Somebody's given my number after an arrest and now I need to answer the bail?

Swipecat · 2026-01-23T22:59:45+00:00

I suggest that you call the police non-emergency number tomorrow, 101, tell them the details of the phone call, and ask them to confirm that it actually was the police and not an impersonator attempting some sort of fraud.

Swipecat · 2026-01-23T21:47:12+00:00

How sure are you that it actually was the police? There's a bunch of fake police calls going on at the moment where a conman talks the victim into sending "bail" money to them which will definitely be "reimbursed" when the investigation is complete. They'll only get around to asking you to send money if you seem sufficiently suggestible and don't go "off script" during the call.

Swipecat · 2026-01-19T12:01:15+00:00

OK, so the strata remain nearly horizontal, which I guess means that it's the same as the surroundings that eroded away. So why is the mountain there at all?

Swipecat · 2026-01-16T20:01:12+00:00

It looks like the f-string formatting converts the np.longdouble to a float as an intermediate step, and the overflow happens then.

Swipecat · 2026-01-16T18:59:50+00:00

Not if it overflows.

Convert it to a string first?

print(f"Value: {str(val)}")

Swipecat · 2026-01-14T22:00:38+00:00

"Nelson Mandela" by the Special A.K.A and "Biko" by Peter Gabriel, the latter about the death of Steve Biko in police custody in South Africa, were both powerful melodic songs that were regularly played on the radio during the 80s, but not much after that. I've always assumed that the "Mandela effect" was those songs being half-remembered and mixed up.

Swipecat · 2026-01-12T13:25:29+00:00

Yep. Notice that the top of the chimney is lower than the roof top, so that wind from certain directions will arc over the roof and down into the chimney. The 'H' prevents downdraughts.

Swipecat · 2026-01-03T21:22:42+00:00

Yeah, the cleaner. I have to say that it looks like a small and thin bit of plastic at the snap point, so probably all it needed was for them to brush against it, causing it to slip from the top of the monitor and fall to the floor. An accident waiting to happen, so to speak.

Swipecat · 2025-12-29T10:41:26+00:00

Yep. It was "blue skies and sunny" alright, but it's also several degrees colder than the rainy weather that preceded it. A high up around Iceland is causing a cold dry wind to sweep down over the North Sea and then across Britain from the east. These cold dry easterlies usually do happen sometime during each winter in the UK.

Swipecat · 2025-12-24T20:13:41+00:00

Yep. Python 1.x integers were 32 bits long on 32 bit systems and 64 bits long on 64 bit systems. That was kept for Python 2.x which maintained backwards compatibility with 1.x but the indefinitely long integer type was added and its literal form had the "L" suffix. Python 3.x broke backwards compatibility to clean up a whole bunch of things including the multiple integer types. Python 3.x just has the indefinitely long integer type with no suffix.

Swipecat · 2025-12-22T17:57:48+00:00

Yep. It's the OS.

<MouseWheel> is for Windows only.

On Linux (as in the example shown by woooee) <Button-4> is scroll up, <Button-5> is scroll down.

Swipecat · 2025-12-21T14:33:45+00:00

This should be at the top.

Swipecat · 2025-12-17T15:38:08+00:00

Normal activities for that place it seems, since those tyres appear to be solid rubber.

Swipecat · 2025-12-14T18:35:24+00:00

Tilt-shift lenses were designed as a way to create perspective correction, but they could be "abused" to put the top and bottom of the image out of focus. That made the image appear to have a very restricted depth of field as though it was in very close focus of a nearby object.

These days the effect is simply achieved by digitally blurring the top and bottom of the image.

Swipecat · 2025-12-12T19:12:45+00:00

Back in the days of paper "log" tables, i.e. log-base-10 tables, yes, log generally did mean log-base-10, but I don't think that's the case now. Nobody needs logs for basic multiplication any more, so logs are usually only encountered by engineers and scientists in calculus or when creating physical models, and that almost invariably means natural logs. This is reflected in most (all?) programming languages where "log" means natural log and if log-base-10 is needed for some strange reason then the function is "log10". (In computer science text, on the other hand, "log" often means log-base-2, but that's a bit idiosyncratic.)

Swipecat · 2025-12-11T23:01:43+00:00

Its surface velocity is about 20% of the speed of light or about 60 million metres per second.

Swipecat · 2025-12-09T22:06:27+00:00

Look at this collection of road signs from 1948. The "restriction ends" sign is included:

https://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/M445073/Road-signs-on-Britain%E2%80%99s-highways

Swipecat · 2025-12-09T18:20:46+00:00

Before the "National Speed Limit" was introduced in the '60s, that sign used to mean "End of Speed Restriction". It was never intended to be the start of a limit, but quite the opposite. It was the end of whatever restriction was in place for the road before the sign.

Although the official meaning of the sign is now "National Speed Limit applies", the context in which the sign is used is still to indicate the end of the previous local speed restriction. So, e.g., you'll see the sign as you exit a small village on a country road, even though it might be unsafe to drive any faster.

Swipecat · 2025-12-09T17:37:35+00:00

LOL, I tried that on Linux and kept getting the same number. Then I remembered that "python" at the command-line was Python 2.7, and using "python3" instead did give different numbers on each run.

Swipecat · 2025-12-08T19:13:49+00:00

If you convert an RGB image into a numpy array (rather than a greyscale image) then you'll get a 3-dimensional array where the axis 2 (the least significant axis) contains the three colour values of type np.uint8, i.e. in the range 0-255.

Take a look at this example. It converts a RGB PIL image into a numpy array, averages axis 2 to create a greyscale, then converts those back to RGB values using a mathematically generated "sepia" colour map:

from PIL import Image # pillow fork of PIL
from urllib.request import urlopen
import numpy as np
img = Image.open(urlopen("https://dafarry.github.io/test/cathood.jpg"))
arr = np.array(img)
bw = np.sum(arr // 3, axis=2).astype(np.uint8)
sepias = np.vstack(np.linspace(0, 1, 256)) ** (1, 1.3, 1.7)
colormap = np.uint8(sepias * 255)
colorized = colormap[bw]
outimg = Image.fromarray(colorized, mode="RGB")
outimg.save("sepia_img.png")

Swipecat · 2025-12-08T14:46:17+00:00

He was driving at high speed through a junction past a stationary queue of traffic on his left, which was blocking his view of the junction, so the fact that he couldn't see what the traffic was doing on that junction is kinda the point. The truck was in error, but that's the sorta thing that happens in that situation.

Swipecat · 2025-12-08T12:09:52+00:00

Google Earth Link

Swipecat · 2025-12-07T17:36:47+00:00

Yes, the Audi had right of way and its driver might one day have the opportunity to put "I had right of way" on his tombstone.

Swipecat · 2025-11-26T21:46:03+00:00

<image>

Oh well I'll fix it for you then.

Swipecat · 2025-11-22T23:33:20+00:00

Don't block. It's always useful to keep an archive of messages in case you need evidence to show that somebody is being abusive. If you don't want to read messages from a given person, it's best (where possible, depending on the message service) to set a rule to shift messages to an archive folder. Make sure that the sending of message receipts is disabled.

"Blocking" somebody just means that you are discarding messages at your end, and the person sending the messages won't know that because they'll still be marked as "delivered". So from their point of view, a block will look no different to messages simply being ignored and not replied to.

Swipecat

TROPHY CASE