English as she is spoke

[j4]

If there's one thing worse than working through a list of "errors" recorded by somebody else and trying to turn them into a list of unambiguous change requests ... it's doing this when the errors have been recorded by somebody whose grasp of English is, shall we say, eccentric:

• Numbering is funny, year is not stated on the issue, just in the webapage as a separator)


• Is funny on that very 71:12 issue (due to not having month name I believe)


• Between 39:42 and 39:45 theres two chaotic numbers


• Before January 1997 issues arent monthed


• Issue 50:2 (winter 1998) stands out from the rest


• Seems to go offsync along the issues (not according to the year)


• Issue 31:6 is orphan, surrounded by 32s and 22s


• There are two separators unaware of what goes on with the other issues: (1999) and (2000)

I have no idea what half of these mean, and it's taking me as long to decipher what this guy means as it would take me to just go and look for any errors myself. I keep spotting things he's missed, too, so I'm having to look pretty carefully anyway.

* * *

While being slowly driven insane by this, however, I was cheered momentarily by a thesis title which my mum claims to have seen submitted today at Leicester University:

"The perceived hazardness and attention-gettingness of fluorescent and non-fluorescent colours"

This gem, mind you, was apparently submitted by somebody whose native language is English... the mind boggleth.

Comments

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Wow. Very cool notes, however I'm sure very irritating to have to deal with in real life. I love the idea of a chaotic number in particular, and am curious as to how Issue 50:2 stands out (perhaps it is a portal to hell), as well as offsync issues (journal jazz specials perhaps)., and diembodied 32s and 22s surrounding 31:6 like a halo.

It sounds like this guy has been reading only obscure occult works for a decade. Has he scryed these notes, perhaps?

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I meant disembodied there, though diembodied sounds like it needs coining, :).

[j4.livejournal.com]

am curious as to how Issue 50:2 stands out (perhaps it is a portal to hell)

If it's a portal to hell, that would explain the Lovecraftian tentacled horrors which keep crawling out of the data...

I suspect that all he means is that Issue 50:2 just has "2002" in brackets after it while all the surrounding issues have "September 2002", "November 2002", etc. Or something similarly thrilling.

It sounds like this guy has been reading only obscure occult works for a decade.

:-) I think he's just Spanish, actually. Though I might see if I can get more enjoyment out of a Kabbalistic interpretation of his notes. It'd certainly have just as little effect on anybody in our godforsaken data-mines actually GETTING SOMETHING RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. </rant>

(And ... BREATHE.)

[brrm.livejournal.com]

the mind boggleth

IBM can helpeth. (Urgggh)

[imc.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I've had this P150 for six years which probably counts as vastly underpowered by that chap's definition, but I almost always have zillions of apps (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imc/26412.html) running on it.

True I wouldn't mind a bit more screen real-estate, but that's one of the hazards of using an ancient laptop (and bopeepsheep has my slightly more modern one).