In our competition, you loved this more...
How exciting. It’s time to count the votes in our Beatles lyrics competition. We trust you have all received your songsheets and are even now making good use of them at your Christmas parties while wearing your party hat at a jaunty angle. Believe us, it’s better than cornering the temp from accounts and telling her how you’ve always fancied her, especially if your wife has just arrived to drive you home.
But we digress. As they say on X Factor: more than three million of you voted. During the voting, all three finalists were in the lead at some stage! (We made the three million votes part up). But the winner is: Neil Haughton’s version of In My Life. If you’re coming to this late, because you only read the silly bit of Computing at Christmas, then we’re not going to indulge your problem by reprinting the lyrics – but you can still get the lyrics, and the rest of our songsheet, by emailing Backbytes with the title ‘Beatles Life’. Neil, send us your address and we’ll send you some Christmas champagne.
Singalonga hacks
Of course, not everyone appreciated our Beatles lyrics shortlist. Steve Ward, at Capgemini, wanted to vote for the rewritten Norwegian Wood, but we didn't put it on the shortlist.
‘I hope the Backbytes team will assure its readers that a rendition of the winning entry will take place as part of Computing’s Christmas party karaoke,’ he says. ‘The results could even be the magazine’s first ever cover CD.’
We have no intention of singing for you. But if any of you send us a recording of you singing, we promise to listen.
It’s a pig’s life
Our horrified tales of chickengammon and turkeybacon have prompted several of you to write in with tales of contracting or holidaying in countries that don’t eat pigs.
Cliff Lawson recalls the Maldives (holiday, Amstrad doesn’t have an office there), where the bacon is made of beef. ‘If you close your eyes you can almost imagine that the thin strips of beef, with added streaky fat, steeped in salty water once led a porcine life,’ he says, not convincing us for a second.
John Butler’s experience of beefbacon was as a survey engineer on a Saudi oil rig. ‘It was marginally more digestible than frying my Rig Boots, with their marinade of crude oil and drilling ‘mud’ – and the effects of forty-degrees-in-the-shade heat upon my feet,’ he says. ‘Having surveyed an oil well, we would process the results on a Data General Nova 4X. As my company had set up the operation on a tight budget, we weren’t initially given a monitor, but had to do our keying on a line printer with an integral keyboard.’
The fun just never stops on oil rigs, does it?
Very late night shopping
We don’t do advertising, but we feel compelled to pass on this email sent to reader Paul Mateer, from PC World: ‘Late-night shopping – open until 10pm Thursday 8 December! Come on down to PC World, where you’ll find a whole range of top-brand PCs, laptops, printers, software and peripherals, including the amazingly priced tomtom ONE now only £219!’ Excellent news, except that it was sent to Paul at 10.06am on 9 December – exactly 12 hours and six minutes after it closed. Still, there’s always late opening next Christmas.
Spoiled for choice
Our final final final word on keyboards, at least for this year, comes from regular correspondent John Szwer, at Gordon & Gotch Publishing, who found this super-efficient keyboard on the internet. If anyone can rightfully claim to be the Photoshopper in question, we’ll give you the credit. Unless, that is, it’s a real keyboard, in which case we’re sure many of you will want to order one for work.
I’m dreaming of a trite Christmas
Remember our thread earlier this year about buildings that light up in exciting and entertaining ways? Well, even if you don’t, we offer you this domestic version as our special Christmas present to you.
Not that we made any effort, mind you, except for opening the email from reader Terry Davies that pointed it out to us. But isn’t that the spirit of Christmas shopping on the internet? Why waste hours finding cheap thoughtless gifts when you can do it in minutes on your computer?
Check out www.wonderlandchristmas.com/av/Wizards.wmv, and read all about it on the site. Created by Texas resident Carson Williams, it uses 16,000 lights, controlled by computer.
Turkeyham and turkeybacon… bootiful?
Following our worries about chickengammon, you prompt us to ask: is a single animal in our meat products no longer enough? What sort of decadent society are we living in? One, as several of you point out, in which Bernard Matthews can sell a packet of ‘turkeyham’.
Meanwhile Laurence Carradus, at Blackpool Council, ponders: ‘Goodness only knows what sort of cross-breeding leads to chicken nuggets.’ And Mick Joy, at Equant, adds: ‘You guys obviously don’t go shopping. Tesco doesn’t do chickengammon but it does sell turkeybacon. Go get some, you are in for a treat.’
Well, that’s Christmas lunch sorted.
Cringing at whingeing about bingeing
Just ahead of your Christmas party we’re sad to bring you the result of scientific research at the University of Auckland, which seems to conclude that heavy boozing might be bad for you.
‘While moderate to heavy drinking is probably coronary protective, any benefit will be overwhelmed by the known harms,’ says Dr Rod Jackson, from the university. These harms include falling over, insulting the boss, that sort of thing. Next week: we research the religion of the Pope.
So make sure your mates drink with caution this Christmas, or even better, send us a picture from your cameraphone when they don’t.
Phoenix has yet to rise again
We tend to resist stories planted by enthusiastic PR companies because, well, because they’re usually self-serving twaddle, in which the exclusive comment that is emailed to us sounds like it was given by a speak-your-weight machine.
But every rule has its exception. So it is with the sad tale of Phoenix Disaster Services in Texas whose site, replete with a slightly sinister picture of a fireman with an axe, apologises for a loss of service. ‘Our site is temporarily down due to Hurricane’s (sic) Katrina and Rita. We are working hard to get them back online. Please check back soon.’ But not too often – this was posted at the end of October.
This was brought to our attention by the servants of ICM Computer Group. ‘The irony wasn’t lost on Mike Osborne, ICM Computer Group’s operations director for recovery services,’ we read.
Mike says: ‘This is exactly the kind of incident that companies can guard themselves against through business continuity planning. It raised a smile in the office when someone suggested sending them some advice – until we realised that our email couldn’t get through!’
‘You weigh 160 pounds.’ (We added that last bit ourselves.)
Rudolf the tax-free reindeer
Bored this Christmas? Then why not try the Christmas quiz helpfully provided by law firm Ashurst’s email newsletter Employment News, forwarded to us by an ‘avid reader’ who presumably really wanted to complete the questions, but didn’t have the time in his busy, Backbytes-reading day.
We’re not going to spoil it by giving you all the questions, but we will leave you with a taste of what may be the worst Christmas quiz we have ever seen. Unless, of course, you know differently, and want to send us any naff quizzes you’ve seen recently.
1. Santa wants to put Rudolf out to grass and considers paying him £30,000 in lieu of his notice period. Will the PILON be tax-free?
a) Yes, provided there is no right to make a PILON in the employment contract and Santa is not in the habit of making PILONS;
b) No, all PILONs are taxable;
c) Yes, all PILONs can be made tax-free.
A warning for the squeamish: a subsequent question deals with the sexual harassment of elves.
End of the long and winding road
Don’t forget to add your vote to the large virtual pile in our Beatles lyrics competition. We don’t have the space to republish all the lyrics – ask a friend who has already voted and has therefore already received our excellent Beatles songsheet in return.
Just a reminder: to vote for Neil Haughton’s In My Life, email Backbytes with the title Beatles Life; to vote for Gordon Thackray’s When I’m Sixty-Four, email with the title Beatles 64; and to vote for Andy Cole’s Strawberry Fields, email with the title Beatles Strawberry. We’ll be announcing the winner in our final Backbytes of the year next week.
Oh, and if you’re reading this on Friday, you’re too late – voting closed on 8 December. Never mind, you can still get our songsheet, and it will be just as exciting to see who won next week.
We’ve been picking up tips from reality TV, so it only remains for us to say, overexcitedly: ‘Please hurry up and vote because this has been the closest Backbytes vote ever! It’s neck and neck!’
Untrained melody
Finally: this requirements document falls into our hands from a ‘well-known car manufacturer’: ‘It shall be possible to transfer the car temporarily into and out from this mode by an untrained car salesperson (equal to the technical skills of the normal mother-in-law).’
If any mothers-in-law are reading, please pass on your assessment of your technical ability so we can provide
feedback to the company in question.
Executive stress
Thanks to Carl Windsor for passing on this IT director role that is ‘looking for real up-and-coming executive talent’.‘Are you interested in an opportunity to be part of an ambitious executive team? Do you want a highly autonomous position with full responsibility for an IT team strategy and operations?’ it asks. And so on, through so many questions you might not notice that one of them asks: ‘Do you have experience in multi-site disrupted computing environments?’ Disrupted? It’s no surprise that ‘the appointment of an IT director is critical to the continued success of the group’.
A chicken and pig situation
Last week we carried the story of Marks & Spencer and its improved recipe traditional British gammon, unchanged since 1900. Surely a contradiction?
‘Maybe Marks & Spencer improved the recipe of Brian Barley’s Wafer Thin Sliced Traditional British Gammon in 1900 and have stuck with that same recipe ever since,’ points out Dave Jakeman.
The truth may be even stranger. Wally Dug writes to tell us that he thinks it may be the fault of an EU directive. ‘In the UK, gammon comes from pigs. Pigs are quite common, but expensive to farm. In Europe, some countries are bereft of pigs and others can’t afford to farm them, preferring cheaper options such as cows and chickens. To give everyone a level playing field, the EU allows other animals to be classed as “pigs”, so Brian’s “improved recipe traditional British gammon” could quite possibly have originated as a chicken.’
Surely this is a meaty urban myth? We don’t believe for a second that any retailer would sell you chickengammon. Unless, of course, you know different.
Arrrr Jim-lad
Yet more keyboards. Fresh from the internet department of general spoofery, Tim Webber sends us this item: the keyboard for pirates. Don’t email us to say it doesn’t have an Alt-Gr key. But do mail us if you know who came up with the picture first – we’d like to give them the credit, instead of our usual trick of hogging it for ourselves
All together now, which lyric is the fabbest?
It’s the time you have all been waiting for: time to vote for your favourite spoof Beatles lyrics. We have whittled down the many entries we have published to three, and now it’s time to vote for your favourite. As an added incentive, anyone who votes will get by return our Backbytes Beatles lyrics songsheet, containing the shortlisted songs, plus the others we published.
First, Neil Haughton’s In My Life: ‘There are programs I’ll remember/All my life though some have changed/Some forever not for better/Some have gone and some remain/All these lines of code had their moments/With testers and friends I still can recall/Some still work and some are wobbly/On my screen I’ve debugged them all.’ To vote for it, email backbytes with the title Beatles Life.
Second, Gordon Thackray’s When I’m sixty-four: When I get older, losing my mind/Will I still know how/O O one one O O one, explicit sign/Twenty five is Hex O one nine/If I’d been out till Octal two three/Would I still be sure/Binary one double O double O O/O is sixty-four.’ To vote for it, email with the title Beatles 64.
Finally, Andy Cole submitted this rewrite of Strawberry Fields: ‘Let me shut you down/’Cause I’m going to/Ctrl-Alt-Delete/You’ve got me beat/I’m completely fed up with this/I’m going to Linux forever’. To vote for him, email with the title Beatles Strawberry.
On 8 December, we’ll tally the votes and announce the winner in the 15 December issue, just in time to get a Christmas bottle of champagne, while the rest of you huddle around an open fire and sing amusing IT-themed Beatles songs, using our songsheet.
What’s up doc?
A reader who asks to remain anonymous writes regarding our story about the doctor’s surgery containing a calendar advertising for a funeral home. ‘As a funeral director, from a family of health care professionals, all I can add is “ha ha ha ha”, with a manic and scary laugh,’ he says. He asks that we withhold his name because: ‘It might not go down well with my clients’. We would have thought they were past caring.
Saluting keyboards in a big way
We never knew there was so much to know about keyboards. A couple of weeks ago we covered the keyboard that has no markings on it at all, and now we bring you its opposite: RM’s excellent BigKeys Plus keyboard. ‘Not only is this ideal for early learners of all ages but can be of great assistance with dyslexia and related learning difficulties,’ says RM.
But it is another feature that has grabbed the attention of Robert Ward. ‘On the subject of pressing ctrl-alt-del with one hand, I noticed the keyboard has an excellent feature – all of the three-finger salute buttons are next to each other in the top corner.’
Moral of the story: it’s never too early to learn to reboot.
All the lonely coders, where do they all belong?
This week, to round off our Beatles lyrics competition, we bring you two correspondents who, unlike many of our readers, provide lyrics for Eleanor Rigby that actually scan. Next week we’ll be selecting three for our shortlist, so if you have a favourite, email us before the weekend to nominate it. Then you vote, the winner gets the bubbly, and everyone’s happy. Except the heroes of our songs this week.
First, Kieran Wareing, at Norsk Data: ‘Eleanor Rigby clicks with the mouse on her laptop but nothing appears/Sheds a few tears/Waiting for Windows, server to show her the files that she needs for Excel/MS is hell/Call support for PCs/And wait another day/My Mac is the bees’ knees/Results without delay.’
And a second entry from Alastair Muirhead: ‘Old Cobol coder sits in an office behind the development team/Lives in a dream/What is she doing? Going over code she wrote back in seventy four/Who was it for?/All the Cobol coders/Where did they all come from?/All the Cobol coders/Where do they now belong?/IT director thinking about the old days when he coded in Plan/Who gives a damn?/Look at him working, balancing budgets at night when there’s nobody there/Losing his hair’. If Lennon and McCartney were writing today, these are the subjects they would be taking on.
Hamming it up
Brian Barley, at ATM, concedes that this is not directly an IT problem, but now we know the care you take over the sandwiches you bring to work, we think it deserves an airing. ‘I was in my local Marks & Spencer the other day, and on the end of the cold cabinet where they keep the prepared cold meat, was a large advert claiming “We have prepared our Traditional British Gammon in the same way since 1900”,’ he says. So far so good.
‘At the same time I was holding a fresh packet of Wafer Thin Sliced Traditional British Gammon which had, printed on the cover “Improved Recipe”.’
Your number’s up
A couple of weeks ago we covered the memo from BA to its staff banning them from completing Sudoku puzzles during take off and landing: ‘This is a critical phase of flight and these activities are forbidden. You must be extremely alert and vigilant,’ it said.
We were at first delighted to find www.mikeoldroyd.com on the advice of Martin Thompson. Mike has written an Excel spreadsheet to solve the puzzles using a series of macros. ‘Imagine the joy on people’s faces when you tell them you have such a spreadsheet,’ says Martin. ‘Just think of all the time you could save them by automating this pointless activity.’
We were about to contact our friends in BA flight crews when we realised that during take-off and landing, they wouldn’t be able to use a laptop.
For the chop?
It’s not just patients who should be worrying in our new culture of public service accountability. ‘I'm impressed by the measures being proposed by the government in tackling those who still do not conform to the government’s idea of "best practice",’ says Richard Haslett, at Nottingham Health Informatics Service.
He quotes our news story on the subject: ‘"We want to create a board of senior people to sponsor the capture of best practice and to challenge people where they see it not being applied," said Watmore. The strategy's success will depend on execution, say experts.’
A little harsh, he points out, nervously.
A grave situation
Michael Pagan, of The Pagan Consultancy, writes to express his concern with the technology and the commercial priorities at his local surgery.
‘I was sitting recently waiting for my GP to pull up my correct details on screen – it appears that our doctors aren’t trained to use the systems on their desks - when I noticed her desk calendar was supplied by a local funeral service.’
Was this, he asks, because the surgery was supplying a lot of trade? Were they touting for future business? Or is his GP, he wonders darkly, on commission?
Lost in the supermarket
If any of you have visited one of our major supermarkets recently, you might have noticed that some of them are experimenting with self-scanning, as they do every few years.
Reader Chris Harwood’s wife popped in for a few groceries last weekend. ‘She was allowed to choose what she bought but when it came to pay, she did the scanning and a staff member did the packing,’ he says.
This also means that while three staff members watched silently, the computerised system took over the job of talking to her: telling her to weigh her flowers (‘Put it on the belt’) and demanding to see her cheese again.
Undoubtedly an innovative system, but we wonder – as does Chris – if this allocation of tasks best suits the skills of the three parties involved. Perhaps having the staff trained to scan and talk would help.
Scream if you want to go faster
Sometimes you feel the government just doesn’t want your money.
‘I was pleasantly surprised not to receive a Fixed Penalty Notice,’ begins Pete Smee, describing his return from holiday in North Wales, where he was snapped speeding by a roadside camera.
That was about as good as it got. He didn’t completely escape: he soon received the final ‘Seven Days To Respond’ notice instead. So Pete wrote the cheque, checked the form, and found no address to send it to. Luckily the North Wales Police Central Ticketing Office opens for four hours a day. So he rang up to ask for an address, and was told that thousands of original notices had been lost by the Royal Mail, so if he could ring again, they would reissue the notice.
Pete asked why he should ring again to allow the police to fine him, and was told the system was suffering from a ‘malicious virus’. ‘Could whoever wrote the virus delete the reminders as well next time?’ he asks.
Rubbed up the wrong way
We receive a shocking email from regular contributor Dave Jakeman. ‘Back in the days of Digital, mysterious keys were commonplace: keyboards had supplementary labels for use with Digital’s current word processor. These included interesting terms such as “Dead Key”, “Abbrv”, “Hyph Pull”, and “Rub Sent”,’ he recalls.
The EDT editor, however, did not get key annotations, and so Digital produced a thin, rubber overlay. ‘They were slightly tacky, unpleasant to the touch, and became known as “keypad condoms”, at which point Digital stopped producing them,’ Dave recalls.
If anyone has one of these, send us a picture.
A long and winding tape
More Beatles lyrics. And while Yesterday isn’t the toughest song to rewrite, we admire the satirical pith of Bob Harle’s effort, all the way from the European Patent Office in The Hague.
‘Years Ago/Cobol programs were the way to go/Now there are languages that I don’t know/Yes I wrote programs years ago/Suddenly/The kids are coding Java and VB/I think I’ll take an MBA degree/Yes – management’s the way for me.’
We leave you with the melancholy of David Gouge’s rewording of The Long and Winding Road: ‘The non-rewinding tape/that spools across the floor/will never be of use/now it’s dumped its data store/No matter what they say/the database is toast/now that the backup’s gone/its memory’s just a ghost.’
Cheer up, it’s only a song.
A light in Andy’s hour of darkness
We fearlessly accused Andy Cole of poaching his Beatles lyrics (below), because we don’t mind naming names. Except that it wasn’t Andy’s lyrics that were non-original – Hugh Holt was the reader who sent in Write in C.
‘I’m sure that at the time it seemed like a good idea to go along with the mistake, as you could make a footballing joke out of it,’ he says, pointing out that he has some experience of that genre of humour. So we’re very sorry to you Andy for our foul deed! You should have a free kick at us! We’re in a corner here! And so on.
Forget Amarillo, show me the way to Amsterdam
We occasionally cover route planner malfunctions as a warning to all our readers. For example: ‘While planning a trip to Amsterdam, I thought I would see what route our coach would be taking to get us from Rotterdam ferry terminal to Amsterdam,’ says Glyn Dobson, from. ‘I usually use MapPoint for this’. Which seems to be his mistake, as the route MapPoint suggests takes him from Rotterdam to Goole, Doncaster, Ilkeston, Luton, Brentwood, Dover, Calais and Antwerp. Which must qualify as one of the least scenic routes in Europe.
Listen... do you want to know a secret?
And finally, before we bring you this week’s Beatles lyrics, we have sad news of blatant cheating.
‘It would appear that goals are not the only thing Andy Cole poaches,’ says Lee Marmara at Code 27, after finding that the lyrics to ‘Write in C’ had previously been posted on many other web sites. We press on, our faith renewed by hundreds more entries that aren’t shamelessly copied.
First up, Bruce Parker’s Yesterday: ‘Yesterday/Windows updates seemed so far away/Now I restart almost twice a day/Oh I believe in yesterday/Suddenly, I’ve got half the Ram I used to see/There’s an update hanging over me/Oh, yesterday came with XP/XP has to go and I know it couldn’t stay/Can’t play Donkey Kong, now I long for yesterday.’
And finally, John Hamling gives us this version of Yellow Submarine: ‘We wrote some code, or was it born?/Where lived a bug that could not be seen/It would only come to life/In the land of
subroutines/So we used Java from Sun/And still found a screen of green/So it saw an early grave/along with that subroutine/We all hated that pesky subroutine…’
Just a couple more weeks before we make a shortlist for your vote. Let us know your opinions so far.
Gateaux loaf of this, ladies!
This trolley dolly studmuffin is a treat for you ladies: it’s dishy Stuart from Citrix. Stuart’s ‘bun run’ has become an important point in our week,’ says Pia Emborg Sund. ‘He attracts a crowd to the trolley to snap up the goodies’.
Look at the size of that trolley! Is it any wonder they can’t wait to get their hands on his scones?
More dollies please, preferably with Carry-On style innuendo in your email.
Stop mezzanine about
‘The term “mezzanine card” has been widely accepted as a term for a card that is mounted slightly above a main board,’ says Michael Turner at the Financial Services Association. ‘HP uses this term in its blades, such as the BL20p, for example.’
This was obviously not exciting enough for HP, which wanted to go one better. Or, more literally, half better. ‘The more recent BL30p has a mezzanine card, but you can also buy a balcony card for it,’ says Michael. ‘I’m just waiting for the porch card or the window box card.’
Number’s up for flight path fanatics
We know you to be keen puzzle fans, so we bring you the disturbing news – possibly entirely fictitious – that BA cabin crew have been banned from doing Su Doku puzzles during take-off and landing.
A memo to staff is reported to have read: ‘We have had reports that some crew are choosing to do puzzles. ‘May I remind you this is a critical phase of flight and these activities are forbidden. You must be extremely alert and vigilant.’ Are there any more Su Doku haters among our readership? Are any more of you being banned from doing puzzles? Can anyone help us finish this one?
Lost your keys again?
‘Why bother with any of those annoying Alt-Gr or scroll lock keys?’ says John Hamling at PN Lee Statistics and Computing, which rather undermines the content of this column for the past two months. ‘Become an ubergeek instead,’ he advises.
He directs us to www.daskeyboard.com which claims it is ‘only for the best’.
‘If you are an elite programmer who can write sophisticated code under tight deadlines, someone who makes impossible projects possible, or a silver web surfer your colleagues turn to when they need IT advice, this keyboard is for you,’ says the site. ‘Shouldn't your keyboard reflect your status as one of the elite?’
The selling point of Das Keyboard is that its keys are entirely blank.
At least you know that no one will ever want to steal it.
