Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Endie - Fount of Wisdom

One continuing source of fun for me is to read the search engine logs for this site: a list of all the search phrases used by people to access pages on my blog, which the engines pass to the requested page in the associated query string.

Some are logical, and match the content well.  Some surprise me, since I doubt I have used certain words at all on my site (the most extreme of these was a hit for the search phrase "3238312176361").  However, I feel occasional pangs of guilt when I see questions asked that I know I have not answered.  These plaintive supplicants come to me for wisdom, and leave disappointed.  It is time I did something about this.  Accordingly, I now present Endie's Fount of Wisdom, answering the questions you googlites have asked.

1) 'would a pirate or a ninja win in a fight?' - A fair question, Wayne (I have no idea who asked this, but I like to put a name to my interrogators) and one which I answer first because a site holding itself out as some sort of authority on Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkeys really should provide an answer.  However, it's really not that simple.  So many caveats exist: who has surprise? Are they fighting in rigging?  Is it night-time?  Are there sufficient, nearby sources of swash with which to buckle?  How drunk is the pirate?  Basically, though, I think the answer should have been pretty obvious in the end.  A Ninja is a highly trained dealer of death, prepared from childhood in the arts of silent and efficient killing.  A pirate is a drunken tavern-jockey who didn't like the navy making him get up early in the morning.  Ninja wins.  Especially if it's one of the pirate chappies that run Edinburgh's Electric Cabaret.  I love that one of them actually calls me matey.

2) Related to this is the query '"grizzly or lion which hardest"'.  Tersely put, Karen, but we get what you are driving at.  I can answer you fairly straightforwardly here, though, since we can set standard criteria: straight up one on one fight, post pub, neither contestant too hammered (no weapons, naturally).  The grizzly wins, every time.  In California in the second half of the 19th century, such contests between diferent animals were not uncommon, and the result when bears fought other large mammals was always the same: the bear punches downwards on the assailant's skull, crushing it and resulting in instant death..  Even if a lion gets surprise, the musculature of the bear's neck means that the artery-compressing death grip of the big cats (they kill their prey by cutting off the blood supply to the brain, not by inflicting trauma) is ineffective.  If you want competition you have to stick the grizzly up against pack animals.  Dogs will do, although breed matters: if you only have labradors, for instance, you're going to have to force a few alcopops down their throats to get them in the mood.

3) 'which website can you type something and the monkey says it' - This is a common misapprehension, Steve.  You see, monkeys can't actually talk.  Nor can they read text from a computer screen.  Your quest is doomed.  Unless you type "ook", in which case you have an outside chance of getting the response you desire.  But that would more be by way of you typing in your prediction of what the monkey would say.  As regards your ability to talk to the animals, see this site (warning, contains repeated, non-mocking references to Chomsky).

4) 'what is the thickness of a typical monopoly property card?' - Caroline poses quite the question there.  In fact, the thickness varies from edition to edition though, as with most playing cards, it falls between 0.18mm and 0.3mm.

5) 'PGR3 xbox live how many races to win before you are no longer a newbie' - I'm sorry, Jean-Claude, but you are still a newbie.  You'll know when you're not, because you'll no longer feel the need to ask others.  Alternative answer: 3, open matches (not friends only) at least six slots taken in each, no fixing in host settings, standard game tracks only.

6) 'how do you write two hundred five aand one hundredth in word form?' - well, Chandra, you could try "two hundred and five plus a hundredth' if you are committed to the use of fractions.  But why not try "two hundred and five point zero one"?  Neither is all that great, though.  Frankly 205.01 is a rotten number, and none of the great authors use it.  It isn't even mentioned in the King james edition of the Bible, which makes it one of the set known to mathematicians and kaballists alike as Satan's Numbers.  Most of them involve dividing in your head by really big values with numbers after the point.

7) 'ninja hates pirate' - No, Trev, he doesn't.  You're just asserting, not asking.  For the most part, they co-exist happily.  The occasional spat is just kayfabe.

8) 'Removing SecuROM!CAUTION! NEVER DELETE OR CHANGE ANY KEY' - Thanks, Alan, I'll bear that in mind.

9) 'was the singer Johnny Cash ever convicted of manslaughter' - Don't be stupid, Lachantelle.  He got locked up for drunk and disorderly a few times.  In case you are on death row, I have a law degree, and the excuse that you killed a man in Reno just to watch him die will not wash if you are trying for a "in the name of scientific research and observation" plea.

10) 'PICTURE OF A MONKEY IN PIRATE SUIT' - Oh, I should sooo have one of those.

11) 'pictures of a funky monkey drunk with a ninja!!!' - Goshdarnit that's an even better idea!

12) 'do you think I'm sexy' - Well, I find you alluring, but I have trouble with the whole rodent/Eskimo thing.  Sorry.  I hope we can stay friends.

13) '"'allo 'allo" jew prosecution' - You know, it's a funny thing, but throughout the entire, ten-year run of this only-in-Britain type series, proto-Smithers Lieutenant Gruber was never ordered to round up the local Jewry and ship them off in his little tank.  I'm not sure that the comic possibilities were as strong as you suspect, Karl-Heinz.

14) 'i may not look like much, but i'm pro at pretending to be ninja' - I'll bet you are.

15) 'grade 4 need to have a project on culture or environmental write a short story they need to design and plan a mask to protray a character in the story' - Bad teacher!  Lazy teacher!

16 'what does the door in the graveyard in brill do on world of warcraft' - It's a warrior quest.  If you're not one, forget it.

17 'what is the average seventeen year olds that have sex' - I like to think that the clearly-missing words here are "age of".  If so: 17.  If they are in fact "proportion of", then the answer is, these days "virtually all of them".

18 'India women having sex with monkeys' - Now that is a mighty specific kink.  I have your IP address.  Don't do it again.  (In fact, the amusing thing is that this IP address owner keeps coming back and reading my blog on a regular basis.  Hi there!)

World Cup Coverage

No, not a whine post about the BBC's match summarisers.  If you, like me, are spending time working in the office when you would rather be devouring the feast of football offered up by the likes of Argentina (currently boosting my world cup fantasy football team score with a thorough-going dismantling of Serbia-Montenegro), then I have found the very best of the live coverage sites.  It is at ESPN's Soccernet, and is a ridiculously competent piece of flash programming, with live coverage of plays, minute-delayed full commentary, indivudal stats on all players, a full game log... even pictures of the latest player to do something notable and flashing markers on a pitch to show ehere shots and goals were taken from.

You can get to it by going to their main page during matches and following the "Follow the Game - LIVE!" link (currently below the main headline picture, but it moves about).  It is also headed "gamecast" under any game showing on the front page.[+] -->

When Ship Naming Goes Wrong

Over at the War Room, Brad posts about the possible names for the Joint Strike Fighter.  Some are good - Spitfire or Lightning are cracking names with great traditions - while others - "Black Mamba", anyone? - are decidely bad.

Brett at Airminded replies, pointing out the terrible, whimsical names that british pre-war planes had, and imagining going to war armed with craft called the Fawn, Flycatcher, or Tabloid.  And he also says, in a reply at the War Room post:

>> Oh, I completely agree about Royal Navy ship names!
>> You just can’t beat names like Indomitable, Resolution,
>> Revenge, Dreadnought, Invincible …

I don't want to come across as some RAF-defending partisan, but, you have to remember that there have also been some pretty poor RN ship names.  Given how long the senior service has been around, there are an awful lot of them.   The Flower class corvettes in World War 2 are an example: who wants to go to war in the HMS Abelia?  HMS Pink was put out of her misery in 44 by a U-Boat, as was the Bluebell in 45.  I'm not sure which would have been worse: to serve on HMS Starwort, the Hyacinth, the Marigold or the Sunflower.  Obviously there were more: there were a *lot* of Flower class corvettes.  But the fact is that Airminded's nightmare scenario was real: we fought WW2 with a ship called the Rhododendron.

For every HMS Agamemnon there has been an "HMS Alice and Francis" or an "HMS Ann and Judith" (fireship).  For every Repulse a Racoon.  For every Prometheus there is a Postboy, a Popinjay, a Pilchard, a Pigmy, a Pantaloon or a Plumper.

Since You Like Crosswords

Yes, you. After years of delay, those photos from the walk we did in Glenshee are up on the site, but I forgot to tell you the path to them, and I'm not just posting them for all and sundry to see.  So, since you are a fan of the Times crossword, I'll let you work it out.  Start with the site address (http://endie.net/) then add the thing that I wrote that essay for you about (9 letters, across), followed by all three of your initials then the year of your birth.  Finally, add the page "/sitephotos.html"  So if you were Robert Louis Stevenson, were born in 1850 and I wrote an essay for you on microbes that would be http://endie.net/microbesrls1850/sitephotos.html.  But it's not that, obviously.  Unless you're more of an authority on Scottish neo-romanticism than I ever suspected.  Plus, RLS was actually RLBS, but we can ignore that.  As we can the fact that he was born Lewis, not Louis.

PS: since I have proved crap with years recently, you should actually try the year you think I think you were born, which may be very different.  Meh.

Strangeness

This is the latest in an increasingly odd series of coincidences.  I got back from holiday yesterday and dumped my rucksack in the hall.  Almost immediately, the phone rings, and when I answer it I am asked if the caller can speak to a person we shall call Ms X.  I knew Ms X very well indeed some years ago, but apart from a chance meeting a few weeks ago, I haven't spoken to her in half a decade, which says something about the state of our friendship.

So imagine my confusion at this call:

"Keith speaking"
"Hello, can I speak to Ms X?"
"Erm... who, sorry?"
"Ms X.  This is Ms Y at St George's."
"Uhm, I'm afraid she's not, uhm... Sorry, who gave you this number?"
"She did."
"When?"  [internal monologue: 1999?!?]
"Yesterday."
"She gave you this number yesterday,  to speak to her?"  I must admit that I looked around the room, somewhat suspiciously, at this point.  I suspected some sort of terribly subtle setup.  At the very least, it implied some radical alterations to my living arrangements.
"Yes."

"This number, yesterday, to speak to her?"  I don't think I was coming across as terribly intelligent, and the lady at the far end - a nice sounding girl in her twenties, I would say - was beginning to use her terribly patient teacher's voice.  But in my defence, how often have you had a phone call asking for a friend who has never even lived at your address, asking to speak to them, five years on, with the caller claiming they were told your number yesterday?!?

"Yes.  Is this [Organisation Name Z]?  Is she available?"  I thought I heard a note of confusion, but she was a trooper, and probably a little intrigued, herself. 

I resisted the huge temptation to say "I haven't a clue love, you'd have to ask her."  Nothing jars me out of confusion like the chance to make a cheap joke, but who am I to have fun with the careers of others (this was clearly work-related)?  I was also tempted to have a little fun: I can socially engineer like any ex-hacker.  Instead, I did the responsible, dreary thing and told the utterly bemused caller that I was terribly sorry, and really couldn't help her, having no idea how to contact Ms X.  I think I may have suggested that she'd be a bit taken aback at her mistake if she knew.

The solution to this strangeness?  Googling the organisation mentioned reveals a one-digit difference in the phone number from my home one.  Freud and our recent meeting will have done the rest.

This sort of thing is happening to me all the time at the moment.  Several times a month.  Coming one after another as they recently have, the compounding effect of oddity upon coincidence rather reminds me of the period when I described to several groups of friends, in some detail, my dreams about muslim terrorists destroying tall, black buildings in the United States with passenger jets.  That was in August 2001.  (And the rational explanation for that was simple, as well: five billion people in the world means that quite a few are going to spend the month before 9/11 dreaming about watching islamic terrorists in planes take down skyscrapers. Didn't make it feel any less Hunter S Thompson-weird.)

When the phone gets weird, the weird get confused.

Rested

Having enjoyed myself on my last visit there, I booked the Glebe at Hownam for a few days of holiday.  Having a four-bedroomed house in the middle of nowhere to themselves may not be everybody's idea of a great holiday, but I loved it: I like to be by myself.  It helped that the sun shone almost constantly throughout.  On Sunday (when I did a 34km hike down to England then cross-country back up again) factor 25 sun-cream was not enough to stop me getting just a little burnt on the bridge of my nose.  Then, when I got back, it was into the burn alongside the house, the water of which was deliciously warm after days of sunshine (and packed with trout: I wish I'd brought a rod).  Further walking, including some along Hadrian's Wall, made sure I was exhausted but relaxed the whole time.  I ate almost every meal I could outside, be it barbequed, packed or just taken on the lawn by the burn.

Although I still have holidays in Italy in August and New England in September coming, I am already wondering if I can justify a further visit to Hownam this year. A huge advantage is that it is a little less than an hour's drive from my front door, with a following wind.

Here is the burn that I spent so much time in or around.  It runs the length of the garden on one side:

Tranquil, no?  I would pay well to have one of these babies installed chez moi.

Supporting the Auld Enemy

Another World Cup comes round and, yet again, Scotland will not be there.  In a reversal of the position in the 1970s, we will be watching from the sidelines while England get to perform on the big stage.  And conversation inevitably turns, wherever two or more Scots are huddled together, as to who they will support in England games.  I, myself, must nail my colours to the mast and say that I will be supporting our southern neighbours.  Up to a point.

This is not, necessarily, a common position north of the border.  Even in Edinburgh, that most anglicised of Scottish cities, the default position is to support two national teams: Scotland, and whoever is playing England at the time.  I, too, used to fall into this trap.  I'm not proud of it, but there you go.  I can only say that I was young and easily misled.  Scottish politicians are asked the same question every four years, and there is no more a correct answer than there is for US politicos on Roe vs Wade.  It's classic "have you stopped beating your wife" territory.

But I'll be watching the games with mainly English people.  Liverpool, my team, are supplying players like Carragher, Gerrard and the incomparable, dancing Crouchinho:

He's big,
He's red,
His feet stick out the bed,
Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch...

I won't deny that it would be awfully funny if England go out in the quarters to Germany on penalties (they might very well meet at that stage, too), with Rooney missing out to decide it.  But I'll be delighted if they win such a game, too.

But there is a caveat.  I'm terrified of what might happen if England win.  I am not sure that I could stand the tv coverage for the next forty years.  England are matched only by Spain, Mexico and, erm, Scotland for massive under-achievement, so it's not very likely, but they still tend to bang on a bit about 1966.  I remember discussing this with a girl I used to know, and she said i was overstating my point.  So I said that she should wait a week, and see how long it took her to see a reference on the telly to the '66 world cup.  By the next day, she had already seen one.

So I'll support England all the way through the group qualifiers, without a qualm.  I'll back them through the quarters, too.  By the time the semis come round, I'll be sweating a bit, but I'll still take pleasure in their achievements.

But if they make the finals, I am not proud to admit once more that I would back the All Nazi Baby-Eating Concentration Camp Guards First XI rather than go through another forty years of Wayne Rooney's Mr Potatohead face smugly grinning like a pale version of Shrek from the back of every endorsable product the length and breadth of the British Isles.

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Today was internal release day for our latest project (yet another subscription-only global oil supply data site).  Yet another perfect roll-out: all the functionality in place on the day set at the project start: the full feature set, on time and probably under budget.  A reliatively light crunch period for a fwe days was all that was needed, and I must admit to feeling pretty smug (as should be the database team who did a lot of the less glamorous but essential schema and stored procedure work).  I think that's four product rollouts in a row that we've completed on or before target date.  Massive re-use is the key: a total re-design of the structure to move away from our framework technology (Broadvision - horrible stuff) towards generic code and direct database access (through my own libraries).

Now I'm off on holiday for a few days, down towards the border, for some hiking (c.30km a day) in the Cheviots.  The weather is gorgeous, the walking great, and by Saturday evening I'll be swimming in a burn and eating all my meals al fresco, before settling down in front of a roaring wood fire to read.  I admit it's not Agia Napa - I shall not be throwing any shapes in the church of dance for a few days - but I can't wait.