'I assumed that it was a suicidal note'

BBC News is running a story today about a French love letter in a bottle that washed up on a Cornish beach.

The man who discovered the bottle, Martin Leslie, is quoted as saying: "I assumed that it was a suicidal note that we came across."

Suicidal note: a note that tries to kill itself...

• Associated Press: Former child actor Joe Pichler missing, suicidal note found; was in `Beethoven' comedies

Bags of fun at Marks & Spencer

So Marks & Spencer charges 5p for each of its regular carrier bags, partly "to encourage customers to reduce the amount of bags they use".

Today I bought a few groceries at Marks & Spencer, and the cashier persuaded me to pack them in two small carrier bags "because they're free" rather than in one regular bag.

Go to Marks & Spencer and use more plastic bags!

Image courtesy of FreeFoto.com.

My metrics tool is feeling optimistic

So the tool we use at work to track our website's page views is feeling wildly optimistic today (click on the image to see a larger version):


There's a clear weekly pattern, and when I took the screengrab at 3pm today we were on track to hit (or slightly exceed) the average for a Monday. Where the forecast of 50,000+ page views came from I don't know. Not least because it would be 14,000 page views above our site record...

Nihari is best eaten

So my local Indian takeaway has an interesting item in the 'specials' section of its menu:

Nihari £9.95

Lamb on the bone is slow cooked to release all its flavours making a rich, very distinctive curry. Best eaten.

"Best eaten"? Does that mean that the other dishes are best avoided?

Funny, but I've found a very similar description on another restaurant's menu - only this one ends with "Best eaten with garlic naan"...

A Generation Hat is Ignored and Scorned

I did mention this great typo on Twitter yesterday but I think it's worth recording for posterity on the blog. You never know, the Daily Express might get around to fixing it at some point:



Daily Express: A Generation Hat is Ignored and Scorned

2000A post may have at most labels.

Two things have annoyed me recently.

Firstly, the discovery that Blogger blogs can only have a maximum of 2,000 tags (or 'labels', if you prefer).

Secondly, the error message that Blogger gives you when you exceed that number:



"2000A post may have at most labels." Very clear.

Free translations, guides, books and, er, sex

I've been meaning to share these links for a while:

Bab.la Phrases: translations of useful phrases to and from any two of 14 languages - with a special focus on formal writing (business and academic). Bab.la is also offering downloadable travel survival guides - but they don't contain any information on pronunciation, so in my view their use is limited.

Lit Drift: a website about fiction-writing, notable for its 'Free Book Fridays' - "the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing". Oh, you can also follow Lit Drift on Twitter. Somewhat surprisingly, the site is blocked at work:

Photo special: infer / imply

Today I took an online course on competition laws ('antitrust' to some of you), and I was pleased to see it contained this example of infer/imply confusion:



Great photo too.

Workplace outing

Recently I overheard this piece of office humour:

Colleague A: "We need a workplace outing."
Colleague B: "OK - your magazine's gay!"

(For those who don't get the joke - 'outing' can mean either "an excursion" or "the disclosure of the undeclared homosexuality" (both OED). I'm not sure whether the former meaning is widely used outside British English...)