Drunk and dress-orderly
We asked for unfortunate tales of office drunkenness. Sue Flower at Elsevier remembers a particular boozy lunch from the 1980s when she was working for a software house in Maidenhead. (For those of you too young to recall, most of the 1980s was spent at lunch).
“Malcolm was four sheets to the wind and after tipping the melted ice bucket over himself he took a bit of a fancy to the Chinese dress I was wearing,” she recalls.
Sue snuck back to the office, and was on the phone to one of her customers when Malcolm snatched the phone.
“I have this gorgeous woman in a Chinese dress and I can’t let her go,” he shouted before slamming down the receiver and grabbing her.
“Strangely, the restaurant refused to have us back.”
More boozy lunch stories please.
No key like Home
Some more speculation on prisoners’ keyboards.
“Even if there was a prison break, despite the lack of Escape keys and extra Ctrl key, the prisoners would have nowhere to go,” says Kieron Hall. “Their Home keys would have been taken from them before they were banged up.”
Reader fails test for secret service
“There is something ironic about the fact that the MI6 recruitment advert wrapped around the current issue of Computing is taped onto the Backbytes page,” says Duncan Drury at Christian Aid.
“It makes it impossible to read the majority of the content without carefully cutting the tape, rather than, as usual, tearing open the magazine to head straight to the recruitment page.
“Have I failed some kind of cunning test of my ingenuity designed to weed out those unsuited for undercover operations?”
We think that writing to Backbytes to talk about enthusiastically reading the recruitment page would rule you out of the diplomatic service, Duncan. If, indeed, that is your real name.
Quest for terms hits right Angle
“Your Esperanto commentators may come over as a little weird,” says Brian Barker, thus ensuring at least 100 more comments on the Backbytes blog page (backbytes.computing.co.uk).
“As we say in English: ‘Bless!’ Perhaps British MPs are a little weird as well, however. Eight British MPs have nominated Esperanto for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Meanwhile we asked for computing terms.
“Probably the best source for computing terms is the ‘Komputada Leksikono’, a lexicon of computing, at www.esperanto.mv.ru/KompLeks/. For an English-language index, click on the letters in the left-hand frame under ‘Angle’,” says a contributor who signs himself only as Hoss.
If you’re wondering, “Angle” is “English”. Keep up at the back.
Souperman
Sometimes we wonder if scientists are developing new stuff just so they can get into Backbytes.
Which brings us to the Co-operative Human Robot Interaction Systems (Chris) project, based at the Bristol Robotics Lab, which has won a £1m grant from the European Commission to find out if they can build a robot to stir soup.
Professor Chris Melhuish explains that: “Not only does the robot need to know what the goal is, but it also needs to know how hard to stir the soup, what it means when you hold up your hand to say enough, to interpret the look of pain on your face if you accidentally get splashed with hot soup, and to stop stirring when told.”
Or you could just employ a real person.
Helpdesks cannot solve stupidity
We close this week with Sunrise Software and the UK’s top “support desk shockers”.
Not least the HR director who brought her laptop to work in a plastic bag. It was not working because it was covered in her son’s vomit.
Then there was the Apple Mac user who moaned that she couldn’t use the computer’s pedal (the mouse had fallen on the floor).
And the actuary who complained about the lack of BlackBerry coverage on his journey home. Would it be possible, he asked his IT manager, for someone to move the satellite?
But for sheer uselessness, we’re pleased to hear about the London telecoms firm that called IT support to ask for the kettle to be descaled.
We assume they told her to turn it off and on again.
Use your brain, silly, not sat-nav
We return to Polperro (www.polperro.org) where Abbi Rendell is still looking for her cat Jerry, last spotted on the webcam of the Claremont Hotel (“A warm welcome from Bill and staff”) by Deb from Indiana.
Its status as Backbytes’ favourite town is reinforced by a story with pictures on its web site warning sat-nav users not to get their JCBs stuck in its tiny streets.
“The problem is, of course, that Polperro is a real world and sat-nav is fantasy. Narrow in Polperro means NARROW (like less wide than your vehicle) and steep means STEEP (like steeper than your engine/clutch/gearbox can endure) – so switch off the sat-nav.”
We’re going to retire to this place.
Going backwards
Following our coverage of contactless payment systems, Andrew Calver-Jones writes from CTi Communications to question the direction our payment security is heading.
“First you had to be able to copy a signature, now with chip-and-PIN someone just needs to look over your shoulder before they nick the card,” he says. “With contactless payment surely they just need to nick the card?”
Not if you beat the thieves by leaving the card at home on purpose.
Even a bra can’t stretch this far
We continue our Faustian pact with the consumer products industry, where we cover the exciting new concept products that they create in a shameless attempt to get coverage in columns such as this one.
And so to Triumph’s solar-powered bra, which comes with a detachable solar panel. This exciting development could power an iPod or a mobile phone, the company suggests.
There are three problems at the moment that will mean this is probably the last time you will ever hear about the “Photovoltaic-Powered Bra”.
The first is that it contains an enormous solar panel, which is more or less just glued on the front.
The second is that it’s damaged by rain.
The third is that it doesn’t work if you put clothes on top of it.
So we conclude this is easily the silliest boffin idea we have ever featured. Unless, of course, you know better.
Coded mystery
We have discovered from Scott Hanselman’s Computerzen.com blog that LOLCode has two .Net implementations for all of you Microsoft developers who want to program in the language of LOLCats (the non-techies among us are beginning to get a mild headache right about now).
Here’s some sample code:
I HAS A CODE ITZ “CRAZY”
VISIBLE CODE
I HAS A NUMBR
LOL NUMBR R 2
VISIBLE NUMBR TIEMZ 2
And so it goes on. We often add that you couldn’t make it up; and then someone does.
Esperanto may actually solve it
Rather excitingly several of our Esperanto-speaking readers have commented on the Backbytes blog page in a language we don’t yet understand.
But being good global citizens, they also posted translations.
“The number of native speakers of Esperanto is closer to 2,000 than to 1,000,” offers Enrique, who runs the Esperanto Fremont pages. “But that is not important, because most of the Esperanto speakers, learned it as a second language.”
Or, in Esperanto “Sed tio ne gravas, cxar la plejmulto el ni, lernis Esperanton kiel duan lingvon.”
Viljo Blanka (translation: Bill White) claims that there are about 3,000 native speakers, but he doesn’t know who counted them.
“Mi estas kaj esperantisto kaj Morica dancantoj, do mi estas multoble malsama,” he says, which translates as: “But I’m an esperantist and a Morris dancer, so I’m multiply different”.
It’s a vision of a different world. Please could someone post some computing terms in Esperanto for our technical readers who might occasionally want to baffle a cold-calling non-speaker?
Not one for the cold-blooded
John Tweed at EDS was disturbed about our piece on Keith Hurford, the Welsh Blood Service and cold callers.
“The thought of a blood service being contacted by cold callers made me shudder,” he says. “Surely, it’s warm ones they want?”
We’re speaking your language...
“It’s lovely to see Esperanto being taken seriously on your page, but your figure of 1,000 speakers is a bit short of the mark,” says Lynda Hill.
How dare you Lynda – we sourced that from Wikipedia, so it must be true!
A “native” speaker is someone who learns it at home from their parents and – let’s be honest – we’re surprised that there are even 1,000 of them. In a less tolerant society someone would call in the social services.
We’re not anti-Esperanto, we just like poking fun at people who are different. So if you’re a speaker, or if you work with a speaker, please get in touch. In Esperanto, if possible.
... but r U red e to h8 LOL? xx
While we are on the subject of odd languages, Richard Murrell brings LOLCODE to our attention, defined as “an esoteric programming language inspired by the pidgin English expressed in examples of the LOLCAT internet meme”. What they mean is, it’s a made- up language based on text messages. Richard gives us this example:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
UP VAR!!1
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10?
KTHX
VISIBLE VAR
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE
This from Google: “Loops lack counters or conditions, and thus do not cease inherently. They must be manually broken with the GTFO...command”. A language worthy of our attention, you must admit.
Any LOLcoders, please continue our education.
Locked out
You will recall that Kevin Ellis made quite a good joke last week about prison keyboards and escape keys.
“I suspect the difficulty was that the authorities wanted to replace the Escape key with an extra Ctrl key,” says Mik Towse at Xemik Solutions, joining in the fun. “However, rather than fail due to lack of Ctrl, they could have replaced it with a Scroll Lock.”
Get with the program(me)
“This morning a colleague of mine asked me to clarify something for him,” says a shocked Richard Hind, writing from York College. “He asked: ‘Program, as in computer program, isn’t spelled double-m-e, is it?’”
Richard asked why he would ask, and the teacher pointed out that the A-level paper he was marking used the double-m-e spelling throughout. We toast the stubborn old-skool Englishness of the AQA examination board, because we’re sure it can’t have been spelled that way because of that other great British national characteristic: careless amateurishness.
Light-headed
Martin Raynsford tried to buy some LEDs from Farnell last week, and received the following advice: “8530319 is a discontinued item with a limited inventory of five. The quantity in your shopping basket has been adjusted accordingly...Product 8530319 needs to be ordered in multiples of 10. We have altered your quantity from 13 to 20”.
Eerie Indiana
The IT stories you don’t get in other newspapers usually turn up in The Sun. For example, the tale of Abbi Rendell’s cat Jerry, lost in October in her home village of Polperro, Cornwall.
She posted on the local web site (www.polperro.org) asking if anyone had seen Jerry and received an email from Deb Wilgus.
Deb had seen Jerry sleeping outside a local hotel. But... Deb lives in Indiana, and saw Jerry while watching Polperro on her webcam. Are we the only people who find this a bit creepy?
Under the influence
Norwich Union Healthcare’s groundbreaking research is important to pass on: one in three employees admitted going to work with a hangover and more than one in 10 has been drunk at their desk.
In construction, 24 per cent have been drunk at work and among professionals, it’s 23 per cent. Only about one in seven IT people has been sozzled at work, but it’s still above average.
But not as far as the 41 per cent of people in media jobs who admitted being drunk at work, which makes us wonder why the other 59 per cent bothered to lie to the researcher.
So put that glass down – what happened when you were drunk at work? Your stories please.
No understando publicity lingo
“Of course Nerdic is not a language – just the result of a highly successful publicity stunt,” writes Bill Chapman, commenting on our report into a highly successful publicity stunt by that company we can’t remember the name of who wasted our precious time by pretending that “Nerdic” was Europe’s fastest-growing language.
“If you’re looking for a real new language, take a look at Esperanto,” he says.
So we did, and we agree: it’s much more interesting than geek jargon.
Did you know that George Soros is one of only 1,000 native speakers in the world? That “computer” translates as “komputilo” and malmangi means to vomit, or literally to “un-eat”? Or that if you visit the Staki public house, you will find that your glass is duon-plena?
Of course you didn’t. We welcome any speakers of interesting-yet-pointless languages to suggest useful words for our readers. Or, of course, to correct our grammar.
It’s bitte out
Keith Hurford at the Welsh Blood Service had a bright idea to stop cold callers phoning him from India.
“I once asked my son, who was doing GCSE German, to answer the phone in German and was stunned when the caller began a conversation with him, also in German. There’s obviously no escape.”
Trouble praising double glazing
“Hang on a minute,” says Steve Mansfield. “Your correspondent Andrew Long ‘used’ to be a cold caller, and is ‘now’ a recruitment consultant?
“Since most recruitment consultants don’t have the faintest idea about, well, anything, whereas at least cold callers know that you need double glazing or cavity wall insulation, isn’t that a move down the career ladder?”
But Steve: in one job his role is to call people who don’t want to be called to try to sell them something that he doesn’t know about and that they don’t really want. In the other job, he’s a double-glazing salesman.
Your name’s not on the list...
“No, it won’t do,” says Martin Williams. “The current debate on whether and how you alter listed buildings is ill-informed.”
That’s nothing new for us Martin. We make most bloggers look balanced.
“As the warden of a Grade II* listed building (The Pales, Llandegley, in Powys) I can inform you that cavity wall insulation would not require permission, but plastic windows would,” he says.
See, Grade II listing just means you can’t change the way the building looks. Grade I listing means you can’t do anything at all to your house without permission. We’re wondering though: does a warden come with the purchase price? And would he answer the phone to cold callers?
Escape clause
Kevin Ellis at Bramhall High School responds to our story entitled “Prisoner database is scaled back and delayed”.
“My first thought when I saw this headline was it will be because of the difficulty sourcing keyboards with no escape key,” he says, confirming that, in Bramhall at least, the age of light entertainment is not dead.
Clocking off
From Pool Business and Enterprise College Bill Lamin writes to express mystification at a sales email he’s just received entitled “Wireless School Clocks”.
“What are they talking about?” he asks, bewildered. “All our school clocks are already wireless. They run on little batteries.”
Reckless Eric
For those of you unaware of the role in the history of the internet taken by Eric Tipton, of Wallingford, Connecticut, we direct you to: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data.
As the report says: “The government does not have a backup of the internet, but had ‘always wanted to get around to making one’.”
We trust our own government specialist reporters will be asking some tough questions at the prime minister’s next monthly press conference.
Mission control
It’s not only CVs and interviews where errors occur.
David Johnson remembers the time when company mission statements were trendy. His firm leapt onto the bandwagon – only to promptly fall off – by pledging to deliver “a quailty product to our customers”.
