Have you got lots of stuff on the desktop? Quartz Compositor treats each icon as a separate window. If you have lots of icons on your desktop, your VRAM might be filling up (depends on what video card you are using).

Are you regularly running some kind of log file deletion? something like onyx, main menu or similar?

I was certainly surprised when I found out the Uk has ski tows

The UK, or England? – because Scotland has a fair number of pretty well developed Ski areas – Ft William/Nevis Range being the obvious one for anyone who ride a mountain bike to be aware of.

Foucault pretty much nails this in Discipline and Punish – Panopticism is fast becoming part and parcel of the way in which all business are run (over a certain size – there is no need to the pretence of observation if one can actually observe what’s going on) – I particularly like this quote:

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” – Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 1977

There are multiple park and rides, all with slightly different stops I’m afraid – although I think all of them do go down George Street/New Road/Queen Street or there abouts – but if you’re going somewhere not quite in the centre, then it would be worth getting the appropriate park and ride and getting off before the centre.

This does sound like a pivot table job.

I had a laugh at Llangdegla, did the red and blue, but I found the format a bit bland – wind all the way up to the top (ish) on a fire road (not so great) then blast back through the forest (lots of fun) I found the very top section of the red run the most fun bit around the head of the valley. I’d certainly go again, but I think I’d prefer it to be mixed up a bit, rather than one long slog, then a blast down the hill.

That said, I’d probably go somewhere else in future unless I was taking my wife, I think she would enjoy the blue there – I have trail centres which I can ride in crap weather closer, with some good fun natural stuff if the weather holds out and some more adventurous natural stuff a similar distance away.

My advice would be to get it right first time – the drive which is in there has a tab on it to make it nice and easy to remove – the drive you are putting in does not. Make sure that all the connections are properly made and the drive will definitely work (are the power requirements for an SSD any different? – I’ve no idea) because without the removal tab, it’s going to be one hell of a job getting the damn thing out again.

I replaced mine with one advertised as a PS3 hard drive and it worked really well on my macbook.

Not having that. Thrutching is a great word if used properly.

Completely agree, anyone who has seen me climb will have had ample opportunity to use this in its proper context.

bokonon, why not?
good luck dazzlinboy, been thinking about it myself, although i was leaning more toward FE

As has been noted above – the money is crap, even in education terms, and there is zero job security – given that FE shrank during the boom years, the current government are doing it no favours and colleges are making significant cuts to departments all the time – I worked in FE for 6 years and was put at risk of redundancy 3 times, and I felt my self lucky to get only that. I’d guess that in any one year, 25% of FE colleges are putting staff at risk of redundancy.

Morale tends to be very low, with directorate coming in with little or no understanding of education – the person who made 90% of the decisions and did all the negotiating with the union where I worked was an accountant, was very good at it, but knew the square root of F all about standing in a class room – how long it takes to prepare a lesson, do some marking etc.

FE is, broadly, a testing round for the rest of the education sector, if you look at the incorporation process of the early 90’s, it’s almost a mirror for the free school/academy changes we get now – except FE lecturers were less well organised and less able to take on the changes – because they were nationally implemented.

School head teachers do tend to have a better idea about what it takes to do the job, which helps generally – although it’s no bed of roses by any means – they are being squeezed just like everything else – but FE has been getting it in the neck through the good times, so the bad times are that little bit worse, more precarious, more bullying management, more obtrusive micromanagement strategies.

(I was on the National Exec of the FE lecturers union (UCU) for a while and got to see a pretty good cross section of what was going on, and it wasn’t pretty.)

Tom Waits
Randy Mosher (is he famous enough?)
Dr John

I tend to time my riding to start at sunrise or just before, whenever that might be, so that I can get home to the family, this means it tends to be solo. I did go out on a group ride with some mates not that long ago, and I really enjoyed it, but I like the relentlessness of riding solo, no need to stop to chat.

Try googling for ‘remove a blue cast in photoshop’ something like this: http://www.sitepoint.com/remove-a-color-cast-with-photoshop/ will help.

Don’t be tempted to teach in Further Education.

The centralisation and privatisation of services is a significant issue – the school dinners service for some of the schools round here is all done at one school – this one is shut, meaning that the others either have to shut as well, or sort out the school meals – once it’s all sold off to the highest bigger, and all the schools are done through one company this will only get worse.

Metcheck have a nice page on weather singularities – not a forecast as such, just vague trends which tend to take place: http://www.metcheck.com/UK/singularities.asp

We are open (a university) and the amount of moaning and whining I’m getting from students that we are open is ridiculous – and they aren’t even forced to come in for lectures!

Good spelling is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit, surely?

If you put the speakers away from the way then their relationship to the wall in terms of where the nodes and anti-nodes are varies with each frequency.

This happens anyway – the nodes and anti-nodes can only form at intersections and given that v=f? this has to occur at different points for different frequencies.

Putting them next to the wall/corner minimises this, and there are less phase issues to deal with because of the reflections.

Surely this has more to do with poor overall room shape (parallel walls, ratios which have inter relationships etc. ) and is only really a vague compromise against exaggerated bass response – because the modal issues will still exist, it’s just that the axial modes will be marginally weaker (although not enough to make a significant difference if the room is an acoustically poor shape), the tangential and oblique will however be unaffected…

stop hijacking the thread.

It’s not hijacking, people are posting pictures of their big shiny penis extensions and I’m critiquing them, seems like fair game to me.

actually prefer the speakers/subs in the corners next to the walls so they have less reflections to deal with.

Surely the reflections come from the walls, so putting it nearer more walls will increase not decrease the amount of them (the number of them is not relevant, it’s the energy each one has).

Preference is also a moot point, if you want an accurate reproduction, and to hear your expensive speakers, tipping up the bottom end significantly and skewing the tonal balance is throwing money away.

I thought otherwise.

With so many willy wavers waving their willys without even noticing makes it difficult not to comment.

without room treatment, this is all just willy waving <ducks>

Absolutely correct, more improvement can be found by improving the sound of the room than the power cables, that is for sure – moving the big expensive speakers out of the corners that will distort the bass balance of the set up would be a start – heavy curtains like in woppit’s picture would be a start, but ultimately they won’t have a good enough absorption coefficient at a low enough frequency to deal with the problem properly.

You could make some half decent bass trapping for the price of a hi fi buff power cable, and have enough change left over to get a bottle of imported craft ale.

So many speakers in corners…

bokonon is describing our relationship with food.. he eats it cos it keeps him alive, but he can’t understand michelin dining..

The focus placed on the quality of the playback system is indicative of a shift away from “music” as a phenomenon of socio-cultural interaction between people, something which happens between people, rather than a thing in and of itself.

This type of ephemeral and transient, experiential arrangement is not a good relationship to have with music in a capitalist society – it makes it difficult to extract surplus value, because it is difficult to place music in the situation where it is, in and of itself, a commodity, whilst minimising labour costs – live music by their very nature have high labour costs – as such, the commodification of music is required – turning music from a thing which happens between people, to a thing in and of itself.

Once this process (which is facilitated by technology) and a re-alignment of the music into the mould of a capitalist commodity has taken place then the fetishisation of the technology which facilitates the individual commodity consumption becomes an obvious outlet.

I disagree that my relationship to music is similar to a ‘food is fuel’ type approach, I’d argue my relationship with music os more complex, because it’s based in an interactive two way process between composer/performer/listener rather than a one way interaction between playback system and listener – the playback system doesn’t matter, because the interest lies in the music, not the commodity of the album itself.

tl:dr – hifi buffs are shills for capitalism and the commodification of culture.
(Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1944)

I’ll stand corrected, but I’d only just read just:

The tragedy occurred after the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) issued a warning that “human-triggered avalanches are likely” in the Glencoe area.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/four-climbers-die-in-glencoe-avalanche-8458863.html

They issue warnings like this every day, rarely does any part of all the forecasts across scotland not include a section which is not ‘considerable’ on the scale – certainly not on a day when it’s worth getting out! however, this warning is for a specific, isolated patches of windslab, these form in specific places and are a perfectly manageable risk for people with experience.

I think it’s possible that the fact that Wales and England don’t have any kind of forecast might mean the reporting of the realities of the risks were better covered in the media – as it stands, they copy and paste the ‘warnings’ (it’s a forecast, like the weather, you know) that are issued as if there was a particular danger on that day, which they have ignored, which is almost certainly not true, I’ve never met anyone out on the hill in winter that I didn’t think had a full grasp of the dangers, and an awareness of how to manage them – it’s not a nice place to be if you’ve got no idea…

It’s always devastating when people lose their lives in climbing accidents, the feeling that it could be me next time is ever present.

Avalanche forecast looks fine for this time of year, I’ve been out in worse, and wouldn’t consider isolated patches of considerable a significant danger to an experienced party – poorly bonded windslab is a fact of life for winter in Scotland and appears in the avalanche forecasts 99 times out of a 100 I’d guess.

It looks like, and is normal in Scottish winter accidents, that the avalanche didn’t harm them in and of itself (like an alpine avalanche might bury you) it’s the falling down the rocky gully/crag that does the damage.

Having got off lightly from being knocked off low on number 3 gully buttress a few years ago by an avalanche/cornice collapse I know how easy it is to happen, we were lucky none of us were roped together and this limited the distance we fell (one of the party of 4 wasn’t even touched) and only one of us (me) went over anything rocky.

I’m looking for some printed lycra shorts, any chance you could do a price for 2 of these?

My 3 year old was looking at the packet whilst having a triangle of it and asked: “does this have mountains in it” which was pretty special.

I’ll bite:

Yes, HiFi is mainly BS, emperors new clothes nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong – I love music, I’ve got a collection of 500+ vinyl and 2000+ CD’s, I’ve dedicated more hours to making, mixing, recording, mastering and listening to music than anything else in my life and I teach it for a living – but I can enjoy a good piece of music on any old crap – dansette, crappy ipod dock, cheap head phones whatever, I’ve never felt my enjoyment of a piece of music was enhanced by a more expensive speaker set up, and I’ve listened to lots of very expensive ones.

The things which improve music for me are completely context based – if I’m at a gig, it sounds better, if I’m in the pub, it sounds better, if I’m with my mates, it sounds better, if I’m singing my heart out, it sounds better.

My feeling would be that big expensive HiFi’s do serve a purpose, but the basis isn’t in an inherent improvement of the experience through superior technical quality (because the absolute, perceivable improvements in quality are dubious, and barely warrant investigation past a pretty low level) it’s because it forces the listener into a mindset of thinking this experience is special – for me, this has very little to sitting back and listening to music on a hifi in the lounge – to me that’s a sterile and dead environment for music – where music goes to die, but I can see that it could provide a context for other people where they will enjoy it more, after all, there are people who like to dress up like the undead for enjoyment.

Didn’t know what I wanted to do, was told by a friend of my dad (a civil engineer) to come up with something quickly (at 13) otherwise you’ll end up as a civil engineer (like my Dad) got into electronic music, theatre and other stuff, did a BSc. in music tech asa degree, did a bit of teaching (kayaking) as a summer job and lived in my car doing it straight after uni along side a bunch of one off music bits, a bit of mixing here, some mastering there, then my girlfriend went to do a degree in Nursing at Oxford Brookes, I got a succession of temp jobs, free lancing music editing and mixing, and did my MA, we got married had kids, needed some more stable income, so applied for teaching jobs in music tech, got a job at an FE college in Essex, got my teaching qualifications, worked there for 6 years, didn’t much like the FE thing, applied for a host of university posts and got one, which is where I am now.

Some Apps will work – it’s developer dependent rather than apple dependent. I passed on my Gen 2 Ipod tough to my daughter, and just went through dozens of apps till I found ones that ran on it still – she hasn’t got the exact apps she wanted, but I’ve found approximations of them for her (e.g. cut the rope won’t work, but there is a clone that does).

Surely the most effective way to protect your mac is not running is as an admin user as a matter of course, then your log in can’t run new software, unless you type in the admin password. I was always taught it was bad form to run UNIX systems as a root user anyway – it’s what SUDO is for.

Tone controls add to the processing of the signal and can impart distortion, rather than the processing and tone control itself being unwanted.

Nowadays it is preferable to do tone control type duties in the digital domain to avoid the distortion.

Phase distortion is inherent, and not just possible, within the process of adjusting the tone of an audio signal with analogue components – it’s the same in the digital domain unless you use linear phase filter (FIR), however, this can lead to pre-ringing in the signal, which is also undesirable…

Musicality, rhythmic stability, stereo imaging, depth imaging, transparency, clarity and detail.

Which is funny, because when I look at amplifiers I look at total harmonic distortion, slew rate, input sensitivity, phase response, crossover distortion, frequency response and power bandwidth – because these are real measurable parameters that allow me to compare one amplifier with another.

Footflaps thats an old wifes tale to stop people making there own hooch

Sort of – there are few if any documented cases, but methanol is present in grain based fermentation and fruits which are high in pectin – this is however only in very small quantities, but it’s certainly there – if it’s fermented too hot, then there can be fusel oils present which 1. taste nasty and 2. might (but might not) cause worse hangovers.

Methanol is of course a lighter fraction, and as such will distill off first – so discarding the first part that comes off the still would solve the problem quite easily – in addition, the simplest way to stop methanol eating away at your optic nerve is to drink ethanol, which causes a reaction in your body to stop the methanol…and the vast majority of the booze in most home brew is ethanol.

The ski lift area on the Raise in the lakes would be an interesting prospect – already got ski-uplift, but is a bit of a walk from the road to it, could have trails built on it, it’s massive though, and is in a national park, which would make it difficult to start with.

**** academic music books, in dead tree format. (Currently: “Spaces speak, are you listening” – Blesser and Salter)

That’s something like a 6% drop in malt content, for a 7% increase in price – given the overall increase in grain prices following last year, and the hit the hop harvest took with the weather as well, this makes some sense – but I’d still suggest there is a margin of additional profit lumped into this – and all expertly blamed not on the fact they make shit beer with crap ingredients, but blamed on beer duty…which is poorly thought out and badly implemented, but not at fault in this case.

(The beer I drink doesn’t come with labels on it…)

As above, I’ve used Butlers Wharf previously when I’ve needed to drop stuff off in Central London – you can book, or just turn up: http://www.q-park.co.uk/parking/london/q-park-butlers-wharf

Why not drop the IOC due to having some corrupt officials as well.