Grand prix... Masa was champion when he crossed the finish line. And then...

I didn't realise how much I was hoping Lewis Hamilton would win the Formula 1 championship until, right at the end, he was overtaken.

He had to be fifth. The car that overtook him put him in sixth. That meant that the winning driver,  Masa, had beaten him to the overall Championship. And you could see the joy in Masa's face, even behind the visor; and the Ferrari team which was celebrating with him.

Masa was, technically, in the championship position, and he'd won the race! How could victory possibly be snatched away from him?

It was. Half a minute behind, or more, the driver who had been number two, suddenly lost control of his car in the increasingly wet conditions, and got overtaken. He went down to sixth; and Hamilton went from sixth to fifth. 

So we had the astonishing situation of both teams, McLaren and Ferrari, simultaneously celebrating the winning of the Formula 1 Championship.

And then, as the news of the overtaking manoeuvre sank in, dismay spread around the red uniforms and overalls of the Ferrari pits, like a spilled champagne glass spreading over the table.

Disbelief

dismay

distress

And they'd just won! How hard can it be to win...!

Nudism... and taboos!

This just in from Eolake...

That nudist resort where I went as a boy
was okay till my organ began to deploy.
When puberty started to rear up its head,
my untimely erections would make me turn red.

When girls were equipped with what nature endows
then my southerly region could get quite aroused.
The problem you have when you go for a walk
is that girls like to tease till you're hard as a rock.

It's hard when a game that you played as a kid
causes nasty effects that the nudists forbid.
Just try to play Twister and dodge a disgrace
when opponents keep sticking their boobs in your face.

The wheelbarrow races I wouldn't advise
for you have to grab hold of a girl by her thighs.
A copious crowd always gathers to watch
while your you-know is grinding away at her crotch.

Now one of the guys had a way of relief
when his obstinate member was causing him grief.
He'd go in the lake where his girlfriend would be
and she'd lend him a hand where nobody could see.

And now that I've reached this cantankerous age
and I have to exist in this suit-and-tie cage,
I often return to that fountain of youth,
the place where my member was often uncouth.

But now I parade with no pretense of tact
for I'm HOPING my organ will start to react.

OK, the Open API stuff for Multimap: it can't be handled by Blogger! I posted it in and the Editor calmly deleted most of it.

Here's the code, HTML: - stripped out completely.

 
 




and god knows how much of that will appear in the final piece.  But what follows below (nothing!) is what Blogger's editor left...


  

Multimap: gets stranger and stranger...

When Microsoft bought Multimap, several of us pulled long faces and went into our Grumpy Old Men routine. But I have to admit, I'm baffled by what's been going on - or, more accurately, going off.

For example, the maps. I know I used Multimap to navigate a journey to East Sussex six months ago, and it was incredibly detailed. Yesterday, I tried again; the map has changed. It's about six years old - houses which were on the old map in blade-of-grass detail - gone! - just a vague blur which shows a building site (maybe).

Or the red circle. Six months ago, you could move it. So, if you wanted to send some directions, you could find the approximate area with a search (find, say Manor House Tube) and then focus in on the lake south of there. Then move the focus circle. bingo! - a URL for exactly the spot. Well, either I dreamed it, or it's been hidden, or taken away. Gone.

And what about the "I can't find this address" feedback button? I know it used to be there! Today, looking for a really well known landmark (the Welsh Harp lake at the London end of the M1 motorway) the only place it could find is a farm called Welsh Hook in Dyfed. And no feedback form at all.

Let's see what this "open API" thing is, and find out more...

Another embedded chat window?

here we go:



join in, assign yourself a name...

Can we do mibbit chat here?

Wordpress wouldn't swallow it.

here is the code, embedded:

How to pronounce magic words...

A hollow voice says "Plugh".

If you're a fan of the famous computer game, "Adventure," in which you can spend hours exploring a cave full of treasure and peril while haunted by sepulchral voices, the above will sound familiar and perhaps take you back a few years.

If not, you can find out more at the links below.

Plugh is a magic word used in several text adventure games, including:

• Adventure (the original)
  
• Radio Shack's Haunted House (for the TRS-80)
  
• Pyramid 2000 (another TRS-80 game that was basically a clone of Adventure but took place amongst the pyramids of Egypt)
  
• Raaka-Tu (yet another TRS-80 adventure game)
  
• Bedlam (and even yet another TRS-80 adventure game - also available on the TRS-80 Color Computer)
  

Somehow, however, plugh never quite retained the fame it deserved. Instead, it fell into the shadows of another more famous magic word: xyzzy.

 

Oh, and the origin of "plugh" is tackled. Some claim it means "plughole" truncated to five characters (why?) but the webmaster adds: "I never really did know how to pronounce the word, plugh, so if you happen to know, please tell me!"

He adds:

Someone recently posted an old usenet article written by Don Woods as follows:

From: Don Woods

Date: 1997/02/27

Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction

Subject: Re: XYZZY

 

Alas, Crowther was responsible for XYZZY and PLUGH. I

think I remember him saying that he'd generated them at

random, but I don't remember how (or even if) he pronounced

them.

 

For my part, I say "zizzy" and "ploog". I'm actually rather

emphatic about the latter, since it's supposed to be said in a

hollow voice. I've heard some people pronounce it "plug", "pluh",

or even "pluff", and when I imagine the hollow voice trying to say

those I keep thinking the poor voice is going to break down

laughing... (A hollow laugh, naturally. :-)

 

On the other hand, PLOVER was my addition, and since it's

keyed to the name of the bird ("an emerald the size of a

plover's egg!") it ought to be pronounced like the bird. But --

aha! -- being ignorant on the topic, I always thought the bird's

name was pronounced ploh-ver. It wasn't until I saw the

discussion here that I thought to look up the word, and found

that both pluh-ver and ploh-ver are accepted, but pluh-ver is

apparently preferred. Oh well. But if you pronounce it pluh-ver,

don't blame me if the magic doesn't work!

 

-- Don.

 

The web site creator adds: "Many years ago, my cousin and I were so into these games (especially Adventure) that we wrote a game language and several adventures that used this language."

You can play these games on-line at:

http://www.skyrush.com/explore/

 

Related links:

• The Colossal Cave Adventure Page
  
• Plugh's Home Page
  
• XYZZY
  
• RetroComputing TRS-80
  

Testing Word for HTML creation

Till today, despite my occasional deep sighs over ScribeFire, I used it in preference to other "quick-blog" systems like Google Notes or Microsoft Live! - but today, I've resolved to overcome my deep suspicions of another way - Word itself.

Word has been urging me to do this, by offering me "new blog post" every time I open a new file. So, instead of ignoring it, I resolved to try it out.

Day One

All I need to do today, is create a short blog entry (this is it!) and link to another web site. So I've picked The Guardian's story about " too much bling " as my link.

 

Too much bling costs suspected drug dealer £650,000 in assets

• Guardian, Wednesday February 6 2008
  
• Martin Wainwright
  

A suspected drugs trafficker who claimed that an ice cream van and other small businesses had earned him three homes and a fleet of luxury cars has become one of the biggest victims of criminal assets recovery law. A painstaking audit of Andrew Pickering's accounts by police in Middlesbrough and the Asset Recoveries Agency convinced a judge that the property, along with (...)

(...) fillip for the force's newly launched tip-off operation, Too Much Bling? Give Us A Ring. Neighbours are being encouraged to use anonymous (...)

<img src="http://is0215.www.is.121d8.com/pics/b.gif" align="left" />

 

I've cut that from the Guardian's own web site. We'll see if it works. And finally, let's include a link to a picture from the same site:

 

http://is0215.www.is.121d8.com/pics/b.gif