Posts by groMMitt

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Now that's unexpected!

'and eventually fell – literally – into disuse and the cable tray'

Wow - whoever thought you'd come across zeugma in a reg article! Nice one!

A hotline to His Billness? Or a guard having a bit of a giggle?

Talking to the Boss - or at least, his closest representative...

Had a mate, back in the 80's, wanted to get married in a church far from his own parish - seemed he needed the permission of every parish between his own and that one...among others, he found he needed to call The Archbishop of Canterbury...he called the Secretary for the Bish, and had a long and pleasant conversation with an old gentleman there, who said he'd get it dealt with...got a letter form the Bishop who said that after the conversation he'd had with my mate, he had no difficulty granting said permission...

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Contact your GP

I contacted the practice manager at my GP Surgery, turns out he can add the opt-out code to my information, without all the hassle of downloading the opt-out form, creating an electronic signature and sending it to him, or the hassle of getting a printer and using snail-mail to forward the printed-out paperwork :)

Sadly, the catastrophic impact with Apophis asteroid isn't going to happen in 2068

Re: Perfect timing...

(more perfect timing - I got an audiobook, that I enjoyed as a paperback many years ago, just before the start of the Pandemic - the book's called 'The Stand'...I'm sure you won't need details :)

Perfect timing...

...so they had to release this news the day after I finished reading Lucifer's Hammer Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)...wasn't I paranoid enough?

We'd love to come up with a Harbor container ship pun but we're too corona-frazzled. Version 2.0 is out

Re: said Michael Michael

I worked with a guy called Russell Sprout

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

Sounds like a Mediator's comment...but even down to the use of the accelerating lasers as a weapon...got my well-deserved upvote :)

MPs tear 'naive' British Army a new one over Capita recruitment farce

Continuing mistyping and syntax mistakes

Just like so many of the articles in the Reg, the reporter hasn't bothered to proofread their article before submitting it - as I read the articles, I find there are several typos in each, often obviously from the use of a spellchecker, but often from the simple use of the wrong word, as well as missing or poor punctuation. The articles are great - the standards of Use of English shoddy. £60? A glaringly inappropriate figure in this context. Sad, really. And the misuse of Bespoke as a verb? Even sadder.

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

...a Different answer?...

Two points you've all forgotten...first (though surely coincidentally) the date of the disaster, when it kicked off, was Hitler's Birthday and the second, knowing those hipsters at the banks, the date was 20/4...or to Americanise it, 4/20...National Marijuana day...or am I just being ultra-paranoid?

UK's internet spy law: £250m in costs could balloon to £2 BILLION

"By then, we may have a better idea about whether ISPs would be required to suck up any hidden costs that could ultimately hit the pockets of their customers."

So - we're gonna have to pay to get them to spy on us? All a bit Through a Scanner Darkly...

Scientists love MacBooks (true) – but what about you?

'...even blind pigs can truffle occasionally...'

Interesting - I thought pigs 'truffled' (is this really a verb?) by using their sense of smell

Go for a spin on Record Store Day: Lifting the lid on vinyl, CD and tape

It's easy - you ever tried to roll a decent spliff on a cd case? Gotta be vinyl, every time!

When the robot rebellion comes, this Jibo droid will BORE you to death

it's quite awful...but it still seemed to be more interesting than the rest of the cast

Apple's strap-on will set you back just '$5,000' – what a BARGAIN!

Killer App Needed?

All Apple need to do is remove the ability of their iGadgets to tell you the time - except for the iClock...et voils - the killer app to end them all!

Weekend reads: Tales of Madchester in Chapter and Verse plus Shark and Ring of Steel

Ring of Steel

Lovely to see Jacques Brel doing Next - the only performance I knew was The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, excellent, but so different from Brel - ty!

Read The Gods of War for every tired cliche you never wanted to see in a sci fi book

Re: Ian M

ah yes - the Lensman series...possibly the most execrable use of English I've ever read...but the stories are incredibly compulsive reading - classical 'I'll have to read a few more pages before I feel so sick with the style that I'll have to put it down again'...

You need a list of specific unknowns we may encounter? Huh?

It's not just in IT...

At my workplace (in a busy operating theatre suite in the NHS) we have to use a new form which is useful in that it helps protect patient safety (right person, right operation, all that stuff that the patients like to hear) called a WHO form (as it's a World Health Organisation product, to be used in all theatres all over the world) and among its many sensible questions is the one that asks the surgeon if there are likely to be any unexpected events during the procedure.

I have the greatest respect for said surgeons (even though I work in anaesthetics and am aware of the real meaning of the blood-brain interface - the blood's over there, the brain is over here) but this question taxes even their immense intellects (well, maybe not that immense in orthopaedics...)

Marc Andreessen: Edward Snowden is a 'textbook traitor'

Re: get over it!

...but obviously, the US don't understand that the message is the more important part, given the comparative lack of effort they're putting into restraining these self-appointed watchmen while still vilifying the messenger.

Hey, MoJ, we're not your Buddi: Brit firm abandons 'frustrating' crim-tagging contract

...wish they could speak English - what's this 'recompete'?...

Adobe price hike: Your money or your files, frappuccino sippers

The Mote?

As an aside from the main subject, am I the only one to note the 'gripping hand' reference? Someone's been reading Niven/Pournel?

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

Fibre to Anything!

As a confirmed Wood-cabling to the Exchange user, with a consistently huge speed of maybe 1.4mbps, I just wish BT would forget about glass and at least upgrade my line to String

New broadband minister snubs 'ugly' fibre cabinet gripes

Hah - why do I care, when Ian Livingstone tells me they have no plans to upgrade my number...I suppose 1.8mbps is wonderful, by their standards, especially over a copper to the exchange line of at least 3 - 4km.

I'd be grateful if they upgraded the cabling from wood to string...

Computer nostalgia is 10 PRINT 'BOLLOCKS'

Computer nostalgia is...

'Thorin sits down and sings about gold'

Aaargh!