Integer overflow redux

[simont]

I posted last week about the strange lift sign in the new Lion Yard car park. I went back there this evening with a camera, and the weird sign was still there and I managed to capture photographic evidence of it.

The sign on the left is reasonably sensible, and looks like this:

But the sign on the right says this:

See, I wasn't going mad! (Or, at least, it wasn't just that I'm going mad.)

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I really don't understand what you think is so strange about these signs. They seem perfectly normal to me - one travels between floors 2 and 6; one travels between floors 2 and -1 i.e. one level below ground. So they're "ordered" in different directions - so what? Maybe the signwriter thought the consistency of beginning both with a 2 was desirable!

[nassus.livejournal.com]

Unless there isn't a floor below ground level in which case it's probably a typo but I agree with Vyvyan *grin*.
I assume you took them from level 2 and the ones on other levels are consistent with starting with the actual level number?

[simont]

I took those photos at ground level, which is below level 2. (So the signs don't describe the entire range of the lift; they describe, or at least are intended to describe, the range of floors you might use this lift to get to from where you are.)

[nassus.livejournal.com]

Totally weird then - maybe the ground signs have been put on level 2 by mistake? Have you checked out all the other floor signs? It'd annoy me enough to do so *grin*

[simont]

For a start, I'm still unconvinced that there is a floor -1. Secondly, I still think ordering them in different directions is weirder than you seem to; it's not something I can easily imagine someone "just happening" to do on a whim. Thirdly, it's a fairly bizarre idea that two adjacent lifts should cover such different ranges of floors, when the apparent intention is for them to be roughly interchangeable. Fourthly, the range of floors if interpreted literally just doesn't make sense: 2 is the lowest floor of the car park, so why a lift would take you that far but no further is beyond me. Fifthly, the sign says "To Car Park", which suggests to me that it probably does actually go up to floors 2-4 or 2-6 or thereabouts.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Well, if they don't make sense in the context of the particular building they're in, then fair enough. But you seemed to be saying (in the previous post also) that "2 to -1" was an intrinsically weird thing for a lift sign to say, which it doesn't seem to me - I've seen (and taken) many such lifts in large hotels etc.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

Even if the semantics are right, the typography is horrible. That's not a proper dash, and that's not a proper minus sign. I think the second one has been moved up and right to make it look different from the first, which wouldn't have been necessary if they'd put the floors in numerical order. *sigh*

[drswirly.livejournal.com]

Inside the second lift:

[simont]

Ooh. Are the lifts actually functioning, then? Or can you just get into them but they won't go anywhere? What is the -1st floor?

[drswirly.livejournal.com]

I took that lift from the 2nd to 0th floor. Foolishly, I didn't think to go to the -1th. ("-1st" just sounds wrong.)

If you walk from next to the Lion Yard towards the car park, you can either go left just after the toilets, bringing you out near the north stairs and lifts, or go more straight on. Going straight on takes you along a balcony bit one floor above Corn Exchange St, leading along to the south lifts.

So I would assume that the -1th floor is really the ground floor (ie, street level) of the car park, and that the numbering is relative to Lion Yard itself.