@archer_rs The utter stupidity is fitting.
@archer_rs Note that I find French a beautiful, but tough to learn language. This has to do both with dyslexia and autism. I still try. Which leads to odd and humorous situations.

1/
@archer_rs A long time ago, I traveled from the 25th W116 anniversary meeting near Frankfurt to a marchingband gig in Northern France.

(It's 20+ years ago, so I forgot the exact city and Google is not of help, so think a city like Lille, Tourcoing, Roubaix or Valenciennes).

2/
@archer_rs Back then northern France was known for it's relatively poverty and low education after the 1980s industrial demise, so I was not really expecting people to speak English well.

3/
@archer_rs So after my first question in the suburbs to some younger people "parlez vous anglais" I got glazed eyes with only one person responding "mais non", I asked "ou est le Hotel de Ville" as that was where we should meet the rest of the marching band next morning.

4/
@archer_rs The answer contained "centre ville", which was on signs (France has far less signage than The Netherlands and Germany) so we followed them.

Near the city centre, I asked a few more people for Hotel de Ville, which eventually became signed.

5/
@archer_rs (Windows decided to reboot because Windows update is scheduled 12 hours from now, and Chrome thought "lets not restore any tabs, but start fresh)

Eventually the signage for "Hotel the Ville" stopped, but there was no building marked "Hotel de Ville"

6/
@archer_rs I was confused about this, so I drove around a bit until I found signs for "Hotel the Ville" again to follow. We did, and came from another direction, then the signage stopped again.

7/
@archer_rs The common part was a big square with lots of partying. Think a mix of Carnival and Luna Park.

8/
@archer_rs So we got out of the car, then asked around.

Most people were to busy having fun, but one nice gentle men responded to our question "ou est le Hôtel de Ville" (hey, diacricits work again!)

He pointed at a big building next to the square.

9/
@archer_rs It was like 22:00, but it was open, and we entered it.

The inside did not look like a hotel at all.

So we asked "mais, c'est ne pas un hotel?".

He paused a while for the gentleman to think about the question, but then he had a big smile indicating "oui, oui!".

10/
@archer_rs So we asked "où est un hôtel où l'on peut passer la nuit".

He pointed at a small restaurant next to the square across the street.

We walked into it, and to our surprise the lady at the counter did understand a bit English and reserved us for the night and for dinner.

11/
@archer_rs We went out to park the car (I was with my by then father in law, now my ex-father in law but still one of my best friends).

This was an era where you could just park the car in a free spot, no payment required. Yay!

Then we re-entered the hotel with our backpacks.

12/
@archer_rs Upstairs we found out it was a typical 2-star hotel: bathroom on the hallway, only a small sink, small wardrobe and a 2 person bed we call "twijfelaar" (120cm wide) with bungy springs and a mattress that was convex in the middle.

Oh well, just for one night (:

13/
@archer_rs We walked by the kitchen which was not clean, but very busy.

The dining people looked very happy with their food, and the plates looked nice.

Almost all guests were dressed like it was a sunday evening formal dinner.

We were highly underdressed with T-shirt and jeans.

14/
@archer_rs But the waiter had a big smile on his face when he pointed us to the one 2-person table that was still free.

So we got some menus, then got us a three-course meal.

It was delicious.

15/
@archer_rs So that night I learned:

- Hôtel de Ville is not a hotel, but like an office building (the next day I learned it is the Town Hall / mayors office)
- 2-star hotels are really 2 star, but their restaurant can have great food

16/
@archer_rs - If you approach French people in a friendly manner, showing you that you try, they are very forgiving and of great help

The next day we had a first and second great breakfast, and then met the marching band, all of them being surprised that we found a hotel so close by.

17/
@archer_rs The following parade including Gilles throwing blood oranges to the crowd and lots of confetti entering our instruments.

Being a proper marching band, the crowd was outrageous, which is always great when performing a 2 hour parade: lots of energy.



18/
@archer_rs Back home we had a great story to tell (:

19/19

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More from @jpluimers

Mar 26, 2023
@Marjo_Sl @Dinsdal85174312 Dit is het enige pompoenrecept wat ik heb: kreeg ik ooit van een vriend.

De truc is 45 minuten in de oven op 200 graden. Dan komt het vel er makkelijk af en is de pompoen ook al flink gaar, dus gaat snijden veel makkelijker.

Recept over de alt-text van beide plaatjes verdeeld. Pumpkin soup (2*4 Portions) Ingredients for 4 Portions 1.7 k... 11) Slowly stir in milk, sugar, and 4 EL of Crème Fraî
@Marjo_Sl @Dinsdal85174312 Recept pompoensoep in veel delen:

1/
@Marjo_Sl @Dinsdal85174312 Pumpkin soup (2*4 Portions)
Ingredients for 4 Portions
1.7 kg Pumpkin use half of the resulting 1.2kg
Salt, Pepper
25 g Butter
250 ml Milk
8 EL Crème Fraîche
3 packages Knorr Vegetable Broth
50 g Brown sugar
1/2 Big onion
4 EL Biryani curry paste
4 EL Chopped ginger

2/
Read 9 tweets
Mar 23, 2023
Whoever introduced `=MID(CELL("filename"),FIND("]",CELL("filename"))+1,255)` to get the current Excel Worksheet name should be spanked: it fails on MacOS & Windows when your Workbook path contains `]`.

It proliferated like crazy though: ~500k results from google.com/search?q=%3DMI…
This one works better:

`=MID(CELL("filename"),FIND("/",SUBSTITUTE(CELL("filename"),"]","/",(LEN(CELL("filename"))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(CELL("filename"),"]","")))))+1,LEN(CELL("filename")))`

Blog post coming up in a while (it's draft and the blog queue is back to strength: 3 years).
This works because though `[` and `]` can be part of path names on MacOS and Windows, they cannot be part of Worksheet names.

Excel for Windows just cancels the rename operation when you try, but on MacOS you get this nice dialog box excluding the characters

: \ / ? * [ ] While renaming a sheet or c...
Read 5 tweets
Mar 21, 2023
@applescripter @Felienne @ICER_C Bumped into another Excel feature today that has this: the CELL function which depends on which locale of Office you have installed.

support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/c… =IF(CELL("type",A...
@applescripter @Felienne @ICER_C In Dutch, the English CELL function becomes CEL, but the parameters are not automatically translated because they are strings instead of tokens.

The first example given works fine in Dutch though.

support.microsoft.com/nl-nl/office/c… =ALS(CEL("type";A...
@applescripter @Felienne @ICER_C But in German, CELL becomes ZELLE and "type" needs to be altered into "typ".

support.microsoft.com/de-de/office/z… =WENN(ZELLE("Typ"...
Read 7 tweets
Mar 19, 2023
It looks like that @aomeitech has put @multcloud as the next one the Password Requirements Hall of Shame for having a maximum length limitation, don't you think @PWTooStrong and @ngrynerds?

"Please enter password with 8-16 characters."

1/ Please enter password with 8-16 characters.
Though you stay in the 2022 @hivesystems investigation "green" for passwords containing at least "numbers, upper and lowercase letters, symbols" you are in the ranges "yellow", "orange" or "red" for all other sets of characters.

hivesystems.io/blog/are-your-…

2/
An 8 character minimum is "red" or "purple" for all character categories, so besides removing the maximum, the minimum should be raised quite a bit.

Note the table does not list improvements of password cracking over time: it is for 2022 cracking hardware and algorithms.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Mar 7, 2023
@b0rk For more background on the Gene Amdahl comment, you might want to to dig in the 8087 which sparked the IEEE 754-1985 standard (and maybe Phil Kaufman too).

I think it is to balance scale and precision.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8087
@b0rk I finished a few blog posts around your tweets like schedued some 3 years from now.

If you want I can get you early access. DM me if you want that.
@b0rk I think the 1987 message by Phil Kaufman in the middle of the below Info-IBMPC Digest Friday, 28 August 1987 Volume 6 : Issue 59 gives a very good historic perspective.

groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm…
Read 5 tweets
Feb 20, 2023
Nice @pfsense here with 2.6.0:

The gateway "172.16.21.22" is a different Address Family than network "192.168.22.0".

The network is a @WireGuardVPN tunnel. Everything is IPv4 address family, including the underlying interface.

I pulled my hairs until I found out:

1/
@pfsense @WireGuardVPN the interface was disabled and the error message is bogus.

Apparently, few people bump into this (they obviously are smart enough to have the interface enabled <g>) as google.com/search?q=pfsen… returns few results.

2/
I did return redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8846 indicating

"
fixed

the GW will be disabled if the interface was disabled.

if there was a static route the GW will disappear if the interface is disabled.

22.05-RELEASE (amd64)
built on Wed Jun 22 18:56:13 UTC 2022
FreeBSD 12.3-STABLE
"

3/
Read 4 tweets

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