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List of Special Elevator Modes

elevation.fandom.com

131–140 of 214 posts

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#131
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or give laws that are simple to articulate, but cover lots of future scenarios via precedent and emergent behavior. the golden rule has held up pretty well (in terms of being applicable, not in terms of being adhered to.)

The commandments that generalize are the exception, not the rule. You know there are mitzvot about which positions of the priesthood should or should not be allowed to eat specific varieties of grapes (that only grew in Canaan) during specific growing seasons, right? Those are pretty concrete rules, that don't really generalize. The sort of thing you'd expect to see matched by modern equivalents. And yet, these are b…

It's a stretch, but maybe you could extract from the rule about eating grapes a general principle, perhaps even one consistent with Japanese tea ceremonies.

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#132
post #86

Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming has, in its first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is a single regular elevator (nothing "special" going on as in the post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation for the task of programming. It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and solutions).…

> We often fail to realize how little we know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a computer.

I'll often write out with pen and paper of how I think the flow of a model will go, it's always fascinating how much that diagram changes once I actually build the model. There are both drastic simplifications and increases in nuance based on experience with the system being modeled and where divergences occur.

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#134
post #37

Maybe this is common knowledge, but I never knew people used fandom for topics like this. I’m amazed that it had 800+ articles and over 1000 videos on a wiki dedicated to elevators.

Are you aware of the vim fandom? It seems to be one of the more complete vim wikis and it's probably the most annoying wiki for a piece of open source software ever. I often go without using whatever information is on there just to avoid listening to my fans (heh) spin up.

Use lynx/links for that wiki.

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#136
post #86

Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming has, in its first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is a single regular elevator (nothing "special" going on as in the post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation for the task of programming. It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and solutions).…

If you love elevators try out SimTower, it's all about micromanaging them!

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#137
Another dumb story from "back in my day". When I was in college way back in 1976, me and my Best friend back then both had graduated early and had to live in the dorm the first year until we were 18. The dorm they made us stay in was 6 stories and had a crappy old elevator. Being a couple of goofy hacker types with nothing better to do on a weekend, we figured out how to get up on top of the elevator and to use the alternate control panel up there. We sat up there and could control it, people would get on, we could listen to them talk, stop the elevator between floors and they would get all scared, we would flicker the lights on and off, make it go to the wrong floor and so forth. Pretty fun stuff for a couple of nerds.

We got bored with that pretty quickly until, 4 gals form the girls floor decided they were going to camp out in there and set the Guinness record for the longest stay in an elevator. Some of the bigger dudes knew that we had hacked the elevator and asked us if we wanted to mess them up. Well... Of course. So we got on top and were listen to them yakkedy yak. Then we took it to between the 6th and 5th floors and locked it in place, then opened the upper doors on the 6th floor where a bunch of guys with big trash cans full of water were waiting.

We thought they were just going to douse them good. So we opened the ceiling trap door to the elevator with the lights off and those gals were screaming and squealing like crazy. Then come dude tossed a string of fire crackers in there followed by two giant Garbage cans of water right after that. Must have been at least a couple hundred gallons of water, who knows.

Then we set the thing to go to the first floor and jumped off. Waiting on the first floor where a bunch of people who were in on it with cameras to capture the whole things as the doors opened it was like the seas parting and flooding out as these poor drenched young ladies came floating out. Picture was on the front page of the school paper "Guinness Elevator Record Attempt Drenched" or something.

They called the cops and all that but no one squealed on us and it was all in good fun but to teach everyone a lesson they shut down the elevators for 3 weeks. Young people don't care, worth a climb of the stairs for all the fun!

BTW, I ended up marrying one of the gals on the elevator and yes I told her I was in on it, later. She loved that for some reason :)

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#138
post #6

my personal favorite is the Sabbath mode https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Sabbath_service_(SHO) not to pick on a specific belief system, but it's quite interesting the lengths people go to follow the letter but not the spirit of things.

Can we all agree that religion is pretty silly?

It seems not on HN you can't.

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#139
post #86

Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming has, in its first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is a single regular elevator (nothing "special" going on as in the post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation for the task of programming. It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and solutions).…

> We often fail to realize how little we know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a computer.

"Programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and sloppily formulated ideas" is definitely on the list of my favourite programming quotes.

Re: List of Special Elevator Modes

#140

Another dumb story from "back in my day". When I was in college way back in 1976, me and my Best friend back then both had graduated early and had to live in the dorm the first year until we were 18. The dorm they made us stay in was 6 stories and had a crappy old elevator. Being a couple of goofy hacker types with nothing better to do on a weekend, we figured out how to get up on top of the elevator and to use the a…

A+ story loved it!
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