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

"Academic books that don't include indexes. Is it just a ploy to make me read the whole thing? If so, it isn't going to work."

Fortunately it appears to have died out a bit, but if you ever have to go to older text books, there's the sort of academic book that assumes the reader has had the right sort of education and can read Latin and Greek. In an otherwise comprehensible discourse, an old-time scholar might illustrate a point by quoting the Classics, but he'll do it in Latin, assume you understand, and not provide a translation, even as a footnote. Or he'll lapse into Greek - written in classical Greek - with neither translation nor transliteration into Roman characters.

Used to drive me nuts... as I say, academic texts written after about 1970 seemed to drop this affectation, but in some disciplines you are forced to go to old works, as these are all that were available, or were still cited as authorities. (Philology as a sub-discipline of linguistics: Professor J.R.R. Tolkein was still the academic authority for a long time after he retired from Oxbridge, for instance)

A (modern) collection of essays I read recently which didn't have translations for the Greek unless the translation was provided in the original publication of the essay.
Really. Is it so difficult to put a footnote with the translation and initial it to show it was added?

Those silly pictures and icons that are now used in Explorers and Directories. I can read, dammit - I like a nice alphabetical list, not a hotchpotch of weird pictures that have no relation to what they are supposed to illustrate. I feel they've sent me back to kindergarten and so I can recognise my coat peg I get the pussy cat or the or the steam engine picture instead of my name written out.

It's even worse when you can't adjust the settings to get it to show the alphabetical (or chronological) list.

People round here who write hugely expensive mountain-type bikes with about 30 gears - riding them in totally the wrong gear so their legs are spinning round nineteen to the dozen.

We live near Holland - it's flat for miles and miles and miles and miles

Learn to use your bikes, you show offs!

Cyclists in general seem an odd buch to me.

with it so flat here we often cycle around when it's not raining. It's quite possible to get around the whole area on an ancient bike with 0 gears (I realise that I'm fairly fit, but i'm not superfit, and i manage it)

"Fortunately it appears to have died out a bit, but if you ever have to go to older text books, there's the sort of academic book that assumes the reader has had the right sort of education and can read Latin and Greek. In an otherwise comprehensible discourse, an old-time scholar might illustrate a point by quoting the Classics, but he'll do it in Latin, assume you understand, and not provide a translation, even as a footnote. Or he'll lapse into Greek - written in classical Greek - with neither translation nor transliteration into Roman characters.

Used to drive me nuts... as I say, academic texts written after about 1970 seemed to drop this affectation, but in some disciplines you are forced to go to old works, as these are all that were available, or were still cited as authorities. (Philology as a sub-discipline of linguistics: Professor J.R.R. Tolkein was still the academic authority for a long time after he retired from Oxbridge, for instance)"

AgProv, I totally agree. I believe I may have actually mentioned it in this very thread some time ago. Drives me mental. I can almost understand it when it's Latin or Greek - but medieval French? Who really understood that, even 80 years ago?

Authors which quote Greek using transliteration. Use the proper letters! Include transliteration in a footnote if you must (and yes, I agree that omitting the translation is also very annoying).

On a less academic note (although I agree, I had a book about the history of vampires written in the 30's, still don't know what parts of that were about) getting a really itchy nose just after you've put your makeup on!

Men and the contents of their noses and sinuses - the audibility of same - just generally especially at breakfast time, where it seems they find it compulsory to indulge in the habit of ing

The general need that some guys have to share each and every one of their bodily functions with all around! I work with a guy who farts and belches constantly, I think he thinks it makes him more of a man!!

Again on gender differences at breakfast: I'm male. I find it hard to remember how to get the top off the toothpaste, let alone have a coherent conversation over the breakfast table. In fact, breakfast in near-silence is heaven.

She, on the other hand, can hit the floor talking from the moment the alarm clock goes off. Then she insists I should be able to talk back, let alone listen. (grunts his vague acquiescence to whatever it was that she's wittering on about THIS time)

i think there is a fundamental gender-difference here.

Nah, I'm like the living dead of a morning. Not gender related, she must just be one of those irritatingly chirpy people!

Petty hate - People who ask you what your day at work was like
On a good day it was mind-numbingly tedious, i don't want to talk about, same as the last thousand or so times I was asked
As for a bad day

Having to wait three months before anyone will teach me more chemistry.

The fact that windows media player has nice swirly graphics and I want to use it but it's alwys cutting out when listening to radio online, real player is both dull and irritating but the music id usually uninterupted.

Windows in general

No, don't get me started

Finding out just after I'd bought a brand new pooter, all windowed up, that the compatability issues I'd always been warned about with macs were now a thing of the past andd I needn't even have bought a pc!

On that subject, iTunes.

Needed to learn some songs for the band, so downloaded them from iTunes recently - legit, mind, paid for them and everything. Then discovered everything was in MP4 format and it doesn't let you convert them to anything else.

Several new coasters later I realise that none of my CD players recognise MP4! I now have several songs I paid good money for that I can't play anywhere except on the bloody computer

Re: morning talk.
Don't anyone talk to me until I had at least 30 minutes of wakefulness in the morning. If you do, I'll grunt at you and lose my patience instantly.
You've been warned.