The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Rabbi means teacher.

Taliban means students.

Mmm, maybe we should dump the entire field.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Renate

Well, we need to fix a lot of things.
Population growth is a problem too, especially with climate change potentially invalidating coastal areas.
Having a dozen kids is a good way to ensure a safe retirement (at the cost of a miserable, poor adulthood) but it's just an unworkable Ponzi scheme.

From what I've read, a single rich person pollutes and consumes far more than a poor family with many children. And I'm not talking super rich here, a European middle class person is comfortably within the richest 10% on the planet, who contribute more to the climate crisis than the poorest 90%. (I'll try to dig out the source for this and add it to the post later.)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by hildea

From what I've read, a single rich person pollutes and consumes far more than a poor family with many children. And I'm not talking super rich here, a European middle class person is comfortably within the richest 10% on the planet, who contribute more to the climate crisis than the poorest 90%. (I'll try to dig out the source for this and add it to the post later.)

Please remember that this is Reading Vent & Rant, not part of the P&R forum.

[ZodWallop]

I read a sci-fi trilogy called The 10th Planet by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch from the year 2,000. In it the characters have essentially smart watches. I remember flashing back to it when smart watches had their moment.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I read a sci-fi trilogy called The 10th Planet by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch from the year 2,000. In it the characters have essentially smart watches. I remember flashing back to it when smart watches had their moment.

Smart Watches do not have Movements.
Back in the 60's a smart watch kept reasonable time during the day.
The Acutron ($$$ even in the 60's)was one of the first Electric watches that kept time for weeks.
I got a Timex electric that lost a couple of seconds a DAY and tried to have it adjusted by a Timex service. I got yelled at. '2 seconds, they are rarely that great'. Now days, the cheapest digital does better than that.

[John F]

Originally Posted by theducks

Smart Watches do not have Movements.
...

It would be gross if they did.

[Apache]

The first accurate watch was the Bulova Accutron. It used a tuning for that resonated at a specific frequency. It started production around 1960. Seiko unveiled the first quartz watch in 1969. A quartz watch is just what the name implies. It uses quartz crystals for timing. The technical term is reverse piezoelectricity. when an electrical charge is applied to quartz crystals, they oscillate at 32,768 times a second. A microchip detects these oscillations and after 32,768 oscillations causes the hands to move one second forward.
This concludes our lesson on watches today.
Apache

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Apache

The first accurate watch was the Bulova Accutron. It used a tuning fork that resonated at a specific frequency.

360 Hz

The Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ ran at 8192 (2^13) Hz.

Since then 32768 (2^15) Hz has become the standard even for computer clocks.

Rubidium clocks run at 6.834682610904 GHz.

Cesium clocks run at 9.192631770 GHz.

Hydrogen masers run at 1.420405752 GHz.

[andyh2000]

Watch nerds, assemble!

(I've had three smart watches and don't wear any of them).

Andrew

[nabsltd]

The designers of eBooks can't seem to figure how to consistently use and kind of inline formatting tags (span, em, etc.).

I've seen books with something like the following:

<p>“They <em>knew.”</em></p>
<p>“But <em>how</em>?”</p>

Later, there'd be a wrap of the question mark and the quotes:

<p>“And <em>now?”</em></p>

I don't know if there are any rules about what should get wrapped by the <em>, but pick a standard and stick to it in the same book.

[Renate]

Although I get confused/disagree on whether terminating punctuation goes inside quotes or not I am consistent in making <b>, <i> or <span> apply only to the characters of a word and not punctuation.

[DNSB]

Personally I tend to wrap punctuation in the italic or bold tags. There are some fonts when for example an italic ? is not distinguishable from a non-italic ? but there are also quite a few where they are different. I also tend to use two punctuation marks where I feel that they are needed. For example, Jill replied "But John, what you said was 'How do we know that she is dead?'." The question mark being part of the quote while the period is the end of the sentence spoken by Jill.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

360 Hz

The Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ ran at 8192 (2^13) Hz.

Since then 32768 (2^15) Hz has become the standard even for computer clocks.

And the very miniature quartz crystals such as 32768Hz may be tuning fork shaped? Not sure.
But some watches with metal backs keep better time on the inside of your wrist and always worn, if adjusted for the remote 37°C "oven".
Though TCXOs are now nearly as good as ovened XO. I have some of both.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

The designers of eBooks can't seem to figure how to consistently use and kind of inline formatting tags (span, em, etc.).

I've seen books with something like the following:

<p>“They <em>knew.”</em></p>
<p>“But <em>how</em>?”</p>

Later, there'd be a wrap of the question mark and the quotes:

<p>“And <em>now?”</em></p>

I don't know if there are any rules about what should get wrapped by the <em>, but pick a standard and stick to it in the same book.

I would not assume it's the ebook designers. 99% of the time, we get files from the authors, and those elements (punctuation) are already formatted, either bold, italic, or whatever. There are exceedingly few customers out there that want to pay an eBook formatter to go through their book and conform all the quotation marks, etc., around italicization, bold, and the like.

Originally Posted by Renate

Although I get confused/disagree on whether terminating punctuation goes inside quotes or not I am consistent in making <b>, <i> or <span> apply only to the characters of a word and not punctuation.

Probably because, at least in English, we have two very different sets of rules, depending on whether you are from the USA or Canadian, British, Aussie, etc. It's hard to remember correctly over years of burnout. LOL.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally I tend to wrap punctuation in the italic or bold tags. There are some fonts when for example an italic ? is not distinguishable from a non-italic ? but there are also quite a few where they are different. I also tend to use two punctuation marks where I feel that they are needed. For example, Jill replied "But John, what you said was 'How do we know that she is dead?'." The question mark being part of the quote while the period is the end of the sentence spoken by Jill.

The problem is, in ebooks, unlike print, you can't compensate for the spacing, between italicized text and non-italicized parentheticals, closing quotation marks, and the like, and it looks weird as hell.

It's..in my opinion, when you get text that can't be kerned, can't be tracked, and has this scenario fairly often (punctuation coming right before/on the heels of text formatting), conformance can be better than being technically correct. I know, grab those pitchforks, but...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Hitch

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

The designers of eBooks can't seem to figure how to consistently use and kind of inline formatting tags (span, em, etc.).

I've seen books with something like the following:

<p>“They <em>knew.”</em></p>
<p>“But <em>how</em>?”</p>

Later, there'd be a wrap of the question mark and the quotes:

<p>“And <em>now?”</em></p>

I don't know if there are any rules about what should get wrapped by the <em>, but pick a standard and stick to it in the same book.

I so, so agree! I go basic, i.e. only the word or phrase emphasized, no punctuation, unless the emphasis is on a complete phrase, in which case I include ending punctuation, but not quotation marks. To use your example:

<p>“And <em>now</em>?”</p>

Consistency is something I'm very fond of.

As a reader, even inconsistent spelling tends to bug me and has done so ever since I started reading, way, way back when.

If you are going to use a compound word, USE the compound word or DON'T. What I hate is when I get something like bunk house and bunkhouse in the same book. Or cowbarn, cow barn, and cow-barn! Or, heaven help me, goodby, goodbye, and good-bye! Stuff like this just makes me internally scream "MAKE UP YOUR MIND!"