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Comment Re:My friend's Maksutov-Cassegrain 4Kmm focal leng (Score 1) 201

Oh, I forgot to mention. I also use Kerbal Space Program for my deep space observations.
Can you prove that the Universe does not contain some part which exactly matches what you can see on KSP? We only need to find where it is, but I leave this work to people with better telescopes and more time to search.

Comment My friend's Maksutov-Cassegrain 4Kmm focal lenght (Score 1) 201

He is an excellent astronomer, but he is totally null when it comes to computers (he says: "Computers smell fear and attack me when I'm around them"), so I usually give him a hand to setup the system to capture images and post-process them. Also, we share some excellent whisky while we observe the skies at his home (which is about 1/4 mile-400m away from mine, so we meet pretty often). This is a (not-so-good) picture of his home site, built by himself.

Comment Re:Did the signal degrade, or the noise increase? (Score 1) 615

Well, the answers are "maybe (or maybe)", "no" and "I try to, but not too hard" :-)

Although summers are quite hot here (around 32C/89.6F), I live on a hilltop where temperatures are somewhat cooler (26C/78.8F). I take no special measures other than putting it standing verticaly on one of its sides (rather than laying on its bottom side) to increase airflow around it. No air conditioners at home (never felt the need of them).

Just for the curious people out there, it's a Conceptronic.

Comment Re:Did the signal degrade, or the noise increase? (Score 2) 615

No desert, no third world country (yet). But only ONE WiFi around: mine.

When I first installed my router, about four years ago, I was able to reach the signal from the garage. Now I'm still able to do it. I didn't measure numerically if the signal degraded along the years or not, but for practical purposes the answer is NO: I'm still able to connect from the garage, with the same two "dots" in the "intensity" display.

So, in my case, the signal did not degrade with time. Therefore, I think the neibourghs deployment theory makes sense: taking me as a "control subject" in the experiment, you can say: "The guy with no neighbours suffers no [significative] degradation in the signal intensity".

Comment Perl, to win a woman's heart! (Score 4, Insightful) 477

Ten years ago, I was doing the Spanish version of an international project in a Incredibly Big Monster company which creates hardware and software. There was a module which was based in a large XML file with lots of nesting levels. In the morning of the deadline day for this module, I saw the Japanese tester desperately fighting to find a nesting error in her version. She told me she had been reviewing the file all night, and she couldn't find the problem. Well, my "help-ladies-in-distress" instinct kicked in, and I took her file, scratched a Perl script to keep track of nesting levels, tag pairings, etc, and run it through the file. One hour later, the problem was fixed.
That day she decided that she would not let me escape, and today I'm happily married to her.

So... PERL RULEZ!

(Anyone knows if there is a "+1, Romantic" in Slashdot?)

Comment Not exactly a sport, but... (Score 1) 47

Well, we are using Twitter to broadcast our Castellers performances, and we know the local and specialised media follow us to get the latest achievements (or failures) as soon as they occur.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, better than explaining in a lot of words I recommend you this video from UNESCO channel in Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iSHfrmGdyo

Each group has a "twitter manager" responsible to twit a castle as soon as we finish it, one way or the other (and, just in case someone asks: no, we don't twit them from up there: we need both hands and all the concentration for the castle!)

Comment Re:WARNING! SPY DETECTED! (Score 1) 121

Of course! One thing is a good coffee, which is dark brown, creamy, aromatic and (to my taste) with a hint of sourness, and the other is a black, bitter coffee which usually hides the lack of real aroma with a strong bitterness and smell of "toasted" more than roasted.

So, finally UKers got decent coffee? That's good news!

But... do you agree that our Anonymous Coward above is an undercover agent? No geek would claim that "Caffeine is bad" or compare it with alcohol!

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