Odd bodkin
Last week we asked what a bodkin was.
'The bodkin is one of the most useful items any home can acquire. It is a sort of large-eyed blunt needle, useless for sewing, but essential for rethreading elastic in knickers,' says Helen George, who sounds like an entertaining companion for a night out.
Lost in machine translation
Our old mate Martin Williams at Powys County Council has come up with an excellent waste of time based on our search for pointless phrases in other languages. He correctly surmises that many Backbytes readers are keen cooks, following our numerous threads on Turducken, sandwiches, Cheesy Wotsits and all-you-can-eat pizza.
'Do a Google search for a top-class French chef - say, Marc Veyrat, who has three Michelin stars - and the word “recettes” (French for recipes), and then use the Translate This Page facility,' he says. 'Where else would you find recipes for the likes of Five Insane Salads of the Meadows (featuring bunches of Stellar Young Persons, and Mottled Tinsel Maker), or, my current favourite, Foam of Virtual Bacon.'
In case you are wondering, the ingredients are: smoked chest, vegetable stock, hen bubble (optional), milk, salt and semolina.
'Caraméliser manioc with dead bacon in a frying pan, then to let drain the plugs during a half hour,' it says here. Who said machine translation was impossible?
Tourist traps
It is the tourist season. 'Having pre-booked a trip on the London Eye, I was relatively impressed with the simplicity of the online booking system until my plans hit a snag,' says Graham Tucker.
He called, and the pre-recorded message asked him to email. So he did, saying that he would have to cancel. The Eye people emailed back to say that he would have to send them his e-voucher - to a postal address. To claim his refund, he had to print the voucher on his PC, use the PC to look up the address to send it to, pop the printout in an envelope and post it.
It's probably a tourist thing: part of the Summer 2006 Great British Festival of Bureaucracy.
We're sure you have seen some of the other exhibits and would love to point them out to any tourists who may be reading?
Force-fed
To return - yet again - to the subject of the taste of electricity: 'When I was younger, my sister would annoy my brother and me. One day, to make her go away, we told her to put her tongue on the Scalextric track,' begins Dan Darcy. You can see where this is going, can't you?
'My brother turned it on and I pressed my hand throttle. She was fine, up to the point where we applied three-quarter power. When we got to full power she started to scream and ended up with two black lines down her tongue.'
Licking a Scalextric track is ill-advised. If only more people knew this, one feels that injuries in the home would fall dramatically
Wasted energy
The world is full of complicated moral choices, and Les Litwin writes to point out one in particular.
'I've been following the recent discussions in Feedback on the merit of turning your PC off at night compared with getting your PC to do some useful work, such as the BBC Climate Change Experiment. Am I the only person who can see the irony of using your PC at night to run the BBC Climate Change Experiment?'
Not now, you're not, we say as we slap our foreheads, Les asks: 'Does the experiment take into account the global warming caused by leaving all these PCs switched on all the time?' And he admits to running it himself.
More SVGibberish
Our student pal who complained about the SVG web pages has some support.
'Not only does the SVG top menu look poor and fail to comply with their own standard, to add to the confusion even some of the text makes no sense to me,' says Joe Slane at Chaucer Insurance.
He quotes: 'SVGDeveloper 1.0 is a powerful software to develop svg [sic] applications. Facilitated by the powerful designing capability of the software, users can “draw” the most of shapes, texts, images, and so on. Using the powerful source coder of the software, users can write any complex svg application with the intelligence.'
The recipe for foam of virtual bacon begins to make sense.
The power of taste
You could always stick your fingers in a mains socket. That fabled figure from the history of IT – the BBC engineer – makes a guest appearance in our thread on the taste of electricity.
‘My father, a professional radio engineer, once told me he knew a BBC engineer in the early days who would stand on a chair, insert two fingers in a socket and state whether the supply was AC or DC,’ says Professor Peter Hill at Cranfield University.
‘He survived all the demos presumably as he didn’t put his tongue up there too.’
And for more insight into how we used to live, check out these books from the era before the first 10 pages of any science book were occupied with cheesy dedications: www.easyontheeye.net/ladybird/60s/621/621.htm (thanks to Nichlas Booth at RBS). What on earth is a bodkin?
As you like it
Which brings us sharply to the main part of our business today – to further discuss what electricity tastes like. ‘Does electricity taste different if you try it on different parts of your tongue?’ asks Stephen Nicholson at Columbus Direct, opening an intriguing new line of enquiry for all you battery tasters out there.
Meanwhile, David Franklin favours ‘tangy citrus’ – which implies he’s tasting it with the acid-sensing part of his tongue we guess. ‘It starts being “fizzy” and finishes up “smokey”,’ says Dave Lee.
‘Surely there is an opportunity here for the utility companies to add value,’ says Chris Harris at STL Ltd, who is obviously going places. ‘They could attract customers by flavouring their electricity supply. And the gas supply – who would not prefer an aroma of roses when they turn on the gas cooker but forget to light it?’
What could go wrong? If anyone else has ideas on adding value to dull commodities, let us know.
Finally, ‘I have found that PP3 batteries have a nutty flavour with a hint of basil in the aftertaste. Furthermore, if you try this test with batteries bought from Ikea, the taste is similar to that of meatballs,’ says Andy Titterton, implying that he has no taste at all.
A standard web of confusion
Reader Matt Strain, a computer science student at the University of Bristol, has had his youthful enthusiasm for web standards punctured.
We can all remember the rite of passage when we first realised that the internet was not perfect, and what a shock it was, so we understand his unhappiness.
‘Over the past few weeks we have been looking at the importance of standards to try to improve the web. This week we have been looking at the SVG standards and we were given an assignment using SVG. While researching for this assignment I visited www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG , only to discover that not only does the top menu look poor in Internet Explorer, but, more importantly, that it does not comply with the xhtml1-strict.dtd. This makes me wonder, what is the point in internet standards if the issuing body does not even comply?’
So long...
What’s the worst day of the week? It depends on how you define a day. ‘I think the worst day of the week is the 24 hours from Monday lunchtime to Tuesday lunchtime,’ says Sue Flower of Elsevier Ltd, rather creatively.
‘Monday morning passes in a blur, but by the afternoon the full awful prospect of the time stretching out to the next weekend faces you.’
She adds that the worst month of the year is March because it’s still winter. Sadly, she sent us her email on a Monday afternoon in March. ‘I feel very depressed’, she signs off.
Can anyone suggest anything to cheer Sue up? She doesn’t say if she works in customer service.
Charge your glass
With heavy heart we bring you news from the New Scientist that the famous MIT Media Lab has created wine glasses that ‘glow warmly when raised’, even when the drinkers are miles apart. This useful application of WiFi is designed to encourage social interaction.
The glasses, on which a red LED glows when the other one is picked up, and a white LED glows when the other person takes a drink, are to help people feel as if they are sharing a drinking experience.
Communal drinking is an important part of social interaction, claim the inventors, although as they obviously need to get out a bit more, it is arguable how much authority they have.
Brought to book
This week’s silly book dedication was uncovered by Greg Stevenson, at New Look, and reads: ‘To my soul mate, Donald P Sherman, whose love and support have encouraged me to achieve goals that once seemed unreachable and to face life’s events that at times seemed unbearable.’
What could these hitherto unreachable goals possibly be for Larissa T Moss? Presumably the writing of Business Intelligence Roadmap.
We trust that your experience reading the book isn’t one of those, you know, unbearable life events.
Safety tags
Someone referring to himself as ‘Dr Cowsley’ writes to comment on our recent news story on the introduction of medical RFID tags in Birmingham.
‘Accidents happen; there are recorded cases of surgeons amputating the wrong leg or, even worse, removing the wrong kidney,’ he says (or admits?).
‘I am sure we are all reassured to know that an RFID tag linked to a government IT project will make us safer from such mishaps, but what was wrong with the old system: drawing a big arrow and jokey comments with an indelible marker to guide the surgeon? Silly question. There was no money in it.’
Nordic love lesson
And now for the most exciting news of the week, if not the year so far.
‘I happen to know what “Are we not all, in some way, searching for our cow?” is in Norwegian,’ says Elya Grice.
This, you must agree, is very interesting, both philosophically and linguistically. If you ever want to chat up a Norwegian, just say: ‘Er vi ikke all, på noen måter, lete etter vår ku?’ and look deep and intense.
More weird foreign expressions please.
A taste for the shocking
Again we turn to the question that has our readership in a frenzy, limbs jerking uncontrollably, eyes popping. What does electricity taste like?
‘It tastes of currants,’ says Mark Hughes, to the accompaniment of the sound of a hi-hat cymbal.
‘The notion that someone should be encouraged to find out the taste of electricity is surely bordering on the reckless,’ says Rhed Robertson, at Verizon Business. ‘And most techies must know it tastes of lemon.’
Mark Johnston and his colleagues at Calderdale MBC have agreed on a ‘vinegary/citric taste’ for electricity in the Calderdale region.
But we defer to a qualified electrical engineer for the last word: ‘Clearly, none of you has ever been pinned down and had a 9V battery held on your tongue,’ says Suzanne Thomas, at Schurter. She settles for ‘stingy and metallic’, but has an intriguing challenge: ‘What would the optimum voltage/current be to taste electricity? Too much voltage and you would jerk your head away before you got the tang, too much current and your eyes would light up and your tongue catch fire.’ We are sure someone has a suggestion. Or an experiment.
Mousey flavours
‘I thought everyone knew electricity tastes like greasy tin,’ says Stuart Taylor, at Trader Media Group. ‘What I don’t know is, what do mice taste like?’
Colour-coded
On the subject of mice, a helpful idea on why they eat red wires.
‘I understand that a lot of mammals have quite good colour perception, to help them distinguish food types. Red is the colour many fruits go when they are ripe. So, to a mouse, the red wire is the ripe one, the green is unripe, and the black has probably gone bad,’ says Alistair Armitage, at Napier University.
It may be rubbish, but it’s entertaining, so it’s ideal for us on both counts.
Scary silence
We asked what ‘silence suppression’ might be in the sad knowledge that the silly emails would outnumber the sensible ones.
‘We have a special tool for silence suppression in this office,’ says Tom Lawton, at Honeywell, briefly getting our hopes up. ‘It is a secretary best described as having verbal diarrhoea. So we have no silence problems here.’
Chris Hills writes from North East Worcestershire College with an even sillier suggestion. ‘Silence suppression is used to suppress silence by playing what is known as “comfort noise”.
‘This is a kind of quiet white noise that is used on VoIP systems.’ Hang on, this is the sensible explanation.
‘With VoIP technology, the pauses between speech are truly silent, unlike the perceptible hiss that one becomes used to with analogue telephony. The “true” silence with VoIP is disturbing to one used to analogue systems, and gives callers the impression that the call has ended,’ explains even more sensible David Parsons at Nirex. On reflection we preferred the noisy secretary.
E-dining
Steve Wright claims that a PP9 battery has a ‘somewhat sweet, metallic taste, and a light burned tongue taste if you hold the battery on for too long’.
But this week’s most discerning gourmet is Phil Hallows: ‘From past experience electricity tastes fuzzy with a hint of lemon up to about 12V, and fairly tasteless after that. The sheath tastes of plastic. Red cable does not taste of strawberries, but the same as all the rest.’
Just don’t go round to his house for dinner.
Tangy on the tongue
Not only have many of you tasted electricity, but you have opinions on what it tastes like.
‘One day, while trying to diagnose a problem on a laptop, I had the power cable in my hand, as the batteries were showing signs of waning. Without thinking, I put it in my mouth and began to chew it, not realising until it was too late that it was, in fact, not a pen, and that it was indeed plugged in,’ says Jamie Gordon, who thinks that electricity tastes ‘tangy’.
I don’t like Tuesdays
We are unlikely to reach an agreement on which is the worst day of the year, but this week we take a giant step towards that goal thanks to Ken Tait, who nominates Tuesday. Every Tuesday.
‘I would like to state that I have always considered Tuesdays as the worst day of any week,’ he says.
‘This dates back to the 1970s when I used to read a cartoon strip by J Edward Oliver who started the Abolish Tuesdays campaign of which I am a staunch supporter.’
Meanwhile, back in Ken’s head, the problem with Tuesdays is their length: ‘Mondays to me are the quickest-passing day of the week. This is because I feel totally knackered after the weekend and I don’t notice the day passing.
‘However, by Tuesday I have come round and, despite being busy, the day drags. I have estimated that a particularly bad Tuesday can last up to three weeks.’
Ode to IT kit
Another book dedication is sent to us by Jamie Gordon at Data Encryption Systems, who points out that the dedications we’ve been making fun of so far may be horribly geeky, but at least they were made to real people.
‘How about dedicating a book to hardware, how geeky is that?’ he asks rhetorically, pointing out that Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by the late W Richard Stevens was dedicated to “MTS, the Michigan Terminal System, and the 360/67”.
Which must have pleased his wife and kids – if he had time to acquire either.
Fancy a nibble?
'The mice don’t care what colour the insulation is, the mice are chewing live cables,' is the theory of Steve Messenger, at Reuters. 'The valve amp uses DC power and red is the colour normally used for the primary DC supply.'
Steve has mice who chew the cables providing power to his pond pump. 'My assumption is that the mice find electricity tasty. I guess that the DC voltage in the valve amp was not high enough to kill them, whereas mice only get to chew a little bit of mains cable before discovering the deadly attraction.'
If anyone has an adventurous colleague, perhaps you could perform a quick experiment and tell us what electricity tastes like.
The right way to hold a button
Psst. Want to cheat at www.holdthebutton.com, perhaps the most pointless web-based competition ever devised? (and that's saying something). As you recall, it's a test of how long you can hold the left mouse button down.
'I'm sad to say that Matt Whitby wasted too much energy in leaving his phone on his mouse button all weekend. All he had to do was right click once he'd clicked the button and the timer keeps going!' says someone who claims to be called Mrs Badcrumble, but is in reality just ashamed to be caught cheating, as well as using several days of office computer time to see if they can get into the lead.
'So you can be "holding the button" for as long as your PC keeps going – while cooking, enjoying dinner with friends, walking the dogs, just pottering round the house or watching TV. It's not holdthebutton.com anymore, but more like WhosePCLastsLongest.com?'
Torn off a strip
Last week Komal Kari was fretting because his performance review was exactly like Dilbert's, and he was wondering if Scott Adams was stalking him.
But as several of you point out, it may be a case of life imitating art: perhaps Komal's boss had already read the cartoon and decided to use it as the basis for his performance review, so as to mess with his head.
If so, it worked.
A geek, sorry chip, off the old block
This week's book dedication is sad, in every way. 'In ASP.Net 2.0 2005 Edition, author George Shepherd opens his dedication with: "I got a great Father's Day card from my 14-year-old son this year. When I opened it up, I saw that he wrote the greeting in HTML!"' Jim Bassett tells us. The dedication then lists the HTML in question, before going on: 'After wiping away the tears…'
'He goes on to explain that this shows how the web is permeating our social infrastructure,' says Jim. 'But surely it just shows that his son is already well on the way to becoming a geek?'
Or that he knows how to make fun of his dad. More dedications please.
Some fishy French
Last week we brought you the Swedish for 'My hovercraft is full of eels', probably a first for a weekly UK IT publication, though as usual we haven’t checked.
Helen George writes to tell us why this phrase would be useful, based on her experiences of living in France and trying to make her French understood. 'When things get desperate, as they usually do, and an effort to speak French is required, I have resorted to the eel phrase as a standby: "Mon hydroglisseur est plein d'anguilles".
'It works every time. The hapless French people are so confused by what has just been said that they immediately resort to English themselves. Pretending to be a complete moron while performing the phrase also encourages them to flex their English skills.'
Remember, you're only meant to be pretending to be a moron if you try this.
Sshh! Enjoy the sound of silence
'While configuring a voice over IP phone I came across the setting "Silence Suppression",' says Peter Howell, at the Energy Auditing Agency. 'How do you suppress silence?'
Perhaps you’re just meant to leave the setting turned off. Or maybe someone could come up with a phone that administers a small electric shock to people who can’t finish a conversation.
We foresee a whole range of office devices that could deliver 'incentives' to staff to behave, but no doubt you will tell us that someone has invented them already. Or you're going to tell us what 'silence suppression' means in the real world.
