Offmessage

Sometimes really fascinating things turn up in your mail. Thanks to Doug for sending me this one… The etymology of “hello”

Dr. Bell himself wanted telephone calls to start with “Hoy, hoy!” Depending on whom you believe, Bell’s preferred salutation was derived either from a Gaelic greeting (Bell was born in Scotland) or from the nautical term “Ahoy.” (Fans of the TV show “The Simpsons” may have noticed that the character Mr. Burns, an old man whose vocabulary includes many obsolete words, always answers the telephone by saying “Ahoy-hoy.”)

How to wire your car. You’ll probably be wanting one of these to start with.
Book found at the raw feed

Some days you must just turn up to work and really really want to just go straight back home again… Business man forces Sothebys and Christies to decide who should sell his company’s art by playing rock paper scissors (NYT, reg required). Harsh, but funny. Made all the funnier by the two little girls that aided Christies’ victory.

Easy mistake to make, eh?

…not putting your photos online

Car lands in top floor of house

Thanks to Doug for pointing me in the direction of this Slate article:

While it is perfectly all right�even charitable�to practice this kind of tough love on those of one’s dinner-party neighbors who are less omnivorous than oneself, the perfect omnivore must always keep in mind that it is an absolute necessity to get invited back.

It makes a lot of sense, but you still won’t find me eating in St Johns I’m afraid.

A drag and drop library of space craft, so you can compare size and see how they’d do against each other in a bare knuckle brawl.
Thank you funjunkie

It is sometimes said that Richard Brautigan is the patron saint of the blog. On that basis I wonder is Douglas Adams the patron saint of the wiki?

Wondering (as I have been for some time) about why exactly PHP sucks quite so badly when you really try to get into something I was intrigued to come across this piece by Rasmus (one of PHP’s creators):

PHP is not about purity in CS principles or architecture, it is about solving the ugly web problem with an admittedly ugly, but extremely functional and convenient solution. If you are looking for purity you are in the wrong boat. Get out now before you get hit by a wet cat!

Don’t get me wrong. I love PHP for exactly the reasons he outlines in that piece, but I sure do hate it for those self same reasons as well.