Boundary Conditions

Tesco is to change the wording at it's checkouts.

"10 items or less" becomes "Up to 10 items".

The reason is that one should say "10 items or fewer", but some people are not sure.

The nice thing about the old wording, from a software engineer's point of view, is that it provies a clear specification. It uses wording that (despite the English faux pas) has a well defined mathematical meaning.

Unfortunately, they are going from the frying pan into the fire with the ambiguous specification of "Up to 10". Does that mean the the maximum number of items is 9 or 10? Up to 10, or up to and including 10?

I don't think I've ever bought fewer than 11 items in a supermarket, and I don't foresee me generating test cases for the boundary condition.

What a waste

I overhead someone grumbling that they were 'fed up' with the two-weekly rubbish collection from the council; their bin, it seems, is always overflowing after one week, let alone two weeks (...)

Last week, being bank holiday, I completely forgot to put out our bin, so the chances are that after four weeks, it might almost be ready for collection.

With the recycling collections, how can anyone possibly fill a wheelie bin every week (or even every two)? What can they possibly find to throw away on that scale?

On a related note, now that Tesco have stopped giving out carrier bags, please will the recycling collection men stop taking our precious carrier bags that we put our recycling in for collection?

Discontinuities

I happened to notice the google maps view of the Humber Bridge, one part seems to have been photographed in the morning, the other in the evening: google maps.

At least they made a better job than Microsoft/Multimap where it looks like the bridge builders made a bit of a miscalculation.

More Rainwater

The Internet is rich with ideas for harvesting rainwater. How can I use the 100 litres of water that I seem to be catching daily?

Short of an expensive plumbing project, connecting water butts to toilet cisterns, I'm out of ideas.

On a scale of Green to not Green

Keen to reduce our water usage (during that hot, dry week a few weeks ago) I ordered a water butt to use for watering the garden. It seems a good idea to use rain, instead of tap water in the watering can.

I fitted it yesterday and within 24 hours of unspectacular British summer, I had 100 litres of fresh rainwater. It's all very exciting.

But what have I actually saved? It cost quite a lot (£70) including a downpipe so that I could put the water butt where I wanted.

I use about 5 watering cans (of 5 litres) to water the garden, that's 25 litres. If I do that 30 times per year (assuming that there is sufficient water in the butt) then 750 litres per year. It doesn't seem an awful lot.

To put things in perspective,

• Apparently, having a shower uses 35 litres, flushing the toilet uses 8 litres, so that puts me on about 22,000 litres per year, just from the bathroom.


• The average water consumption per person is about 140 litres per day, so 51,100 litres per year.


• A few weeks ago I reported to Yorkshire water that there was a water leak on a busy road in York. It had been leaking for about 6 months. Judging from the amount of water that was going upwards to the road this leak might have been far wetter than our dining room roof during drizzle. So guessing at 200 litres per day, that is 73,000 litres per year.
  

Ironically, I got stuck in the traffic jam on Sunday caused by the water company fixing the leak.

Pure Brilliant White

The problem with painting skirting boards is that when you finish one, there is always another one, or a door frame, or a stair rail. The job is never done.

After painting all evening, I'm worried that the probability of accidentally leaning/kicking touching one of them before they are dry is rapidly approaching 1.

I'm Swimming in the Rain

When it rains, the attendants at the outdoor swimming pool (that we can see from our office) call the people indoors.

We've joked about it being to stop them getting wet, but we now wonder if it's because the life-guards don't want to get wet (presumably not getting wet is not in the job-spec of a lifeguard!)

Jobs

I was once in the routine of doing one "DIY" job every day, perhaps only something small each day, but something. It was a good routine because it got things done and I didn't spend the whole evening in front of a laptop writing reports.

I don't know how I got out of the routine, perhaps one day there were no jobs to do(!)

There certainly are jobs now, however. I am hoping that by writing this down I'll stick to it this time.

Sunday: garage door frame undercoat.
Monday: garage door frame topcoat.
Tuesday: err. TBA

In case I "can't" think of anything one night, here are a few things to keep me going:

• fix that annoying bit of skirting board that keeps coming off


• paint the gloss in the dining room


• water butt


• paint that bit of polyfilla by the dining room window


• put some trellis by the compost


• floor of downstairs loo


• gloss paint in downstairs loo


• put up coving in living room


• paint coving


• fix loft hatch


• paint loft hatch


• move header tanks in loft (probably several evenings...)


• knock down the wall in our garden


• check the sealant around the sink


• write a new list