The Medusa Fora

Today I learned that there is a pocket in my jacket that I'd never realised was there. A pretty damn useful pocket too.
I've only had said jacket for about a year.

I learned today that Liverpool City Council (yes those b******s) are closing off all the roads round Aintree this year for the Grand National, making it totally impossible for me to park near work on Thursday and Friday. The nearest I will be able to park is about one mile away. Fuming.

firehazard wrote:Today I learned that there is a pocket in my jacket that I'd never realised was there. A pretty damn useful pocket too.
I've only had said jacket for about a year.

Ha ha ha ha, Firehazard that is probably the most trivial post I've ever read.

Today I learned about Tsar Bomba which was a Soviet nuclear weapon with a yield of over 50 megatons. It was tested in 1961 and for the test was run at half capacity as it was designed to have a 100 megaton yield. It was....

1,400 times the combined power of the two nuclear explosives used against Imperial Japan
30 tonnes and so large they had to remove the bomb bay doors of the massive Bear.
Seen from over 600 miles away!

Heather wrote:I learned today that Liverpool City Council (yes those b******s) are closing off all the roads round Aintree this year for the Grand National, making it totally impossible for me to park near work on Thursday and Friday. The nearest I will be able to park is about one mile away. Fuming.

Ah the Grand National, .... good times !!!

Heather wrote:I learned today that Liverpool City Council (yes those b******s) are closing off all the roads round Aintree this year for the Grand National, making it totally impossible for me to park near work on Thursday and Friday. The nearest I will be able to park is about one mile away. Fuming.

Update.

Today, I learned that things may not be as bad as expected. If we put a notice in our car window with where we work, the phone number and the car registration number, we may be able to park in the road next to work. This is according to a guy from the council, whose name we have taken down should there be any problems.

Heather wrote:

Heather wrote:I learned today that Liverpool City Council (yes those b******s) are closing off all the roads round Aintree this year for the Grand National, making it totally impossible for me to park near work on Thursday and Friday. The nearest I will be able to park is about one mile away. Fuming.

Update.

Today, I learned that things may not be as bad as expected. If we put a notice in our car window with where we work, the phone number and the car registration number, we may be able to park in the road next to work. This is according to a guy from the council, whose name we have taken down should there be any problems.

I think the boundries between the Moaners thread and this one are blurring somewhat

Can someone clever learn me something? Could Firehazard have written 'learned' with a t at the end? i.e 'learnt'

Fr. McGreer wrote: Could Firehazard have written 'learned' with a t at the end? i.e 'learnt'

It's an irregular verb. This means you can do what you like with it. It's not fussy.

jennylois wrote:Ha ha ha ha, Firehazard that is probably the most trivial post I've ever read.

Yay! I have been working towards this moment for a long time now. My mission here now must be to come up with something even more trivial. Oh the pressure...

And yes, I could've written "learnt". Both "learned" and "learnt" are perfectly acceptable. Though I suspect the latter may be largely a British usage?

Today I learned that serious meetings can be enlivened by the sound of The Saw Doctors doing their soundcheck in the concert hall upstairs.

soulfinger wrote:Today I learned that serious meetings can be enlivened by the sound of The Saw Doctors doing their soundcheck in the concert hall upstairs.

How does a soundcheck work? Does a band play the entire setlist or is it just individual instruments?

DownInTheGround wrote:

soulfinger wrote:Today I learned that serious meetings can be enlivened by the sound of The Saw Doctors doing their soundcheck in the concert hall upstairs.

How does a soundcheck work? Does a band play the entire setlist or is it just individual instruments?

It's a cross between a rehearsal and a technical run-through. It would be unusual for more than five or six numbers from the setlist to be played. Frequently, in the case of a band like The Pogues, the backline crew (people with responsibility for maintaining and setting up drum kit, instruments, amplifiers etc), in conjunction with the house and stage sound crews, will have done a substantial amount of the tedious instrument-by-instrument checking before the band itself clocks in.

But with lesser rock stars it's something different.
After hauling the stuff into the venue and putting it all on the right spot and together, a volunteer of this venue will take place behind a desk with way to many buttons. (or worse, way to few) He lets the drummer play all the pieces of the drum kit one by one an enormous long time. The rest of the band waits or uses this time for soldering the broken down equipment. If, for no apparent reason, "the sound tech" waves from behind his mixing desk he is ready, the drummer can go sit in thebus/backstage/bar to tap ruffle his legs/bar/glasses and so on.
During the end of the drum soundcheck especialy the gitarist(s) will start tuning their guitars and then play enlessly riffs of -to be inserted- well known rock bands. (for example led zeppelin, acdc or some funky chords progressions with to much effects on it) If there are other "guitar like" string instruments it will roughly go the same way.
The violin, however, is a completely different story. Endless tuning, out of tune notes too high frequencies. The same goes for any instrument that remotely look like bag pipes.
(During all this people from the venue keep coming in asking questions like: How much longer? Does the vegetarian mind if there's a little bit pork in the meal? Can you please make that drum less loud? )
With a band with as many instruments as The Pogues with a sound engineer with no specific experience (and that's what you can expect) this all could take up to 1,5/2 hours..
Then the singer, who will be drinking the most of the above mentioned time, comes on and two half songs are played. There will be a lot of complaining about the sound on stage. The bass is too loud (offcourse, it wasn't soundchecked and it is allways too loud.. ) guitars allways not loud enough and so on. Because it probably is a crappy sound system or a sound egineer that doesn't know how it works there is nothing that can be done about that.

This is more or less from my own experience playing in a, sort of, pogues alike band.. We didn't make it..

The singer showed up for the soundcheck. Now that is different!

The average speed of the earth in its orbit is 66,600 mph

Our solar system travels around the center of our galaxy at 560,00 mph

Though I've owned a Mac forever, I have just learned you can right click on a Mac by pressing Control while you click. It truly is embarrassing to have found this out after, well. maybe 1.5-2 decades.