We don’t do music!
In researching the previous post on children’s TV theme tunes, I noticed something I’ve never noticed before: Google doesn’t do music.
You can search for web pages, within books, for news, for images, videos, the list goes on. But you can’t search for music.
Is this because of the dominance of Apple in this market? Or is music simply not relevant to Google’s model?
Top three children’s TV tunes
Admittedly I have a lot of experience of this subject. But the three examples below all have fabulous theme tunes, each with a link. So, in no specific order, the top three children’s TV tunes are:
Comedy sans
An amusing conversation about my hatred of Comic Sans the other day.
Me: my mum loves it
Simon: if my dad knew how to change the font on his computer, he would too
What’s the yardstick?
I was surprised when reading the news of the Schiphol air crash that the BBC uses yards as its primary unit of measurement:
"The Boeing 737-800 aircraft came down at 1031 local time (0931 GMT), several hundred yards (metres) short of the runway."
Seems rather archaic for a global news organisation operating in a largely metric country.
What time is it?
Among other things, my wife bought me a watch for Christmas. I’ve not worn a watch for about eight years, and apart from feeling a little lopsided at first, I love it. I’m still getting used to looking at my wrist instead of my mobile phone when wanting to discover the time, but that will pass.
The most amusing thing about the watch is its nighttime feature. Each of its twelve digits comes with a luminous blob that glows green in the dark. But the hour and minute hands come with no such blobs. So while I can find my watch on my nightstand in the middle of the night (via a circle of blobs), I have no means of working out where the hands are pointing. Not a feature I’m bothered about, but one that tickles me.
Acceleration and deceleration: the facts
There was an article on BBC News today covering the court case of a man convicted of dangerous driving after driving his Renault Kangoo with an officer on the bonnet. Below is an excerpt.
"Christopher Evans, from Prestatyn, Denbighshire, reached speeds of 40mph (64kmh) with Pc Fran Donaghy holding on with one hand, Mold Crown Court heard.
"The officer had been trying to stop banned driver Evans, 40, in Hawarden in Flintshire when he drove off for 125m (410ft) before coming to a stop."
Let’s analyse the data.
America’s Drive and Stay Alive website claims that the stopping distance from 40mph is 80 feet (pure braking distance, not including thinking distance), or 24.4 metres.
The Renault Kangoo’s performance data suggests seven seconds will take it to 40mph. The graph therein suggests an average speed of around 24mph during this acceleration, which gives a total acceleration distance of 74.7 metres. Although I’m speculating, neither of these tests was done under the unusual circumstances of a police officer being attached to the car’s bonnet.
So 100 metres have been used up with full-on acceleration and deceleration, The following factors will likely increase this:
- The van had previously travelled over a grassed area, likely reducing its aptitude for acceleration and deceleration
- The van was likely not empty of stuff, again increasing its acceleration and stopping distances
- Unless he used his left foot for braking, there was likely a good few feet elapsed between the hard acceleration and the hard braking
- There was a police officer on the bonnet, for fuck’s sake. If this was good for aerodynamics, you’d see them on the front of F1 cars, right?
Given the above, I have to question how likely it is that he reached 40mph if his stopping distance was genuinely 125 metres.
I’m just saying.
Grammar: supply and demand
As grammar and spelling standards continue to slide and txt-speak continues to gain prevalence, will demand for skills in grammatical correctness (e.g. proofreading) increase because of the shortage of skilled resources, or decrease owing to the reduced demand?
Like watching format paint dry
Why on earth does Excel 2007 take so long to react to CTRL+1 (format cells)? My stopwatch just recorded 13.26 seconds before the dialogue box popped up.
Anyone?
Hiding errors where data doesn’t appear
Imagine a bunch of formulae copied down columns B, C, D etc. that are all driven by the data appearing in column A. An example might be a staff reference number in column A, with associated details (forename, surname, gender etc.) populated through formulae in the subsequent columns.
The trouble is, I don’t know how many rows will contain data—that is the decision of the operator of the spreadsheet. So I usually copy the formulae down beyond the point I think they will ever be used.
In the past, I’ve always added logic in the formulae in columns B and beyond to get rid of the horrible N/A# errors that appear when you try to look up a blank value, usually through one of the following
=if(ISERROR([INSERT LOGIC HERE]),”",[INSERT LOGIC HERE])
=if(A1=”",”",[INSERT LOGIC HERE])
The former checks whether the logic will return an error, in which case it will blank the target cell. The latter checks for the presence of data in column A.
Thinking about the problem today, I figured it probably makes more sense, both from a presentation and a memory perspective, to cater for this circumstance using conditional formatting as follows:
=isblank($A1)
The conditional format for the columns to the right of column A would simply contain ;;; as the custom number format, which hides the cells’ contents.
(In the course of writing this post, I remembered that the conditional formatting of number formats was only introduced in Excel 2007, so this tip is only applicable in the latest version, I’m afraid.)
Present: I tweet; future: I will tweet; perfect: I twat?
Below is one of Stephen Fry’s recent tweets
Reception SO fragile. My iPhones don’t like the weak signal, BBerry sometimes gets thru. Off in 12 ms to paddle our pangas with the whales.
(He’s currently in Mexico, but that’s not important right now. Nor is the fact that he’s tweeted (twot? twat?) ten times in the last 24 hours, a very quiet day for him. Nor his favourable comparison of the BlackBerry over the iPhone(s).)
The reason for this post is my image of him wandering around wrapped in the equivalent of a builder’s belt, iPods, BlackBerrys and other mobile devices strewn around his waist to cater for every eventuality, a suitcase wheeled behind him full of the chargers, wires and interconnectors needed to support them all.
Mobile technology indeed.
BBC Mobile navigation
To see the Premier League table on BBC Mobile having only bookmarked, BBC Sport’s Homepage, I do the following:
- Open BBC Sport
- Hit the Football Scores/Results link
- Hit Premier League
- Hit Premier League in the crumbtrail
- Hit Table
The lack of a comprehensive navigation at the high levels means that I have to drill beyond my intended destination and step back a level to find the link I’m looking for.
Overall, I’m disappointed by BBC Mobile, in terms of both the navigation and stories available. In my opinion, all of the content and navigation on the main BBC News is equally suitable for my mobile device (BlackBerry Storm) as it is for my laptop. Until that happens, I’ll have to drill in and out to reach my destination.
Jaded?
Is the BBC not adding to the very problem they are reporting on?
Volume is no substitute for content
I attended a meeting today in which someone with little of worth to say used volume as a substitute for his lack of content. Interesting approach, but not one that worked on me.
All fried out
Today the BBC has an article titled "Five Minutes With: Stephen Fry". I follow his slew of updates on Twitter, so I don’t think I could take another five minutes.
Extra points
Why is a three-point turn not called a two-point turn?
e-receipts
Whenever something breaks, I try to figure out when I bought it to work out whether it’s in warranty. I then try to work out whether I think I kept the receipt, and if so, where the hell I put it.
How’s about you could register with your bank an email address against all of your credit and debit cards? When the card-reading machine connected with your bank, the details of the transaction (the full receipt) would be transmitted to them so that they could then send you the receipt as a text file or PDF in an email—this would be called an e-receipt. I would set up my email to automatically throw these into a Receipts folder.
The shops participating in the scheme (hell, make it compulsory) would then accept a print-out of the e-receipt as evidence of purchase. If necessary, the receipt could contain a unique reference number assigned by the shop to identify the purchase to avoid fraudulent e-receipt generation.
As well as relieving my annoyance at rarely being able to find paper receipts when I need them, and saving oodles of paper at the till, they’d also provide rapid evidence of credit card cloning, something my mum suffered recently.
Thoughts?
Hoegaarden
My daughter can say Hoegaarden with perfect pronunciation. I’m slightly concerned.
Hard or soft? Top or bottom?
In addition to the more traditional and intangible measures that people use to assess their compatibility with potential partners, a couple of extras should be considered:
- Which Quality Street sweets do you prefer?
- Do you prefer the top or bottom half of a loaf sandwich?
I’m a soft-centres person myself, and my wife’s preference for the harder centres and toffees makes us ideally suited on that front. As for the bread, I’m a big fan of the crusty top half. My wife couldn’t believe I’d even contemplated the subject.
Maybe the match.com questionnaire needs to be enhanced.
Best moments in songs (part 3)
A couple of additions to the first and second posts detailing the best moments in songs:
- The opening piano notes in Take That’s Shine
- The syncopation of "I Can Fly" by the backing singers in R. Kelly’s I Can Fly. The one at 4m35s is fabulous, surpassed in beauty a mere 23 seconds later.
Character flaws
Apart from the allegations of murder, I have to say I find Amanda Knox phenomenally alluring. That one possible character flaw is quite significant though.
