Stupid/Small Questions Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Stupid/Small Questions Megathread

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Flipperwaldt posted:

Fairly easy to do in third party text editors like Notepad++, impossible afaik in Microsoft's Notepad.

I think Word and by extension maybe other word processors may have that specific functionality as well.

How do I do it in Notepad++?

# ? Jan 21, 2019 21:19

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:57

dokmo: Aug 27, 2006; man

Jewel Repetition posted:

How do I do it in Notepad++?

Make sure you have regular expression chosen in Search Mode, newline = "\n"

# ? Jan 21, 2019 21:24

life is a joke: Mar 7, 2016

Mister Kingdom posted:

I bought some frozen tater tots (don't judge!) and the cooking instructions were a bit odd. It said if I used a full-sized baking sheet, I should cook them for 30 minutes, but if I used a half-sheet, I only had to cook them for 20 minutes.

Why would the size of the baking sheet make a difference?

Don't the have how evenly spaced they should be on there, regardless of sheet size? A half sheet could only accommodate a certain number of tots - maybe it's just shorthand because properly spaced tots on that size pan could only ever be up to the amount that requires 20 mins?

tots :kimchi:

# ? Jan 21, 2019 22:20

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

dokmo posted:

Make sure you have regular expression chosen in Search Mode, newline = "\n"

Thanks.

# ? Jan 21, 2019 23:04

Squibsy: Dec 3, 2005; Not suited, just booted.; College Slice

big crush on Chad OMG posted:

It�s actually a joke because the candle wax you drip on people is not the same as a regular candle.

Whoa, really? I tried this once with a normal candle and it seemed fine, did we narrowly manage to avoid a catastrophe?

# ? Jan 22, 2019 00:07

veni veni veni: Jun 5, 2005

dokmo posted:

I think it was I Am Legend, although technically vampires not zombies.

28 Days Later predated I am Legend by over 5 years. And Resident Evil 2 was like mid 90's. I don't know if that was even the first thing that involved zombies as a viral outbreak though. There's probably even older stuff I'm forgetting.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 00:14

Flash Gordon Ramsay: Sep 28, 2004; Grimey Drawer

ineptmule posted:

Whoa, really? I tried this once with a normal candle and it seemed fine, did we narrowly manage to avoid a catastrophe?

I think it depends on what the candle is made out of. Some wax melts at a higher temp so if you use that you can get burns. Bees wax is either what you�re supposed to use or what you�re not supposed to use, for this reason. Not sure which though. So either do or do not use it.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 00:18

El_Elegante: Jul 3, 2004; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS; Biscuit Hider

veni veni veni posted:

28 Days Later predated I am Legend by over 5 years. And Resident Evil 2 was like mid 90's. I don't know if that was even the first thing that involved zombies as a viral outbreak though. There's probably even older stuff I'm forgetting.

I am legend was published in 1954, adapted into Omega Man in 1971.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 00:19

dokmo: Aug 27, 2006; man

El_Elegante posted:

I am legend was published in 1954, adapted into Omega Man in 1971.

And The Last Man on Earth in 1964. The same character has been played by Will Smith, Charlton Heston, and Vincent Price.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 00:40

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

kedo posted:

There's less pan to absorb heat so the tater tots would theoretically cook faster, but I can't imagine it'd make that much of a difference. Maybe they've assumed a small pan would fit fewer tater tots?

It said nothing about cooking a half bag versus the full one.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 01:20

veni veni veni: Jun 5, 2005

El_Elegante posted:

I am legend was published in 1954, adapted into Omega Man in 1971.

I completely forgot about that. My basic rear end just immediately thought of the Will Smith movie.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 01:39

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

El_Elegante posted:

I am legend was published in 1954, adapted into Omega Man in 1971.

It was adapted for film as The Last Man on Earth in 1964 with Vincent Price.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 01:48

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

I think it depends on what the candle is made out of. Some wax melts at a higher temp so if you use that you can get burns. Bees wax is either what you�re supposed to use or what you�re not supposed to use, for this reason. Not sure which though. So either do or do not use it.

Beeswax candles burn the hottest among typically available candles but the wax cools off among the fastest too. Safer than you might expect in general, but best kept to lighting rooms since they're also the brightest. Roughly 140 degrees F.

Soy wax candles burn at about the same temps as beeswax and pure paraffin candles do, which is hotter than the scented paraffins, but the melted wax cools and hardens very rapidly once it's away from the flame, so it's about the safest one to have around if you want drop melted wax on someone. Roughly 130 degrees F.

Regular scented paraffin candles burn the coolest among the commonly available types, but they also take a long time for melted wax to re-solidify. So they're pretty messy and inherently have more risk of burning you than you might expect. Roughly 120 degrees F.

For some perspective here, exposure to 120 degrees continuously for 5 minutes will cause a burn for sure, exposure to 130 degrees continuously for 30 seconds causes a burn, and exposure to 140 degrees continuously for 6 seconds causes a burn. Of course the wax cools as it falls off a candle onto someone so you're not getting the full heat off the candle and that's why things like beeswax solidifying and cooling more rapidly helps somewhat even though right off the candle the melted beeswax is significantly more dangerous.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 02:00

Grouchio: Aug 31, 2014

Is Social Darwinism based on individual merit, ability, talent and means (and not race) still categorized as Social Darwinism (Survival of Fittest applied to humans on basis of merit, not racial superiority), or is it a form of Meritocracy?

# ? Jan 22, 2019 07:41

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Grouchio posted:

Is Social Darwinism based on individual merit, ability, talent and means (and not race) still categorized as Social Darwinism, or is it a form of Meritocracy?

Yes, also yes.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 07:42

Ham Equity: Apr 16, 2013; The first thing we do, let's kill all the cars.; Grimey Drawer

Jake Snake posted:

What story/game/movie was the first to use a virus or some scientific cause as an origin for zombies rather than Voodoo or some magical curse? Re-Animator (1985) is the earliest example I can think of, but I'm wondering if there's anything older.

Also wondering what was the first story to use a zombie virus outbreak?

Herbert West--Reanimator was a 1922 serial written by H.P. Lovecraft; no virus, but a serum.

Arguably, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein fits your bill; published in 1818.

EDIT: Fair warning, Lovecraft fans widely consider that to be his worst work. Having read a healthy portion of The Complete H.P. Lovecraft, I'm inclined to disagree, as the man wrote a loving poo poo-ton of complete garbage. It was, however, not great.

Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Jan 22, 2019

# ? Jan 22, 2019 10:12

value-brand cereal: May 2, 2008

Why does the Starbucks app and Google play apps need access to my phone? What's the point of that?

# ? Jan 22, 2019 19:14

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Excel question here. NASA formats its dates into a fraction of the year, so like, I have a bunch of data with 1958.208 and 1968.708 as dates. I need to turn these into serial dates for excel to recognize them. How should I do that?

# ? Jan 22, 2019 19:18

dokmo: Aug 27, 2006; man

tuyop posted:

Excel question here. NASA formats its dates into a fraction of the year, so like, I have a bunch of data with 1958.208 and 1968.708 as dates. I need to turn these into serial dates for excel to recognize them. How should I do that?

as long as there are always 4 digit years and 2-digit days and the format is always yyyy.mdd or yyyy.mmdd then this should work on a date that is in cell A2:

=DATE(LEFT(A2, 4), MID(A2, 6 , LEN(A2) - 7), RIGHT(A2, 2))

which means
year = the 4 leftmost characters
month = the 6th character in the string, plus 1 character if there are 9 total character (eg 1999.0131 instead of 1999.131)
day = the 2 rightmost characters

# ? Jan 22, 2019 19:50

Big Bad Beetleborg: Apr 8, 2007; Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle.

tuyop posted:

Excel question here. NASA formats its dates into a fraction of the year, so like, I have a bunch of data with 1958.208 and 1968.708 as dates. I need to turn these into serial dates for excel to recognize them. How should I do that?

Is it what dokmo said, or like 70.8% of the way through 1968?
You might have some luck asking in the excel question thread.

You could split it into two columns, convert the year to the integer Excel uses to store dates (no# days since 1 Jan 1900 IIRC, hopefully should be able to just format the column of years as Text), add to that the decimal x 365 (unless its a leap year which will need exception handling) then convert the resulting number back into a date but there is almost certainly a better way

e: like this, last column is 2nd to last formatted as a date

pre:

Original	Year	Decimal	SerialYear	IsLeap	=if(E2=true,D2+((C2/1000)*366),D2+((C2/1000)*365))	
1968.708	1968	708	24838		TRUE	25097.128	16/09/1968
1958.208	1958	208	21186		FALSE	21261.92	17/03/1958

e2: technically you could also format it as dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss too, if that was significant. Might want to double check that against known values before using it though.

Big Bad Beetleborg fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jan 22, 2019

# ? Jan 22, 2019 20:23

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Big Bad Beetleborg posted:

Is it what dokmo said, or like 70.8% of the way through 1968?
You might have some luck asking in the excel question thread.

You could split it into two columns, convert the year to the integer Excel uses to store dates (no# days since 1 Jan 1900 IIRC, hopefully should be able to just format the column of years as Text), add to that the decimal x 365 (unless its a leap year which will need exception handling) then convert the resulting number back into a date but there is almost certainly a better way

e: like this, last column is 2nd to last formatted as a date
pre:
Original	Year	Decimal	SerialYear	IsLeap	=if(E2=true,D2+((C2/1000)*366),D2+((C2/1000)*365))	
1968.708	1968	708	24838		TRUE	25097.128	16/09/1968
1958.208	1958	208	21186		FALSE	21261.92	17/03/1958
e2: technically you could also format it as dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss too, if that was significant. Might want to double check that against known values before using it though.

I was looking for that thread, thanks. And it�s like year and then thousandths of a year. So 2004 and 84.7%. I�ll ask there tomorrow.

# ? Jan 22, 2019 21:49

Big Bad Beetleborg: Apr 8, 2007; Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle.

tuyop posted:

I was looking for that thread, thanks. And it�s like year and then thousandths of a year. So 2004 and 84.7%. I�ll ask there tomorrow.

Yeah that'll work then. I don't have Excel at home so I'll tinker with making it into one formula when I'm at work, but ask in that thread too because there is probably a more elegant solution than what I can formulate.

also 1000th of a year is like 8.75 hours, so probably don't use the time values as they've been aggressively rounded.

Big Bad Beetleborg fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 22, 2019

# ? Jan 22, 2019 22:27

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

You know those glass smoking boxes in airports that have fans that create a gentle, constant vacuum so all the smoke stays in the box and gets pumped outside? How big of a fan would I need to do that to an entire building with the goal being that anywhere inside, the air would always be flowing towards the suction point? Call the building 1000 sq ft.

# ? Jan 23, 2019 00:07

Big Bad Beetleborg: Apr 8, 2007; Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle.

tuyop posted:

I was looking for that thread, thanks. And it’s like year and then thousandths of a year. So 2004 and 84.7%. I’ll ask there tomorrow.

Try this - no promises
=IF(OR(MOD(left(a1,4),400)=0,AND(MOD(left(a1,4),4)=0,MOD(left(a1,4),100)<>0)),TEXT(DATE(left(a1,4),1,1),"0000")+((TEXT(right(a1,len(a1)-5),"000")/1000)*366), TEXT(DATE(left(a1,4),1,1),"0000")+((TEXT(right(a1,len(a1)-5),"000")/1000)*365))
�
�
�

pre:

 
=IF(OR(MOD(left(a1,4),400)=0,AND(MOD(left(a1,4),4)=0,MOD(left(a1,4),100)<>0)), - assess leap year status
if leap year -
TEXT(DATE(left(a1,4),1,1),"0000") - pull left 4 characters, convert to serial date and render as text and add to...
+((TEXT(right(a1,len(a1)-5),"000")/1000)*366), - pull all characters after the period, force to 3 digits then div/1000 to get a percentage, multiply that by days in the year
if not leap year, same but multiplied by 365 not 365
TEXT(DATE(left(a1,4),1,1),"0000")+((TEXT(right(a1,len(a1)-5),"000")/1000)*365))

Big Bad Beetleborg fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jan 23, 2019

# ? Jan 23, 2019 00:58

TheLastManStanding: Jan 14, 2008; Mash Buttons!

tuyop posted:

Excel question here. NASA formats its dates into a fraction of the year, so like, I have a bunch of data with 1958.208 and 1968.708 as dates. I need to turn these into serial dates for excel to recognize them. How should I do that?

code:

=DATE(A2, 1, 1)+(DATE(A2+1, 1, 1)-DATE(A2, 1, 1))*MOD(A2, 1)

Where A2 is your 1958.208 date value.

Explanation: The first date function floors the year and converts to an excel date number. The next two date functions are used to subtract the floor of that year and the next year, which gives how many days there are in that year. You multiply that by the mod1 of your number (which is the fractional portion), giving you how many days in that year have passed, then add everything up.

TheLastManStanding fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Jan 23, 2019

# ? Jan 23, 2019 02:25

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

These are all brilliant. What program even generated these date values?

# ? Jan 23, 2019 02:34

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

tuyop posted:

These are all brilliant. What program even generated these date values?

Not sure what you mean here.

NASA and various other space agencies and astronomical research use decimalized dates within the year for the same reason they often use the "Julian dates" that are expressed as of days since the date that would ordinarily be called November 24, 4714 BC - space stuff doesn't really care about time periods relevant to Earth, and converting things into these decimalized formats with certain choices about when to set start points makes it easier to cross reference orbits and trajectories of things including against very old historic records.

NASA's been using the decimalized years since at least the late 50s in their computer systems for many purposes, European and Soviet agencies picked it up shortly thereafter.

# ? Jan 23, 2019 02:50

Big Bad Beetleborg: Apr 8, 2007; Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle.

I told yall someone would have a more elegant solution

# ? Jan 23, 2019 05:44

Doorknob Slobber: Sep 10, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

is it safe to lay a 2 wide 4 tall kallax on its side

# ? Jan 23, 2019 20:10

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Doorknob Slobber posted:

is it safe to lay a 2 wide 4 tall kallax on its side

The building instructions even suggest this alternate use, so yes.

# ? Jan 23, 2019 23:40

kakotheres: Nov 9, 2016; Do the job that is in front of you

Hey Goons! I'm a woman who is large enough to regularly blow out the inner thighs of her jeans. Hot, I know, but still a problem cuz I'm super poor. Anyone tried internet solutions like patches or scotchguard (crotchguard)? I swear I'm not wearing jeans that are too small for me, I'm too old to care about a number. Thank you! :zoid:

# ? Jan 24, 2019 14:04

Literally Lewis Hamilton: Feb 22, 2005

Googles iPhone travel time widget: is there a way to force this widget to use my actual work address instead of GPS? Without fail this widget uses GPS which thinks I�m sitting on the highway and not a street overlooking the highway. This leads to a big difference in travel time. I�ve programmed my work address into google maps but the commute time seems to only use your gps location.

# ? Jan 24, 2019 20:05

veni veni veni: Jun 5, 2005

GCU Quelle Suprise posted:

Hey Goons! I'm a woman who is large enough to regularly blow out the inner thighs of her jeans. Hot, I know, but still a problem cuz I'm super poor. Anyone tried internet solutions like patches or scotchguard (crotchguard)? I swear I'm not wearing jeans that are too small for me, I'm too old to care about a number. Thank you!

In my experience trying to fix the crotch on jeans is futile. Iron on patches don't stay on at all, and if you sew them on, the stitches or the fabric around them rips. Sewing the hole shut seems to work the best but you'll be lucky if you get a few weeks before they rip again.

I'm sure it's something that can be done but I never had the skill to pull it off. Maybe go to a dry cleaner that does clothing adjustments and see what they say. Personally I just throw out jeans right away if the crotch rips after trying to fix numerous pairs over the years and failing miserably.

# ? Jan 25, 2019 02:25

kakotheres: Nov 9, 2016; Do the job that is in front of you

veni veni veni posted:

In my experience trying to fix the crotch on jeans is futile. Iron on patches don't stay on at all, and if you sew them on, the stitches or the fabric around them rips. Sewing the hole shut seems to work the best but you'll be lucky if you get a few weeks before they rip again.

I'm sure it's something that can be done but I never had the skill to pull it off. Maybe go to a dry cleaner that does clothing adjustments and see what they say. Personally I just throw out jeans right away if the crotch rips after trying to fix numerous pairs over the years and failing miserably.