I don’t use Twitter

I don’t use Twitter as I find it impossible to summarise my complex sophisticated thoughts into meaningful sentences of less than 140 charac

What's that in English money?

356,953 km ??? I remember whenit was always about 240,000 miles.

On Google earth I can see a 12" wide ladder on next door's roof. Iknow it's aerial rather than from space, but the old standard was 'we can see a dinner plate from space.'

But I don't have a phone...

...so where should I stick it? I'm 54, worked in IT all my life, love gadgets but hate mobile phones witha vengance. I have no plans to buy one.

Already available

You can buy self-healing cutting boards in most art and carft shops. They are so clever.

Full analysis of the word

Sorry I can't post full details, but somewhere on the net there is a file called something like FWORD.mpg which is a full and serious analysis. It's very funny, if you find it.

There are still plenty...

...of people, me included, who don't use mobile phones.

With the London Eye...

...when I travel in to London each day, I 'amuse' my self by letting my brain wonder which side of it I am lookg at. You can fool yourself into seeing the other side of it.

So it says...

"... images from the scanners are 'automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer"

So this infers that if someone successfully smuggles 'something' through, we'll have no record of how they did it. Great.

Did the prices go...

...t!ts up?

What I've never known is...

...why we pronounce Cen'timetre, Mill'imetre, but some folk say kilom-etre.

Has anyone looked at the other end...

...and seen that there are several ebooks costing over £3000 (yes, £3000) each.

The worst thing...

...are the gormless goons (usually male) wandering into people doing thjeir shopping. Let's have an app that gioves Boadicea-knives on shopping trolley wheels.

Short(er) stories will help...

...keep down the weight of your Kindle...

Any thing that gets up...

...Swami Chakrabarti's nose has got to be good.

Even better thab Budwar is...

...unfiltered, unpasteurised Budwar. We found it in a bar in Prague. It was incredible. The landlord even took us down into the cellar to explain it all to us.

I remember years ago...

...rolling out DOS 3.3 to dozens of users after changing "Bad Command or Filename" to "Bed Commode or Filename". Nobody ever noticed.

StreetView indicates development of nations

Like reviewing how early in a country's history it experiences civil war, one day we will look back at the reaction to StreetView around the world. The more go-ahead nations will object less. It seems like a national 'growing pain', that all countries seem destined to go through.

But can you...

...swat flies with it?

Elvis will stop...

...the internet too, when he dies.

Mines the one with a pocket full of Sun 45 rpms.

Can we see these...

...built in to mice and keyboards?

When we can't afford the gas bill...

...we love a nice family evening sitting around the warmth of a good old-fashioned light bulb. Sadly we've only got one left.

Angels & DEmons is...

...quite possibly the second best novel I've ever read. Truly unputdownable, and it made me want to visit everywhere mentioned in the book.

(The best ever novel? 'The Sett' by Sir Ranulph Fiennes . In a novel about ruthlessness and revenge, our hero takes on Yardies, the IRA, badger baiters, the CIA and the President of Pakistan, to name a few. )

It may be green but...

...£17 per year is peanuts compared to the sitting around idle waiying for a PC to boot time.

Is there anyway I can leave mine on when not in use, working on a massively distributed 'how to get computers to boot faster' project?

Mine's the one left on the peg seemingly not used.

A very clever publicity campaign.

'Scores' of images is less than a drop in the ocean. This is marvellous technology, and will allow many, many people to do their jobs from a desk without unnecessary travel. A few in the US complained last year and they were all thrown out. It's progress and it's here to stay. Live with it, enjoy it. have fun with it.

Oh, and anyone who leaves valuable objects on display in their windows is stupid.

If a house is blacked out....

...at the request of the householder, let's all go and take a photograph of it and put it on a website.

Only 2Gb...?

Surely he needs double-digit storage?

There big mistake was...

...not putting the data on a web site hosted somewhere else?

Giving lessons in txt spk...

...would soon help kill it off. If kids were taught to text, they wouldn't want to bother.

I do all my computer 'writing' using voice recognition software which is brilliant, and I've always thought using a voice medium such as a phone for typing is ludicrous.

Put them on the net, then,,,

I'll be able to drink cheap supermarket booze and still have the atmosphere of my local.

Losing history

Idiots are destroying an important aspect of social history. And now watch a few clever people slip ones in unnoticed.

Getting rid of dog poo

This is one of the uses that it SHOULD be put to. Forget terrorists, get those dirty people.

Why do people say signage..

...when they mean signs? It really annoys me.

Deserved?

Anyone who falls that deserves to have their PC taken away.

Easter egg

Click on the ! in the logo on the .com homepage to hear the Yahoo yodel.

Postage cheats

eBay MUST do something about sellers who profit from excess postage charges, AND avoid paying eBay their percentage. I tried to buy a USB hub, 99p plus £2.99 p&p, so I thought I might as well buy two. Postage went up to £5.98, despite the text saying 'combine to save postage.'

probably genuine

If the files are full of zeroes, they are probably genuine Windows bloatware.

Martin H. Watson

"The Conversation"

Watch Gene Hackman in "The Conversation".

Anagram

"RETINA DATA" is an anagram of"RETAIN DATA"

My eBay problems

I stopped using eBay after I complained about sellers expecting me to provide feedback before they would. I complained and got no response. Effectively it means that if I pay and don't get an item, then leave negative feedback, they just leave tit for tat negative feedback for me.

4 pack not 6 pack

I've always preferred exercising a 4 pack than my 6 pack.

Best wishes,

Martin

http://www.martinhwatson.co.uk/puzzle_news.html

Martin H. Watson

Misleading figures

I think the 50K vocab is incorrect. I have always believed that a vocab of 20,000 words is typical of a graduate (at least until the last 20 years of dumbing down). Offhand, I think English has 250,000 words, so suggestions that we use 50,000 seems incorrect.

I am lost for words...

Best wishes,

Martin

http://www.martinhwatson.co.uk/puzzle_news.html

Martin H. Watson

More Paris please

She's so banal that I find her entertaining. She may be from the depths of a murky gene puddle, but she makes me laugh. You couldn't make up her life.

Mashup is my hate - why not use amalgam, blend or mix?

"You can choose which Mapplets you want, and you can create a mashup of mashups by combining Mapplets with each other or with built-in features of Google Maps, like driving directions and business search – and view it all on the same map."

That garbage was from the latest Google Earth news letter.

Best wishes,

Martin

http://www.martinhwatson.co.uk/puzzle_news.html

Martin H. Watson

eBay Jim, but not as we knew it

Three or four years ago I used to use eBay quite a lot. It was an environment that was honourable and there were lots of bargains. I recently decided to look at eBay to buy a Web cam. I was shocked at some of the negative feedback given but my biggest moan was the number of companies listing items as 'buy it now' for little more than 99p and then charging £10 first class post and packing, from English addresses. This is a clear avoidance of eBay fees and I reported several such listings. Unfortunately eBay do not provide any feed back to me as to whether my complaints were justified. Should I bother continuing to report this flagrant cheating?

It's eBay Jim, but not as we knew it.