Things that Scared the Shit Out of Me as a Small Child

Number 1: This Film.

"A warning may come quite unexpectedly."

Shudder.

Misread Blog Roundup 27-Feb-2006

This week on the Traineesphere and beyond:

Kris has an interesting piece on how to chuck a dog, which is of no use to Kat who's mourning the fact her foster dog has been taken away by Dogtanian. Speaking of pets, Siobhan wants someone to buy her a live monkey.

Karol's been having fun selling rakes and stuff at the National Weeding Show. Charlotte's going back into the water closet, but judging by this picture, Connie beat her there by a whole year.

On the technology myths front: the Pillow-Book relates the Saga of Stephanie versus Grendel, and Ian is continuing his crusade against the fallacy that Mac Owners don't get menswear.

There'll be another round-up of blogs that I've misunderstood, misread and misrepresented next week. Or when I get around to it. Whatever.

Oooh...

... I made it into WIRED!

Well, Flickr Sudoku did. It's appeared on their Ten Best Flickr Mashups article!

Thanks to Siobhan for giving me the heads-up. Here hon, have some extra sloppy seconds with my thanks. ;-)

Really Big Things

I hope that that the old Routemaster (the classic "Red London Bus") never completely dies out, for one reason: what else would journalists use to measure Really Big Things?

I was reading an article today that described the new A380 passenger aircraft as "as long as seven Routemasters laid end-to-end". It also has a wingspan "wider than a football pitch", another favorite unit of measurement for the journalist.

In fact, they seem to have their own set of SI units, among others:

The Routemaster - for Really Long Things
The Football Pitch - for Really Wide Things (or Really Big Areas)
The Storey - for Really Tall Things

I used to think of it as an insult to my intelligence when they used these terms. I know how high 24 metres is. I don't need to be told it's "over 6 stories high!"

But then I realised that journalists are incapable of talking in normal weights and measures, due to some kind of mental re-conditioning they get at Journalist School.

Living with these people must be exceptionally hard.

"How far is it, Dad?"
"About a mile, or nearly 391 Routemaster buses placed end to end!"

"How much milk would you like in your coffee?"
"Ohh, just one 5 billionth of an Olympic Swimming Pool's worth, please."

"What size inside leg is Sir?"
"32 inches, that's the equivalent to a trip to the moon and back 0.00000000105659101 times!!"

The IT-Girl

Do you remember the Saga of the Missing Sky Cards? I wrote a long and rather snotty letter of complaint to them, and yesterday they wrote back offering me a £20 rebate as a means of apology.

I eventually got the card just before going on hols, which meant I was able to record the new Graham Linehan sitcom, The IT Crowd, set in a computer support department. I watched a couple of episodes last night.

I think it's the first ever sitcom where I've identified with every single main character. The slobbish but aimiable Roy, who doesn't really care that much about IT support beyond "turn it off and on again"; the socially inept computer nerd Moss, who gets excited by incredibly geeky gadgets; and their pretty line manager Jen whose obsession for nice shoes that are 2 sizes two small for her result in permanent foot injuries.

It's like someone gave me some dodgy Kryptonite* and split me into 3 people! :-)

*Pop quiz: what's the extra ingredient you need to make dodgy Kryptonite? You probably need to be over 30 to know this, or Richard Pryor.

Travesty

The English language is a strange thing. This is only really apparent when you compare it to other European languages like Dutch and French. What made me notice it recently was this sign in Lellebelle, the Amsterdam tranny club:



Travestie means transvestite in Dutch, as well as a few other languages. This had always amused me, it sounding so much like the English word travesty, meaning "an exaggerated or grotesque imitation or parody". I'm not sure I like the idea of being a "grotesque imitation"!

The similarity between the words transvestite and travesty doesn't end there, though. The "vest" part is from the Latin vestis, meaning "clothing". We also use it in words like "vestment" and, or course, plain old "vest"!

The "trans" part is also from Latin, meaning "across" or "switched". In the word "travesty" it got shortened further to "tra", but the word literally refers to something pretending to be something else though "switched clothing". Presumably that originally meant someone pretending to be someone else, but now we use it to mean anything that's not what it's pretending to be. A travesty of justice is something that appears to be just, but just isn't! (Two different uses of the word "just", I told you English was strange!)

Travesty got into English via words like travestire, an Italian word which means to disguise by dressing up.

So the words "travesty" and "transvestite" share identical roots. Somewhere in the melting pot of Indo-European languages the word "transvestite" lost most of the negative connotations that "travesty" has; or maybe "travesty" gained them.

Either way, I'm glad I'm a transvestite and not a travesty, however you spell it!

Amsterdone

I'm back!

Amsterdam was cool. No correction, Amsterdam was cold. Seems like my predictions for Mart Weather were horribly accurate. We still had fun though. :-)

A quick summary of activities partaken in:

• Canals: lots


• Van Gogh paintings: 100+


• Fries with mayo: 3


• Spacecakes eaten and miscellaneous druggish activities: 0 (that ain't my bag, baby).


• Windmills: 1


• Anne Franks: 0


• Tulips: 0


• Diamonds (in total carats): lots


• Very nice evening meals: 3 (1 Italian, 1 Indonesian, 1 kinda Dutch).


• Dressing up activities: 0 (look it was cold okay?)


• Erwtensoeps: 1 (just the thing on a cold Dutch day!)

There was other stuff. I'll upload some pics when I get around to it, but at the moment I'm still technically on holiday and away from my own PC. I could do it on Jane's but I can't be arsed. :-)

Seeya soon!

Gezellig

A perfectly Dutch word which sort of means 'cosily convivial'. It describes exactly all of the best bars and restaurants that the city has to offer.

This italian place is nothing special to look at, basic furniture and plain tiled walls. But the food is stunningly good and the atmosphere is fantastic.

Very gezellig.

Birthday Prezzie!

It my birfday! Yay me! :-)

The view from Gate 19

The weather's awful, but I don't care! It's my birthday and I'm off on holiday! Just realised I haven't checked whether roaming is enabled from this phone. So if you don't get any blog entries for a few days, you know why!

When it's spring again, I'll sing again...

... I'm going to Amsterdam! With the lovely Jane. Next week, in fact.

Actually, chances are it's not going to be spring-like at all.

In my home town we have something called "Mart Weather".

The Mart, or "Valentines Fair", is an old-fashioned travelling fair that takes over the centre of King's Lynn every February. It marks the start of the season for the Showman's guild, who's members take their travelling attractions from town to town throughout the year.

King's Lynn has a long association with fairgrounds, being the home of Frederick Savage, the inventor and manufacturer of the "platform gallopers", merry-go-round horses that actually galloped. And as a town we're rather proud of the fact that the annual fair season always starts here first.

Of course, we forget that this means we always get it during one of the coldest months of the year! In fact the arrival of the Mart nearly always marks the beginning of a particularly cold snap. Hence the term "Mart Weather". When I was growing up, my birthday (February 12th, fact fans!) was often spent snowed-in. Great if I had a new toboggan to test-drive, crap if I had WHSmiths vouchers that needed spending.

Maybe Amsterdam will fare better than King's Lynn, weather-wise. I don't really care, I just need to get away from the fens and dykes and get a change of scenery!

Er, they have mountains in Amsterdam, right?

Ben Rooney has the easiest job in the world

Ben Rooney compiles "Today on the web" for the Guardian newspaper.

This is what I imagine his working day consists of:

10:00AM Get up.

10:30AM Read the papers. Find some semi-interesting person or story in the news.

11:00AM Type it into Technorati. Probably Google Blogsearch it these days too. Maybe check to see who's back-linked to stories on the Guardian site.

11:30AM Spend a few minutes cutting-and-pasting what he finds into a template.

12:00PM Send finished template to editor. Have lunch.

So...

Abu Hamza Obesity Bird Flu Sion Jenkins U2 Chip and Pin Child Maintenance Evo Morales IT Crowd

Did you get that Rooney? My little Buzz-word Bomb has brought you here! We're on to you Rooney! No longer are the bloggers of the world going to put up with you growing fat from the hand-crafted content you've stolen from our sites! I dare you to quote from this blog post! I dare you!!

Wowsers trousers!

I've just checked my Google Ads stats, and thanks to yesterday's appeal I've had my best single day's takings ever, by a country mile!

Keep up the ad-clicking and we'll be well on track to donating a huge wodge of cash to this year's Sparkle.

(Although don't overdo it. I don't want Google getting suspicious and accusing me of faking ad traffic. One of two judicial clicks a day per person should be enough!)

Have you outsourced your brain?

I swear I just had this conversation on the phone:

Me: Hello, could I talk to your IT department please?

Woman: I'm sorry, we outsource all our IT functions.

Me: Okay, in that case could you give the number of the people who look after your email server?

Woman: I don't have a number, it's all outsourced.

Me: Ooookaaaay.... so how do you contact them if you have a problem?

Woman: We email them.