Great/Interesting Finds

[Muirium]

Hey, quit judging us in the last 5 seconds club! I only bid when it's too late for anyone else to react.

Nobody can beat my ultimate snipe - a winning 1 second snipe (bid and end time were the same - does that make it 0 second?), using a 1987 Amiga 500 on 56K dialup. Now that was unbelievable timing.

If eBay still works on that old browser of yours, they just won a little credit! I find my old PowerPC Macs work okay over there, but I'm not exactly in the same fight…

[mr_a500]

No, that was sometime around 2006 or 2007, 128bit SSL. I'm sure it won't work now.

I had to account for the slow processing of SSL, javascript & HTML rendering, the dialup delay, the bloody slow refresh. I had it all timed with practise bids and a stopwatch. I think it was something like a 26 second delay, so if I wanted a last second bid, I had to bid 27 seconds before the end time. (...and I found out I won 26 seconds after it was over)

[XMIT]

Compare this with the way we sell homes here in Scotland...

Sounds like a classic seller's market to me. Housing in the SF Bay Area is very much like this. Even if I had 20% of 1.5MM USD there is still no guarantee I would get a house. The decision process there involves an emotional component as well so people write letters with sob stories to accompany their offers.

I saw the ridiculousness of this all and got a house on 2 hectares of land for about the down payment of a house in Palo Alto.

Y'all come on down to Texas. Hope you like it hot.

[Muirium]

You've got enough solar power for good year-round air-con there, I hope!

You're right that there are even worse ways to run auctions. At least our bids system is sealed, with no sob stories and other lies. Simply, the richest buyer wins. How quintessentially British! It's a gentlemanly process, for which your chosen gentlemen is handsomely paid. The pinstriped bastards.

[XMIT]

You've got enough solar power for good year-round air-con there, I hope!

Maybe. We do have a real winter with some ice. It was about 17 C this morning and clear skies. http://www.city-data.com/city/Austin-Texas.html

We call it an "AC" here, and, depending on how well insulated a house is and what standard of living you can tolerate it is possible to save a bunch of money using solar. The AC in my house in the summer is typically at 26 C. 22C is a much more popular but expensive temperature. My office is 20-22C, I just sit there with a jacket freezing while it is 35C outside.

[Muirium]

Yeah, that might be tough. I keep my place at 16ºC in the winter. In the summer, once it's above 22º inside (which does happen quite a bit in the 20 hour long sunlight) I'm outside in the shade. Most Scots like it hotter than I do. My allergies make indoors mighty unfriendly when it's proper warm here. I'm allergic to London even more than Edinburgh!

My brother in southern California has got his place solar powered and air conditioned. He's got the dial at 20º, which costs him nothing apparently. Only in the winter, when the system warms the place up instead, is he over his solar budget. Nice trick if you can cover the outlay.

[seebart]

2006 the iNet was still "innocent" compared to today in terms of technology and volume of traffic.

[mr_a500]

My office is 20-22C, I just sit there with a jacket freezing while it is 35C outside.

I've never understood that kind of crap. If it's extra hot outside, why does air conditioning have to be extra cold? So you come out of blistering heat to freeze your ass. Inside should be a reasonable 26˚C so that the temperature difference isn't so extreme.

When I went to Texas, they said it was over 100˚F, but it didn't feel hot for some reason. I think it was the ozone/smog layer, blocking UV rays. When it's that hot in Ontario (yes, it does get that hot), it feels like the sun is frying your skin because the ozone is thinner. (...thanks American industrial pollution! Why don't you strip your own ozone.)

[XMIT]

When I went to Texas, they said it was over 100˚F, but it didn't feel hot for some reason.

What was the dew point?

I've found that talking about the dew point (a measure of the quantity of water in the air) is more meaningful than relative humidity. The number is more stable in the face of temperature swings. Plus I've found that the dew point has more to do with the "feel" than any other quantity. This is why 38C/100F in Texas is "doable" and that same temperature in New York is "unbearable".

I don't have enough data to comment on UV or other intensity. But that surprises me - we're at much lower latitude here. Sun is certainly stronger at elevation, e.g. Colorado.

[Muirium]

I'm further north than A500, as far as I know. 56ºN. There's a lot of Canada but very few Canadians up there! The sun just doesn't ever get very high in the sky here. Instead it circles an immense way around the horizon. It would even touch north if we were up at the arctic circle! The night is so short the stars are hidden by dusk and dawn for months.

We're right on the coast of a perennially chilly sea, and the result during good summer days is an oppressive heat that seems to last for all eternity. Oh, and the mother of all plagues of every kind of insect. The swifts and swallows head up here from Africa to feast! It's not quite as bad as I've heard Florida can be, of course, but we're pale and ginger and really not made for this shit.

[mr_a500]

I don't have enough data to comment on UV or other intensity. But that surprises me - we're at much lower latitude here. Sun is certainly stronger at elevation, e.g. Colorado.

Look at any ozone map and you'll see it gets thin just over the US border into Canada and gets thinner the more north you go. How ironic that the US is spared, when it was mostly US pollution that caused it.

I was down in Virginia and played tennis in the hot sun for 6 hours straight and never got a sunburn. In the wilderness of Northern Ontario, I sat in the sun for half an hour and got a sunburn so bad, my skin was like a radiation victim. It slid off my shoulders in yellow watery chunks, leaving puffy red sores. I'm now permanently freckled all over my back when I had none before.

[GuilleAcoustic]

XTs aren't usually so expensive. Have a little patience and you should be able to pick one up on DT with no customs fees, and maybe even within France.

What would be a correct price for an XT (dirty vs clean) ?

Hey Guille, you can swap the keys around on an XT dead easy. No need to be too picky about QWERTY vs. AZERTY or QWERTZ. You can even use Model M caps to replace them, or new ones from Unicomp.

[snip snip]

ISO AT? Far as I know, all ATs are "big ass" which is neither ISO nor ANSI. Like this:

Symbols as well as numbers aren't the same. This is the AT AZERTY I saw ...

[Muirium]

I'd call that Big Assed French! ISO and ANSI refer to the physical layout (the shape of the Return and Shift keys) not the legends on them.

A fair price for an XT is, I'm guessing, 50 Euros. I've seen them sell for twice that. And I bought one for half from Cindy. Clean or dirty shouldn't matter. The important thing is that everything works! Cleaning comes later.

ATs are more expensive, but not dramatically. You get a nicer layout but a cheaper body.

[GuilleAcoustic]

I'd call that Big Assed French! ISO and ANSI refer to the physical layout (the shape of the Return and Shift keys) not the legends on them.

Didn't know that, that's nice to know. Thanks for the information.

A fair price for an XT is, I'm guessing, 50 Euros. I've seen them sell for twice that. And I bought one for half from Cindy. Clean or dirty shouldn't matter. The important thing is that everything works! Cleaning comes later.

I have filled the spreadsheet on Cindy's thread. I'm not really in a hurry.

ATs are more expensive, but not dramatically. You get a nicer layout but a cheaper body.

To be honest I prefer the layout on the XT keyboard. As a french user, I use accents quite a lot. On the XT the ', " and ` and on two adjacent keys, while the ' and " are close to the Enter key and the ` is on the opposite corner with AT layout.

[scottc]

I'd call that Big Assed French!

Ooh la la...

[Vax]

[GB] GMK Triumph Adler is live!

Contact me for shared shipping in Germany.

What's special about this set?

It's gorgeous
<10 original sets are known to exist
Made on the same machinery that made the originals
Layout will cover nearly any keyboard out there
Includes ISO keys
Dope teal spacebars
First time a GMK set has ever had a custom color, let alone 3
Lowest price EVER on a GMK set!

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=70278.0

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/triumph-ad ... guest_open

[scottc]

I don't get it. Is it exclusively for German users? That's what the mockups imply, but the picture you posted here are US ANSI.

Also, why are the 1.25U mods in B-profile, with the arrows and numpad bottom row in A profile? That's just going to look a bit weird...

[photekq]

That was just an original TA set that was provided so that Massdrop could take some pictures. It's a bit of a franken-board and doesn't reflect the set in the GB. The mockup posted above reflects the actual key selection.

A-profile was put in to make this a true reproduction of the TA set. It was decided to just add in B-profile 1.25 keys, inspired (in reverse) by AEG Olympia Cherry boards.

[Vax]

I don't get it. Is it exclusively for German users? That's what the mockups imply, but the picture you posted here are US ANSI.

Also, why are the 1.25U mods in B-profile, with the arrows and numpad bottom row in A profile? That's just going to look a bit weird...

Nope it's international. Hmmmm that's an interesting question. I didn't even realize it changed to A/B.... I'm going to ask him about it.

[elRetto]

http://r.ebay.com/gXvAf2
dell at102w plus a bunch of junk

[mr_a500]

French NeXT keyboards (black ALPS, doubleshot) - supposedly new - $39.95 US:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271779026248

[Muirium]

Ah crap, they're not in France!

[mr_a500]

You can't expect French keyboards to be in France. That would be silly.

[scottc]

Damn, that's a great-looking board!

[mr_a500]

I've got a whole NeXTstation - lovely looking machine, but a pain in the ass to work with. Amiga is much more fun.

[HzFaq]

Oh, that reminds me, I've had this on my watch list for a while now, I would've posted it sooner but it's bananas expensive.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390840318596? ... EBIDX%3AIT

[GuilleAcoustic]

You can't expect French keyboards to be in France. That would be silly.

You can't expect good keyboards to be in France ... I know it, I'm french

[GuilleAcoustic]

You can't expect French keyboards to be in France. That would be silly.

You can't expect good keyboards to be in France ... I know it, I'm french

An IBM XT for sale with a sub $50 start price (with $73 shipping to France ) : http://www.ebay.fr/itm/161650050364?ssP ... 1423.l2649

EDIT: My bad for the double post, I tought I clicked on "edit" but happened to hit "quote"

[shreebles]

My office is 20-22C, I just sit there with a jacket freezing while it is 35C outside.

I've never understood that kind of crap. If it's extra hot outside, why does air conditioning have to be extra cold? So you come out of blistering heat to freeze your ass. Inside should be a reasonable 26˚C so that the temperature difference isn't so extreme.

Exactly. I traveled the southern states last june (GA, AL, MS, LA, TX) and got a cold in the first week. I was coughing all through my summer holiday, eventually I always carried a sweater with me (while sweating in the summer heat) and put it on as soon as we went in a shop or restaurant.

http://r.ebay.com/gXvAf2
dell at102w plus a bunch of junk

In that state the beat-up Dell with the missing keycap is hardly better than the rest of the junk, IMHO
7€ for shipping takes the cake.

[ramnes]

G84 cheap
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Cherry-Electrica ... 58c193f748

G81 HAD
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/PC-Keyboard-Cher ... 46372307b3