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It’s been some time since this blog was last updated. Well quite a lot of time actually – nearly two years. Well at lot as happened in those two years. When I say a lot I am referring to the 15mth old little one upstairs asleep (currently).
So I apologise for any inconvenience whilst I’ve not been blogging. So why what write this now? Well in the interim I’ve actually started using Twitter and been ‘micro-blogging’ for some time. I saw the title of this post on a vending machine. My thought process was – ‘oh I’ll tweet about that when I get back to my desk; but 140 characters can’t sum up my dislike for it’. So I’m here!
Scenario is: at work we have cashless-vending. i.e. we need to ‘charge-up’ a card with money. Stick in your card, cash, and you can now use vending machines/buy lunch at the canteen etc. There aren’t many of these charging machines, and when one was out of order, the nearest is the other side of the site. Ten minutes walk – ok not a big problem but it gets a “grrrr” when all you want is quick coffee before the next meeting.
So what’s my problem? It’s the any in the phrase. It has always implied to me that the author is saying. “This machine being out of order could possibly in some rare circumstance have caused you inconvenience. Should this unlikely circumstance have arisen then I’m sorry”.
It’s the fact that the any suggests for the most of time you won’t have a problem – but if you do hey, we’re sorry. My argument is that they when this phrase gets the probability is that you have (or will) be inconvenienced. Therefore this phrase just adds “insult to the injury”.
Rarely you do see “Sorry for the inconvenience caused” – which always gives me a better feeling. It’s also a case of writing a phrase that is so often used the author is not actually thinking about what they have said.
Anyway – that feels better now, rant off. So when will the next post be? 2011? I certainly hope not, but if it does I apologise for the inconvenience I will have caused you.
I went down to Little Woodham this afternoon – the “1642 Living History Village”. James is a long standing member and encouraged me to come down; some pictures where required as well.
The weather was wonderful, and the site is in amazing small piece of oak woodland. Absolutely English!! Together with the wittle and daube buildings it is a very impressive place. After a while you really start to forget that it’s 2007. The civil war siege of Portsmouth was occurring this week in 1642; one thing that struck home is that 1642 what we now think of as being close wasn’t then. Scale was very different.
Wonderful people with great stories to tell of life and living. Narrowly missed being signed up to be a Pikeman.. best job for a gentleman apparently. Attention to detail is amazing – sausages in the chimney to smoke and kill the maggots.
My knowledge of 1642 is a bit rusty – better brush up for next time as well. Sadly some of my photo knowledge left me as well and the VR lens didn’t perform as well as I had hoped it would do.
In the words of Bill Bryson “Go; go now”…. (though I’d like to keep my car if you don’t mind… plus it didn’t exist in 1642 anyway)
Wheelwright, originally uploaded by Calanais.
Often in news reports you hear stastics quoted, such as 1 in 5 people eat fish once a week, or 20% of people got A grades in this exam. Fine, it tries to give an idea of scale. There are many ways of quoting for example
- 1 in 4
- 25%
- A quarter
- 2 out of 8
Now they all quote the same proportion; my assertion is that whilst these are the same amount, that saying “a quarter of people” gives a different ‘feel’ from “1 in 4 people”.
Assuming this assertion holds, the problem that I have is when 2 statistics are mixed together. For example (and this is the real example I heard today).
A quarter of students achieved grade A in A-level exams, compared with 1 in 10 a few years ago.
By using the x in y approach for figure a few years ago and using “a quarter” now I think exaggerates the difference between the amounts. Say we recast the sentance,
25percent of students achieved grade A in A-level exams, compared with 10percent a few years ago.
Does that change the perceived difference? I think it does – please contradict me!!
Despite the threat of more rain, I ventured out this morning. Having spent much of yesturday inside, I very much wanted to get out side. Checking the BBC’s weather page this morning hinted that today would be notably better. The satelite pictures suggested that better weather was coming in from south-east.
Buoyed by a promising conclusion from the amateur meteorology, I headed for Broughton Down. A location I’ve wanted to visit for sometime, due to the tag of “the best views in Hampshire” from the Hampshire Wildlife Trust.
Following the HWT’s directions I got there eventually, although the car is now muddy and it’s suspension has less life in it. Walking past the burnt out shell of Ford Fiesta, I was not confident in that tag line. Nor did passing the supposed location of one of these view points. I sure it was a nice cornfield, if cornfields are your thing. After landing flat on my back after slipping on some exposed chalk, I had firmly removed “best views” from my thoughts.
Things started to look up, when I found that the actual view points where on the other side of the small wood I had walked down. Looking over across the village of Broughton, the countryside opened up. A small but pleasent chalk down with numerous low growing flowers, but without the usual butterflies that accompany such land. The weather at this time was turning bad so macro shots would have had me soaked, so I head into the woods. Some wonderful old knarled tress.
However whilst in there, the cloud started to break up giving some better light and I headed out again to the chalk down. The expanse of the flowers, much like bluebells looks like a great shot but capturing it is always difficult. A few shots with the 200mm looked promising; will attempt similar at a later date.
Time was now approaching lunchtime; the (virtually) unmarked track and that burnt out car had been at the back of my mind at the time. This seemed like farily remote and safe part of the test valley but was it? Plus I was hungry
Would I go back? Possibly, but I think I’d like to park in in Broughton, or similar go through the down on a walk to somewhere else.
Well I’ve just come back from my 5th Blood Donor session! For many years I never did this, the mere thought of it was absolutely awful; my blood was very precious to me and didn’t really want to loose it.
But it’s very precious to somebody else as well. somebody quite probably in a far worse state than me. I can make more it; they might be alive to.
The worse part of donating yet hasn’t happened yet… later on this evening I need to take the plaster from my arm. Now that is going to hurt!!!
Some people can’t give blood, and for some it is quite a shock to the system. But if you then I would really urge you to do so. If you look on the National Blood Donation website you can see the level of blood stocks.
For some types that is just a few days and at the best 11 days. That is hardly anything at all……
As it says in the adverts “Do something amazing today”.
I’m a horder (or should that be an horder?) It pains me to see things thrown away, that to me have no value, but still retain something about them that could be useful in the right context. Of course by this definition nothing would be thrown away. This is a state that we should be in. Landfils are getting very full.
In the part “the old days” of computers when I first started using them, floppy disks could be 5.25″ wide – and really floppy. There was a notch on the side of the disk that you could cover up with a small sticky label. This had the effect of making the disk protected against being overwritten.
Time of course moves on, and the systems that used this disk have gone by (or collecting dust in my garage). But I still kept those labels in an envelope full of various different types of labels. 15 years later we were packaging up some greetings card to sell for charity. We needed some small sticky labels to seel the packets. Those old 5.25″ labels came out.
So next time you think “that might just have a use” save it, but be prepared to wait for 15 years!
