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

Attempted to believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,

YES! You have it! What's that - 5 messages I think. I've just nipped over to the stats page and I'm an erudite now. Well spotted that Wumbeevil! So there you have it: being in the erudite list doesn't indicate that we're erudite.

Never mind, Ah?

There was one poster I spotted on the erudite list around a week ago who puts us both to shame (tho I doubt if that's the correct word). I think it was Archangel somebody, he/she had 62 postings and the average was over 500, that's a lot of RSI. By the time I finish this the members should have cracked the 63k mark as it was only one away when I checked there.

That's strange about the keyboard, are the keys laid out differently from the standard qwerty, or is it an in-betweeny that doesn't want to offend typists by changing the key layout to a more efficient one? If I could bring myself to training a computer to recognise a Glaswegian accent, I think I'd go down that road, but I'd still feel pretty silly sitting here talking to a machine. It also might get me barred from motherf*!$£^%& H2G2 if there's a motherf*!$£^%& Spike Lee film on in the motherf*!$£^%& background!

I read something about 18 months ago that the internet was beginning to affect TV audience figures in the US. I suspect the same thing is happening here, so relax about the nerd bit, it just means you're no longer a couch potato. Hmm, if someone has got WebTV does this make them a couch nerd?
As for friends via the internet, that newly discovered nurse is going to a wedding in San Francisco at Xmas. Her son in Sheffield met his fiancee via email, so there are associated dangers!

I've just checked and both Java links are up and running. Javascript was developed by Netscape and is a simple scripting language that's usually embedded in HTML pages . The balloons on Amy's page are an example, as are the buttons that change colour when you hover over them. Java was developed by Sun and is a full programming language used to write applications and applets which are loaded seperately from the HTML. You can also get hostile Java applets which are no doubt going to become an increasing problem. Apart from both Java and Javascript being featured on webpages, I think the only connection is that they both had their roots in C, or it could have been C++. Needless to say Microsoft has developed it's own versions of both. The last I heard Sun were suing them.

The animation is just a moving gif. There are plenty of free gif animation progs kicking around if you have designs on sticking out your tongue and eating some poor six-legged creature!It looks like a lot of the OU computer stuff is going to change next year, and not before time either, it reminds me of one I did 12 years ago. My brother's been away from computers for donkeys, so he's really gonna need to do the intro course. Still I suppose it'll let me see if their figures of study time required are the gross exaggeration they appear to be. I may have spent the time they recommend in the bar during my degree, but otherwise I don't remember ever spending 16 hours a week on the one subject.

You'll already know that I liked the cicadas, despite the educational effect you had on my happily somnolent brain. I remember a beaut of a cicada (I think) that came in with a box of bananas, it must've been 3" long and had amazing blue eyes. Sadly, like most of the banana pets, it only lasted a couple of days. Are they a hobby of yours, or did you just wake up one morning thinking, "I must write an article about cicadas"?

That wasn't you with the teabag coffee, it's those damned evil gnomes. They're either nicking your underpants and single socks, or putting teabags in your coffee the moment your back is turned. There's even a subspecies that lives inside every washing machine and specialises in removing the wires from bras and taking them down to the scrappy.

On the subject of wasting money, Glasgow's Millennium tower is either not going to be very high, or isn't going to be ready in time. It looks quite flimsy and as it's on the banks of the Clyde, which acts as a wind tunnel, we might have some entertainment come next spring! What have they wasted money on in Leicestershire to celebrate, what is, just another day?

Yeah, I like the sound of the "dog digs up corpse and takes an arm home" bit (tho you, being a dog-owner, probably don't). That would set the neighbours talking in suburbia. Round here, they'ld probably welcome it as an excuse not to buy dog food that week (assuming they ever do!).

Well unless Archangel whatsisname has been busy I reckon I'll go off and have a few minutes of fame now. Seeya on the list.

I've noticed some people post well over 100 messages in a day and some of the longest messages have been massive. I'm happy to say that although I get into the long-winded list fairly often, I don't think I've ever been at the top of the list and I've never made it into the list of the most prolific posters.

The layout of the keys on my bent keyboard is the same as a normal qwerty keyboard except that the [6] is on the left of the split so you have to hit it with your left index finger instead of the right. I find that annoying. If you touch-type you'll know that it's your fingers that know where the keys are rather than your brain so my right index finger usually holds things up by groping around for the [6] before my brain remembers it's not there any more. That shouldn't slow me down all that much though. I think I just haven't got used to the thing yet.

Did I tell you I've tried to train my computer to recognise my voice using "ViaVoice"? What a fiasco! The training takes ages. You read sentences into this headset mic. That takes a long time and seems fairly straight forward. Then when you come to dictate a letter you find it still doesn't understand a word you're saying - unless you're effing and blinding at it. You say "Dear Sir" and it says "Pardon me". You repeat "Dear Sir" and it repeats "Pardon me". You go over to ViaVoice's help file and find that you can select previous letters you've written and tell the software that this letter is typical of the sort of things you write. Then you try again: "Dear Sir" and it writes "There are". This sort of insanity continues until you lose your temper and swear at it. That's when you discover, to your astonishment, it understands all the swear words perfectly and transcribes them without a fault. Very frustrating. I wouldn't recommend it. Also, you wouldn't have Spike Lee or anything else on in the background because that confuses the software. You have to provide all your own bad language - and that turns out not to be a great hardship.

Funny you should say about your nurse friend's son. One of my second cousins popped over to visit me last week and he said he'd gone to Ireland to visit a girl he'd been corresponding with by email. It was a great disappointment to them both. I was surprised. Call me unromantic if you like but it just seemed so naive. There're all sorts of cues missing from online communications that seem necessary to trigger those damned hormones. I don't know if they exchanged photos but even if they did, the pheromones would still be missing and all sorts of other subtle clues about mental and physical compatibility. Perhaps it was just that they were both very young and were overcome with and unreasonable level optimism.

I suppose if I wanted to learn Java I'd have to go to a class. I haven't written a programme in years - not since all the object oriented stuff reared its wobbly and unreliable head. I could just about knock together something in Clipper or one of the other xBase languages but when everything went Windows, I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. Perhaps if I could've got over my reluctance to join a class instead of battling with the impenetrable and badly written manuals, I could've got over the hump - and maybe not.

I wonder what the cicada was doing in the bananas. Bananas don't grow on trees, do they? Poor little devil. They don't live long as adults. The blue eyes must've made it look quite arresting. The periodicals have red or orange eyes. I thought I'd do the article on cicadas because I was looking for a subject and there wasn't already an h2g2 one on cicadas. I think I may already have mentioned to you elsewhere that it struck me when I was telling Amy about these amazing mites, that I'm really fascinated by bizarre animals and plants and have a head full of that sort of strangeness.

Are you getting your sock-goblins mixed up with the beverage-gnomes? I've almost defeated the ones who like to nick things from the washing machine, by getting a top loader. I haven't lost an item of laundry for ages. I think they're too short to get in and if they do manage to get in, they can't get out again.

What's Glasgow's millennium tower for (apart from marking the millennium)? I don't think they have any particularly daft ideas for wasting our money on the Millennium down here - probably because it's all spent. Our village is getting a sports pavilion and a millennium walk but that's being paid for partly by a quarry company that has access to a landfill tax fund and partly from private donations. Leicestershire County Council actually tried to stop our millennium walk project because we didn't have space for an enormous carpark. It was pointed out to the council that the walk was for us - the villagers to WALK to and along, not an invitation for the rest of the population to invade us en mass and park their cars all over the place. The council reluctantly gave in.

Ah well, time to walk the dogs. Hope they don't find anyone to exhume - that sort of thing makes such a mess of the carpets.

Well I've got bad news for you if you've ever been second on the windbag list behind Archangel whatever. I was just at the info bit and spotted another mammoth posting by the holy one (c.20k) so I clicked on it and found out it was the same line pasted I don't know how many times. You may have been top of the genuine windbag list and not known it.

No you hadn't mentioned ViaVoice, but I'm glad you did! Have you tried an American accent? It might be better at understanding that. That'ld go down well with the Postie!...and even better when they get to the pub - "I was dropping off Mugwump's tranquilisers today when I thought I heard John Wayne, so I peeked in the window and there was Mugwump, talking and swearing away in an American accent." The next time you popped in for a pint, yould be greeted with a chorus of "Howdy pardner".

I quite enjoyed meeting up with that American nurse on my close encounter of the nerd kind, but unlike your cousin, I hadn't taken a gross of condoms with me in expectation! All I was looking forward to was a bevvy session, which I got. I guess, as you say, they both just expected too much from it. I'm not so sure about your pheromones and body language theory tho, I'd say that knowing about each other's likes, dislikes and life before meeting would make up for them, by giving them something to work on. I'm assuming that they had exchanged pics prior to meeting, and it wasn't a case of a (Galway) Baywatch Babe expecting to meet some hunk. Apologies to your cousin if he is a hunk.

I haven't been to one, but I'd guess those H2G2 meet-ups would work better simply because it's not just a one on one situation, and there's
probably no expectation of taking a relationship further. The Scottish one seems to have been good anyway judging by the pics, even if there were only about six folk there. I haven't heard of any English ones, but I haven't looked for any, I just presume there must have been some.

I think I'm going to need my class in Java, judging by the book I bought myself on it. It seems to have been written back to front. You're in chapter one and you're given references to stuff that doesn't appear until chapters 4 & 6. I seem to have a blind spot about object oriented languages, I don't know how often I've taught myself the definition, but it just flies straight out my head the next day. I just enjoy programming cos every one's a challenge (sad, very sad), but can't get my head to have anything to do with definitions and most of the jargon. I hope it's just lack of effort and not another example of my single overtaxed brain cell crying out for help.

I had to check up on the languages you mentioned cos, up until last year, I hadn't done any programming on a pc since the late 80s (except for a very old Psion database I still use, and that's just like basic). They both seem to be database languages, is that right? I've very vague memories of DB3, which also seemed like basic, is Clipper similar?

I think the cicada probably got into the box after it was packed and went for a kip only to wake up in Scotland with a bit of explaining to do to the Missus. The cicada would probably have been from Costa Rica or Panama, with a slim posibility of it being from one of the Leeward or Windward Islands. We used to get lots of creatures you wouldn't expect to climb a banana plant, and a lot you would, but the only things they took seriously were the scorpions. Plenty of frogs as well, including one yellow specimen in a box of Colombian bananas, it was only later that I found in the Guinness book of records that one of the most poisonous species in the world was a yellow Colombian tree frog! Boxes of ants were a speciality, they were just sent direct to the shops without checking. Strangely enough they never ever came back. If I remember right bananas are the largest herbaceous plant in the world. I grew one once, it hadn't a hope of producing bananas here, but managed to reach around 5 feet high before succumbing to my TLC and the weather. Talking about strange mites, what about the ones that live in a bees ear, but they only ever block up one ear on each bee?

I must try out your theory about the gnomes not being able to get into a top loader. The wife's going to be really delighted when she finds the washing machine lying on its back tho.

I don't know what Glasgow's M-word tower's for (apart from tourists, but that goes without saying, or would have done if I hadn't said it) I
remember the council were wanting a symbol for Glasgow, cos that other city whose name I won't mention has got a castle. Personally I think a skull and crossbones would have been a satisfactory symbol for the city, but no we've got to have some tower that's probably not going to be any higher that any of the multis. What's the betting your M-word walk get's used by folks on trail bikes? I did some charity work for an environmental thingy during one of my many resting spells. We were trying to make a path walkable, but at the same time stop bikers using it, so most of the work went into fencing rather than on the path. The guy who was in charge of the work used to stick nails in the ground where there were puddles. Too bad if you were a walker with worn down boots!

If the dogs exhume a corpse, you probably won't need to worry about the state of the carpets as corpses seem to be wrapped in new ones quite often. Apparently Paisley pattern shrouds are the in-thing for murder victims, no one is seen dead in plain white anymore.

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

Got a bit delayed. Been doing my bactriophage entry. I know you know about these things so don't be too hard on me if you go and have a look at it. It's not quite finished so if you have any suggestions for improvement, I'll brace myself ready to receive your wisdom. I'm researching the use of phages to introduce genes into different organisms at the moment. Doctor Wonky Mungbean over at the peer review suggested I should put something in about it.

Why on earth would his or her holiness prat about with a huge great post of one repeated line, I wonder. Maybe it's some sort of computer mantra. The PTB at h2g2 will just love him/her cluttering up their web space with that sort of "project". You know I mentioned that one entity was listed 6 times when I had a look the other day - the 5 longest and the top erudite, well at least his messages had a message to convey. Wow. Makes one feel humble, doesn't it?

No, I hadn't considered trying an American accent with ViaVoice. Not too worried about postie overhearing me but I don't want the dogs to think I've lost it. They'd jump at the opportunity to take advantage.

I'd got the impression that some h2g2 members meet up from time to time. I see what you mean. It's probably quite nice to meet up for a drink (to discuss your research ) with the members who live near by. I don't think my cousin went supplied with condoms to the meeting with the nice lady (maybe he took a crisp packet and an elastic band just in case - doesn't look quite so contrived that way, does it?). I think they had "true romance" in mind. I think you could fairly accurately call my cousin tall, dark and handsome and from his description, the young lady was rather nice looking too. They'd already been corresponding for some time so I would guess they had an idea of each other's interests. If not pheromones, then I don't know what might have turned them off each other. Odd.

I remember books like your Java book. Maths text books are a pain in the neck that way. I can vaguely remember some similar fiasco with linear programming questions at the beginning of a book, in term one and the subject wasn't covered till the end of the book, in term three. I think you just have to conclude that some people who write books, shouldn't because they don't really have the skill.

Those things you can't keep a firm mental grip on - the ones you keep learning and then forgetting: I expect it's just that you don't use them often enough to get them to stick in your mind. I haven't touched programming for ages. I did start to mess about with object oriented stuff when Windows first became popular. When was that, 9 or 10 years ago? I did one of my brothers a data base to keep track of his customers, but it was a horrible language, the manual was full of errors and loads of bits and pieces didn't work so I thought I must be doing something wrong, but it turned out this awful 4GL was full of bugs and "undocumented features". It was very disheartening.

You're right the xBase languages include dBase and Clipper. Clipper's very similar to dBase but there's more of it and it's more flexible.

They do get some exotic critters in boxes of bananas. I wonder what the boss would've done if someone had touched that yellow frog and keeled over. There was a place where bananas were unloaded over the river from my parents' shop in Newhaven. The girls who worked there were always telling horror stories of gigantic spiders.

I remember that thing about the mites that live in the ears of bees. I wonder if they check both ears to make sure the bee has vacant possession before they move in. It does seem incredible that something like a mite would know how to be careful not to do anything to compromise the life chances of its host. I might do a thing on mites if I can find enough weird material, at some point, if someone else doesn't get there first.

I don't know what they'll do if our m-walk is plagued with trail bikers. What if the moto-cross bikers get wind of it? The people who live 3 houses away from me have 2 moto-cross sons. I should think there'll be some friendly, country folk solution to the problem. It may involve the blowing off of limbs. Did I tell you about my gun toting neighbours . . .

I can just imagine what the steam cleaning technicians will say when I get the firm round to sort out the remains on the "new" carpet the dogs brought in: "Oh yes, we had similar problems with the Turin Shroud. Never did manage to get those stubborn stains out. If you can't sell this little beauty as a religious relic, you'll just have to live with the mess I'm afraid."

And I couldn't resist that one.

I seem to have calmed down a bit now and those nice doctors have let me out for the weekend.

Not having the longest five postings and not being at the top of the erudite list actually pleases me immensely. I take it as a hopeful sign that I still have a life away from a keyboard. It's either that, or my four-fingered typing is a lot slower than I imagine - probably a bit of both.

OK it's apologies to your hunky cousin then. Can you really meet up with someone having "true romance" in mind? I suppose you can, but you're liable to end up just as disappointed as your cousin. Can't say I'm much of a believer in love at first sight. Lust at first sight, certainly, tho unfortuanately I've never been the passive participant in this

I can't say I've ever thought of the crisp packet and elastic band technique, you recommend for your cousin. I imagine tho that there might be some argument as to who gets the salty side. Hmm, if adopted, this could lead to a whole new line in male display rituals, "Ooh Doris, look at him, that bloke munching on a large bag of Dorritos". "Don't fancy yours much tho Sharon, the guy with the Scampi Fries".

I seem to remember Windows being just a young whippersnapper when I was doing systems analysis, that'ld be around 87. We were all clustered round one PC and invited to "Ooh" and "Ahh". It may even have been Windows 2.0, as I think Macs first appeared in 84, or is it just Apple's "Big Brother" ad that makes me think that? I love the phrase "undocumented features", it's a lovely euphemism for bits of software we can't quite get the bugs out of yet.

Cockroaches were the most common things in boxes of bananas and then it was the appropriately named banana spiders. Took a few home, including one with an egg pouch. They're barely visible when they first hatch, just about the size of one of these full stops at 1024 with some straggly bits. Great scarey spiders from little acorns grow. Maybe you should import a few to deal with your insect population (weevils excepted)? ...or would that ruin the dogs' diet?

I haven't checked, but you'll probably be able to do your entry on mites. I think there are only 2000+ approved entries, and an awful lot of them are on places, so there's a vast amount of subjects undocumented as yet.

Moto-cross bikes: I'd imagine your gun-toting neighbours would welcome the chance of some fresh moving targets (they might even want to invest in incendiary buckshot so the petrol tank explodes in good ole Hollywood style). They must be frustrated about the lack of wildlife in the area after they've shot most of it. I suppose the pub sign that got shot dared to swing in the breeze and therefore automatically classed itself as fair game? I saw one of the delightful rural solutions to footpath bikers on the news one day, it involved stringing a wire across the path at (bike) head height. Unfortunately it got some youngster out on a bicycle. That guy with the nails was quite sane by comparison with whoever done that.

Can you let your dogs off the leash, or is that just inviting them to be shot?

The dogs and the carpet/shroud just brought back an episode of One Foot in the Grave that was on last week, where a dog ended up doing unspeakable things to a rolled up carpet containing the woman Victor hates, and there was an art class of kids who documented it. Oh dear, that's one of these things that you just have to have seen for it to be funny.

Ah, the Holey Shrouds of Leicestershire, it's just too bad that they can't be put on display because the weight of the buckshot in them collapses the display cases. You'ld get pilgrims coming from far and wide to visit, and your neighbours could welcome them with open firearms.

I see you're back online now, so I'm just going to post this, my head's starting to give me "Get some caffeine into yourself, or go to bed, cos I ain't working again 'til you do one of them" signals.

Hey, I've just seen your pop up windows. You have links AND pop up windows. You have been busy. I'm ever so impressed. The JavaScript is obviously being beaten into submission. Well done.

Watched the last One Foot in the Grave this evening. Very funny. Poor old Victor. There was a snippet about Mrs Warboys being abused in a sack by a dog in the programme about the programme that was on before the actual programme. Poor old Mrs Warboys.

If I'd answered your message just over a week ago I could've said yes, I walk the dogs off their leads. Things have changed though. One of them stuck their nose on an electric fence last week (not for the first time) and now she's gone daft and keeps running off in terror. I have to keep her on a lead but the other one's still ok off the lead. I've taught them not to worry the rabbits and come back when called. They both enjoy a good dig. No shallow graves located yet.

I hadn't considered the problem of salt left in the crisp packets. I guess I must keep my imagination under stricter control than some people, who shall remain nameless - but we all know who I mean, don't we?

I can't remember when I first used Windows. I think it must've been 1989 or there about. Little did I know how it would put me off computers. Everyone thought it was the biz back then of course. Nobody had any idea of what wobbliness and instability we had to look forward to.

For some unaccountable reason, I used to dislike cockroaches. I used to work in a local (fairly posh) restaurant at weekends when I was a kid. They had a red wine cellar. It was warm and the walls and ceiling were whitewashed. The ceiling was low so you couldn't stand up straight. The ceiling was a solid black swaying mass of cockroaches so you couldn't actually tell that it was whitewashed. One of the girls went down for a bottle of wine one evening and came screaming back up the stairs beating herself about the head and throwing herself around because one had dropped off and landed in her hair. Sometimes they dropped out of the curtains into people's coffee or whatever was close to the curtain. Ugh. I'm sure they're nice people if you get to know them but they're a bit like humans - you usually find them in huge numbers and that's a bit off-putting. (I might tell you about the cockroach experience of my friend who used to live in Dubai one day, if you feel up to it.) I like them better now that I only see them on tv. Perhaps we should think of them like elephants, monkeys or rats. They're very nice as long as they're not in you house - or your hair.

Spiders are ok but I wish they'd clear up their mess when they'd finished. Was Mrs Beevil happy to have large exotic spiders in the house? Some people get a bit funny about spiders, especially if they're nippers.

I'll bug you no more this evening. Speak to you later.