Text 26093, 155 rader
Skriven 2012-02-28 10:48:37 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
  Kommentar till text 26031 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
Ärende: Popular echo?
=====================
28 Feb 12 00:34, Richard Webb wrote to Roy Witt:

 Roy>>> Weather, FDN_announce and Syncdata, this echo ranks third in
 Roy>>> popularity among non-robots. And frankly, it probably ranks 1st if
 Roy>>> you exlude posts in the Cooking echo by Dave Drum, who mostly
 Roy>>> posts recipes with very little conversation in those posts. Some
 Roy>>> conversation may come afterwards by those who would comment on
 Roy>>> them, but not until. I'd classify his recipe posts as robotic. I
 Roy>>> can't say anything about Railfan, as I don't read that echo.

 RW>> I think DD uses a qwk reader though, so I doubt it's a
 RW>> robot.

 Roy>> Perhaps so, but each recipe has it's own subject line, which makes
 Roy>> them look like robotic posts. None the less, there is no comment in
 Roy>> any of those, save for one that I myself saved for my own use.

 RW> INteresting.  I read him elsewhere.  I carried cooking for
 RW> awhile, but haven't lately.

There were 19 of those in Cooking today. 10 or so by Jim Weller the rest
by Dave Drum. They're posted to ALL and none of them contain any
discussion, just recipe's for 10 batches of biscuts and pig dishes in the
other.

 RW>> I post an occasional announcement to fdn_announce, which is
 RW>> the only reason I carry it.  AS for weather, I do actually
 RW>> read a lot of that data that's posted.

 Roy>> Unfortunately, you have to have a reader do that for you. OTH, I
 Roy>> use the Weather Channel's version in my browser.

 RW> I mostly look at some of their long range stuff nationwide,
 RW> and some of the stats.  The poster used to do a lot of other marine
 RW> forecast stuff there, but slowed up on that, which is kind of a
 RW> disappointment.

Interesting to note that posting weather reports in Fidonet is like
posting the history of 1990s weather. When you see it in Fidonet, it's
yesterdays news.

 RW> I've actually used it for vessels heading for one of those places on
 RW> ham radio, although for areas right off NOrth America I get that
 RW> stuff from noaa web, thanks to Mark Lewis it ends up in my inbound
 RW> where my automation slices dices and processes it to make it
 RW> presentable for me to read on the air, either by dumping off to my
 RW> braille embosser when it worked,

Damn that's got to be a lot of work...I just got a Kindle Fire and
'todays' local weather is the first thing I look at right after putting on
my pants. When I'm finally fully dressed for the day, I see what the
weather is like in such places as where my sister lives in northern
Illinois, where my youngest daughter lives in Okeechobee, FL and where my
son lives in Denver. Then I look at the weather in Berlin, just to make my
day that much better, even if it is only 15 degrees warmer here than it is
there. Not lately! 8^)

 RW>  or to make it easier for me to listen to the screenreader and then
 RW> present on the air.  Have the automation able to flip back into
 RW> emboss in hardcopy braille mode though as soon as I find a kilobuck
 RW> to get my braille printer unit fixed at the brailel printer doctor's.

Hmmm. No one else around who can help you fix it?

 RW>  IT is intermittent printing a couple dots out of the cell, iirc dots
 RW> 1 and 2.  I was hoping it was just a matter of swapping out a
 RW> solenoid or something cool I could do on the bench here, but the tech
 RW> at the comompany told me not hardly.

Well, he's a service tech, so he's going to make that assumption so he can
make a buck. Adjusting a pin stroke can't be all that difficult, if one
has the tools and a pair of eyes to see what's going on.

 RW> After they swap out the bad components they twaek the thing, use a
 RW> micrometer to look at dot height and make sure all's copacetic, and
 RW> he'll get a complete checkup and going over with that $1k.  nOw it's
 RW> jsut a matter of finding it ,g>.

I don't see how a micrometer would help, perhaps a depth-mic would make
that job easier. I recently moved my verticle mill into my garage and
could probably set your braill machine up on the mill table, use a dial
indicator and set the stroke of all pins to the same height when fired.
Having an X-Y table movement that would be a piece of cake to do.

I wouldn't have any clue as how to fine tune it though.

 RW>> I do read railfan, it's gated from misc.transport.rail.americas, and
 RW>> there are actual humans there carrying on conversations.

 Roy>> That's interesting.

 RW> YEp, a couple interesting threads went on there recently,
 RW> one on cab signaling vs trackside signaling for train crews. Isn't a
 RW> real good thread currently happening there i"m into, but that'll
 RW> change sooner or later.

My dad used to use his scanner to listen to rail traffic when the train
passed through town. It used to stop there, but not anymore. He's been
gone for ten years, so its probably just as well that they discontinued
that practice now days.

 RW>>   I"ve even posted there a couple of times since I linked up.  A
 RW>> couple years ago it was dead as a dog that got hit by a semi truck
 RW>> but whoever's gating that ng there is doing the gating right, at
 RW>> least on the input side.

 Roy>> It's always nice to see someone actually doing somthing right.
 Roy>> Every so often I get some messages that are too long for FE to
 Roy>> process and they end up in my BAD area, which gets them deleted.

 RW> Any of the stuff I post in ls_arrl doing that to you?  IF so I'll set
 RW> up things to post smaller messages.

No, it's just an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing that is stuffing
Fidonet with internet crap. None of which has anything of interest here.

And none that you and/or Mark are importing.

 RW>> I've seen replies to another poster from the fido side, nothing to
 RW>> mine yet, but I've only posted a couple msgs, and they were minor
 RW>> corrections to some erroneous info somebody else posted and probably
 RW>> didn't warrant any further comment, but am sure I'm propagating
 RW>> there <g>.

 Roy>> At least you've shown a prescence...

 RW> Yep, there again I mostly follow the technical threads over
 RW> there in rf.

One thing that would interest them is that here in Texas, San Antonio and
now New Braunfels have 'quiet' crossings on all major highways and
streets.

It used to be that the 5am southbound train would blow his way through
town. And I mean 'blow' as in hanging on the horn pull chain and never
letting go.

In the summer when there are lots of leaves on trees to help stop the
noise, I could barely hear it. During the winter the trees are bare and it
would wake me up. That helped awaken for pee time.

My friend Harry used to sleep in his camper behind his shop, which is
within 150 feet of the rail and right on the corner of a road going over
the tracks. He was never late in opening his shop at 6am. 8^)


                R\%/itt


  ... Only those who will risk going too far can possibly
  ... find out how far one can go ~ TS Eliot


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