h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's something in this room, right now, going bleep every 120 seconds.

I don't immediately recognize it and it could be one of a dozen things. The bleep is short enough that there is no chance of getting a fix on its location...

Is it the battery going flat on my laptop? Is it my watch alarm? Is it the smoke detector battery? Something on TV? I'd better go find out...

gj101

Bet you its the smoke detector low battery alert.

For four weeks I thought we had a love-sick but lowly-sexed locust in our airing cupboard until Eureka! the smoke alarm chirruped when I was close by.

It's great that a battery-powered device tells you its battery is worn out, thus acting as an electronic voluntary redundancy application. But when it waits until you are fast asleep, or almost out of earshot and only sounds such a brief trill that you cannot be entirely sure that there was a noise at all ... then one can easily get paranoid.

Or suspect that Cirius Cybernetics actually exist ...

Bleepy things are generally ok, but I can't help feeling that we need to negotiate some kind of 'bleeping' standard so that further confusion can be avoided.

There are an exponentially increasing number of devices that 'bleep', or at least purport to 'bleep'. However, upon examination it can soon be discovered that some items that are specified to bleep do, in fact 'beep', 'eep', 'peep', 'meep', 'mleep', 'oeep', 'orrp', 'fangee' and 'twizzleflit'.

A number of independent studies have concluded that all electronically generated short term single frequency sounds are in fact prone to what is now commonly known as the 'bleep evolution' process, where a device exposed to variable environmental conditions is likely to mutate its 'bleep' depending on number of variables. They are too many in number to fully document here, but one is of such global impotance that it warrants a mention - sympathetic bleep metamorphosis.

In extreme cases 'bleeping' electronic devices located in close proximity to other such devices, or indeed songless pet birds, are known to change their own 'bleeps'. In one extremely extreme case, an oblivious pet parrot once famed for being able to recite the first paragraph of the Communist Manifesto was reduced to 'bleeping' after finding itself located close to a digital alarm clock for a long period of time. Sadly, the said bird had to be shot.

This in itself warrants international discussion on the matter, and I shall be lobbying my local member of Parliament immediately.

Bleeping things bleeping well bleeping get up my nose, down my throat and right up my arse! There is one that goes off at 2am...long enough to wake me up... but too short for me to find the bleeping thing...and another that starts bleeping at 5am...and its NOT the same bleeping b*****d that woke me up 3 hours earlier!!! this does not put me in the best of moods when I have to go in to work and give sympathy to spoiled young executives that have an irritatingly wide variaty of so-called humour inducing bleeping things that always go off and interupt anything I might be saying...damn..gota go, something is bleeping me.

I had a keyring thingy that beeps and flashes when you whistle, the idea being that you can use it to find your keys. The trouble is that you need to whistle like a maniac for a response, but just about every other sound (knives clattering, crisp packets rustling, laughter) set it off every 5 seconds or so when you don't want it to. In the end, it ended up in a hidden sealed container until we could get rid of it.

hey wanan be ma friend

This is the start of the Universal Bleep Catalog:
#1
Equipment: Toshiba Tecra 8000 CDT Laptop computer
Event: Imminent automatic shutdown due to low battery power
Frequency: 16,475 Hz (F#)
Pattern: , repeating indefinitely
Notes: This tone is also played, non repeating, when the lid is closed or the machine is powered off (in resume mode only).

#2
Equipment: Walter Jones & Co Type 17700/2 Ringing Dynamotor
Event: UK Engaged Tone
Frequency: 400 Hz
Pattern: for 0.75 seconds for 0.75 seconds, repeating
Notes: Now mainly replaced by a higher frequency on most digital exchanges.

#3
Equipment: Unknown
Event: Falkland Islands Ring Tone
Frequency: 12,000 Hz
Pattern: Short tones separated by long pauses
Notes: The international dialling codes section of the UK BT telephone directory has a comprehensive list of ringing and engaged tones for most countries of the world.

Please add some of your favourite tones to this list.
gj101

Okay, there are nice things that go bleep, like my beloved Pikachu Pokemon pet, and there are horrible things that go bleep, like smoke alarms with dying batteries. I hate smoke alarms, they're useless stupid evil little things we have to have! (Landlordrules, not okay.) We have four, they all sound slightly different, and they are all defective. The one in the hallway goes off if you take a shower and leave the bathroom door open. The one in my son's bedroom goes off at insects. I HATE SMOKE ALARMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whissendine (n.): "The noise which occurs (often by night) in a strange house, which is too short and too irregular for you to ever find out what it is and where it comes from."
From 'The Meaning of Liff' by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.

I have two really annoying things that go bleep!

One is a washing machine that insists on bleeping and driving you completely mad when it has finished doing it's thing. So much so that you cannot leave it to beep away and you have to open it to stop it.

The other one is even stranger it is a microwave that bleeps when it is finished until the door is open, yes it does not stop, a series of 4 bleeps - pause - 4 bleeps - pause - .... - - .... - (might be saying something in morse code!) etc etc etc,.

Very annoying, as for the washing machine the cover may have to come off and the offending device disconnected.

My phone goes bleep when the battery starts dying. Or, if I've got it set to vibrate, it vibrates while the battery is dying, thus using up a sizable chunk of the valuable remaining battery power.

A few years ago I remember having a hire car while I was visiting the US.

It had been parked in the sun all day and when I returned to it I could hardly get in, it was so hot inside. I left the door wide open while I got the engine started and put the air-conditioning on full. There was the usual ing that indicated that the seat-belt was not done up. So after a few minutes when the car had cooled down a bit I did up the seat-belt and prepared to move off. However, the ing didn't stop. I checked the seat-belt, the parking brake, the lights, everything was fine except for the damn noise.

After a good few minutes trying to figure out what was wrong I decided that I would just have to drive off with the still going. So I put the car in gear, closed the door and, guess what..., the ing stopped.

gj101

A few more things that go :
Tamagotchis
Aircraft seat call buttons
Garbage trucks when reversing
Barcode scanners at supermarket checkouts
Burglar alarms (on entry and exit as well as when they go off)
Car alarms (now what use are they?)
Car proximity alarms
Ski-pass readers
Speaking clock ... at the third ...

gj101

Let's add to that list:

Digital watches, with or without alarms set;
Computers that don't like a given action (if the sound is left on);
Phones with push-buttons, be they house-hold or call-boxes: each number pressed has a different tone;
Some Interac devices;
Microwave oven control consoles....

Fruitbat

Let's add to that list:

Digital watches, with or without alarms set;
Computers that don't like a given action (if the sound is left on);
Phones with push-buttons, be they house-hold or call-boxes: each number pressed has a different tone;
Some Interac devices;
Microwave oven control consoles....

Fruitbat

And there should be federal laws prohibiting bleeping of any sort by any electronic device which is not even in your house at all, but is being advertised/demonstrated on the bleeping television!

A couple of days ago I heard a very distinct bleep in my house that proved almost impossible to track down.

Every 20 seconds or so there would be a tiny electronic "ting" sort of a bleep. It got exteremly annoying as I checked everything I know of in the house that might have cause to raise my attention by bleeping at me. Mobile phones, PC's, laptop, digital watch, palm organiser, etc etc.

After some minutes it turned out to be the cat eating out of her ceramic food bowl. Weirdly, the tag on her collar was periodically knocking the side of the bowl resulting in a strangely electronic sounding beep.

I have a gadget that goes ...

It's this little PDA incompatible with everything else, but the software is all free.

Every button you press...

It's good to let you know when you hit a tiny button- since it's not a touch-screen, there's a miniature QWERTY keyboard on there. (They included a stylus so you can push the little tiny buttons.)

Let's say you wanted to type "H2G2 is the best website on earth."

As you try to hit the tiny buttons...
------ (for the period)

It gets a little irritating when playing Tetris...

.......--...

AAAUUUGGGHHH!

In Saudi Arabia, all rental cars are equipped (or were, 5 years ago)with a bleeper that goes off at regular intervals whenever you exceed the legal limit. It seems to me that it happens on cars you buy also - but you can have these removed (I mean the bleeper, not the car, but you can have that removed too, if you are not careful). Since no one who does not wish to be rear-ended would ever drive at or below the speed limit, it takes a while to get used to the constant bleep. I can not imagine that anyone ever said, "Oh, gee, I am breaking the law," and slowed down...

My alarm clock sounds like a garbage truck is backing into my bedroom.







Etc.