Sir Tim Berners-Lee and me

I didn't blog yesterday evening because I was at the Science Museum here in London, listening to a talk by Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor of the World Wide Web.

I've written about it for one of the Computer Weekly blogs, if you're interested:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the Web (past, present and future)

Overheard in the Newsroom

So I've fallen in love with a website: Overheard in the Newsroom. Unsurprisingly, it's a collection of "the best quotes overheard in the newsroom".

So many of the quotes I can relate to:

Reporter talking about the copy desk: “Has this desk ever seen this much action?”

Copy editor: “Last time there was cake… ”

I'm definitely going to be contributing, and hopefully making it slightly less US-centric.

Oh, here's the OHNewsroom RSS feed and here it is on Twitter.

Unforeseen circumstances beyond our control

An Indian restaurant near my office has closed down "due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control and the current economic climate".

That suggests to me that the owners of the restaurant either foresaw the recession or have it within their control (or both). I just hope they've left the restaurant business to become economists.

Headlines: Gordon Brown ordered mission...

R Mason spotted this poorly written headline on the Times Online website:


She writes:

When I first read this, I wondered: why would a mission hold a journalist? Why would Gordon Brown give it orders?

(If you can't see the picture, the headline reads: "Gordon Brown ordered mission to free kidnapped reporter Stephen Farrell")

England is a place next to the Wirral

Here's a Multimap screengrab I took today:


Is it just me, or does this map make it look like (the) Wirral and England are two neighbouring places? You can find the town of England just east of the Wirral...

(For those who don't know, the Wirral is a peninsula in England, albeit close to Wales.)

Stammering and stuttering

I've just started reading David Mitchell's novel Black Swan Green, and already I've found a passage I'd like to share. The voice is that of 13-year-old stammerer Jason Taylor:

Most people think stammering and stuttering are the same but they're as different as diarrhoea and constipation. Stuttering's when you say the first bit of the word but can't stop saying it over and over. St-st-st-stutter. Like that. Stammering's where you get stuck straight after the first bit of the word. Like this. St...AMmer!

Is this really true? Maybe - but even if it isn't, it should be.

Juxtaposition: cocaine deaths / adult cot death

Sarah pointed out this recent Metro front cover to me:



The lead headline reads:
Cocaine deaths jump by a fifth

The headline above the photo of the teenage girl reads:
'Angel' who died in her sleep at 16

At first glance, Sarah assumed that the girl had died after taking cocaine. However the copy alongside the photo begins:

This is Kelly Blair, a bubbly teenager whose life was cut short when she died in her sleep. The 16-year-old, described by her parents as their 'special angel', is thought to have been a victim of adult cot death, which kills around 150 people in Britain a year.

In other words, the picture caption is entirely unrelated to the cocaine story.

Sarah would like to know whether the juxtaposition of the two stories was intentional or unintentional. I'm not sure. What do you think?

Names: Joy Rider

A couple of years ago, Apus wrote about one of our colleagues who had uncovered some interesting names while working on her family history: notably, Arthur and Walter Bottle.

That same colleague has continued her research and she recently stumbled across another great name: Joy Rider.

Interestingly, the Joy Rider in question was born in Kent in 1939, while the first recorded usage of the word 'joyriders' (or in this instance, 'joy-riders') dates from back in 1908 - according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition it gives is: "A pleasure trip in a motor car, aeroplane, etc., often without the permission of the owner of the vehicle."

The word originated in the US and I'm not sure whether it was widely known in the UK by 1939. I would suspect not, judging by this evidence.

Greetings to any Joy Riders reading this post!

Cook for 12-20 minutes. Maybe

Cooking instructions for a Morrisons 10" fresh vegetable pizza:

Cooking appliances vary. These instructions are given only as a guide.

Make sure that the food is piping hot throughout before serving.

Place pizza on a baking tray and cook in a pre-heated oven at 200°C, 400°F, Gas Mark 6 for 12-20 minutes.

The pizza is handmade and so probably doesn't conform to a precise shape or thickness - but 12 to 20 minutes? An instruction such as "cook until the cheese melts and starts to brown" would be more useful (to anyone unsure of how to cook pizza, that is).