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

Bah!
Petty Hate: Posts that show up on a new page and don't make any sense by themselves.

~*~The picture, of course, is far better, but why does it take so much longer to change channels - or to switch on in the first place? Used to be that you could hop through the channels in seconds, but with this thing - minutes!~*~

My Dad has a TV like that, it's pretty strange alright, and definitely annoying. Along with the channels, the volume doesn't stay where you actually set it to, instead it goes up or down by three levels each time. What's with that?

what kind of TVs to do you have? if you tell me the brand I can tell our marketing team...

The mention of Lidl and WalMart gave me an idea for a thread though...

Pronunciation


When did homage (hom-adge) become om-arge?

When did med-e-cine become medsin and po-leece become pleece? Are we losing our language one letter at a time?

Though maybe with the latter it's only in Australia?

"When did homage (hom-adge) become om-arge?"

I know that Americans tend to pronounce words they believe to be of French origin the French way. So herbs, garage, ballet, homage become erbs, garARGE, balLAY, omARGE. (Herb is Middle English, originally from Latin.) The British say herbs, GARidge, BALlay, HOMidge. I don't know why and I don't see that it matters. The American way can sound a bit camp and/or pretensious, depending on who's speaking.

What about digital radio and tv time? It's always a few seconds behind the old steam radio GMT pips. Makes the pips redundant, really and makes one realize that the British obsession with getting everthing exact to the second is a load of hooey.

Our "new" (bought about two years ago) TV takes a long time to change channels, too. And it also does something else that annoys me: when it turns on, it doesn't stay at the channel or volume level it was at when it was turned off. It increases the volume and advances to the next channel. Not a huge annoyance, but one of those little things that just bugs me.

(It's a Sharp Aquos)

Psychocandy, I suggest you read the manual. There may be a 'preferred volume' setting which the TV defaults to when you switch it on. You should be able to change this.

Our TV remembers the channel you were watching and the volume setting, which is just what you need.

My TV remembers channel and volume - but the radio in the kitchen doesn't.It always comes on quite loud, which is not good when I come down at 6.30am, and the rest of the house is still asleep!

Digital telly irritates me regularly. When you set the timer record it doesn't always start at the beginning of the program. With an ols style video you could just set it to start earlier but the digital box thinks it's too clever for that!
Also the whole thing freezes every few days and needs rebooting.

I hate 'progress'!

>>>but the radio in the kitchen doesn't.It always comes on quite loud<<<

That reminds me - if you select travel news on your car radio, it is v useful on long trips, but in the last three cars we've had, when it cuts in and interrupts a programme, regardless of what your volume setting is, it always blasts out about twice as loud. It even makes you jump sometimes, which surely is not the idea?


Anyone else find this?

The thing is you have got it set on "Traffic Causer" In which the radio is so loud you crash during the travel news

yeah, I think the idea is that you'll pay attention to the traffic reports rather than miss them amongst the general background radio noise, but of course when you're already listening loud...

and I'm with you on 'progress'. Thing is, I would enjoy progress more if someone could invent a gadget that stops all other gadgets from crashing/freezing. ever.
I think it's pretty sad that we now have phones, washing machines, Tv's, etc that can 'crash'

I mean, OK, you used to be tied to a wall when making calls but decade in, decade out, the thing kept working. Same with TV's.

Stuff needs to get more far reliable and less buggy. Trouble is, the next model is so fast on the heals of the 'old' that the bugs never get time to get fixed

~*~Are we losing our language one letter at a time?~*~

No, we're not "losing" anything. Languages, like species, change over time; they are not "lost," and there's nothing sinister about it. This brings me to another petty hate: people obsessed with "purity."



~*~The American way can sound a bit camp and/or pretensious, depending on who's speaking.~*~

Or the British way can sound a bit camp and/or pretencious, depending on who's speaking.

When I was younger I thought the way English was spoken/written really mattered. Over the years I accepted that language is a living thing. It evolves and changes. Languages that don't change become 'dead' languages, like Latin. Like I said, Americans say things differently and I don't see that it matters.

Anybody who's obsessed with the "purity" of our language should read Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. Great book and a real eye-opener on English, both written and spoken.

I have to agree, it's a fascinating book.

i hate it when people say "like" alot in their speech and it's not necessary. I lived with a girl who did that in my third year at uni and it drove me crazy!

I agree that languages change - English is a mixture of all sorts of other languages. If the Americans want to change it, I'm happy for them to do so - but then call it American, not English, or American English.
We altered other languages to suit ourselves, so we gave the result a new name. Could they do the same please? Sorry... petty annoyance!