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

... to forgive the world. I'm not going to carry over any of my resentment from last year. Definitely a new start.

I'm back to work today after the long break. Although I prefer being at home to being in work, there's been quite a lot of partying, drinking and sitting around over the last week and a half, and the weather was too bad to go out for many walks, so it is nice to get back to a simpler routine.

The sun is coming up as I type. It's the 9th day of Christmas, so it should be Nine Ladies Dancing.

*dances for Gnomon*

mind you, me dancing is not a good idea. I fell over the other day trying to show #2 how to do an Argentine Tango. My elbow still hurts

Thanks for the dancing, Sho.

I remember you falling. I hope your elbow recovers soon.

it's a lot better now, thanks.

I might be a dancing lady later today with my Wii - picking up my fitness regime again after a chesty cold. Will be glad to get back to work & regular leisure activities too.

Happy New Year!

Good for you Gnomon.
I have always found it easier to forgive the world in general than forgive a particular gouger who has crossed me.

Happy New Year - I am SO glad you're back. It really felt like something was missing over new Year.

I've been looking at my entries in the New Pliny and can't find any formatting problems.

I'll let you know if I do find any, but otherwise, you won't need to look at any of them again, except if you need to know how to fry an egg or wrap a parcel .

Pastey fixed the biggest formatting problem, which was inserting extra new-line characters in hundreds of entries.

I'm not in the mood yet for testing out the new system, after the reception I got for my findings last year. I'll confine myself to chatting for the moment.

Those findings are logged, and most of them will be dealt with in time. The new Pliny aimed at not breaking anything that worked in old Pliny, so that we (Pastey) can have a chance to fix the other problems, which wasn't even possible for most part, in old Pliny.

Passes Gnomon a healthy .

Good to see you around.

It appears that while I'm willing to forgive, some other people aren't.

Yep. There definitely seems to be some personality conflict and ego clash. It's not pretty. I can see why you would want to pull back, but I do hope you don't .

Tricky situation.

Oh dear, I'm missing something, so I'll just dance (always cheers me up), and dispense virtual hugs to them as need 'em.

Thanks for the dancing, Bea.

But it's now the 10th day of Christmas, so I need 10 lords a-leaping. The ladies can keep dancing too.

I always believed as a child that the first day of Christmas was Christmas Day, the 25th, and the 12th day was 6th January, also known as Little Christmas or the Epiphany.

I was a teenager before I realised that would be 13 days, not 12.

I now think that the phrase "the 12 days of Christmas" is inaccurate and was invented for the song. It was based on the assumption that if there were 12 nights in Christmas, then there were also 12 days.

Now I believe that Christmas starts at sunrise on the 25th and ends at sunset on 6th Januarym so there are in fact 12 nights and 13 days. Christmas Eve is the eve of Christmas, that is, the "night before Christmas" and is not part of Christmas. And "12th Night" is eve of the Epiphany.

Incidentally, the 6th is called Women's Christmas in Irish. In Lanzarote it is the day that the Three Wise Men come on camels and bring the children their Christmas presents (since Santa Claus doesn't deliver in that part of the world).

We once wrote an IT office version of 12 Days of Christmas. We'd just taken delivery of a new tape streamer backup device (this was the 1980s), so 'On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me... a cartridge in a tape stream'. Blessed if I can remember the others.

Two 12-inch floppies?

I remember when we had typists, one of them typing an order for a 120MB hard dick. It was spotted before the order was placed, though.

So it was a spotted dick, then?