User talk:SqueakSquawk4

Discussion of calculation of Physics Cost-Saving Tips

At the moment the calculation for 2649: Physics Cost-Saving Tips performed by SqueakSquawk4 is included in the explanation of said comic. Here this can be discussed. --Kynde (talk) 07:01, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

That looks great! Sorry I can't talk to you on your talk page, it hasn't been created and I've always been too lazy to make an autoconfimed user. I hope you're okay with the changes in this edit. Do you mind if we subst: this into the collapse box on 2649 so it can be cleaned up and formatted there? Thanks for looking all that up. 172.70.207.8 14:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

What actually is Subst-ing? SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 15:51, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

It just means copying it instead of transcluding it like a template. The advantage is it's not dependent on your userpage which is kind of nonstandard and awkward, but the disadvantage is that edits in one place won't show up in the other. mw:Help:Substitution. 172.70.210.145 16:12, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I actually kinda like it referencing my profile. If there's no strong reason to change it, I'd like to keep it.SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 18:06, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

No problemo! 172.69.34.50 23:46, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi SqueakSquawk4. I cannot validate your calculation, but given all the discussion about it, I think it is valid to include in the explanation. It is a new way to include stuff on explain xkcd, so I'm not sure about that version, but I will not oppose it. If others agree with your calculations, I think it is a great effort by you. Thanks. Have added a header, so the next who wish to write to you on other subjects, can make a new header, so not to mix up the discussions. And also included the calculation at the top, so everyone coming here knows what the fuss is about. Good job! ;-) --Kynde (talk) 07:01, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

... First, I just noticed, why did you go from 1.25 to 1.35 to 1.5 MeV? Which figure did you use for the total energy product? Fixed math. 172.69.34.86 16:53, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I put a broken machine into https://xkcd.com/2916/

Hiya!

If you're reading this, it's probably becuase you spotted a square on https://xkcd.com/2916/ that doesn't let any balls through, which should be impossible because it can only be submitted if balls are flowing.

Put simply, what I did was take advantage of the time it takes balls to fall. The square was such that balls took a while to drop the height of the room before being accepted. I placed a "Bucket" under the dispenser, then had a fan blow the balls round the bucket and into the receptor. To get it recieved, I just had to delete the fan then paste the name into the name box and submit before they stopped falling.

Here are some screenshots I took: https://imgur.com/a/yAJ5pjM

I know this is kinda mean and I may get banned for it or something, but considering I'm writing out how I did it so Randal can prevent it I don't see it as so bad, at least I'm open about it. SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 17:55, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Not gonna say that you're to blame (there's all kinds of other possible problems, even at my end), but just to note that I've been having submit-crashes (not of the browser, but of the functionality) for several goes, now. I did the "Two yellows, one green!" (see my little contribution to the Machine comic Talk) and got so far as seeing that I had Under Construction tapes above me (as well as either side and below), so maybe I was already on procedurally-dodgy territory. All solutions since then have page-crashed (gone to completely white area between the standard upper and lower comic navigation buttons) and apparently not got anywhere.

What I'm sort of hoping is that it's a server-side issue (perhaps your 'broken machine' submission, but as likely some other cascading operational error, or even whatever it is that prompted "multiple yellow routes" to actually emerge onto a given pane) that a bit of manual tweaking at Randall's (or his collaboration team's) end will make work again once it's obvious that it's gone a bit funny.

...also possible that it's just overloaded my browser and there's absolutely no issue (or, at least, not this one) with anyone else out there. ;)

As for getting 'banned for this'. Well, apart from pushing the envelope a little (a very xkcdian thing to do!), I don't think there's anything to be worried about having done. It was an experiment, not malicious. And 'banning' from here won't help regards anything you did to the Machine site, and this isn't somewhere Randall comes (that we know of!), let alone involved in our business here (well, not that I've seen). If you want my opinion, as a casual observer with absollutely no say in the matter, don't worry about this. Maybe this is the kind of thing the release delay was trying to address (didn't delay long enough, for further testing!), but that's all a development/stress-testing issue, not a 'moderation' one. But it's been interesting, either way.

Half minded to poke Randall and let him know my ideas for an interactive comic (sometime in the next couple of years... I see no need to rush). But there's a lot to do to make sure it even works in the sort of way that I think Randall would appreciate, even before I nudge him and see if he even wants such an unsolicited suggestion! :P 172.70.163.31 21:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure how I would have crashed the site, seeing as all I really did was stop the flow of balls. I saw someone on r/xkcd put the script of the Bee Movie as a name so that's more likely to have caused problems than me. I was also getting either the same or a similar fault myself on Firefox (But not Chrome) before I submitted this.

Oh, I'm fairly confident it wasn't as simple as stopping the flow of balls, but I just thought I'd mention my issues, whilst here. Some things seem to have started working nicely (also, for the first time I've seen the glass/award icons... they were conspicuously missing from the toolbar), although several (IMO 'award winning') solutions seem not to have stayed in the overall picture. Quite proud of some of the recent ones, especially ones where I've applied advanced hue-sorting techniques to unmix mixed balls. But looks like there's still an issue of being accepted as permanent submissions. Not 'crashing white' anymore, though. So maybe been tinkered with (to work with Firefox). 162.158.74.118 23:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Also "this isn't somewhere Randall comes (that we know of!), let alone involved in our business here (well, not that I've seen)" sounds like something Randall would say if he were here and trying to be stealthy

I'm definitely not Ran... wait, that's what he'd say... I definitely am Randall. Darnit. He might say that too... I definitely and definitively am not definite about anything. I mean, I used to be indecisive, but now...? I'm not so sure! 162.158.74.118 23:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Btw, how did you find this? Does explainxkcd have a new edits thread? Did you see the link in the name in the comic? Genuinely, I'm curious SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 21:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm just a big fan of the "Recent changes" link over <<<thataway<<<... :P 162.158.74.118 23:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

né/born

Wikipedia is inconsistent, itself. The page for Bill Clinton cheerfully uses it (ok, in linked form, perhaps that link could have been given when first written here), keeping "born for the birthdate alone. Some of the others go with "born as, <birthdate>", or similar contraction. And you find "neé" widely used (not exclusively... Hillary C. is "neé"d, Melania T. goes with "born", etc).

Maybe it's just not an American thing as much as (formally?) it can be/has been over here in Britain. My mother was, for a while, listed in the Guiness Book Of Records. We still have an edition of the book where it lists her, as a holder, in "Her Name (neé Birthname)" format. She attained the record (and improved upon it twice) before her marriage to my father, and did not earn any newer entry afterwards, so I don't know what process led to Guiness learning of the need to update her listing accordingly... it being more than fifty years ago, I doubt anyone will remember precisely, and maybe these days a contemporary version of my mother(-to-be) would be more inclined to not bother with a name-change at all. And maybe the US edition of this 1970s GBOR was retypeset in US editing style for internationali[s|z]ed printing.

Apart from a bride's changed name (or both brides, in a mutual switcheroo/double-barelling, in more modern marriages), I remember a girl at primary school whose surname changed due to her mother (re-?)marrying, but it seemed unremarkable to us and I don't know the full context that the adult world might have been interested in during the '70s.

Double-barelling was never really a thing around my area/amongst my 'class'. Ditto, you'd not get any "Jr." offspring of Same Names Father, never mind "...the Third". Middle names also seemed rare. A childhood friend had one, but I think I only really found that out because we were best buds and the "not exactly embarrrassing, but not proud of" detail came out in conversation some time. No such "John F. Kennedy" or "L. Ron Hubbard" pride of bearing even just an initial, round these parts.)

I only personally know of one male-equivalent where he changed his surname to hers. (His name, ten letters, conceivably he never liked it due to fictional connotations; hers, being six letters, far more 'normal'.) But I never really have encountered any context or attempt to explain that with a "born." or "né." annotation, I know I had to spend time making sure his corporate login/email details were 'corrected', but with a redirect from the old mail-id to catch legacy contacts. And if we were talking of trans-community "deadnames", then we'd ideally at most note it (as much as required to) then from then on honour only the newly chosen name out of politeness and honest regard.

...ok, so don't mind me. Spotted the edit (you can guess which), and I've no vested interest in undoing it or even compromising between both opinions, but my intention was to point out that (some) people do indeed know what it means, and I had noticed that the Wikipedia hive-mind does indeed (inconsistently, but not infrequently) use that shorthand. Depending upon where the OE of this article's previous style started from, possibly they adopted the first 'house style' they picked up upon from the wikisource. Starting with another bibliographical page they might have used a whole two extra characters per necessary article! The rest of my ramblings are just illustrative of some of my own experiences (not much to be said w.r.t. my own marriage, pretty much as you'd expect, given my age) because I think you deserve a bit of entertainment rather than an apparent short sharp lecture (which was never my intent).

And, naturally, I expect other people to have other local realities. Randall Patrick Munroe has a middle name, for example, and doubtless he's used to his contemporaries having one (or more). (It has been said that if the Second Amemndment had excluded anyone with middle names, it might have prevented many of the US political assasinations (inc. attempts) from happening. ;) Wilkes, Harvey, Leon, Earl, Matthew...! Of course, this might just be because nobody in the US who can afford a gun is too poor to have been given extra names. :p ) Oh, I hope you realise, by now, that I'm trying to amuse you (and anyone else passing by) as much as to be informative, not at all to be provocative. Gonna have to just imagine that I've made you at least smile a little, along the way. 172.69.195.115 13:29, 11 August 2024 (UTC)