They were very rude and demanding attention. 
 

If I was sat at that table, I’d have told them to fuck off. 

[Toast 16,140]

Two things that are really inconvenient about Wikipedia.

 

On the pages for politicians, monarchs, statesmen etc., they list all their appointments, terms of office etc before the actual biographical details.

So you have to scroll down some considerable way to find out the basics.  That should come first.

 

Pronunciation guide. It's fine for English, hover over the phonetics and it guides you through the pronunciation for each letter. 

But for any other language it refers you the full page IPA guide to the language in question, which is hard work.  Why can't they do the same?

Even better, they could include an audible pronunciation - some pages have that, but not many.

Example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Gainsbourg

 

Oh and a third thing of course is despite promising not to pester you after you've donated, they do.  Over and over again.  This has achieved the result of me not donating any more.  Well done.

[Sir Creep 7,070]

3 hours ago, Toast said:

 

Oh and a third thing of course is despite promising not to pester you after you've donated, they do.  Over and over again.  This has achieved the result of me not donating any more.  Well done.

Same happened to me with the good people at St Jude. After I sent a donation, my post was suddenly overrun with more donation request documents every week or so. I figured if that’s what they were going to do with my donation I didn’t need to send any more money to them.

[Sod's Law 445]

13 hours ago, Toast said:

Two things that are really inconvenient about Wikipedia.

 

On the pages for politicians, monarchs, statesmen etc., they list all their appointments, terms of office etc before the actual biographical details.

So you have to scroll down some considerable way to find out the basics.  That should come first.

 

Pronunciation guide. It's fine for English, hover over the phonetics and it guides you through the pronunciation for each letter. 

But for any other language it refers you the full page IPA guide to the language in question, which is hard work.  Why can't they do the same?

Even better, they could include an audible pronunciation - some pages have that, but not many.

Example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Gainsbourg

 

Oh and a third thing of course is despite promising not to pester you after you've donated, they do.  Over and over again.  This has achieved the result of me not donating any more.  Well done.

And of course, there's the obligatory emails from Jimbo Wales himself reminding you that your £5 donation is the only thing stopping the last fading shreds of the 'free internet' collapsing into a subscription-based add-riddled corporate hellhole forever. I love Wikipedia but it does get a bit over-the-top. 

 

BTW foreign languages tend to have many sounds which don't have English equivalents, which makes it kind of difficult to translate phonetically with any accuracy. Wonder how you write something like 'Sairrrrj Gons-bore' without it looking awkward on a serious article? 

[Toast 16,140]

1 hour ago, Sod's Law said:

BTW foreign languages tend to have many sounds which don't have English equivalents, which makes it kind of difficult to translate phonetically with any accuracy. Wonder how you write something like 'Sairrrrj Gons-bore' without it looking awkward on a serious article? 

 

That is one where they've provided an audio.  I don't see why they can't do that for everything.  The OED does, and even gives both British and American audio pronunciation.

 

Which leads me to another gripe.  The Oxford English Dictionary has recently revamped its website and it's very good.  I'm grateful that I can use it at home via my library membership.

However!  It logs you out every time you leave the site.  And it doesn't remember you.  Previously it left you signed in until the next day.

Signing in is a bit tedious.  I have to select my library or institution from a drop-down menu, then type in my 9 digit library number.  Every time!  The only way round it is to leave the tab open permanently which isn't ideal.  I have emailed them about this so hopefully it'll get fixed.

[Sod's Law 445]

47 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

That is one where they've provided an audio.  I don't see why they can't do that for everything.  The OED does, and even gives both British and American audio pronunciation.

 

Which leads me to another gripe.  The Oxford English Dictionary has recently revamped its website and it's very good.  I'm grateful that I can use it at home via my library membership.

However!  It logs you out every time you leave the site.  And it doesn't remember you.  Previously it left you signed in until the next day.

Signing in is a bit tedious.  I have to select my library or institution from a drop-down menu, then type in my 9 digit library number.  Every time!  The only way round it is to leave the tab open permanently which isn't ideal.  I have emailed them about this so hopefully it'll get fixed.

My gripe with the OED is that my library no longer provides membership, which I'm guessing is down to my cash-strapped local council taking the axe to that kind of non-essential spending. In order to use OED online, I'd now have to pay a hefty membership price, which is annoying as it was a useful tool for me at one time but I can't justify the subscription fee on my own at the moment. Stinks.  

[Toast 16,140]

1 hour ago, Sod's Law said:

My gripe with the OED is that my library no longer provides membership, which I'm guessing is down to my cash-strapped local council taking the axe to that kind of non-essential spending. In order to use OED online, I'd now have to pay a hefty membership price, which is annoying as it was a useful tool for me at one time but I can't justify the subscription fee on my own at the moment. Stinks.  

 

Check out other counties. I'm with Oxfordshire Libraries, and anyone can join.  On the downside, you do have to turn up in person at one to show ID and collect a library card.  That may not be convenient for you, but there may be somewhere nearer that will oblige.

[TQR 14,397]

Pickup trucks.

[Toast 16,140]

Amazon search function.

 

Whatever I search for, they throw in loads of things that aren't it.

If I want cognac, brandy or whisky, I'll search for it, so don't show me those when I've searched for Calvados.

If I've selected the Books category, don't switch me to the Kindle Store.

 

I get that they are switch-selling, and sometimes it's useful to get alternative suggestions, but FFS put them at the bottom of the page like they do with the "inspired by your recent browsing" stuff.

[Sod's Law 445]

1 hour ago, Toast said:

Amazon search function.

 

Whatever I search for, they throw in loads of things that aren't it.

If I want cognac, brandy or whisky, I'll search for it, so don't show me those when I've searched for Calvados.

If I've selected the Books category, don't switch me to the Kindle Store.

 

I get that they are switch-selling, and sometimes it's useful to get alternative suggestions, but FFS put them at the bottom of the page like they do with the "inspired by your recent browsing" stuff.

Geez, I hate searching on Amazon now. Half of the items on the list are sponsored items which have nothing to do with what I searched for. I will search for coffee pods and randomly get baby formula thrown into the results. I don't even have a baby. 

 

I also miss how I could preorder books by selecting 'publication date' in the drop-down list and it would have upcoming books by authors I've read that I could easily preorder. They seem to have changed the algorithm now so it only shows books that are already released. Changing search criteria from 'featured' to 'publication date' will also cut a list of 2,000 results to less than 50 for no apparent reason. 

[AstroKat 534]

3 hours ago, Toast said:

Amazon search function.

 

Whatever I search for, they throw in loads of things that aren't it.

If I want cognac, brandy or whisky, I'll search for it, so don't show me those when I've searched for Calvados.

If I've selected the Books category, don't switch me to the Kindle Store.

 

I get that they are switch-selling, and sometimes it's useful to get alternative suggestions, but FFS put them at the bottom of the page like they do with the "inspired by your recent browsing" stuff.

 

Even if you write the exact brand and model name/number of the item you're looking for in the search box, it still ends up halfway down the page behind sponsored & similar items. 

[Toast 16,140]

Oh and another thing.  Amazon seems to have dropped the question and answers section, and replaced it with a general round up of what people liked and didn't like.

Now it was annoying when dimwits replied to a question with something like "I don't know, I haven't used it yet". 

But sometimes there was a reply from the seller or manufacturer to a specific question eg "Does this fit model number XYZ?" which was useful.

[time 8,603]

Everything Amazon does leads to a worse user-experience. I had a delivery due yesterday; tracking informs me its due before 9pm. Time was you had a fixed three/four hour delivery window, then that changed to a flexible ever-changing 3-to-4 hour (ish) window. Now its "sometime today". Even the oft-criticised Evri gives better information than that,

 

[Sod's Law 445]

24 minutes ago, time said:

Everything Amazon does leads to a worse user-experience. I had a delivery due yesterday; tracking informs me its due before 9pm. Time was you had a fixed three/four hour delivery window, then that changed to a flexible ever-changing 3-to-4 hour (ish) window. Now its "sometime today". Even the oft-criticised Evri gives better information than that,

 

Then there's the whole 'sticking ads in Prime movies and removing one day delivery from many products' thing. Companies like them are desperate because the boom days of internet shopping and streaming are now well and truly over and they're desperately clawing at the bottom line as much as they can. 

[AstroKat 534]

32 minutes ago, time said:

Everything Amazon does leads to a worse user-experience. I had a delivery due yesterday; tracking informs me its due before 9pm. Time was you had a fixed three/four hour delivery window, then that changed to a flexible ever-changing 3-to-4 hour (ish) window. Now its "sometime today". Even the oft-criticised Evri gives better information than that,

 

 

Even named day delivery, with Prime, isn't reliable. We've found that it tends to arrive a day earlier than requested lately, which I suppose is slightly better than a day later. 

[En Passant 3,741]

9 minutes ago, Sod's Law said:

the whole 'sticking ads in Prime movies

 

Which, even though I didn't use the video that much anyway, was the final straw on my Prime membership.

9 quid a month is 108 a year, not much in the great scheme maybe, but I'm rarely in that much of a hurry and in the month or so since I quit it's taken maybe a day longer and is still free if you do 20 quid or so.

 

Further, Amazon is not the cheapest by default anymore, the ratings are 'gamed' to hell and back, everything is some alpha-betti spaghetti name where the quality is at best questionable and at worst just dreadful. 

And lastly if I can give money to anyone who isn't Bezos and is preferably a british company (ha! I try) so much the better.

 

Their returns are good though, at least for me, never had an issue.