Tavern on the Meta

Nick T

3:11 AM

Is there some good SE site to ask how what general processing/filtering steps I could use to turn images like X into diagrams?

Yi Jiang

@NickT You mean something like OCR?

Nick T

Not really; just like what steps I would use to turn images like i.imgur.com/nfuL0.jpg into something clean and grayscale

Yi Jiang

@NickT Programmatically?

Nick T

Yeah, probably with something in Python or using mogrify

Yi Jiang

Ask on SO

George Marian

3:29 AM

I have no idea what caused it, but the spinning railcars were amusing.

Yi Jiang

@GeorgeMarian Oof, what were you doing, removing signals?

Tim Stone

And if 8 people had to be sacrificed for our amusement, so be it

Yi Jiang

Train crashes should never happen with properly maintained signals

Dan Grossman

Don't do a Google image search for "queen's blade" at work. Netflix recommends some creepy stuff sometimes.

George Marian

@YiJiang No. I added some path signals to the track, though.

Yi Jiang

3:31 AM

@GeorgeMarian Use one way path signals

George Marian

@YiJiang I'm still trying to figure out the signaling.

Yi Jiang

Trains moving in the opposite direction of two-way path signals will ignore them coming in the other way, so this can happen

The OpenTTD wiki just doesn't do a very good job of describing the signals and what can be done, which is a real shame

George Marian

@YiJiang Wait, what? I don't understand.

I figured that would be the case with one way signals.

Yi Jiang

@GeorgeMarian Path signals always face one way, yes?

If the train was moving in the direction opposite the direction the signal is facing, it will ignore it

George Marian

@YiJiang It would seem that way.

Yi Jiang

3:34 AM

Therefore you should be using one way signals most of the time

George Marian

Can a section of rail have two sets of one way signals, for each direction?

Yi Jiang

Most of the time, you'll want a parallel dual direction railway, with one-way signal on both sides to maintain the correct direction

George Marian

@YiJiang The direction of the one way path signals is based on the direction you drag 'em, right?

Yi Jiang

@GeorgeMarian Yup. Ctrl + drag to autofill

Nick T

@YiJiang What is that

Yi Jiang

3:37 AM

This allows a large number of trains on the tracks at once, subjected to signal intervals and train length, of course

@NickT OpenTTD

George Marian

@YiJiang Oh, you were referring to a two rail setup?

Yi Jiang

@GeorgeMarian Generally speaking you'll want something like that, since a single rail just doesn't have that large a capacity

You can create a loop, of course, that would be a single single direction line

mootinator

wonders how he triggered the "it looks like you're writing a subjective question" filter.

Tim Stone

What's your title?

Yi Jiang

@mootinator Word filter. Stuff like 'Best, favorite' etc will trigger it

mootinator

3:44 AM

Oh I started fiddling I can't remember what the original was now :/

I might have used 'example' in there.

Oh, apparently it was the word 'you'.

That does generally suggest the question is asking for an opinion.

"What would you do if I sang out of tune?"

Tim Stone

Ah ha

Nick T

mootinator

Hmm that one didn't actually trigger it. Tricksy filter.

Nick T

What's that stuff in the background supposed to be

mootinator

Now, instead of asking a question, I'm playing around trying to figure out a filter O_o.

Tim Stone

4:04 AM

0

Q: Competing to an answer , problem with competitors voting you down.

Not shure if i should post this here ( please let me know , i will delete this question and ask it in the right place ) , however this happened 2-3 thimes allready and it's realy annoying . When there are easyer questions , usualy 2-3 answers popup at the same time . No prob till now , however ...

> @mvds: and you are shure about what you're sayng ? , here is how i would interpret it ( eaven tough i had 12 shots of jagermaister ):

...

People are interesting.

Nick T

Heh, nice

Dan Grossman

4:20 AM

> honestly i am too drunk to get into an argue

Yi Jiang

Wow, adding in two more platforms to Jeff Atwood really needed some funky engineering

Nick T

@DanGrossman So SE sites need a sobriety test? I too may have posted while...altered.

Yi Jiang

See that Maglev platform sandwiched between the railway ones? Yeah, that took some work...

Dan Grossman

:just realized it's Friday by what's on TV:

Yi Jiang

4:35 AM

@DanGrossman And not by the posts on Meta? Hmmmm...

Dan Grossman

(for another 25 minutes)

where'd thursday go...

Nick T

I wonder how long it would take dot to generate this dependency graph on my computer

oh the gems of TDWTF; even if they have no clue what an embedded system is.

Dan Grossman

Nick T

I don't know why they drew a gray box

mootinator

I am playing a boardgame online with three people in the same room as me.

Dan Grossman

4:47 AM

been there done that

Nick T

Are you cheating?

mootinator

Now I know how people who paid thousands of dollars to play scrabble on iPhones and an iPad feel.

Yi Jiang

@NickT To hide the victim's name I think

mootinator

@NickT Of course.

Nick T

Dan Grossman

4:50 AM

> CLIENT: “Please change the file name of the document and send it back to me ASAP. I need this done immediately.” -- Clients From Hell

> "Please email me back the file. I sent you the only copy I have." -- Clients From Hell

Nick T

"Fax me some paper, we're out"

Yi Jiang

Another one for Marc! Jeff and Marc is even at 4 each, I think!

Tim Stone

Ah, neck and neck in passenger fatalities. Hooray!

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Not really. The one that crashed at Marc's isn't full, so Jeff's still ahead on that count

Tim Stone

Oh, my bad.

Hmm

Yi Jiang

5:11 AM

I hereby announce a new competitor to the competition:

Tim Stone

I'm sure Nick Craver will be honoured ;)

Also, I didn't win the iPad in that Manning contest. I declare shenanigans!

Yi Jiang

Really, I should see if I can get the newspaper to announce: 'Citizens celebrate first plane crash at Nick Craver Airport', the format they use for first vehicle arrival at stations

Tim Stone

Such a joyous occasion :P

drachenstern

Well, inlaws crashing here for the night includes my nine year old nephew. I really dont like video games as much as they think I do :p now for my pillow. Asta mañana mi amigos.

Tim Stone

Hah, g'night @drachenstern

Yi Jiang

5:31 AM

Another one on Jeff! Jeff 5, Marc 4, Nick 1

Tim Stone

Nick's pilots better stop trying so hard if he wants to catch up.

Rebecca Chernoff

oy

Tim Stone

'Ello again @RebeccaChernoff

Rebecca Chernoff

Allo

Tim Stone

How's Drop7 been treating you? ;)

Rebecca Chernoff

5:40 AM

hahahaha

good q:

Tim Stone

And you even snuck in a WwF move! Very nice, heheh.

Yi Jiang

@RebeccaChernoff No planes crashing on your airport yet :D

Rebecca Chernoff

\o/

mootinator

\o/ ,o, /o/ /o\

Why don't you stay at the

Yi Jiang

@mootinator \o\ lurch both ways /o/

mootinator

5:45 AM

34 secs ago, by mootinator

\o/ ,o, /o/ /o\

Tim Stone

Hahah, nice.

►

The first guy makes it sound so epic.

I'm not convinced that it actually is, but. :P

Dan Grossman

:crashes his editor again:

George Marian

6:31 AM

@TimStone It sure sounds like his believes it.

Tim Stone

Yeah, hahah

George Marian

Oh, yah. Gaming on the Atom. Where do I sign up? =/

Tim Stone

It confuses me a little, because it's like a netbook you have to have an external mouse for.

George Marian

A gaming netbook. That doesn't sound painful, at all.

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone, when was the last time a word longer than 3 letters was played?

Tim Stone

6:41 AM

Well, you have to have hardcore gaming on the go @GeorgeMarian. Since, you know, we all leave the house so that we can play games.

@RebeccaChernoff Heheh, I was thinking the same thing. I'm not sure. :p

I really like that last three letter word I played, though ;)

Argh, lack of Office on this computer is a fail on my part.

Rebecca Chernoff

hrmph

Tim Stone

Oh TI, where have you gone..

Dan Grossman

TI? They're still here, selling their calculators for the same price as they sold them 20 years ago. And they are making one of the ARM chipsets for Windows 8 tablets.

Tim Stone

I meant my calculator specifically, it's gone missing in my room somewhere. :P

Rebecca Chernoff

6:57 AM

Dammit.

Tim Stone

Hm?

Dan Grossman

Don't worry! No matter how old it is, you can replace it for the same exact price at the store today. The TI-83's 6MHz processor and 32KB of RAM have not dropped in production cost a single penny since 1996!

Rebecca Chernoff

Not cool @TimStone, not cool.

Tim Stone

\o/

@RebeccaChernoff Ah....erm, sorry?

Rebecca Chernoff

You're killing me!

Tim Stone

6:59 AM

You were winning too, which is the really confusing part.

Tim Stone

7:22 AM

@RebeccaChernoff Good game :)

Rebecca Chernoff

(:

Tim Stone

That was quite the board though, heh.

Rebecca Chernoff

seriously |:

Tim Stone

I keep trying to avoid that, but apparently it's not easy.

Rebecca Chernoff

Alrighty, I'm out. G'Night.

Tim Stone

7:29 AM

G'night

Geoff Dalgas

7:45 AM

Ooo mouse hover over a tag on SO.. shiny new feature

Yi Jiang

8:20 AM

@RebeccaChernoff First plane crash! Congratulations!

@GeoffDalgas That is... very shiny

From the figures though I don't really think the number of subscribers is a useful figure to have there

Yi Jiang

8:32 AM

Hang on, what does subscribe do? For a second there I thought it's for the RSS but obviously it isn't, since the RSS link is right beside it

radp

8:54 AM

@drachenstern I do, that's the whole point for me ;)

Yi Jiang

Why is Hotmail reminding me that my own birthday is tomorrow?

radp

@YiJiang to remind you to remind us.

Yi Jiang

@radp Yo d00z! My homie's bDay is tmr, yo! Com'on round and have a slice of teh kake, ya!

radp

@YiJiang Are you going to have reps giveaways? Then sing me in!

Yi Jiang

@radp I don't know, maybe I'll throw a hundred reps or so on a feature-req or a bug that needs fixing

Oh look, they took SE offline. Hmmm... back up again. That was fast

radp

9:09 AM

also why did you just have to put a feature I so want to mod now that I'm swamped with work! :P

(take the tag name off the rss URL, call the API and fetch the number of questions for it instead of an useless subscriber count)

It'd be trickier to know via the API if you can or not edit a tag wiki.

Yi Jiang

@radp Not entirely useful either, but it's better than the number of email subscribers certainly

radp

@YiJiang What would you suggest then, as the one main stat of tags?

(Question count is used pretty much everywhere next to a tag; that's why I mentioned it.)

Yi Jiang

@radp Removing that figure altogether, since you can pretty much see it everywhere anyway and the main reason why someone might want to hover over a tag isn't to see it's stats?

But you should open a feature req for that - I agree that having the number of email subscribers is very unuseful

radp

@YiJiang well, the tag wiki increased visibility is awesome -- for sites that already do have tag wikis.

Yi Jiang

@radp I'm not saying remove the whole box, just the top figure displaying header

radp

9:15 AM

The 2.5k rep req + top 20 user/bronze badge requirement doesn't make that easy..

@YiJiang I know what'd be more interesting than that.

"Number of people that have this tag as interesting"

like: "16,847 have interest in this tag (me too! - ignore - subscribe -rss)"

Yi Jiang

True, I thought about that, but the number isn't necessarily easy to calculate, give that we can also use '[tag*]' format for the interested tag thing

radp

@YiJiang eh, maybe don't count those. While I do use wildcards I only do a fraction of the time.

Mainly when ignoring.

like *wii*

Yi Jiang

That reminds me, I need to name a city after radp. Hmmm... which one to pick

radp

@YiJiang One you don't have an airport in.

Yi Jiang

@radp Okay... hmmm... not many

radp

9:18 AM

Also, man, train railways are complicated in that game.

You need to study a manual about semaphores before you can really do anything.

Yi Jiang

@radp Very. I tried learning it by creating a network and then letting it grow organically. The result is a mess.

radp

@YiJiang Heh, my first attempt was connecting two cities with two trains. I had to make one bridge in the middle. I also put the trainyard the wrong way round. You can imagine the output.

Yi Jiang

Hmmm... found a reasonably large city that doesn't have an airport. No guarantees I won't build one later though.

Any OpenTTD veteran will want to kill me now for creating such a monstrosity

@radp Signals. I use electronic signals exclusively.

radp

I didn't see the 1×1 red and green pixels. Sorry.

Yi Jiang

@radp Only at this zoom level can you see the whole junction

radp

9:23 AM

I take it those yellow and red tunnels are, um, erm, rotting trains lost forever?

or just bridges?

Yi Jiang

@radp Bridges. Tube bridges appear when you first have access to monorails (I think) and allow speeds of up to 600 km/h

There are also two tunnels there to allow East-West train services to cross over

radp

My second attempt involved buses. It wasn't much better.

I connected a bus station to all four sides; buses still would get lost and ram the station from the wrong way round.

Yi Jiang

Originally it was a Y junction going in three directions, then I decided that I wanted it to become a full blown four directional one. The result it this mess.

@radp Heh, how did you mess up buses? They're a lot easier to manage than trains, that's for sure

The hardest part about buses is to keep the intervals between them constant

This is the result of my 'organically grown' train network. Looks sort of like the cables coming out of the back of my computer, only worse

radp

10:05 AM

yay train crash.

Yi Jiang

@radp Oh bothers, what did you do this time? :P

radp

Concurrency :P

Yi Jiang

@radp A race condition, I see

You need to refactor your railway lines

radp

Should've put more stations in between

or exchanges or something

Yi Jiang

@radp Signals. Seriously, running multiple trains on a single line isn't too hard

radp

10:10 AM

erm, erm, it let me build airports before the airplane was invented :|

Yi Jiang

@radp Which year on which type of map?

radp

@YiJiang I'm doing things half-assedly,

Yi Jiang

You should have at least two types of planes available to start with

radp

uh, I could've sworn the game started in 1850, it's 1950 instead.

Jeff Atwood

I do not know what @YiJiang is doing but it frightens me a little

2

radp

10:28 AM

2 days ago, by Yi Jiang

Oh hey, another one at Jeff Atwood. That's Jeff 4, Marc 2 now

Yi Jiang

@radp Jeff and Marc are currently tied at 5, and Rebecca Chernoff and Nick Craver both have one each too

Jeff Atwood

has anyone moused over a SE network tag recently?

radp

0

Q: What does 'subscribe' in the Stack Exchange Shiny Hover Tag Information-o-Matic do?

Now that tags have this erm... shiny thing which appears when you move your mouse over them (try it! waffles), one question remains: What in the billion blue blazes does the 'subscribe' button do? It's not RSS, since a traditional RSS feed link appears beside it, and clicking on it seems to inc...

support tags user-interface subscription

Yi Jiang

2 hours ago, by Geoff Dalgas

Ooo mouse hover over a tag on SO.. shiny new feature

Jeff Atwood

I was expecting more outrage

Yi Jiang

10:32 AM

@JeffAtwood Eh... why?

radp

@JeffAtwood nah, the added visibility of tag wikis is great.

Sure, some newer sites will look "untidy" for not having hardly any, but I guess this is an encouragement to get those going.

Jeff Atwood

I always expect outrage

2

radp

To be fair Weblog is sleeping.

Jeff Atwood

historically we've had a surprising amount of difficulty funneling users, who really should know better, to specific tags of interest

A common reaction is "why in the wide, wide world of sports would you be on the HOMEPAGE?"

go to the damn Java tag, or the C# tag, or the Python tag and hang out there!

radp

nah, there's always the off chance I see an interesting question from other tags.

Jeff Atwood

10:35 AM

so we've been trying to make tags more of an obvious destination

radp

Sure, on SO that doesn't work as well.

Jeff Atwood

anyway now you can 'fire and forget' by clicking subscribe and have the questions emailed to you

and rss was always there, though I have gotten very pessimistic about the value of RSS lately

SORRY "FEEDS", I KNOW DAVE WINER DIES INSIDE WHEN I SAY "RSS"

that whole Atom vs Rss thing was an embarrassment

classic pissing contest, the "winner" is the one covered in the most urine, I guess

Feeds

goes into a corner, sobbing

4

radp

RSS is useful to pump information into the "social graph"

I wouldn't want to follow a Twitter feed with all Ars Technica articles, but when I do find one interesting on GReader I can link to it on Twitter.

Jeff Atwood

I changed it so stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-answer shows all sections

but in reality, the "pay it forward" is only shown to answers containing 'thanks' and "have the same problem?" is only shown to answers containing 'same' and 'problem' and the like

the bottom 5 items are constant

also if you have any feedback on

Stack Overflow Blog: How to Say Thanks in an Answer

Jeff Atwood

After successfully implementing active assistance for new askers, we’d like to do the same thing for new answerers. So we’ve been analyzing characteristics of answers by new users to determine what makes an answer fundamentally good or bad.

One strong predictor of a poor quality answer may surprise you: the presence of the words thank or thanks in a short answer.

That’s right, the humble, innocent desire to thank your fellow man (or woman) for some question or answer they have contributed was sadly choking our system in thousands upon thousands of florid thank you “answers”. …

Yi Jiang

10:49 AM

The phrase 'active assistance' instantly reminds me of clippy

Barry

Is there anywhere where I can see all the tags that i have subscribed to via the new tag pop up window?

Other than hovering over it and seeing if I can unsubscribe

Jeff Atwood

no, that is part of the hypothetical "greatest hits" unified profile on stackexchange.com

the emails will also have individual management links

Yi Jiang

@JeffAtwood Why not just stick it under the currently almost empty 'pref' tab on user profile for now then?

Jeff Atwood

it's a se.com function

Yi Jiang

Or is this profile going to appear sooner than, say, six to eight week?

Jeff Atwood

10:51 AM

meh

Barry

Is it worth me adding as a feature request on meta?

I don't want a [status-declined] :)

Jeff Atwood

already there, multiple times

what, you thought you had an original suggestion? :)

Barry

@JeffAtwood Ha! no chance of that! :)

radp

►

3

← not affiliated

George Marian

11:14 AM

@radp lol

radp

11:28 AM

67

Q: Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

It appears that there has been no move to create a formalized official repository of recent changes, so for now, we will be keeping track of it ourselves. RSS feed for this question

support faq

↑ now an official faq

I hope you didn't plan to edit the question text :P

radp

12:34 PM

0

Q: Tag bubbles on metas point to meta tags, not parent tags.

See this answer: all the "rss" and "help us edit this wiki" (and possibly the subscribe link too?) point to the meta site -- whereas a click on the link proper goes to the parent site. Reproducible on MSO: status-completed. The tag link points to Stack Overflow, where it doesn't exist, but fetc...

bug user-interface tag-bubble

ChrisF

12:57 PM

0

Q: porting reputation from SO to programmer SE

As far as I understand, questions about discussion on design is now covered on progSE and so on. I am relatively annoyed by the fact that I can give a >10k support on SO, but on progSE I am at around 150, even if most of the reputation I have on SO is due to questions that may be now a better fit...

feature-request reputation integration

I've tried to formulate an answer as to why this would be bad, but I can't seem to come up with a coherent argument at the moment.

radp

@ChrisF The only question here is, should SO questions about a topic be mass migrated to the more specific sites?

If yes, then reps are migrated too.

If no, then the reason against migration is the reason against reps migration.

ChrisF

I don't think rep is migrated at the moment at all. I can't find the reference though.

radp

I guess the single most important reason against is the tagging.

@ChrisF Not automatically, perhaps. At the next recalc however it should, right?

ChrisF

@radp I'm not sure it is even then. I had an answer migrated from SU to SF but didn't get the rep even after a recalc.

radp

:|

ChrisF

1:04 PM

8

Q: Why is the reputation from transferred questions missing from reputation report?

UPDATE I would really liked to have awarded the bounty on this to an answer that indicated that "yes this is a bug and it will be fixed at some point", or better yet one that stated "this is now fixed", but it was not to be. Oh well. I answered a question on Super User on the 24th May 2010 that ...

bug reputation migration

Self answered - but links to:

5

A: Questions about the Gadgets closure & migration

Reputation is not migrated between sites. Yes, flag any post that was not migrated and we'll address them. I have migrated the one you mentioned. There is no way to access the gadgets.stackexchange.com site - it is closed. The data dump is now available on the area51 proposal page for gadgets....

Sathya

@ChrisF that might be dated info.

ChrisF

@Sathya Agreed, but I've no evidence to the contrary. I'd have to see a post of mine (with upvotes!) migrated and then see the corresponding rep increase.

Sathya

@ChrisF Actually, no it's still valid

@ChrisF recent example would be

superuser.com/questions/228819/…

-- 2011-01-05 rep +10   = 523
 2     10931 (10)

on webapps, though I have +2

ChrisF

That mirrors my SU -> SF experience

Sathya

@ChrisF I could've sworn the rep was increased by the right amount, the /reputation says otherwise

ChrisF

1:18 PM

That's what I thought too - but with my SF rep being so low I could see exactly where I'd got the votes from.

Sathya

@ChrisF yeah, same's the case with my webapps account

radp

1:42 PM

The truth is that going back to 101 rep sucks.

Although we should all be grateful for the association bonus. Life with 1 rep is much worse.

ChrisF

I suppose it sucks even worse when you see questions and answers with points being moved. You lose those points for good when then happens.

radp

@ChrisF as in bounty?

Sathya

of all, no edit & vote to close privs when you start afresh is a pain

ChrisF

No - if you've got an answer with 10 upvotes on site A that's migrated to site B. That's 100 points you lose on A due to post deletion but you don't get back on site B.

@Sathya I think that's the worst part. Getting to 3K is my goal on all sites I'm active on. Once I've done that I feel I can participate fully again.

radp

@Sathya edit is okay -- vote to close no.

Just see the amount of migrated questions that get closed on arrival.

"Oh yeah a computer question that isn't about programming off to Super User you go!"
"Oh wait there's the word 'Game' in it, go go Gaming!"
"WTF? This is about a Game API. Off to Game Dev!"
"...but it's an api-rec! Sigh..."

ChrisF

1:48 PM

The blow is softened if you participate in a beta with their reduced rep levels.

Sathya

@ChrisF yeah

radp

↑ true story, except I recalled wrong -- there was no SU jump and no actual migration:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4474030/what-is-the-most-popular-mmo-game-that-has-an-out-of-game-api-closed
http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/what-is-the-most-popular-mmorpg-game-that-has-an-out-of-game-api
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/6648/what-is-the-most-popular-mmorpg-game-that-has-an-out-of-game-api

Josh

2:35 PM

@radp sorry I don't understand what you meant by:

14 hours ago, by radp

@Josh is it you with the book open?

Yi Jiang

@Josh I think he's asking if you're the one editing the Book of Rchern at that time

radp

@YiJiang Well there was one person using Chrome Dev (or Canary) looking at it -- I guessed that was rchern but couldn't be sure.

Josh

Ahhhh. No I forgot to update my status, I was AFK then :-)

radp

►

radp

3:06 PM

@YiJiang nice link in your status

Yi Jiang

@radp Yeah, pretty sad that he no longer updates Copper, still they make for very interesting reads

Carson Myers

naggers!

Yi Jiang

3:24 PM

Hang on a sec, when did blog.stackoverflow change to blog.stackexchange?

radp

@YiJiang it... didn't?

Tim Stone

Hm?

radp

It's on both domains.

Tim Stone

nods

radp

It could be links are migrating to blog.SE as opposed to blog.SO

Yi Jiang

3:26 PM

Oh, the one on MSO and SO goes to blog.so, the ones on SE sites goes to blog.se

radp

SU goes to blog.SO and SF goes to blog.SF I guess

Yi Jiang

@radp Yup. The one for SF doesn't show the 'new' thingadongdong

Tim Stone

3:58 PM

2

Q: Should a badge be awarded for images?

Should a badge be awarded for adding images to a question or answer, like there are for using other aspects of a Stack Exchange web site such as editing a post?

discussion badges

7

A: What do the arrow icons in Subclipse mean?

When working with the Subversion repository, remote changes (those on the repository) are incoming changes (remote → local), while local changes are outgoing changes (local → remote). In views that compare the local and remote copies, incoming changes are denoted with a blue, left-faci...

= Gold

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Ha!

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