Author Archives: colin

When I read Shetlandic

Posted on 2016-01-03 by colin

it is in Verdana in my mind’s eye: BÖD JUPPM AAMOS UPPADOGA HEDDERKINDUNK YARG VOAR HENTILAGETS

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Two simple rules for avoiding a #shirtstorm

Posted on 2014-11-17 by colin

I’m going to assume for argument’s sake that it’s your choice if you’re a gentleman and want to flaunt your moobs or your coccyx. However, the zeroth rule of cleavage, before anything you might see in glossy magazines, is any cleavage you … Continue reading →

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(گربه بزرگ از شهر ایرانی (۵

Posted on 2014-02-18 by colin

Persian ought to be pretty good for crosswords. There are no case endings to make things fiddlier, and the ezafe, the grammatical particle that holds noun phrases together, is usually not written. Further, the short vowels, at least in the middle … Continue reading →

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心無しで柴犬がなくなる（２）

Posted on 2013-12-31 by colin

This is しぬ and the working is as follows: 柴犬 in syllables is しばいぬ. Remove the “heart” (心) from this and you are left with the outer two syllables, which can also be written 死ぬ “to die”, which is another sense … Continue reading →

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The opera-a-week challenge

Posted on 2013-12-31 by colin

New game for 2014: see an opera a week. Some rules spring to mind: Cinema showings and DVDs count, but CDs don’t. Concert and semi-staged performances count. Plays in Ancient Greek count. Musicals don’t count. Carmen is an opera for … Continue reading →

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Doo. Dee doo. Dee da doo… dee doo. (Doodly doodly doodly doodly doodly.)

Posted on 2013-09-08 by colin

The late Christopher Longuet-Higgins invented a musical shoe, which could tap along to arbitrary pieces of music that were played to it. I wonder how easy it would be to write a tool that took music and rendered it into … Continue reading →

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On memorability

Posted on 2013-07-07 by colin

A few years ago, round about when the LHC was due to start up, at a beer festival, we were trying to remember the members of the Cabinet. This was jolly hard and remembering who was in John Major’s last … Continue reading →

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Parliamentary arithmetic

Posted on 2013-05-15 by colin

I think I understand the Tory party’s thinking now. They’re using a special non-contradictory arithmetic where if you start with zero, and add x, you can get out any number you like. Worked example: Take the number of UKIP MPs … Continue reading →

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Artisanal search engine optimization

Posted on 2013-03-10 by colin

Also, now that I need it again, the way of turning a table in a MySQL database into UTF-8 is described in this post here.

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I am going I am going

Posted on 2013-02-05 by colin

Basques: are they two-for-one at Noa Noa?

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