English usage

  • An Easter egg at Christmas

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Tech

    Now that Christmas is just about out of the way for another year, the great speculation amongst Britain’s shoppers will be how soon into the New Year will Easter eggs appear on supermarket shelves. The customary 3 months as with all that Christmas tat? We’ll just have to wait and see.

    As a user of free and open source software, I’ve had an early – or late – Easter egg already courtesy of the VLC media player, as shown below.

    screenshot of VLC media player wearing its Christmas hat
    VLC media player wearing its Christmas hat

    Unless you’re familiar with the language of tech aficionados, the previous statement and accompanying screenshot are probably incomprehensible.

    In software an Easter egg is defined as “an intentional inside joke, hidden message, or feature in an interactive work such as a computer program, video game or DVD menu screen. The name has been said to evoke the idea of a traditional Easter egg hunt“.

    One of the first occurrences of what are now known as Easter eggs appeared in the Atari video game Adventure, having been planted there by computer game developer Warren Robinett. It wasn’t too fancy or interesting, just a hidden object planted in the game that led to a screen that said “Created by Warren Robinett.” The developer had buried this object within the game code as Atari didn’t credit its games developers at the time.

    Anyway, returning to the screenshot above, the Santa hat on the VLC program logo (the traffic cone in the middle of the window. Ed.) appears each year for the Christmas holiday period only; for the rest of the year, the logo is hatless.

    Besides VLC, some well-known and widely used applications have also contained Easter eggs. For instance, Easter eggs in the 1997 version of Microsoft Office include a hidden flight simulator in Microsoft Excel and a pinball game in Microsoft Word, whilst on all Microsoft Windows operating systems before XP, entering the text “volcano” in the 3D Text screen saver will display the names of all the volcanoes in the United States. Microsoft removed this Easter egg in XP but added others. Microsoft Excel 95 contained a hidden Doom-like action game called The Hall of Tortured Souls.

    Turning away from Microsoft, Apple is also not immune from Easter eggs. In 2012 an update to the Mac App Store for OS X Mountain Lion introduced an Easter egg in which apps, during the download process, were timestamped “January 24, 1984,” the date the original Macintosh went on sale. However, Easter eggs were not popular with Apple’s founder, the late Steve Jobs, who went through bouts of banning them.

    In addition to being sophisticated and/or laden with deep significance, some Easter eggs can be very simple and bereft of any meaning, merely reflecting the playful personality of their creators. Here’s a prime example from the GNU/Linux apt-get command line tool used for managing software packages. Typing the command apt-get moo results in something similar to the following screenshot.

    screenshot of apt-get moo command giving output of cow saying have you mooed today?
    The output of typing the command apt-get moo in the Linux terminal

    Anyway, I’m enjoying my festive Easter egg and I hope it’s not too late to wish all readers and visitors to this site the compliments of the season.

  • Spelling or sleeping?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    There was a great clanger in a tweet this morning from Bristol’s Western Daily Press, the sister publication of the Bristol Post (and joint occupier with it of Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth. Ed.) and likewise subject to many of the latter’s failings with the English language.

    Here’s an image of the tweet in question.

    text of tweet reads Simon Cowell's home gets burgled while he and his family spelt inside

    The morals of this tale are clear: if you run a tawdry TV talent show orthography is as dangerous as shut-eye if housebreakers are around; if you run the social media account of a mediocre regional paper, learn to proof-read before posting online*! 🙂

    * The spelling error in the tweet originally appeared in the article itself, but has since been corrected.

  • Bristol Post balls – rescued from the rescue services?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    There seem to be times when confusion is rife in the Bristol Post’s headquarters on Temple Way. This was exemplified yesterday by the headline in this report, of which a screenshot follows, just in case Post hacks realise a mistake has been made.

    screenshot of headline stating Man rescued from Bristol Floating Harbour fire brigade after a night on the town

    In spite of the headline, Post reporter Emma Flanagan fails to explain in her article why anyone would need rescuing from the fire brigade after a night out.

    Furthermore, there is no explanation either for the logic behind Bristol’s City Docks having their own fire brigade.

    Perhaps kind readers could help her out and provide plausible reasons in the comments below. 🙂

  • A seasonal post

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    bare treeIt’s now that grim time of year between the end of British Summer Time (BST) in October and the winter solstice in December when periods of daylight are short, deciduous trees lose their leaves and the weather deteriorates. Indeed the United Kingdom is presently experiencing a succession of autumn storms and two evenings ago the Avonmouth area of Bristol experienced the strongest wind in the country with a blast of 79 mph as Storm Barney battered the country. In short, it’s the middle of November.

    The Victorian poet Thomas Hood (23rd May 1799 – 3rd May 1845) caught the mood of the time of year beautifully in his 1844 poem November.

    No sun – no moon!
    No morn – no noon –
    No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
    No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
    No comfortable feel in any member –
    No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
    No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds –
    November!

  • Bridge left on shelf too long?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    image of Avon Ring RoadHardly a day goes by when the hacks at the Bristol Post exhibit the poor quality of written English so prevalent in the media nowadays; and today is no exception.

    Writing about a closure of the A4174 Avon Ring Road and clearly out of his usual field of politics, reporter Ian Onions drops a real clanger which would doubtless have been picked up if the paper still employed proper, old-fashioned, omniscient sub-editors.

    screenshot showing words The existing bridge is also reaching the end of its shelf life and would need replacing in a few years' time in any case

    Having a shelf life – that’s another first for a bridge!

    Shelf life is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

    Shelf life is the length of time that a commodity may be stored without becoming unfit for use, consumption, or sale. In other words, it might refer to whether a commodity should no longer be on a pantry shelf (unfit for use), or just no longer on a supermarket shelf (unfit for sale, but not yet unfit for use). It applies to cosmetics, foods, medical devices, explosives, beverages, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals, and many other perishable items. In some regions, an advisory best before, mandatory use by, or freshness date is required on packaged perishable foods.

    No sign of a bridge in that list of products, unless it’s covered by “perishable items“. 🙂

    The term for which Mr Onions was grasping was clearly “service life“, whose definition is once again supplied succinctly by Wikipedia.

    A product’s service life is its expected lifetime, or the acceptable period of use in service. It is the time that any manufactured item can be expected to be ‘serviceable’ or supported by its manufacturer.

    However, since the reports headline tried to create uncertainty about the length of any road, I reckon the Post’s objective was more concerned with whipping up emotions amongst its predominantly car-obsessed readership than with accuracy in use of the written word.

  • Greenwash Capital: stuff air quality, let’s build power stations

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

    If one only read the Bristol Post, there’d be no way that residents in the wider city would have any inkling that three polluting standby electricity generating stations were currently awaiting planning permission in the European Capital of Greenwash.

    Fortunately, this dreadful development has been picked up by Bristol 24/7: and here’s the unsurprising bit; they are all in the more deprived parts of the city.

    It is believed these power plants will form part of the Short Term Operating Reserve (Stor) network of reserve power banks which provide additional generating capacity to feed into the National Grid at peak times.

    Firstly, a planning application (ref. 15/02310/F) has been submitted on behalf of Plutus Energy for a 48 unit diesel generating plant and 2 diesel storage tanks with a capacity of 22,000 litres for 6 Feeder Road, Bristol and Avonbank, Feeder Road, Bristol, (both in the deprived Lawrence Hill ward. Ed.) close to St Philips Marsh School.

    Forty-eight diesel generators will doubtless chuck out a fair old quantity of particulates, which is a component of air pollution implicated in human cancer,heart and lung damage, and mental functioning.

    The applicants have not conducted an environmental impact assessment for the site since its small size (0.5 ha) is below the threshold for such a requirement. Nevertheless, local ward councillors believe such an assessment should be carried out due to the size and impact of the proposed development.

    In addition, some skulduggery is evident in the noise impact assessment that has been carried out. Edward Road was chosen for the noise impact, significantly further away from the site than St Philips Marsh School. Again, local councillors think this study should be reviewed and amended to include the impact on the school and the nearby Severn Vineyard Church.

    diesel generating plant somewhere in Africa
    A diesel generating plant somewhere in Africa

    Despite the fact that inner city Bristol already has dreadful air quality, this is not the only dirty diesel generating plant planned for the city.

    An application (ref. 15/04297/F) for another such facility has been submitted for Romney Avenue in Lockleaze, another of the city’s not so prosperous areas. Once again the applicants are Plutus Energy, who want to put 32 generators on this site close to a major housing estate and obviously care very little indeed for Bristol’s air quality.

    Finally, yet another application (ref. 15/04420/F) has been filed by UK Power Reserve for 10 diesel or gas generators for in in New Gatton Road in St Werburgh’s, with ten 12-metre high exhaust flues.

    Below is a short video on the St Werburgh’s scheme made by local residents.

    It’s quite scandalous that UK Power Reserve and Plutus Energy are even considering putting polluting power stations in or next to residential areas. On account of the need for extra domestic heating and lighting, these back-up power stations are most likely to be used on cold, foggy winter days when something called a temperature inversion occurs; this causes cold air to sink, trapping the warm air in a bubble enveloping the city, thus enabling urban pollution to build up to dangerous levels, perfect for increasing the incidence of respiratory ailments. The fact that both companies have cut corners in the form of environmental and noise impact assessments shouldn’t be forgotten.

    These dangerous unwelcome schemes should be thrown out by councillors.

    Finally, a language note. Over in the United States of America, this dumping of dirty, polluting and generally unwelcome facilities on poor, deprived communities has a name – environmental racism. In Wikipedia, environmental racism is defined as follows:

    Environmental racism is placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay.

  • Leaping salmon

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Wikipedia informs us that the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into the north Atlantic.

    The salmon’s journey through life from fresh to salt water and back to fresh is not just an aquatic journey, but a terminological one too, as shall be shown.

    The salmon spend their early life in fresh water, when the immature salmon are known firstly as alevin, then as fry and finally as parr, this final stage being when the juvenile salmon prepare to migrate to salt water.

    When the parr develop into smolt, they begin their trip to the ocean; this occurs mainly between March and June. The length of time that young salmon take before journeying from sweet to salt water can vary between one year and eight years.

    Once large enough, Atlantic salmon change into the grilse phase, when they become ready to breed and return to the same freshwater tributary from which they departed as smolts. It is believed that the salmon’s navigation for this journey involves a combination of magnetoception and the fish’s sense of smell as it nears its destination.

    This return from salt to fresh water occurs from September to November, the time of the salmon run. After spawning most Atlantic salmon die and the salmon life cycle starts over again.

    Many obstacles – some natural, some artificial – face salmon as they migrate upstream to their spawning grounds. One of these is formed by Shrewsbury Weir on the River Severn, the UK’s longest river.

    This year jettybox.com was on hand to record the salmon run over the weir; and do so in slow motion, which adds a poignant beauty to this annual spectacle.

  • Alliterative Linux

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Tech

    The Ubuntu Linux distribution is well known for its use of alliteration in the naming its releases.

    This convention dates back to the release of version 5.04 which bore the name “Hoary Hedgehog“.

    The latest in the series has just been announced: Softpedia reported yesterday that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will be named Xenial Xerus.

    What’s a Xerus and how is it xenial?

    a family group of xerus inaurisWikipedia informs us that the genus Xerus is better known as African ground squirrels. These squirrels form a taxon of squirrels under the subfamily Xerinae and are only found in Africa. A family group of 3 Xerus inauris or Cape Ground Squirrel is shown to the left of this paragraph.

    There are four species of African ground squirrels divided into three subgenera.

    The subgenus Euxerus is made up of the Striped Ground Squirrel, Xerus erythropus, which lives in south-western Morocco, southern Mauritania and Senegal.

    The subgenus Geosciurus consists of 2 species:

    1. Cape Ground Squirrel, Xerus inauris (also called South African Ground Squirrel), native to Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa; and
    2. Damara Ground Squirrel, Xerus princeps, native to south-western Angola and Namibia.

    The subgenus Xerus also consists of just one species, the Unstriped Ground Squirrel, Xerus rutilus, whose home range is from north-eastern Sudan to north-eastern Tanzania.

    As for xenial, that’s a great word whose definition is:

    1. Hospitable, especially to visiting strangers or foreigners.
    2. Of the relation between a host and guest; friendly.

    In addition, Dictionary.com informs us that the word originates from the Greek xenía, meaning hospitality.

    However, if you want your computing to be powered by a hospitable African ground squirrel, you’ll have to wait until next April!

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