Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

ivyleaf wrote: »

Pyxis The awful waste of what made you wonder? i think I've missed something somewhere, unless there was a post that was deleted?

PasturesNew wrote: »

*looks a bit shifty*

The waste of WW1 and WW2 - all the conscription of everybody to go and die in a War nobody asked for or chose...

Yes, Pastures was talking about someone who died in WW1 leaving a young family. 'Heroes' aka cannon fodder for politicians and generals.

Her post contained personal stuff so was deleted.

ivyleaf

Thanks, Pyxis

Two pairs of 4-bed townhouses are nearly finished across the road from us; they may have 4 bedrooms but they don't look very spacious (though I know appearances can be deceptive.). All have already sold for £530,000 each, so we're hoping they haven't been bought by people who plan to rent them out to students or something :eek: I can't think there would be many people with young families, for example, being able to afford them in this borough. If they could, I think they'd be more likely to go for an older property with bigger rooms and a decent-sized garden. (These new houses will have a small landscaped area and some parking spaces. BUT we're only a few minutes' walk from the train station.)

Seems surreal that when we bought our house (3 beds-but one-is-really-a boxroom) in 1983 it was £36,500 It's a shared ownership house and I can't see that we'll ever be able to afford to move, though at least our son can inherit our equity when we pop our clogs

Pyxis

Is Oxfordshire still called Oxon for short? (I was in Oxfordshire yesterday, and it made me think of it).

I think it's a shame that postcodes have taken over from counties on letters, (although I always put the county on envelopes, as postcodes don't always work!).

Three other slightly odd ones are Salop, Warks and Sy.






On another note, I'm looking through all my pound coins to see if I've got a rare-rarish one, although even if I have, it probably wouldn't be in a good enough condition to warrant much more than its face value.

It's made me look at the designs more, though, and also those on other coins. Some of the designs on the silver coins are lovely!






I was quite impressed with IDS on Victoria Derbyshire this morning, promoting the use of sniffer dogs for detecting various cancers in people.
There are a number of cancers that they can 'smell' .
They showed a dog selecting a sample of urine from someone with prostate cancer, out of several samples.

There was also a lady who had her own diabetes detection dog, which licked her face if her blood sugar levels changed, so then she could do a quick test to see whether she need to eat something sugary, or take insulin.

Apparently, dogs have 220million olfactory nerve endings in its nose where we have 5 million.

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

Is Oxfordshire still called Oxon for short? (I was in Oxfordshire yesterday, and it made me think of it).

I didn't know that it was, TBH - the only Oxon reference of which I was aware was as a postnomial in academic qualifications from the University of Oxford, eg MA (Oxon) [/quote]

Three other slightly odd ones are Salop, Warks and Sy.

What's Sy? All I can find for that is the postcode for Shrewsbury which, IIRC, is the county town of Salop.

Another odd seeming one is also from academia, the postnomial for qualifications awarded by Cambridge University, Cantab - eg MA (Cantab)

I was quite impressed with IDS on Victoria Derbyshire this morning, promoting the use of sniffer dogs for detecting various cancers in people.
There are a number of cancers that they can 'smell' .
They showed a dog selecting a sample of urine from someone with prostate cancer, out of several samples.
There was also a lady who had her own diabetes detection dog, which licked her face if her blood sugar levels changed, so then she could do a quick test to see whether she need to eat something sugary, or take insulin.
Apparently, dogs have 220million olfactory nerve endings in its nose where we have 5 million.

There was a good article on the BBC News site about this subject this morning - especially the diabetes detecting dog for the lady who can go hypo with little to no warning whatsoever, so without the dog she was having to test herself hourly, including at night.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

Tomorrow is Pi Day, and I thought the NP might like these two short puzzles.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/13/can-you-solve-it-pi-day-puzzles-that-will-leave-you-pie-eyed?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Massive fail from me!
Got both answers wrong.
I thought I was on the right track with the first one, but obviously not!

And I couldn't see how to use pi in the second one.

But then I'm a maths dunce, barely scraping an 'O' level in it!


And now I want some PIE!

Pyxis

Sy is Surrey. I used to live there, so used that a lot.

Yes, Oxon is the abbr. for Oxfordshire, too, and I have used it on envelopes in the past.


Yes, Shrewsbury in sunny Salop! (Shropshire).

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

Sy is Surrey. I used to live there, so used that a lot.

Cheers. I've never come across that one, despite both my parents coming from Sutton.

GDB2222

Pyxis wrote: »

Massive fail from me!
Got both answers wrong.
I thought I was on the right track with the first one, but obviously not!

It's unintuitive. Normally, if you put a load of ping pong balls into a large box they won't stack themselves in teh way shown. Each row will be staggered, so you *usually* can get more rows in the box.

And I couldn't see how to use pi in the second one.

Neither can I! But I can see that, if the virus extends into a row, it can fill that row, but not the rows beyond if those are empty.


But then I'm a maths dunce, barely scraping an 'O' level in it!


And now I want some PIE!

I don't know whether this picture is helpful, or simply mystifying?

Pyxis

I assumed we were looking at a plan view of one layer, rather than a view of stacked layers.

I tried to work it out with algebra, using the area of the square minus the area of the circle(s), to get the 3 areas of the empty spaces, but I must have gone wrong.

PasturesNew

#Undersiege
All day I am not aware of the building work just 20' away at all - heavy machinery, a team of carpenters putting together a wooden kit framework.

The minute a boy bashes a ball against tarmac 80' away it hits my ear drum!