Fun With Thread Drift

[Spectacled Warbler]

Fun with thread.

 

Tartan.

 

20 minutes and several posts later, the penny's only just dropped. Even wove meself a little cloth from all the bobbins of yarn and still never cottoned on. Goodness me, how slow this girl is...

 

Liked the site, by the way.

[kiminca]

Why are pirates so cool?

 

 

 

(pause)

 

 

Because they arrrrrrrrrrrrrre

[Peter Stephenson]

Talking of frogs, a fiddler friend of mine would keep a table tennis ball with a hole in it to plonk on the end of his violin at crowded sessions so he would'nt blind other musicians.

[Peter Brook]

On the creation theme, I've just spent 48 hours in "management speak" hell at a work conference. We had got so fed up of the riddulous "physco-babble" that me and a few colleagues just started making up new phrases to entertain ourselves. Hence:

 

Rhinosorous position: used to describe an organisation that is struggling to respond quickly enough to the needs of its clients and is slow and ponderous.

 

Giraffe view: An objective considered viewpoint taking in the whole businesscape.

 

Bumble-beeing: Top level mangement zooming around without much purpose, frustrating staff by changing their minds about "the task" every few seconds.

 

I think we are going to introduce a new phrase each week, and then see how long it takes to see someone on TV use one of our phrases........................ almost like letting a ballon free and seeing if it will get to china.....

[JimLucas]

...when I was a kid I hung (hanged, did hang? hung doesn't seem right somehow)...

"Hung" is right. As both past tense and past participle. Remember that the present tense is "hang", so it's not "hing", "hang", "hung".

[JimLucas]

Bumble-beeing: Top level mangement zooming around without much purpose, frustrating staff by changing their minds about "the task" every few seconds.

And here I thought a "bumble being" was someone who could never do a job quite right.

[Daniel Hersh]

Hanged is a form of execution (being from the USA I still know about such things, unfortunately...)

 

...when I was a kid I hung (hanged, did hang? hung doesn't seem right somehow)...

"Hung" is right. As both past tense and past participle. Remember that the present tense is "hang", so it's not "hing", "hang", "hung".

[jlfinkels]

On the creation theme, I've just spent 48 hours in "management speak" hell at a work conference. We had got so fed up of the riddulous "physco-babble" that me and a few colleagues just started making up new phrases to entertain ourselves. Hence:

 

Rhinosorous position: used to describe an organisation that is struggling to respond quickly enough to the needs of its clients and is slow and ponderous.

 

Giraffe view: An objective considered viewpoint taking in the whole businesscape.

 

Bumble-beeing: Top level mangement zooming around without much purpose, frustrating staff by changing their minds about "the task" every few seconds.

 

I think we are going to introduce a new phrase each week, and then see how long it takes to see someone on TV use one of our phrases........................ almost like letting a ballon free and seeing if it will get to china.....

 

Funny stuff. I have to remember to try this next time I'm in one of these sessions. I frequently get stuck in a similar situation, but we play the "buzzword" game. We keep track of how many phrases the presenter uses that are the buzzwords of the day. Who ever ends the day with the most words collected gets to drink for free.

 

-jeff

[Chris Timson]

"have you noticed that when a fiddle is played slightly out of tune the sound clashes with the sound of a concertina more than with other instruments?"

 

Perhabs because it's a sustained note instrument, just like concertina, and a one voice too. So the two clear voices definitely clash. Other instruments might be plucked, or strummed, like a guitar or balalaika,

At the risk of establishing a theme (which would be an off-topic thing to do in this thread (so maybe it would be on-topic really)) the effect is much less clear with a melodeon than with a concertina. In fact there have been times I've switched from concertina to anglodeon to protect my sensibilities.

 

Talking of which, aren't we about due for another adaptation of Sense and Sensibility on the telly?

 

Chris

[JimLucas]

...we play the "buzzword" game. We keep track of how many phrases the presenter uses that are the buzzwords of the day. Who ever ends the day with the most words collected gets to drink for free.

Wouldn't that be vulnerable to cheating? I.e., someone falsely claiming to have caught some "offenses" that others missed?

[JimLucas]

...me and a few colleagues just started making up new phrases to entertain ourselves. Hence:

 

Rhinosorous position: used to describe an organisation that is struggling to respond quickly enough to the needs of its clients and is slow and ponderous.

 

Giraffe view: An objective considered viewpoint taking in the whole businesscape.

 

Bumble-beeing: Top level mangement zooming around without much purpose, frustrating staff by changing their minds about "the task" every few seconds.

... Buzz whirred: Describes someone whose life revolves around the use of buzz words.

 

Your above examples all seem to involve animals. Here's:

... Lemon-tree: An idea or project that initially looks lovely and "smells" sweet, but which ultimately bears sour fruit. Hence...

... Lemon treeing: Habitually proposing or promoting such ideas or projects.

... Lemon tree-er: Someone in the habit of lemon treeing.

 

... Tripewriter: A machine used to write advertising copy... or the person who uses it.

 

... Ale husband (not to be confused with "alewife", which is a fish ): Someone who always comes to meetings with the smell of alcohol on their breath.

 

... BKing: Telling the customer the product can be configured to work "your way", even if it can't. ("BK" stands for "Burger King", but one never uses full words if initials can obscure an otherwise dubious original concept.)

 

But how about some that sound like they could become real buzzwords?

... Menuing: Telling the customer they can have it "their way", but instead requiring them to choose from a limited list of "ways" (which of course never includes what they actually want).

 

... Free climbing: Entering a market (or releasing a product) without "equipment" such as market research... or possibly even product testing.

 

Hmm. Maybe after your next such meeting you should "compliment" the speakers on their "wonderful job of soporification", and watch them swell up with pride.

 

And to bring this back on topic (if not on Topic)...

... Concertinaing: The process by which all the real work in a meeting gets done in the last 10 minutes, whether the length of the meeting itself is 20 minutes, 4 hours, or 3 days with breaks for meals and sleep.

[Theo]

On the creation theme, I've just spent 48 hours in "management speak" hell at a work conference. We had got so fed up of the riddulous "physco-babble" that me and a few colleagues just started making up new phrases to entertain ourselves.

 

Which made me smile and remember Keith Runcorn Professor of Geophysics at Newcastle, an early proponent of continental drift before it was a fashionable idea. He had a very distinctive lecturing style which involved many long lingering "eeerrrrr's" betrween phrases, or sometimes between words when the concepts got really tough.

 

My fellow postgrads and I would entertain ourselves by counting the number of eeerrr's in a lecture and could then rate the lectures on the number of eeerr's per hour. We even invented and named the unit of the Runcorn R as his average number of eeerrr's per hour. I forget what the number per hour was for a unit of 1 R but I do recall that we had to also invent the milliRuncorn to measure other lecturers rate of eeerrr-ing.

[Peter Stephenson]

Hi Theo from Gateshead. Here is a photograph I took of 'The Angel last time I was up. unfortunatly my friend Karl got in the way.

 

Edited April 8, 2006 by Peter Stephenson

[Peter Stephenson]

Hi Theo from Gateshead. Here is a photograph I took of 'The Angel last time I was up. unfortunatly my friend Karl got in the way.

[hjcjones]

On the creation theme, I've just spent 48 hours in "management speak" hell at a work conference. We had got so fed up of the riddulous "physco-babble" that me and a few colleagues just started making up new phrases to entertain ourselves.

 

Which made me smile and remember Keith Runcorn Professor of Geophysics at Newcastle, an early proponent of continental drift before it was a fashionable idea. He had a very distinctive lecturing style which involved many long lingering "eeerrrrr's" betrween phrases, or sometimes between words when the concepts got really tough.

 

My fellow postgrads and I would entertain ourselves by counting the number of eeerrr's in a lecture and could then rate the lectures on the number of eeerr's per hour. We even invented and named the unit of the Runcorn R as his average number of eeerrr's per hour. I forget what the number per hour was for a unit of 1 R but I do recall that we had to also invent the milliRuncorn to measure other lecturers rate of eeerrr-ing.

 

 

I am reminded of the "milliHelen" - the measure of beauty sufficient to launch a single ship.

[Theo]

Here is another image of Angel of the North with me and some friends in front of it.

 

Noel (second from left) plays English Concertina. I'm third from left failing in my attempt to build a third bollard out of melodeons..

[Spectacled Warbler]

so it's not "hing", "hang", "hung".

So, Angels of the North, do you do that song:

 

Hing Hang Huley Huley Huley Huley watcha,

Hing Hang Hu,

Hing Hang Hu??

 

 

Thanks, Jim and Daniel

Edited April 8, 2006 by Spectacled Warbler

[Alan Day]

With six English Setters I have to keep the grass cut Gerry for a number(2) of reasons.

Talking of frogs Peter,the frogs and toads are on the move.The toads sadly think that the road is a nice place to sit ,so all of you watch out for them.My wife and I spent three hours transporting female toads with the little males on their backs during their mating season ,across the road.Many had already been killed before we saw them and even flagging the cars down did not stop people ploughing thier way through the poor things crawling acrosss the road.

Al