020210us Th1ngs

[FredNurke]

O micron = small o
O mega = large O

Also, epsilon and upsilon are 'slender E' and 'slender U', ie the letters on their own rather than in the Greek digraphs EI and OI, which in the middle ages were pronounced the same way as Greek E and U. The classical names were just E and U.

Not obvious, but interesting.

[olliebean]

Fuck me! Just googled this. Right-click on the map, and at the bottom of the menu is "measure distance". Then you can click successive points to form a path. My previous method was to use the find a route, drag it about, and add additional waypoints.

Which, to be fair, is probably easier, assuming the distance you want to measure is along a route rather than as the crow flies.

[Icehaven]

Fuck me! Just googled this. Right-click on the map, and at the bottom of the menu is "measure distance". Then you can click successive points to form a path. My previous method was to use the find a route, drag it about, and add additional waypoints.

That's the one! And if you're using a touchscreen device you just hold down a point until the red pointer appears and then the measure distance function is in the menu again. Blowed my mind.

[mjwilson]

O micron = small o
O mega = large O

Even though both omega and omicron have lower and upper case versions, so you can have a large small o and a small large o.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Of course they've all had a large O by the time I've finished with 'em.

[touchingcloth]

Google maps has a function where you can draw lines between multiple points and it tells you the distance. It's probably been there since 2005 and I found it yesterday.

I don't think it's been there that long. At least I hope it hasn't because I've long used a different site for measuring distances, paths and areas. I'm 99% sure than when I first found that site circa 2017 it was after trying and failing to find an easy way to do it in Google, because making routes is no fun at all.

[Icehaven]

Ok I feel a little less stoopid now it turns out I'm not the only one who didn't know it was there and that it might not have been there for ages anyway.

[touchingcloth]

That's good. BECAUSE THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER THINGS FOR YOU TO FEEL STUPID ABOUT AM I RIGHT LOL AHAHAHA

[Ferris]

About 2/3 of people on board survived the Hindenburg disaster which happened in New Jersey (not somewhere in Europe like I'd always assumed). Also the famous image:



...doesn't show the tailfins which is probably a good thing from a branding perspective.



It flew across the Atlantic regularly, including a flyby here in Halifax (where it hovered over the British naval facility to take pictures for no reason). The picture above is the Hindenburg flying over downtown Manhattan,

[dissolute ocelot]

^ That got me looking on Wikipedia, and apparently the worst airship crash was of the USS Akron in 1933, which belonged to the US Navy and was filled with safe, harmless, inert helium. The Akron was a flying aircraft carrier capable of carrying and launching planes, although there were numerous technical issues and it crashed at sea during a storm with 73 deaths.

EDIT: This is not an obvious thing, obviously.

[touchingcloth]

Is that a helicopter in the second image?

[Ferris]

No it's the Hindenburg

[dissolute ocelot]

Is that a helicopter in the second image?

It's a biplane, helpfully captioned "aircraft in 1937" on Wikimedia Commons, in case you think it's a time traveller.

[touchingcloth]

It's a biplane, helpfully captioned "aircraft in 1937" on Wikimedia Commons, in case you think it's a time traveller.

I didn't think it was a time traveller, but I did realise that I had no idea when helicopters first date from, practically speaking as opposed to drawings by Da Vinci.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Some day, I'd like an autogyro; it's basically a chair with a screw. Can't be difficult to use.

[touchingcloth]

Greenwich - from off of time - is in London, not on the coast.

[Sonny_Jim]

Why did you think it was on the coast?

[Ferris]

Because of ships and that?

Greenwich is one of the few places in London I'll willingly go to because you can see a Hawksmoor by the underground stop, have a nice walk to a good museum, get a decent pie + view for lunch, then mudchute farm on the way home and some fun laughing at canary wharf cunts.

It's an 8/10 day out nailed on.

[famethrowa]

mudchute??

[Sonny_Jim]

Fucking love the Greenwich time museum, but I'm a bit of a clock nerd.  My wife thought it was OK, but only because I was running around like a small child going 'Oh wow, look at this!  This piece revolutionised ship navigation'.

My wife puts up with a lot, really.

[Cold Meat Platter]

the Greenwich time museum

Ah yes, a look at time through the ages...

[Paul Calf]

Fucking love the Greenwich time museum, but I'm a bit of a clock nerd.  My wife thought it was OK, but only because I was running around like a small child going 'Oh wow, look at this!  This piece revolutionised ship navigation'.

My wife puts up with a lot, really.

It was only recently that I realised that shipping revolutionised clock design because they needed a clock whose regulator wasn't disturbed by motion, and clocks at the time used pendulums as regulators.

I think I was watching a Tom Scott video at the time.

[Sonny_Jim]

Yeah I'm pretty sure my enjoyment of that museum directly correlated with the amount of 'man walks towards camera gesticulating ' documentaries I was watching at the time.

Loved seeing a bit of the old trans Atlantic telegraph cable, purely because I'd watched 'The Victorian Internet' doc.

Sorry this is no longer obvious.

Okay how about this, I just noticed that insects get really fucking big when the temperature goes up for a bit.  I'm guessing that it's something to do with them being 'cold blooded', so when it's warm all the different biological mechanisms in their body get a little boost.

[touchingcloth]

Why did you think it was on the coast?

Because of ships and that?

Precisely that. I know they have the big ball that sailors look at to be able to set their watches from afar, so I just assumed it was by the sea where the ships are.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Longitude by Dava Sobel is a great book about Harrison and the development of the chronometer.
Figuring out how to measure longitude at sea was such a problem Parliament set out an award for 20,000 pounds for anyone who came up with a solution. However, John Harrison was an outsider with no credentials and found himself constantly thwarted in his efforts.

The modern-day Longitude Prize, created in 2012, is a 10 million-pound award to anyone who can invent a way to tackle microbial resistance to antibiotics. Which has bugger-all to do with measuring longitude.

[Paul Calf]

Precisely that. I know they have the big ball that sailors look at to be able to set their watches from afar, so I just assumed it was by the sea where the ships are.

Nah. Thames estuary though, so probably the next best thing to actually being on the coast.

Longitude by Dava Sobel is a great book about Harrison and the development of the chronometer.
Fuguring out how to measure longitude at sea was such a problem Parliament set out an award for 20,000 pounds for anyone who came up with a solution. However, John Harrison was an outsider with no credentials and found himself constantly thwarted in his efforts.

So how did Del Boy end up with it?

[dissolute ocelot]

I didn't think it was a time traveller, but I did realise that I had no idea when helicopters first date from, practically speaking as opposed to drawings by Da Vinci.

The first commercial helicopters were in the 1940s, I believe, although they'd spent ages playing around and doing autogyros before then, so it's a bit confusing. I just think it's amusing someone posting a photo from 1937 and then captioning everything in the photo "X in 1937".

[JesusAndYourBush]

I saw a film (American, if it makes any difference) made in the 40's or early 50's where they pronounced helicopter as heely-copter.

[Ferris]

Does anyone want my helicopter fact? Ok great: it's a compound word but not "heli" and "copter" like you would think. It's "helico" + "pter", from the Greek for sun and wing respectively (like heliocentric or pterodactyl).

[Andy147]

"Helico" is from the Greek for spiral/helix.