General Chat

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

My attempted joke about Apple phones obviously fell on stony ground. 

Try doing it again on Sundae. 

[Davkaus]

6 hours ago, bickster said:

Our Customer Services Dept just received an email with the subject as follows

The entire contents of the body text was

  Hide contents

Sent from my iPhone

You should email back with "Sorry, we can't help, our email system is down"

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

Trying to help 8 year old granddaughter,  really struggling with times tables (EG 4 x).

Any tips or tricks ? I was going to make things with dots on or similar but someone may know something better ?

ta,

[Big Salad]

6 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Trying to help 8 year old granddaughter,  really struggling with times tables (EG 4 x).

Any tips or tricks ? I was going to make things with dots on or similar but someone may know something better ?

ta,

Break the tables into manageable parts. When teaching a young child math in general, never a good idea to try and teach them too much at once. Pace yourself

Cannot stress enough: Have visual aids. Dots as you said are good, but even use something she likes(For example when I used to tutor adolescent math I had a kid who loved baseball so i had baseballs, gloves, and bats be part of my visual stimuli if you will)

Practice practice practice:Do each time table on their own with her until she masters them all

Use worksheets to help practice with her

And lastly just try to make it is as fun as possible. Hard to do with math but it can be done. Make it like a game but ensuring she learns the material as well. Even reward her after completing each table with a hug, high five, or if yall allow her candy a small bite of candy.

Good luck and hope this helps pal.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Big Salad

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Trying to help 8 year old granddaughter,  really struggling with times tables (EG 4 x).

Any tips or tricks ? I was going to make things with dots on or similar but someone may know something better ?

ta,

There’s more than likely some good YouTube videos with proper teachers breaking it down (and the 8 year old is more likely to watch a YouTube video than listen to their relative)

[Brumerican]

3 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Trying to help 8 year old granddaughter,  really struggling with times tables (EG 4 x).

Any tips or tricks ? I was going to make things with dots on or similar but someone may know something better ?

ta,

 

Only works on "9's"  but it's still cool.

9 x 1 =  9 digits to the right of 1 = 9

9 x 2 = 1 digit to the left of 2 and 8 to the right = 18

9 x 3 = 2 digits to the left of 3 and 7 to the right = 27

9 x 4 = 3 digits to the left of 4 and 6 to the right = 36 

 

And so on up to 10.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Brumerican

[Rds1983]

2 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Trying to help 8 year old granddaughter,  really struggling with times tables (EG 4 x).

Any tips or tricks ? I was going to make things with dots on or similar but someone may know something better ?

ta,

Only maths trick I know is if you type 5,318,008 into a calculator and turn it upside down it spells boobies. 

Not sure that'll be much help though. 

[KentVillan]

45 mins until On Topic becomes unreadable for several weeks

[bickster]

13 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

45 mins until On Topic becomes unreadable for several weeks

You think it'll be ok for the first 13 minutes of the match? Optimistic

[sidcow]

3 hours ago, KentVillan said:

45 mins until On Topic becomes unreadable for several weeks

The people who absolutely fail to see any of the positivity and good things that happened and focus entirely on the result to judge the whole performance. Drives me nuts, they'll all be in there now moaning.... I can feel it. 

[KentVillan]

Just now, sidcow said:

The people who absolutely fail to see any of the positivity and good things that happened and focus entirely on the result to judge the whole performance. Drives me nuts, they'll all be in there now moaning.... I can feel it. 

Weirdly, it’s not as bad as I expected, including from usual suspects

[villa4europe]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

The people who absolutely fail to see any of the positivity and good things that happened and focus entirely on the result to judge the whole performance. Drives me nuts, they'll all be in there now moaning.... I can feel it. 

100% this

Its people with some bigger and quite serious issues using football and Aston Villa as a vehicle to vent 

I've done it myself, I was a saturday afternoon alcoholic in the name of Aston Villa

Anyone who says "that's my weekend ruined" without any degree of bravado needs to have a serious word, people take it too far 

[lapal_fan]

My 6 year plays in his first football match tomorrow.  He couldn't get to sleep until half 9 because he's so excited.

I am too, and I've already told him that "it doesn't matter if his team wins, draws or loses".

Absolute bollocks of course.  If he doesn't get at least 3 and win then he's out of the family - but I'm really tired and his incessant calling to us downstairs was pissing me (us) off.

[lapal_fan]

19 hours ago, lapal_fan said:

My 6 year plays in his first football match tomorrow.  He couldn't get to sleep until half 9 because he's so excited.

I am too, and I've already told him that "it doesn't matter if his team wins, draws or loses".

Absolute bollocks of course.  If he doesn't get at least 3 and win then he's out of the family - but I'm really tired and his incessant calling to us downstairs was pissing me (us) off.

Got man of the match and a goal in a high score draw!

Absolutely over the moon for him, he's buzzing and is asking to take his trophy into school for show and tell 

He can stay, for now..

Edited September 12, 2021 by lapal_fan

[Genie]

Does anyone know how I check if I went into the Birmingham low emissions zone today? 
I don’t think I did but want to be sure I don’t get a penalty.

All I can find is the checker for vehicle type, not if I actually have a charge to pay.

[cyrusr]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

Does anyone know how I check if I went into the Birmingham low emissions zone today? 
I don’t think I did but want to be sure I don’t get a penalty.

All I can find is the checker for vehicle type, not if I actually have a charge to pay.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20076/pollution/1763/a_clean_air_zone_for_birmingham/2
 

Here’s a map of the zone. Pretty much if you go inside the inner ring road you’ll have gone in it. Where about a did you go?

[Genie]

7 hours ago, cyrusr said:

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20076/pollution/1763/a_clean_air_zone_for_birmingham/2
 

Here’s a map of the zone. Pretty much if you go inside the inner ring road you’ll have gone in it. Where about a did you go?

I’m pretty sure I went around the ring road, but not 100% as I was blindly following Google maps.
I assumed there would be a site I could put my reg in to see if I’m due to pay the fee or not but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Looks like my options are pay £8 or wait and see (which could be £130 or £60 if paid early). It’s annoying as they obviously have a list of who needs to pay, but you can’t check yourself against it.

 

[cyrusr]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

I’m pretty sure I went around the ring road, but not 100% as I was blindly following Google maps.
I assumed there would be a site I could put my reg in to see if I’m due to pay the fee or not but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Looks like my options are pay £8 or wait and see (which could be £130 or £60 if paid early). It’s annoying as they obviously have a list of who needs to pay, but you can’t check yourself against it.

 

On the link above if you have got a specific post code then you can put it in to see if it is in the zone or not, but if you were just passing through so to speak, then it will be difficult to pick up exactly where you went (although if you did it through google you can check). 

The main road most people would likely go down without realising is the Queensway/A38. If you avoided that and going inside the ring road generally, you should be OK. I think the reason they don’t have a page like the one you want as they expect people to know. Also a lot of petrol cars are OK (2011+), it’s just diesels that are screwed apart from the most modern. I’ve not paid the most attention save to check my car is OK.

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, cyrusr said:

On the link above if you have got a specific post code then you can put it in to see if it is in the zone or not, but if you were just passing through so to speak, then it will be difficult to pick up exactly where you went (although if you did it through google you can check). 

The main road most people would likely go down without realising is the Queensway/A38. If you avoided that and going inside the ring road generally, you should be OK. I think the reason they don’t have a page like the one you want as they expect people to know. Also a lot of petrol cars are OK (2011+), it’s just diesels that are screwed apart from the most modern. I’ve not paid the most attention save to check my car is OK.

My car is definitely chargeable (2.0L diesel) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t sneak into the pay zone so I’ll take my chances. It’s just annoying they don’t allow people to check, is it to catch people out and generate more money? (Either by people paying to be on the safe side, or getting a fine they didn’t expect). 

[bickster]

19 minutes ago, Genie said:

My car is definitely chargeable (2.0L diesel) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t sneak into the pay zone so I’ll take my chances. It’s just annoying they don’t allow people to check, is it to catch people out and generate more money? (Either by people paying to be on the safe side, or getting a fine they didn’t expect). 

I suspect its a technological issue

You'll have the ANPR "live" database, which will then compile overnight into a reporting database

You'll also have a payment database which will in all likelihood again compile overnight into another reporting database

When those processes are complete, then there'll be some sort of  sifting of exemptions, then they'll run reports of Paid, Exempted and Unpaid

That process will take longer than you have to pay the ticket in the first place

Thats just a scenario based on my understanding of how situations like this can operate. I know our IT guys really don't like "live!" databases being interrogated especially with large complicated queries which is why they dump all the live stuff into reporting databases that are no longer written to