Dilbert causes Stage fright
Komal Kari thinks that Scott Adams may be stalking him, as Dilbert cartoons regularly parallel his own life.
He particularly focuses on Seven Stages of a Performance Review. ‘Every stage was almost identical to my own appraisal and came out in the same week. How very spooky is that?’ he writes.
Very, although if your performance review is the same as Dilbert’s, perhaps you may have more to worry about.
Pay up for a strip
We don’t usually recommend any commercial businesses, in case it stops them from buying advertisements in the paper. But there are exceptions. Jill Barringer, at MC Research, writes to tell us about www.pcweenies.org, where you can pay $25 to have a cartoon drawn from a picture that you send in.
‘A lot of the jokes are very IT. A lot are for Mac users,’ she says. ‘I had one done for my Dad. It looks like him, and you get a hard copy of the preparatory artwork and a download of the hi-res PDF.’
This is especially handy if your friends and relatives don’t look like Dilbert or his boss. Though we’re guessing that many of you do.
Backward in writing foreword
This week’s book dedications come from Celia Pearce, of the interactive book (yes, lower case), as suggested by Ian Thompson, at Morley High School, who uses it for teaching. But not the first 25 pages, which include sections entitled ‘why is this a book?’ and ‘how to read’.
However, we’re mostly interested in the gushing foreword. Written by Mark Pesce, it fills three pages with twaddle such as: ‘The interactive book, opinionated and utterly sensible, aimless and ceaselessly direct, incomplete and incontestably whole, pens the line between the quick and the dead. In its wake, our creations can only be judged by how human they are, and how they reveal the human in us.’
And if that’s not enough: ‘If Celia Pearce is the Samuel Johnson of the interactive age, gathering all of its nascent gestures into a vocabulary, then I am content to be her faithful Boswell.’
Should we really allow the children of Morley High School to read this? More dedications please.
Going clip clippety-clop on the wires
On a similar subject, Sav Mellor points out that this week is the 60th birthday of Eniac, the first US electronic computer. He quotes from CNET’s article about the computer: ‘The scientists faced another concern that was decidedly low-tech but equally important: rodent control. “We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We used that wire,” [co-inventor J Presper] Eckert said in a 1989 interview.’
Maddeningly, he doesn’t tell us which wires the mice preferred. Some people have no sense of what’s important.
Better red than dead
We asked why last week’s mice ate only red cable insulation, leaving the equally tasty stripy stuff alone. None of you took our advice to eat some insulation to find out – or at least, none of you survived to tell us. So we are left to speculate.
‘The red part of the light spectrum tastes awful, so mice will only eat insulation that reflects, rather than absorbs red light,’ says Richard Keith at Microlights Group. Don’t write! He’s winding you up.
‘With the new WEEE and RoHS directives, we have to look at our cables here because lead is used for red insulation,’ says Steve Wright at Synatel.
‘Do mice like lead? Do they die from lead poisoning afterwards? Will the new directive and removal of lead stop mice eating the insulation. thus extending their life? And will we become overrun with rodents?’ So many questions, but at least we have you out there to answer for us.
A fire in the sky, and a hovercraft full of eels
Mike Brennan will not be using the Finnish computer programme that makes air guitar into real guitar.
‘Who needs an air guitar? I have a real guitar and I can already play Smoke on the Water badly,’ he claims. We’re sure his neighbours will confirm this. On the other hand, we feel it is our duty to inform Mike that he already has an air guitar. We all do. It’s just that most of us leave them in their air guitar cases.
Meanwhile, no one can explain to us the Finnish saying that ‘Life is smiling like a herring in a pint of sour milk,’ which wouldn’t make us smile. But herrings are a funny bunch. Or shoal. School. Whatever.
Rob Clack instead contributes the Swedish for ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’ (© Monty Python Hungarian phrasebook), taught to him by his wife’s Swedish PhD student, which inspires us to ask for some more Nordic technology expressions that we can misprint for fun.
And, in case you need it: ‘Min svävere ar ful med ål.’
Worst days of our lives
Continuing our exciting quest for the most miserable day of the year, we examine the plight of the Scottish football fan.
'For some of us, the most miserable day of this year was undoubtedly the day of the European Championship qualifying draw. As a Scot, can you imagine what it was like looking at our group, then seeing the England group?' says John Stenhouse, at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.
'Can't agree with your nomination for the most depressing day being the day England are knocked out of the World Cup. Being a Scot, the day they win it would be far worse,' says Jim Smellie.
And we have bad news for Chris, at Flexible Lamps, who last week suggested a boycott of leap year days on behalf of full-time staff, because they don't get paid extra for them.
'He will be relieved to know that he hasn't been working unpaid on every 29 February,' says Andrew Turner, at Peter Wilson Fine Art Auctioneers, pointing out that all the leap day does is bring us back into line with solar time.
'He has in fact been overpaid – or paid in advance if you look at another way – in the intervening years.'
Pick up my air guitar and play
We are delighted to hear that the long nights at Helsinki University of Technology aren't affecting the ability of what newspapers such as ourselves call 'boffins' to do useful work. That's why we send kudos to Aki Kavernos, who last week was all over the news demonstrating his computer system that interprets air guitar playing and makes it sound like a badly played real guitar. We're even happier that with the world's media watching, Aki chose to play Smoke on the Water. Badly.
It only remains to note that Oulu, an even more remote outpost of Finland that houses many technology companies (think Maidenhead if it were north of the Arctic Circle) holds the Oulun Musiikkivideofestivaalit every year, featuring the world Air Guitar Championships. Watch the winners at www.omvf.net/2005/index.php?lang=en.
'According to a traditional Finnish
saying, life is smiling like a herring in a pint of sour milk!' says the web site, somewhat untranslatably.
Bunny talks
This week's book dedications come courtesy of Sean Anderson. Apart from the dedications themselves, we get a valuable insight into your choice of reading matter.
Sean's two selections are Just XML by John E. Simpson, featuring the dedication 'to Toni (fiery boar to my jackrabbit)'.
Ron Patton, author of Software Testing, sets his sights a little lower. 'Hey Val, we can go out now!' he says.
You're all still thinking about XML John being a jackrabbit, aren't you.
No holds barred
If you can't handle the site that tells you not to click at all, try a site where you only have to click once: www.holdthebutton.com.
'I've gone away for the weekend with the phone sitting on the mouse button,' says Matt Whitby, at English Heritage. 'What can I say? I'm competitive.'
So much so that he's alerted all of us to what is perhaps the most mindless competition ever devised, and God knows we've tried in that department. If you start to play the game today, you might have just beaten the record when next week's Backbytes hits your desk.
Colour supplement
'I often get asked to repair all sorts of electronic items,' begins Stuart Taylor, at Trader Media Group, with the distinctively chirpy tone of a man with a rodent story to tell.
'One of them was an old valve guitar amplifier that had gone with a loud pop when its owner switched it on. I opened the case, and at first nothing looked out of place, until I noticed that a large number of the wires underneath the chassis were missing the insulation along their length; all cleanly removed.'
The affected wires were the ones which should have been red. The blue, black and green wires were untouched.
'I related this tale to a fellow repairer,' says Stuart. 'He informed me that mice are colour blind, and that is why they left the other colours intact. Is this true?'
Well obviously not, because they wouldn't know which wires were red, but is there a reason why mice prefer red insulation? Maybe one of you could help us out by eating some live wires to see whether the red ones taste better.
Getting to the bottom of things
Remember the bummer error from last week? 'You get this error with Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3 as well,' says an excited Lloyd Langley, wondering where else it appears.
Clickety-boo
Several of you write proudly to claim that you managed to navigate www.dontclick.it without clicking once. Congratulations.
Others admit to being unable to resist the odd click, which makes us wonder why we're helping when really this is in the realm of psychotherapy. Others give in to the rage this site inevitably creates.
'How daft is a site that claims it doesn't need mouse clicks, yet before you can use their "wonderful" new interface you have to click something - the CLICK HERE part of the text,' says Darren Flynn, at Baker Goodchild, who is purple, yes purple, with rage.
It's not our fault. We just report the news.
Stock exchange
So why do shop assistants at PC World who cannot locate stock, divert customers to Currys? Because, as several of you point out, they are owned by the same group. 'If they have consolidated their stock control systems, any bets on the chance of getting what you want?' asks reader Keith Barlow.
A bum rap
We don't want you to send in your error messages, because, let's be honest, we've seen them all by now. Except for this one, for which we break the golden rule of Backbytes: never go back.
'Although I realise this feature has ended, thought you might like the attached error that has just appeared when trying to scan an image into Paint Shop Pro 7,' says Adam Newton, at Sheffield Forgemasters Engineering.
Chairman couldn't connect to the web
Our vivid mouse-in-printer story has prompted at least one of you to send in a wildlife-meets-hardware story. Are there any more? If so, we'd like to hear them. Maybe if we get a few stories, we'll give a prize to the most entertaining, sorry: ghastly and sickening. For example: 'After reading about the mouse in the printer I felt compelled to tell you about a support call I dealt with recently,' says Jill Pass, at Christies Care.
'Our chairman has a computer at home, and recently said it would not turn on. After getting him to check all the cables he brought it in for us to investigate. On taking it apart the connection between the motherboard and the hard drive had been blocked' (wait for it) 'by a spiders' nest. When he heard, he asked for the nest in an envelope so he could replace it in his barn.' We're assuming it didn't go through the post.
SGML: Soppy, Gooey, Mushy for Linda
We are still anxious to hear about geeky book dedications. Mark Taylor, part of the Astrophysics Group at Bristol University, suggests Charles F Goldfarb's definitive SGML Handbook.
'To Linda, but for whom life would be like SGML without an application - all form and no meaning.' Linda's response is not recorded.
Can anyone top this?
Look before you leap
Keep those ideas coming for the worst day of the year, but we have a very interesting suggestion from Chris Pritchard, at Flexible Lamps.
'The worst day, the one that really should be taken outside and given a good kicking, thankfully won't happen this ear. It's 29 February,' he says. 'Those of us who are salaried staff sit at our desks working for the duration of this miserable, loathsome day, without being paid a bean for it. Being paid monthly, we get the same amount of dosh, regardless of whether there are 28 days in February or 29. So every four years, we work the extra day – for nothing. I feel we should boycott the next one in 2008, leave our hourly or weekly paid colleagues to get on with it, and go down the pub.'
It's not exactly what the Tolpuddle martyrs campaigned for, but if it involves a day in the pub we're all for it. Anymore worst day suggestions?
The Gloomsday Book
Our assertion that the day England get knocked out of the World Cup will be the worst day of the year doesn’t meet with universal approval. ‘Here in Scotland we like to think of that day as a national holiday, or “Let’s All Laugh At A Country Getting Knocked Out Of A Cup Competition Early And Not Us Day”. Do you think it will catch on?’ asks Greig Logan. Not in this office.
Any more suggestions as to the worst day this year, let us know – in advance, if possible.
Tell us your problems – but keep it brief
While Business Objects, if you recall, is allocating a 13-digit number to its support queries, BT is not pursuing quite the same strategy.
‘I recently had occasion to log a fault on BT’s web site. There was a description box for details not covered in the drop-down selections,’ says Murray Grainger, at Elizabeth Finn Homes. So he started typing, and then stopped, having hit the box size limit – of 150 characters.
‘Having savagely abbreviated my fault to fit into 150 characters, I will not be surprised if the technicians have no idea what is wrong.’
Don’t worry Murray: they might all be 18 years old, in which case they have grown up trying to make sense of txt msgs.
Voulez-vous chercher avec moi, ce soir?
We’d love to hear from any Backbytes readers involved in the exciting European project to create an alternative to Google, known as Quaero. Actually, there probably aren’t any, because it’s a French-German project, which President Chirac referred to in his New Year address. ‘Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world,’ he said, which just goes to show that he’s never used Google.com, or indeed Google.fr for that matter, where he can find anything in French on the internet already.
It’s only words
In years to come it may be called ‘The Hilton Defence’. We’re indebted to The Sun newspaper for its report from Paris Hilton’s pre-trial statement before a court case in which she is being sued for $5.7m (£3.2m) after she was accused of planting a false story in the New York Post. One piece of evidence is an email she sent to her publicist – in which she apparently praises him for placing the story – about which she told the lawyers: ‘Whatever I write in email, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just words that I write.’
Try that excuse at work, and let us know how it goes. The Sun also reports that it emerged during the hearing that Ms Hilton didn’t know London was in the UK or that not everyone in Europe spoke French, so perhaps she’s not the best role model for your career.
Look out for small print
A recent call about a printer problem left Bill Roberts at Wardle Storeys a little lost for words. The problem was, it seems, that a mouse had got itself trapped in the works. We felt that the somewhat bad-taste photo depicting the remains of the once-curious furball were slightly too graphic for the eyes of our sensitive readers. ‘I’m afraid requests for a new mouse or complaints of a squeaky printer will never be the same again,’ says Bill, significantly enhancing the amount of dead rodent humour in Computing.
Futility comes in useful
Our discovery of Star Wars rewritten, so it could be displayed in ASCII – a sort of high water mark in cut-price, low-tech pointlessness – predictably impressed our old mate Cliff Lawson at Amstrad, from where many other devices that could be described in that way have originated. Only kidding, Cliff. That’s a bit mean because he usefully sent a link to an image-to-text converter site – www.text-image.com/convert – and a picture of himself rendered, aptly, with the use of the letter why, sorry ‘y’. Jeff Fox at the Highways Agency usefully points out the links we had missed at the bottom of the page because our minds were so numbed by watching two ASCII robots talking: build your own jet turbine www.asciimation.co.nz/turbine . Use the turbine to cool your beer: www.asciimation.co.nz/beer. We hope to see a version of this from Amstrad in time for Christmas, only £39.99.
The wrong trousers
We delight in bringing you useless inventions, but we’re not sure what to think of Levi Strauss’s decision to launch a pair of jeans that can control your iPod. This obviously addresses the needs of the silent majority who suffer the hardship of having to take their iPod out of their pocket to press the buttons. The RedWire DLX jeans, which go on sale this summer, will be fitted with a remote control and docking station. They have attached headphones, are likely to cost £115, and have very complicated washing instructions. We recommend you buy some iPod remote control headphones and a separate pair of jeans, overcoming the need to change your trousers every time you want to listen to music.
