The year started well as I rolled out of bed in my warm brushed cotton, red tartan, pyjamma set. Mumsy buys the best christmas pressies with her Marks and Spencers loyalty card. As the teapot brewed I lifted the cupboard‘s lid and logged in.

The warm, fluffy feeling started fading as Microsoft’s .NET framework announced an ‘unhandled exception‘ in MY ‘application‘.  My cheeky little application had the afrontary to so something without proper handling? Naughty!’

This verbose .NET Framework message appeared to offer me 2 choices in the first paragraph:

• ignore this error (continue button)
• force my application to close (quit button)

The second paragraph is written in jargon about turning on functions, configuring, clients, trace-logs and SDKs.  This is 2012, good practice for producing software error messages has been around for decades. Why is Microsoft still showing me outrageously poorly designed dialogs? Especially first thing in the morning of the new year.  pfft. I choose to ignore this message because it didn’t enable me to make an informed decision – which ‘application’ of mine is exceptional?

A few moments later I got a BIG clue about the exceptional  ‘application’. Mozilla:

• raised it’s hand with a message
• started its conversation with me by  apologising. Nice! This takes ownership for having caused the problem and sets the tone of the conversation with me as one of respect to me
• tells me firefox will try to fix the problem – doesn’t expect me to fix it
• politely asks for me to give them diagnostic information. Which I did

I really like the tone of voice, the attitude, of Mozilla when talking to me

As I poured my second mug of tea another potential culprit for the ‘application’ that Microsoft .NET framework found ‘exceptional’ raised it’s hand

The large, ugly, Sony Viao update dialog insisted that I update my netbook software then told me I had to reboot the cupboard.  It’s direct instructional approach feels rather rude. I follow the instructions because I’ve been trained by years of poor software to feel helpless and follow this type of condescending instruction

It’s like being in the 1990′s all over again

Do0-do Doo-do

The English language has some fun collective nouns for animal groups:

a shrewdness of Apes
a cloud of Bats
a flutter of Butterflies
a murder of Crows
a seething of Eels
a business of Ferrets
an implausibility of Gnus
a troubling of Goldfish
a loveliness of Ladybirds
a parliament of Owls
a mutation of Thrushes
a chime of Wrens

As the winter nights draw-in the endless possibilities of entertaining new collective nouns snuggle into the wendy house:

a ________________ of celebrities
a ________________ of Journalists
a ________________ of activists
a ________________ of celebrities
a ________________ of lawyers
a ________________ of bankers
a ________________ of MPs
a ________________ of commuters
a ________________ of cyclists
a ________________ of doctors

The Italian tourist on Paddington station asked me

“what times are off-peak travel times?”

Gradually realising the sysem craziness I reply

“That depends which direction you are travelling, peak time applies to trains into London in the morning and out of London in the evening, so if you are travelling into London in the evening – there is no peak time

but I’m not sure”

Then I asked my Londoner friend for clarification

“Are there peak time restrictions on the tube?”

My friend didn’t know about ‘peak times’ so we assumed that tube trains within London didn’t have travel restrictions based on time of travel. How could this Italian distinguish between tube trains and other trains when they use the same stations?  Should we say ‘you can travel on the grubby looking trains  that are travelling around London, sort of, at any time”?  I felt daunted. Such a simple question, such a complex answer.

Then, to make matters worse, I remembered that at peak times you can catch some trains which are not covered by the peak time travel restrictions, so added

“You can travel at peak time with a non-peak time ticket on some trains, normally the slower trains, but some of the fast trains”

The Italian looked suitably baffled. We hadn’t really helped her. I had a passing thought of Franz Kafka, imagining him stuck on a train station trying to get out of London at 5pm.  No matter how good your grasp of the English language, this explanation, this system is

• fundamentally confusing
• really difficult to remember even if you can work it out in the first place.

it’s not designed to make ticket purchase and use easy, its evolved to satisfy diverse organisations that lack customer perspective. The best pracitcal suggestion that we could give the Italian was

“Find the train you want to travel on and ask one of the rail staff if it works, and what’s their best suggestion,  it’s the only way to be sure”

When I asked a train station employee at Reading main station he whipped out a PAPER leaflet that listed trains that travel at peak times but accept off-peak time tickets. This work-around suggest that the service providers recognise the problem. The cute, archaic, work-around made me smile. But why not make it easier for the traveller in the first place (or time)!

Currently peak travel times are defined by a mixture of train

• time
• service provider (not applied on the tube)
• direction (relative to London, and maybe other citiies?)
• train speed (sometimes)

I know what name I’d like to give the ticket pricing and travel system, but that’s unpublishable …..

Your’s huiffily, wendy x

PS here are the peak travel time trains from Paddington that accept off-peak time tickets:

numb·er·i·cal /nəmerikəl/

Adjective

Definitions:

1) Deprived of the power to feel or manipulate a number or series of numbers

“wendy suffered a numberical moment when asked to work out how many people it would take to eat 6 packages of  twiglets in 30 minutes”  (the answer was, of course:  ’1, ME!’ )

2) Inability to perceive numbers

“When asked how many packets of twiglets are hidden in the back of your wardrobe? wendy numberically answered “MINE!”

3) Counting without direct use of numbers

“wendy numberically asserted that there were a whole bunch of twiglets for sale in the Co-op”

“A guest in the wendy house numberically suggested there were loads of twiglets hidden in the back of wendy’s wardrobe” (not actually true because I’ve eaten them)

With bubbly enthusiasm Tracey describes the people she met in Geneva when representing the UK at a Proctor and Gamble hosted international conference:

His parents were from Naples in Italy, they moved to New York before he was born, so even though he looks Italian he’s a real New Yorkan

He was a bit of a scientist boffin from Germany, his name was “Yo!-harn” or something like that, I had trouble with it so I called him Yogi Bear, how we laughed!

Tracey’s exhuberance was captivating, she quickly built a picture of people from all over the world enjoying each other’s company, sharing a passion…

Words are a powerful force, even descriptive statements have the power to cause action, illocutionary force. What people choose to say, or not say, causes the world to change

If a guest in the Wendy House makes a statement like “it’s cold in here” then I will interpret that as a description of discomfort. The force of the statement pushes me to suggest either

• lighting the woodstove
• providing a jumper
• making another pot of tea
• going somewhere warmer
• doing something that raises our body temperature

The reply will either confirm, or disconfirm, my assumption and take us a step nearer to making the immediate world a more pleasant place to be

Some people use their illocutionary force with skill, wisely or cruely. Some people spew words in a stream of consciousness seemingly without awareness of their forceful impact on listeners

Someone said ennui in a real conversation

• as-if it might be a real word
• as-if I might know what it means!

what a tease!

It sounded like “ahn-wee, setting-off my sensitively calibrated toilet-word-radar alarm. Wee?!

Giggling ensued, then I checked the spelling and looked up the meaning

This was not a tease. This was a real word and the utterer had used it in a sentence that made total sense

A celebratory tea party is in order

Bring on the cakes!

PS 82 word post before the PS

England has a long history of rioting. In 1714 an act of parliament was introduced to try and deal with this national passtime – “the act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies” with the more snappy popular title of  “the riot act” .  The riot act let local authorities declare to a group of twelve or more people that they were unlawfully assembled and ask them to disperse within the hour or be punished. The riot act would be read to the assembled people:

Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!

It had to be read precisely. It was a hanging offense to not disperse within the hour. Some prosecutions were overturned in court because the proclamator forgot to read “God save the King!”  The act included the death penalty, later transportation and was last used in 1919 on the Wirral. The act ceased to be law in 1975

The phrase ‘read the riot act’ is still used colloquially as a warning to cease serious misbehaviour…

I gave up trying to compile a decent list of riots in mainland England because it was getting way too long

This left me wondering how to distinguish revolution, rebellion and riot…

Visitors to the Enterprise centre can only park for 20 mins

20 minutes is their time-box

time-box is trendy business language

Is this a cunning prompt for enterprising visitors to think out of their (time) box to either

find ways to stay longer than 20 minutes

or

do what normally takes more than 20 minutes in less time

The toilets in the Fine Art department of Reading University are proudly green and probably original features of the one-storey utilitarian style brick building (circa 1930). The subtle differences in styling such as the 3 vertical panels on the womens’ door imply it may be newer (circa 1950) than the more utilitarian design of the mens’.

The addition of a paper sign to the womens’ door is a modern addition, an attempt to change behaviour using strong language “Important, Under no circumstances should…” clear identification  of the people who should attend to this notice “...fine arts students…” and their unacceptable behaviour “…clean their brushes in these toilets”

EWE!  I always use the sink to clean my brushes – easier and less whiffy.

“It’s a little-known fact that the world’s best chicken sexers come almost exclusively
from Japan”

For some reason psychologists and philosophers investigate chicken sexing. Psychologists lured me into reading obscure articles on chicken sexing because, amongst other things, it is a skilled human activity that cannot be articulated. Just one mention in my undergraduate course, carefully juxtapositioned with a reference to how wine tasting is a similarly non-articulatable skill.

Chicken sexing? Chicken sexing! Maybe the idea stayed with me so long and in preference to wine tasting because of the word sex. Maybe its that the act of labelling a chicken with a predicted sex is called ‘sexing’. From one comment in a 1985 class on cognitive psychology, I developed an interest in reading about chicken sexing. So it was, so it is.

“If I went for more than four days without chick sexing work I started to have ‘withdrawal symptoms”

 

Our correspondent from Barcelona recently provided this little tid-bit:

Most modern English place names have their origins in Old English, the Anglo-Saxon language; most of the other contributions are either oddities or window dressing. Recurring elements that help us to do our own detective work include the endings “-ham” and “-ton“, ancestors of “home” and “town“; Hampton is a combination of the two and Hampstead means, more or less, “homestead“. The “-ing” generally means a place was founded by the followers of a certain chieftain: Reading is called after an otherwise forgotten man, Reada, whose name suggests that he had red hair, and Hastings after Haesta, who was probably quick-tempered.

BBC Radio 2 described the shooting of two British students in Sarasota Florida as happening Several miles from a recognised tourist area in a Downmaket residential area where it is very unusual to find tourists

Apart from an exta 8 syllables what are the main differences between Downmarket residential area and Ghetto? Why do you think the BBC chose the longer phrase?

I love it when my car talks sexy to me like this. Really Thomas is saying, phone those nice boys at the Mini Service centre, you know you want to. And he’s right, I do want to and I do call them. On the phone I slowly, precisely say to the service centre chappy

I’ve got a Diesel Particle Filter Malfunction, Yeah, really, I have

He giggles

If you were at a Swedish speaking school you would swear in Finnish or German. Often the language at school was different from the language at home. At home you could have a conversation where one sentence would switch between languages, Finnish, Swedish German (Dad)

Dad had a multilingual upbringing in Finland, Sweden and  Hull (England). I had a monolingual upbringing, English was the only language spoken at home.

Dad did make sure we had many connections with his family history through music (Sibelius), decorations such as Dalacarlian horses, personal and published stories. Dad arranged the weekly trip to the Library to swap our story books. A big family event, such fun. Noggin the Nog and Tove Jannsen‘s Moomin’s (Muumi in original Finnish) were fond favourites of my early life. Like Dad, Tove was a Swedish speaking Finn. Little my is an occassional character in the Moomins, based on Tove.

The soundtrack for the TV series sounds almost Cajun….

Watch and listen to a Moomin episode in original musical Finnish

Ostara, in the form of a hare is cohorting around the garden today, delighting the local adult children (Sampo and I) celebrating the shift from more than 12 hours of night to more than 12 hours of daylight.

With a clear view of the sky, in the Wendy House orangerie, the circular dining table has taken the role of an altar dressed in green cloth, laid with candles, flowers, seeds, pen and paper. Drinking large mugs of hot spiced apple juice from the caldron on the woodburner. Yummy. In a small celebration we’ve danced a clockwise circle round the table, written our hopes and desires on the paper, burnt the paper. Tomorrow I’ll put the ashes in the garden, plant the seeds where the growing daylight will nourish and draw them towards the sky

That’s the vernal equinox described in story form. The focus is on the people words that draw images and emotions, describing what people do and how they do it. This writing style is traditionally the domain  and humanities.

I find the scientific style of writing which often deliberately excludes explicit reference to people and beliefs fascinating in itself. Some ‘social sciences’ have included people by treating them as the objects to be studied, for example psychology that conducts research with human participants (not called people) and produces research papers written in the scientific tradition of the passive 3rd person. Wikipedia articles are examples of writing in the 3rd person passive, which I understand as core to the current scientific style. Wikipedia describes the vernal equinox in detail.

Here’s a few things I found out written in a more scientific style:

The word “vernal” is of Latin origin and refers to the season – spring. The word “equinox” is another word of Latin origin that means “equal night”. The vernal Equinox is a time when day and night are of nearly equal length, 12 hours, across the world. Today is the March equinox, which is the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere.

miss typing ‘different’ as ‘diffident’ can add a sad twist to a sentence

Each runic symbol has a sound and meaning often conveyed through a poem

X

We give the gift
to us, beautiful thereby.
The exiles miss this

Name Gefu, Gyfu, Gifu
Number 7
Sound (hard) G
Colour red
Traditional meaning Gift

This rune refers to agreements, settlements, legal matters, honouring of contracts and betrothal. Often used to sign contracts, in place of a signature by those who could not write. It is often used to indicate a ‘kiss’ in writing, text. Two strokes of the ‘pen’ me and you making a cross, each equal and leaning towards each other. It reminds me of Yin and Yan. Two distinct individuals meeting, giving, receiving, balanced.

This is my Butler sink. The Butler sink got its name from the role of the main user. The Butler of the household would use the Butler sink. As I talked to kitchen suppliers they all corrected me when I called this a Butler sink, no, its a Belfast sink. A quick online search tells me that Butler is the generic word for the sinks and Belfast describes more specific features, in this case a ‘wier’ style water overflow. This website describes how city names became associated with the design, and why different cities had different designs:

This is because, when butler sinks were first made in the late 17th century, each major city had a sanitation officer autonomously responsible for the ordering of pipes, basins, sinks, and decreeing sizes, styles etc. Different patterns were evolved and gave rise to specific types. Hence the Belfast butler sink was different from, say, the London butler sink.

Belfast, with access to plentiful water housed sinks with overflows, but London , built on clay where deep wells had to be drilled to reach water, discouraged water wastage and no overflows were accommodated. Therefore, the Belfast butler sink has what is known as a Weir overflow built into it, whereas a standard Butler Sink doesn’t

wendy: have you been watching the Ashes?

German: I’m waiting for them to start, at the moment they’re still playing tests

‘Bob’s your uncle’ is a phrase tagged onto the end of a set of instructions or a succesful demonstration – to indicate successful completion. According to World Wide Word’s the phrase is mainly used in the British Commonwealth and probably derives from political nepotism when the Prime Minister Lord Robert Salisbury gave his nephew Arthur Balfour some senior political positions for no clear reason other than Arthur was his nephew. Arthur was good at the jobs so ‘Bob’s your uncle’ appears to mean, dont worry, it will work…

software developer: do you interact with the customer?

wendy: I talk to people while I watch them use our stuff and give them tips on how to get the most out of using it

My ability to liberally apply single syllable words at work, when multisyllable jargon will do,  is outrageouss. In the photo you see me demostrating how to use the ‘hunt and peck’ keyboard technique. I also have a compulsion to think of people as people rather than income sources (customers)

Naughty me

Using a ‘quick and dirty’  survey of all the British staff (n=3)  in the office at lunch time revealed the reliable result that

she is the cat’s mother

according to all of our mothers. Apparantly the phrase is meant to illustrate the imprecision of the use of ‘she’ to refer to a person, the listener might not be able to work out who is being referred to.  We all agreed that we were taught that it was rude to refer to a person who is present during the conversation as ‘she’ or ‘he’.  The phrase is a rhetorical technique used to point this out because presumably we know the name of the cat, but we don’t know the name of the cat’s mother, who is unlikely to be present. When a person is present you should use thier name as a reference point for example  ‘wendy spilt tea in your keyboard’ as oppose to pointing and saying ‘she spilt tea on your keyboard’.

Though I need to make it VERY clear that I was no actually the culprit, I drank all my tea, all 6 large mugs of it.

wendy: Norfolk and Norwich

The Canadian’s face instantly flushed red as he smiled, then catuiously asked

Did you just say no fücking nor witch?

Lord Hutton’s use of the English language when interviewed on radio 4 this morning was most entertaining. I won’t provide English translations unless requested because the actual meanings were a tad more dull than

• race for the bottom
• push problems under the cup

.

want

before tell

ending in need

A paper printed sign in the groundfloor window of a small redbrick terraced house who’s door opens directly onto the street. The house has probably beeen reposessed, the people who lived there evicted. The notice probably fulfills a legal requirement. 

The notice says that there are things in the house that will be chucked out if their owners don’t pick them up within 7 days of the date on the notice.   It says this in a language that is no longer spoken by lay people in England – using words like chattels and herein. If I suspect that the people evicted from this house have a literacy level below average then the wording is difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Almost as if the ‘Agent’ doesn’t care whether the person who’s belonging are in the house understands that they need to promptly pick-up their stuff.

Sad.

Thomas’s turning was accompanied by a squeak. Not a mousy squeak but an evil squeal. It’s possible he may be unsafe to drive. We trundled off to the garage where I left him with the mechanics for diagnostic tests.

Both Gordon Ramsay and my niece are well known for the liberal use of anglo saxon swear words and tantrums. In an attempt to be safe and not gay I’ve made several excursions into emultating their trendy linguistic, emotive, style.  For example

wendy: when can I have my mini back?

mechanic: are you missing your mini? (wry smile)

wendy: Fuċk, am I?! (stamps foot)

The mechanic understood, but 

I went on to fuċking fail

to maintain a modern fuċking focus

on using one fuċking word

Fuċking fuċk. Fuċked (fuċk)

Meanwhile,  Thomas pootled out onto the garage forecourt with the stone that caused all the squeaking surgically removed from his disc brakes. Phew!

when writing blog posts I sometimes find it difficult to percieve where the sentence ends and the paragraph starts

the difference between a sentence and a paragraph

its a para normal experience

tramatic = the dramatic expression of a traumatic event.    

Examples of the word in use

• It was the tantrum in Sainsubury’s female hygiene isle that made the whole event tramatic
• Texas chainsaw massacre was a tramatic film