Large plate glass doors – how yesteryear

I haven’t ventured into the neighbor’s project in a while (I let the workmen park in our front yard so it’s cool). The project is definitely developing an industrial look. I’m undecided whether to call it Casa Industrial or La Fábrica. Apparently this stovepipe, erected yesterday, does not sit well with the neighbors beyond the wall, and I can understand why.

Meanwhile, closer by, I see there’s been a boo-boo, perhaps because of the wind today. The walls of this addition are going to have a huge proportion of large, sliding glass doors.

But—ye northerners—notice anything odd? Yes, the glass: plate glass, which when broken will form large, dangerous shards. Plate glass sliding doors, which have not been allowed in United States construction for over 45 years. Hmmm.

Ah, Uruguay: not just www…

Welcome to Uruguay. Please type “www.”

Six years ago I pointed out that some large websites in Uruguay required you to type “www” or they wouldn’t work. ANCAP, the national company for petroleum, alcohol, and Portland cement, still requires you to type “www” in late 2021. Honest: ancap.com.uy. [October 2024: still not corrected!]

However, Riogas, one of the cooking gas companies that has become completely annoying in the last few years by driving noise trucks around in a country where absolutely no one who might want to order gas lacks a phone, has outdone itself with web design.

It was probably 1994 when I first played around with web design, and knew about including “www redirects,” as one had to. But almost since then, web hosts have provided that automatically. But don’t tell Riogas. Honestly, check it out: riogas.com.uy. [October 2024 – corrected! Imagine that.]

But it gets better: do you remember GIFs? Not animated GIFs, but the limited-palette color file format released by Compuserve in 1987? Which you probably stopped using by the late 1990s when PNG came onto the scene?

Ah, but don’t tell Riogas. Not only do they use a GIF as one of their header images, but it’s a doozy: measuring 5,228 by 1,801 pixels, it takes up 8.8 megabytes!

There it is, in all its glory. Even if simply saved in an appropriate format (not GIF!), its size could easily be reduced by 80%.

However, I reduced that image to 1920 pixels wide and saved as jpeg at reasonable quality. It’s perfectly presentable and barely more than 1% of the size. In fact, would load 86X faster than their monster legacy image.

Maybe the genius designers at Riogas will figure that out one day?

The lending library that wasn’t

Alvero has retrieved the refrigerator from a block away. Did he not anticipate people would leave things in it? Were the failed Macintosh keyboards offensive? Or did someone else leave something really offensive?

I suspect the latter, but don’t expect to find out soon. I glanced through our Union Vecinal Whatsapp group but saw no mention.

Why don’t I ask, you wonder. I guess that would be because I find it potentially interesting, but also kind of so what?

A little short

I’ve gotten back into infrared saunas, perhaps ironic now that spring is here. But when I come back after it’s been warming, there’s a burning-plastic sort of smell I can’t quite place. Yesterday, a few minutes in, the sauna turned itself off. Power outage? I hit the button and it came back on. And then I heard it.

So, off to the electrical store tomorrow. Why the adapter? When we first got here, I immediately replaced the Schuko plugs on several new appliances with tres-en-linea (above). But then it occurred to me that it might void the warranty. I’ll replace the two ruined t-e-l with one Shucko.