Tag: problems

Posted on

Tribulations

This site has been having some issues over the last couple of days and I’m not sure what’s causing it. There may be some problems with the DDNS systems or there may be worse problems. It seems that the site works at times and not at others. This is not helpful. Working or Not-Working is normally the best. If something works well then there are no problems. If something doesn’t work then causes are more easily found. If the problem is intermittent then you are screwed.

I one had a strange problem with a car I owned which, when the morning was a special type of damp, wouldn’t start. I got used to looking at the weather and then attempting to park the car so that the bonnet faced the rising sun. This normally worked and the car had dehumidified enough to start. When taking this vehicle to the garage it would be working and so it was nigh on impossible for them to track down the problem. When it wouldn’t start I couldn’t get it to the garage. I sold that car, but was honest about the occasional problem with it. I bought a motorbike.

I hope to investigate the issues this site faces as I know there are at least four people who read this stuff regularly. I aim to keep you all updated. In the mean time, if you’ve managed to read this you know there may be problems. If you haven’t managed to read this then you also know there are problems. Simple.

Posted on

Midnight

I’ve been thinking about time. Well, let’s face it I think about lots of things all the time but time is problematic. I was mostly thinking about this at the turn of the year, when 2018 magically turned into 2019 or the start of the nth journey around the sun when starting from an arbitrary point. I mean starting the new year on the day after the shortest day for the northern hemisphere would be more sensible but I guess we could have a war with the southern hemisphere about that.

Midnight is the first moment of the next day. When the clock hits 00:00 that is the start of the next day. The previous day ends at a moment which is the limit of all time before 00:00. Twelve AM is the beginning of that day. Such is the definition.

Now, here’s the problem and it involves language and colloquialisms as is often the case with problems about definitions. Within mathematics there are plenty of words which have specific definitions in the subject and different meanings in casual language, I mean that was designed that way originally to exclude the masses from education.

So, if I said to you I will meet you “at midnight on Thursday” then it is likely that we would be talking about meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday. But, if I said I’d meet you at 12am on Thursday that would probably mean we were still meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday but in reality that time is the boundary between Wednesday and Thursday.

Thinking about this now I think it would be only me having problems with a meeting time of “midnight on Thursday” and in a group discussion I would be the one asking for clarification whereas everyone else would be perfectly happy with the understanding of the meeting time. Oh how I hate language sometimes.

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