Rick's b.log - entry 2024/08/28

Green traffic lights aren't green

This is entirely correct. Well, mostly. It's actually an ITU specification, though I too have seen green green lights so I'm guessing that perhaps it only applies to new installations and replacement light modules.

Why are the lights turquoise? Well, human vision is a fascinating thing. If you have a car, chances are you can easily spot it in bright sunlight and under the urine-coloured glare of neon lights (those that haven't been replaced by LEDs yet) despite the fact that the colours are very very different. We can appreciate a morsel of curried chicken on fluffy rice under strip lights, by candlelight, or with modern LED lights where you can shift the colour temperature from reddish to bluish as you prefer. All because your visual system knows what colour these things should be so routinely fills in the blanks. Most people don't look at a savoury piece of chicken and think of throwing up on themselves because it looks ghastly under a traditional style fluorescent light, yet those things are heavy in the green and yellow wavelengths and most stuff does look ghastly under them (take a digital photo, you'll see what I mean... it's why there is often a special "fluo light" white balance setting, it's to attempt to fix this).

Therefore, the lights are "green enough" to look green to people who expect them to be green; but they are also far enough away from actually being green that people with red-green colour blindness (the most prevalent sort) can tell them apart from the red light. And that is the reason why the green light isn't green any more.

Do you see 21, 74, or nothing?
Image public domain from Wikipedia.

Oh... My...

Oasis reunion

Oasis... were they the ones that sounded like they were trying to be The Beatles in The Mid Nineties? "Aaafteraaaaaaaaaooooowl yure my wanderwaaaaaaooowl.". That was them, wasn't it?
Just before, on the "Because maybe" line, he holds the final note so damn long you half expect his T-shirt to turn blue with a message saying ":( Liam Gallagher ran into a problem and needs to restart...".

Google tells me that was from 1995. Just had a look at the top songs from 1995 and, yeah, reminded myself that this was the rebound decade from the cool music of the '80s. There were a few good things, Lisa Loeb and Tori Amos for example, but also a lot of intensely annoying "boy bands" with dance moves far slicker than the lyrics.

If it's all the same to you, I'll stick to my selection of goth/power/dark/symphonic metal, especially those that tick all those boxes at the same time. ☺

Doddery old gits in the checkout line

Storm on the phone.
Screengrab from live Channel 5 broadcast.

Now, quite a lot of callers were pensioners, and most of them were against the self-service tills. There's a certain way that many of the callers spoke that suggested to me that thinking does not come easily to these people. The one speaking as I took the picture was complaining that they were always breaking down, that the prices were often wrong. Well, yeah, you know what? For stock management (as well as fraud prevention), all of that stuff gets held on a central computer somewhere in the building and all of the tills talk to that machine. So if the price of a loaf of Hovis is wrong on the auto-till, it's pretty much going to be wrong on the other tills too. Now, I'm sure she'd argue that "but you can complain to a checkout girl". Same with the machine, there's going to be a button someplace that calls for assistance. Or maybe just turn around and look for the poor sod wearing a uniform that is watching you, huh?

The one that did make me slightly miffed was the guy who said that "it is nice to talk to the people at the checkout" and "for some older people, that's all the interaction they get". Oh. My. Freaking. God. It's a supermarket, not a social club. He should bugger off to a Weatherspoons or something. Or maybe he wouldn't like that because all the others there are as annoying as he is, and anyway the best bit of the shopping experience is the "doll" behind the checkout is always so nice to him.
Newsflash! She's paid to be nice. Makes a person want come back and spend more money there.

Meanwhile, anti-social (humans, meh, overrated) gits like me that really appreciated being able to unplug myself from humans (meh, overrated) for a few weeks, have to stand there waiting patiently as humans (meh, overrated) like that blather. You know, there's usually a till for disabled people (or, at least, where they get priority). Maybe there should be an "old git" till for humans (meh, overrated) who want to talk endlessly about whatever brain farts they feel they should share with random strangers.

...says a human (meh, overrated) sharing his brain farts with random strangers, but the difference is that you decided to come and read this rubbish (or got lost in a Google maze and ended up here) and anyway, I'm not holding up the line. If you're looking for kittens, you're in the wrong place, they're over here...

...seriously, click that link.
Unless you're using Netsurf and sucks to be you I guess.
"Gimo" (currently #2), oh wow.

Your comments:

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Zerosquare, 29th August 2024, 11:19

> Maybe there should be an "old git" till for humans (meh, overrated) who want to talk endlessly about whatever brain farts they feel they should share with random strangers.     There is:  https://greenseedgroup.com/french-supermarket-tills-where-chit-chat-is-welcoming-growth-in-popularity/

David Pilling, 29th August 2024, 16:20

"ONE in eight shoppers steals from stores by cheating at self-service checkouts, a poll shows. Using the so-called 'banana trick'"    Self service is OK when you have few items, but not so good for a weeks shop.

C Ferris, 29th August 2024, 16:56

Aren't most of here 'Old Gits' :-(

Rick, 29th August 2024, 19:18

David: That's where you get some next level self service shopping, with a little scanner wand thing that you beep everything as you put it into your shopping bag.  So long as the system thinks it trusts you, the checkout is simply telling the girl that there were no problems, nothing to add (that didn't scan, or whatever), and then simply paying.  If the system doesn't trust you, or if it wants to check, you'll put everything on the conveyor belt like a normal shop.  I think it's been far too long (like, YEARS) since the Leclerc in Châteaubriant checked my stuff. I keep putting it haphazard into the bag as "this time it'll want to check" and... nope. I don't go often (maybe 2-3 times a year) but it still thinks I'm okay.    Sadly the facilities and card for one shop only works to collect points (sort of maybe (*)) in another shop. I'll probably be going to a big one tomorrow, but can't scan my own stuff without getting a reward card for that particular location. Meh.    * - unlike the Super U, where I have quite a bit of reward card credit, I've never quite figured out what actually gets rewards at Leclerc. It seems "random stuff" does. At least at the U it is really obvious, like "pay full price, get 34% back on your card".    Colin: The difference between "Old" and "Old Git" depends on whether or not one is holding up people behind because, as a certain bloke used to say, "It's good to talk".    Zerosquare - That's good. It gives people the option. Ideally there should be a mix of all three (chatty, regular, and do-it-yourself) because everybody has their own preferred way of shopping. Also it may give staff more reassurance because these days, with the automatic methods, there are fewer actual tills open.    Actually, it seems at the place I usually go that a fair number of the former checkout girls are now running around the place with boxes on wheels to fulfil orders from the fourth style of shopping - those who want somebody else to do it for them. Despite my clear preference to exist in an empty world, I'm afraid I am far too finicky to tick boxes on a website and have my food delivered that way. Remember, I'm the guy that grabs one from the back because it may be days/weeks fresher than the one at the front.   PS: I've linkified the link for you.

Rick, 29th August 2024, 19:36

David - the banana trick wouldn't work here, because every item known to the system has not only its price, but also its weight. You need to scan the item, then put it in your bag, which is on a table-thing that is weighing everything as you do it. If the item's weight is outside of some predefined tolerance, the till will block and a red light will blink until the operator checks what is going on. She can tell the system to continue from her control panel so if she's watching then it's a quick process. But if she's busy or otherwise distracted, she'll need to come and see what's going on.  Note that part of the protocol is to remove the object that it didn't like. The weight must return to the prior weight, or it's a full bag check. So you can't try tricking the system by dropping in two things after scanning just the one, and then sneaking the second through.    That British tills are susceptible to being fooled by a banana suggests that the till manufacturers really didn't think things through. Or they're trying to do it on the extreme cheap and hoping the saving by not having, say, a balance integrated will be less than the losses due to theft.  Really, they probably should have installed their system in a class of 12 year olds. :)

David Pilling, 29th August 2024, 22:46

UK has scanning as you shop - I'm too guilty to use it. I always thought that online with delivery would be no good, but Covid made it essential and I have learnt how to make it work.  This year I had a phase of boxes of apricots upsetting the checkouts in Aldi (overweight?) - my job as a shopper is to spot the punnets with the most fruit in. Aldi were late to the self service checkouts party, ISTR they have cameras too, maybe more sophisticated.  "Waitrose of the North" Booths have scrapped DIY checkouts.  They've always weighed stuff - "unidentified item in the bagging area", these days they seem to work with less intervention - did they improve or did we get used to them. Seemingly we've had about 20 years of them in the UK - USA use goes back to the 1980s.

VinceH, 30th August 2024, 01:11

Most of my shopping comes from my local Iceland or my local Aldi, because proximity. The Iceland (where I have to shop at normal times along with normal people) has no self service tills, while the Aldi does but they're never in use when I go in there (typically after 9pm when it tends to be quieter).    Much more rarely, I get stuff from Asda (so rarely, the last trip was in 2020). They are (or were) open 24/7 so I'd go late at night, again because it's quieter (in theory - in reality not as quiet as I'd hope, but nowhere near as bad as during 'normal' hours) - and there, at that time, the self service checkouts were the only option.    I found them a PITA. They are, as Rick described, the type that checks the weight as you load up the bag - but I find them far too slow. I want to get my shopping bagged and paid for so I can get out of there ASAP.    I'd rather put up with someone trying to make small talk, simply because it's a quicker process.    Hence it's so rare that I shop there.

Clive Semmens, 30th August 2024, 10:26

Oh, as soon as you told me that new traffic lights ARE "turquoise" (or thereabouts) and why, I understood straight away 8~) - Grace is an optician...I probably would have understood anyway, been aware of red/green colourblindness as long as I can remember, probably since school days, but nearly forty years married to an optician buries some memories of what I might or might not have known already...

Clive Semmens, 30th August 2024, 11:00

Oh, and the urine-coloured lights start up with neon (pinkish) but most of the light once they're up and running properly is sodium... almost monochromatic: just two emission lines, very close together, in the urine part of the spectrum...    As for self-service tills: I generally use them, because they're usually quicker here, at the times I tend to shop, anyway. Both the supermarkets I use (Aldi & Morrisons) have the type that weigh everything as well as scanning it all.

VinceH, 30th August 2024, 12:14

The first time I tried them - not knowing how they worked - I was trying to scan the next item with one hand while dropping the previous one into the bag. It wasn't working, and a member of staff intervened a couple of times in response to errors - eventually watching me for a minute to see what was going wrong, and telling me to slow down.    The issue was the need to wait for the weight of each item to register before scanning the next - which isn't quick.    A checkout person, OTOH, is scanning items while I'm bagging them - usually faster than I'm bagging, TBH - and I can have more than one bag open at a time and deposit items in them as I see fit.    For me there is no comparison.

Clive Semmens, 30th August 2024, 12:38

"For me there is no comparison."  The tills in your supermarket are obviously queueless.  I usually go at the quietest possible time, to avoid covid carriers, so there aren't generally many staff on the tills - and there are queues. Quite short, but long enough to be a lot slower than self-checkout.

Rob, 30th August 2024, 15:00

I prefer the hand scanners; I wander around Sainsburys with a trolley, sorting my shopping into two or three carrier bags as I go. (eg. all cold items together.) The occasional check when attempting to pay consists of the attendant being asked to scan a percentage of they items, picked randomly from your bags. Assuming they are all already scanned by you, the system then lets you pay and be on your way. The only time I got pulled up was when I had two bags of cat biscuits, and they scanned one of them twice on the check, not realising they were different flavours with different barcodes. Procedure then necessitated going to a till to scan and pay "normally".    The self-scan tills have weighing scales.. I gather the "trick" is to weigh an item and put it through as Brown Onions, these being one of the cheapest £/kg they sell. Till is happy as you've paid for the weight. But the stores are on to this, and people have been caught and prosecuted. So don't do it. (especially if, as one report I read a few years back pointed out, the store didn't even stock loose onions!)

VinceH, 30th August 2024, 23:55

The queues at my Aldi tend to be short - but not 'obviously queueless'.    As I said, I go post 9pm to avoid other people as much as possible - fewer people shopping means shorter queues. (And unlike me, doing a slightly bigger shop, most people at that time tend to be just grabbing a few things).    The self service checkouts aren't on when I go there, and there tends to only be one person on the tills. I can't compare like with like there.    And conversely, those rare occasions I go to Asda (even later, again to avoid people) their attrocious self service checkouts are the only option; no manned checkouts. So again, I can't compare like with like.

C Ferris, 31st August 2024, 14:18

I suppose traffic lights could be all the same colour - Top Middle Bottom - I wonder how one lamp switched to different colours would work!

jgh, 31st August 2024, 21:24

"Green" traffic lights have never been green. They are *called* green, not /coloured/ green. Put a traffic light next to a lawn, and no way are they the same colour. They are actually off-white, and have been for decades. "Green" is the functional label for the light, not the colour.

jgh, 31st August 2024, 21:30

re: tills - I would also go to the self-service tills to avoid the humans. My greatest human sales interaction was posting online sales at the post office.    But! Now that I'm working on.... a certain non-vertical public sector IT replacement project.... I discover that there are some post offices.... with self-service *postage* counters! Wow! If I can track one down near where I live, I no longer even need to "chat" to post office staff either!

A tree-dwelling mammal, 7th September 2024, 12:55

If I'm buying one or two items, eg a can of drink or a sandwich whilst out and about, then I'll use the self-checkout. But there's one thing that keeps catching me out. Energy drinks are now "age restricted", which means if I try to put a can of Red Bull or similar through the self-checkout the whole thing stops with an "approval needed" message. Then I need to interact (albeit briefly) with a staff member.    Honestly would have been quicker to go through the normal checkout. The problem is, if I'm out and about and I need a can of energy drink to keep me going, I'm almost certainly too tired to remember that energy drinks now need approval thanks to the stupid nanny state.    I can understand it with alcohol, but honestly, a can of Red Bull or Monster? Really?

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