Posts by bebopalula

  • Are forums a dying platform?

    Interesting article.


    I go waaaay back. To the days of JANET and USENET - in fact I still subscribe to several usenet newsgroups which will become much more fit for purpose once Google drops it's support for them in February 2024. Google have absolutely ruined the experience for the past several years and if you are a user you won't need any explanation of why. But there are still usenet news servers peering with each other and at least one BBS style web interface.


    But forums: pretty well all "serious" subjects are supported by forums, in my opinion. Look at the open source community: github, linux etc - how many of those are on social media?


    Forums are, in my opinion, far superior to social media in so many ways.

  • Dark or light theme?

    When I'm signed in I use one of the dark themes (I can't remember which one it is, but you probably know from your logs) because it's much easier on these weak, old eyes of mine.

  • Customer service stories

    Something positive here. The Cablevision/Personal/Flow/Whatever-they-call-themselves-today engineer came today to fix a problem. Initially we had been bounced around between various bots which didn't help but, once connected to a human being, they diagnosed that a visit was needed and set up an appointment for within about 36hrs.So he came, found the fault, fixed it and, to be honest, left things better than they had been before. Very satisfied with the service. I could only dream of service like this back in the UK with the BT/Openreach jungle and the other cable/fibre services as bad or worse.


    10/10

  • Christmas 2023

    So, am I the only one here who makes their own?


    Essencia de pan dulce can be bought wherever you buy your vanilla essence; if you don't have a pan dulce tin in your kitchen, different sizes of paper cases can be found in supermarkets wherever tney keep the paper cases for cupcakes.

  • Buying property in Buenos Aires

    Quote from aficionado

    Yeah many odd and unreal sounding posts. I appreciate his idea to create another expat or an in-english online community for Buenos Aires / Argentina. Though not sure if this is the way to build a trusting place for web surfers to hangout. If there are no honest questions or answers from real people then it is just an archive of information pretending to be a community forum.


    If he really has deep pockets to make a good website he should be able to pay for better ideas outside of scraping content from another website. Also is it allowed to just copy and paste the entire contents of news articles of WSJ, Reuters, Bloomberg, AP? Usually fair-use copyright allows a snippet and a link, not all the words and photos, right?

    Enforcement of copyright in Argentina is sketchy at the best - have you seen the photocopied textbooks for sale near UBA? - but the site is a .com so US copyright law ought to apply. Splinter will probably tell us.

  • Currently watching on Netflix

    Quote from Rice

    Looks like a very atmospheric old pub. Please don’t shatter my image by telling me they now have video poker.

    See for yourself:

    Duck and Drake


    A bunch of people who used to participate in a no-longer-extant Yorkshire-themed online forum would meet up for a drink a few times a year and the "Mucky Duck" was a popular venue. Another favourite in Leeds was the Nag and Fart. (Horse and Trumpet on the inn sign.)

  • Currently watching on Netflix

    Last night, EQDSO watched this:


    Watch Bank of Dave | Netflix Official Site
    After big financial institutions fail the people in his small town, a self-made car dealer decides to fight the odds and set up his own local bank.
    www.netflix.com


    We've been to Burnley (it was closed) and, over the years, to a whole host of other northern English towns and cities and, as she told me this morning, she jumped up in the middle of the film exclaiming to nobody in particular, "That pub's not in Burnley, it's in Leeds!" I think we could safely say she's getting to know some parts of England rather well!


    I'll be back in Buenos Aires from next week so I suppose I'll be expected to watch Bank of Dave if only for the location shots. It was a real, genuine, heartwarming event when it happened and affected the mood of the country much as Marcus Rashford and the School Dinners or Refuge's campaign against domestic violence. How accurately the movie portrays this I don't know (yet) but I have a feeling that I will, next week.

  • Do You Speak British or American English?

    Quote from Splinter

    An American might find this handy when visiting Blighty!


    I think you are making this measuring thing far too easy for Rice Measuring beer alone is far more complicated than that - ask any singer of traditional English folk songs:


    Well, here's good luck to the barrel,

    Good luck to the barleymow.

    Jolly good luck to the barrel,

    Good luck to the barleymow.

    Oh, the barrel,

    Half-barrel,

    Gallon,

    Half-gallon,

    Quart pot,

    Pint pot,

    Half a pint,

    Gill,

    Half a gill,

    Quarter gill,

    Nipperkin,

    Pipperkin,

    Then the brown bowl.

    Here's good luck, good luck,

    Good luck to the barleymow.


    (I don't think the pipperkin is a thing - it's just added to make the lines scan - but all the rest of them are real measures.)

  • Thought for the day....

    Absolutely.


    I used to think that I found fat people of either sex uncomfortable to be with until, in a professional setting, I encountered a heavyweight woman wrestler. Yes really. I was teaching adult literacy classes at that time, since you asked. She was enormous with rolls of flesh you wouldn't believe. But she absolutely loved her body and was so comfortable in her own skin that she just radiated contentment. And that was the point at which I realised that I felt uncomfortable in the company of people who felt uncomfortable in themselves regardless of their size: it was just the big ones who -er- stood out.