joke – Dan Q

A Stupid Joke About Elephants

Duration 2:48

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You’ve probably been taught that you can tell the difference between African Elephants and Indian Elephants by looking at their head and ears. The larger African Elephants have a rounded cranium and big ears (with a shape somewhat like the continent of Africa itself!), whereas the smaller Indian Elephants have a two-lobed skull and diminutive ears that tuck tidily alongside their heads.

But suppose you don’t manage to get a glimpse at the front end of the elephant as it passes you. What hope is there of identifying the species? Well: you can look at its back!

African Elephants, it turns out, have a concave back, whereas Indian elephants have a convex back (a bit like a hump)!

I was having difficulty sleeping one night during the UK‘s current heatwave, so naturally I opted to practice my newfound ability to distinguish elephant species by their spines. Indian, Indian, African, Indian, African, African… etc.

And then I came across this one:

African Elephant backs are concave. Indian Elephant backs are convex. But what does it mean when you see a flat elephant’s back?

It turns out…

…

…that’s a grey area.

April Features!

I’m testing a handful of highly-experimental new features on my personal website using multivariate (“A/B”) testing.

Screenshot of the recent "Quickly Solving JigsawExplorer Puzzles" blog post with a new "Dark mode" switch hovering over it. — “Dark Mode” is just one of the new features I’m testing out.

If you visit within the next day or so you’re likely to be randomly-selected to try out one of them. (If you’re not selected, you can manually enable one of the experiments.)

I’d love to hear your feedback on these Very Serious New Features! Let me know which one(s) you see and whether you think they should become permanent fixtures on my site.

Loud Helpline

I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody.

Where?

I’m pretty sure that Wally/Waldo, Woof, and Wizard Whitebeard must be out on this mountain somewhere, too.

Installation of Windows has Stalled

I was told Windows installation should take less than 20 minutes, but these ones have been sitting outside my house all day while the builders sit on the roof and listen to the radio. Do I need a faster processor? #TechSupport

[Bloganuary] Paws to Hear my Scents-ible Idea

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

Come up with a crazy business idea.

Smell-based social networking for dogs.

Hear me out…

I’ve tried to explain to our occasionally-anxious dog that, for example, the dog-and-human shaped blobs at the far end of the field includes a canine with whom she’s friendly and playful. She can’t tell who they are because her long-distance vision’s not as good as mine¹, and we’re too far away for her to be able to smell her friend.

If this were a human meetup and I wasn’t sure who I’d be meeting, I’d look it up online, read the attendees’ names and see their photos, and be reassured. That’s exactly what I do if I’m feeling nervous about a speaking engagement: I look up the other speakers who’ll be there, so I know I can introduce myself to people before or after me. Or if I’m attending a work meet-up with new people: I find their intranet profiles and find out who my new-to-me colleagues are.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could “show” my dog who she was going to meet, in smell-form.

I imagine a USB-C accessory you can attach to your computer or phone which can analyse and produce dogs’ unique scents, storing and transmitting their unique fingerprint in a digital form. Your subscription to the service would cover the rental of the accessory plus refills of the requisite chemicals, and a profile for your pooch on the Web-based service.

Now, you could “show” your dog who you were going to go and meet, by smell. Just look up the profile of the playmate you’re off to see, hold the device to your pupper’s nose, and let them get a whiff of their furry buddy even before you get there. Dogs do pretty well at pattern-matching, and it won’t take them long to learn that your magical device is a predictor of where they’re headed to, and it’ll be an effective anxiety-reducer.

A laptop keyboard with a black man's hand and a cream-coloured dog's paw resting on it, seen from above. (Almost-matching) sleeves can be seen on the limbs of both. — Seeking investors for a genuinely terrible crazy business idea. Photo courtesy SHVETS production.

The only question is what to call my social-network-for-dogs. Facebutt? Pupper? HoundsReunited???

¹ Plus: I get contextual clues like seeing which car the creature and its owner got out of.

Inclusivity

Max credit to garry (@repeattofade) for the original toot. All I did was adapt it into a motivational poster.

The thing I’m wondering is whether that bus lane is one that a bi-cyclist like me can use? 😂

Solitary Nouns

The other night, Ruth and I were talking about collective nouns (y’know, like a herd of cows or a flock of sheep) and came up with the somewhat batty idea of solitary nouns. Like collective nouns, but for a singular subject (one cow, sheep, or whatever).

Then, we tried to derive what the words could be. Some of the results write themselves.¹

Some of them involve removing one or more letters from the collective noun to invent a shorter word to be the solitary noun.

For others, we really had to stretch the concept by mutating words in ways that “felt right”, using phoenetic spellings, or even inventing collective nouns so that we could singularise them:

Did I miss any obvious ones?

¹ Also consider “parliament of owls” ➔ “politician of owl”, “troop of monkeys” ➔ “soldier of monkey”, “band of gorillas” ➔ “musician of gorilla”. Hey… is that where that band‘s name come from?

² Is “cluster of stars” ➔ “luster of star” anything?

³ Ruth enjoyed the singularised “a low of old bollock”, too.

Breakups as HTTP Response Codes

103: Early Hints ("I'm not sure this can last forever.") — 103: Early Hints (“I’m not sure this can last forever.”)

300: Multiple Choices ("There are so many ways I can do better than you.") — 300: Multiple Choices (“There are so many ways I can do better than you.”)

303: See Other ("You should date other people.") — 303: See Other (“You should date other people.”)

304: Not Modified ("With you, I feel like I'm stagnating.") — 304: Not Modified (“With you, I feel like I’m stagnating.”)

402: Payment Required ("I am a prostitute.") — 402: Payment Required (“I am a prostitute.”)

403: Forbidden ("You don't get this any more.") — 403: Forbidden (“You don’t get this any more.”)

406: Not Acceptable ("I could never introduce you to my parents.") — 406: Not Acceptable (“I could never introduce you to my parents.”)

408: Request Timeout ("You keep saying you'll propose but you never do.") — 408: Request Timeout (“You keep saying you’ll propose but you never do.”)

409: Conflict ("We hate each other.") — 409: Conflict (“We hate each other.”)

411: Length Required ("Your penis is too small.") — 411: Length Required (“Your penis is too small.”)

413: Payload Too Large ("Your penis is too big.") — 413: Payload Too Large (“Your penis is too big.”)

416: Range Not Satisfied ("Our sex life is boring and repretitive.") — 416: Range Not Satisfied (“Our sex life is boring and repretitive.”)

425: Too Early ("Your premature ejaculation is a problem.") — 425: Too Early (“Your premature ejaculation is a problem.”)

428: Precondition Failed ("You're still sleeping with your ex-!?") — 428: Precondition Failed (“You’re still sleeping with your ex-!?”)

429: Too Many Requests ("You're so demanding!") — 429: Too Many Requests (“You’re so demanding!”)

451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons ("I'm married to somebody else.") — 451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons (“I’m married to somebody else.”)

502: Bad Gateway ("Your pussy is awful.") — 502: Bad Gateway (“Your pussy is awful.”)

508: Loop Detected ("We just keep fighting.") — 508: Loop Detected (“We just keep fighting.”)

With thanks to Ruth for the conversation that inspired these pictures, and apologies to the rest of the Internet for creating them.

Note #20517

Was a 10th century speaker of Old Saxon a “Saxophone”? 🤔

Note #19862

I know what it means, but my inner child still sniggers every time I see Animista‘s effect “kenburns-bottom“.

EGXchange – a digital EGX wallet

I’ve just launched EGXchange.org, a digital wallet for new currency Emma Goldcoin, which I’ve mentioned previously (including a discussion with the author in my comments section).

Homepage of EGXchange.org, showing the slogan "Everybody has an EGX wallet. Log in to yours now." — Of course, you don’t strictly *need* a digital wallet to use EGX. But as we’re in a culture where people invariably ask “is there an app for it?”, I thought I’d make one.

You can install it as an offline-first progressive web application, which means that this could be the first ever digital currency to have an app that works without an Internet connection. That’s probably something no other digital currency can claim to have, right?

Here’s what it looks like if I send 0.1 EGX to my friend Chris using the app:

Naturally, I wouldn’t be backing Emma Goldcoin if it didn’t represent such a brilliant step up better-known digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ripple, and Etherium. Specific features unique to Emma Goldcoin include:

Using it doesn’t massively contribute to energy wastage and environmental damage.
It doesn’t increase the digital divide by helping early adopters at the expense of late adopters.
It’s entirely secure: it’s mathematically impossible to “steal”EGX.
Emma Goldcoin is so simple that you don’t even need a computer to use it: it “just works”.

Sure, it’s got its downsides, and I’d encourage you to read the specification if you’d like to learn more about what those are. Or if you already know what EGX is all about and just want to try a new way to manage your portfolio, give my new site EGXchange.org a go!