Category: Terminally boring

A few techo ramblings

You may have noticed that recent changes made by WordPress (they make changes pretty regularly) have resulted in the loss of the “Quote” facility and of the individual serial numbers for comments.   Rather a shame, but I have checked everything that can be checked and there’s no way to bring them back, as far as I can see.

They’ve also mucked around with the comment box – it still works as it always did, but the text that used to remind you that you can’t comment unless you’re logged on is not there any more.   You do still have to be logged in though.   If you try to comment when you’re not logged in, nothing will happen when you click on the “Post” button.   Nothing, nada, zilch.   You’ll just be left hanging – not a friendly outcome, but there’s nowt I can do about it. 😦

Finally, for about the hundredth time, please can certain Charioteers remember that “it’s” (with an apostrophe) always means “it is” (or “it has”) and is never, ever the possessive (genitive, belonging) case.   If you need the possessive, as in “the cat licked its paw”, leave the apostrophe out.   Yes, it’s the opposite of what we do with all other words, but that’s English for you.

Lastly, totally off track, how about our young Canberran, Nick Kyrgios?   What a guy!   Pronounced “Kir-ee-os”, in case you were wondering; the “g” is silent. 

Overrated: Google overhead view

Bypassing all its criticisms- invasion of privacy issues, cursor navigational problems, serial killings as they occur- Google street view is a fine application. The ability to teleport to anywhere in the world is Star Trek at your fingertips. Beam me up, I mean, beam me down to Barbados, Scotty.

Where Google comes down to earth is with its overhead view option. This satellite imagery, used often by television news stations, is boring. There’s nothing interesting about the top of something. You won’t hear an actress or a model say “ oh my best feature is the plan view of my head.” Continue reading “Overrated: Google overhead view”

Copacabana Dreams

The left footers really should know better. Don’t they read the good book? Graven images aren’t allowed. God is not happy. After trying to hold his temper and count to, I don’t know, a virgintillion and one his patience ran out and he rained down on the Rio statue of Christ the Redeemer some very, very frightening tautological thunderbolts and lightning.

Aiming this year to travel more, Brazil is one of the countries on my goto list. My goal is not to help fix the statue or swim in the Amazon river or look at the rock paintings in the Parque Nacional da Serra da Capivara. Would you believe I’m not even going there to watch the skimpily clad carnival girls rocococoing in the flesh. My mission is to make the natives better at football. Coming from where I come from I’m sure my ministry will be helpful in this godforsaken land of no-hopers. After all, my five-a-side team have won their last few matches.

Gin and Fat.

Well this started out as a comment on Sipu’s recent post, then as usual it got so long and convoluted I decided it better belonged here.

A number of unforeseen consequences of Whitney’s cotton gin followed rapidly after its wider application.  The rapid growth in cotton fibre production in the southern states was accompanied by a huge supply of cottonseed, for every bale of cotton (480 lbs) an astonishing 700 pounds of cottonseed were produced, most of it was dumped in the nearest river (gins were often water powered) or simply left on the ground to rot.

Continue reading “Gin and Fat.”

War and Gin

Had my father been alive, this month would have seen him celebrate his 100th birthday. Of course 1914 is better remembered for being the year that The Great War commenced.

It was an earlier great war, what Southern States call, ‘The War of Northern Agression’ aka the American Civil War, that saw the birth of my grandfather, in November 1862; exactly one year before President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

The Napoleonic Wars had not yet commenced when my great grandfather was born 220 years ago, in February 1794. However, they were well under way when, at the age of 16 he went off to fight with Wellington against the Corsican upstart. Much to his chagrin, my ancestor was wounded at the battle of Quatre Bras, which took place two days before Waterloo and thus was unable to take part in that more famous battle. Continue reading “War and Gin”

To Google or not…

There are an estimated one billion Google searches a day, give or take a few million either way. I am delighted to be in the minority of internet users that do not use the search engine’s facility. For the record I also don’t Ask Jeeves or use the other lesser-known singing search machines like Bing, Sinatra or Dean Martin. I am of the opinion that if I am in the dark, I’ll stay there. Where is it said that you need to know everything? Continue reading “To Google or not…”

The Charioteer in the clown’s house was right

A bunch of us held a gathering at the local McDonald’s where a wide range of topics was discussed. After we had exhausted the serious issues of our time -and polished off a burger or six- we started to talk about television shows and the Emmy awards. I was congratulated on predicting two of the winners long before the short list was announced. Furthermore, these were my only two predictions and both long shots; every man and his dog could have picked Breaking Bad.
https://charioteers.org/2012/09/10/emmy-award-prediction/
https://charioteers.org/2013/07/27/he-got-a-gun-he-got-a-gun-everybodys-got-guns/

One of the members asked if I had insider knowledge. I said I was not at liberty to answer that. A few extra McFlurries were used as a bribe but I stuck to my guns and kept schtum. They’re now convinced I’m in the screenwriter’s guild because I didn’t break the unwritten code of conduct and spill the ketchup, I mean beans.

No nicotine in the nick

I’m sure some cherished colleagues have diplomatically mild views on how best to punish criminals.

 

But HMGov has come up with a humdinger – taking the fags away from the 80% of inmates who smoke. What a stroke of penological genius! Let’s show genuine concern for the prison environment, not to mention the health of the minders and the minded.

Backside wonders whether most of the deprived denizens will ask for transfers to Rikers island, Bang Kwang or La Sante where they could at least nurse their bruises with a quiet drag.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/20/smoking-ban-plan-prisons-fears-disturbances