The Bah f***ing humbug, f***ing Christmas thread

[Mr Larrington]

These days you get arrested and thrown in jail if you celebrate Christ mas.  These days

[Oscar's dad]

These days you get arrested and thrown in jail if you celebrate Christ mas.  These days

Quite right too! 

[tom_e]

Good.  I have an entirely disproportional dislike of random double-spaces in the middle of sentences.  Some people seem to just not see them.

[Mr Larrington]

Could be worse.  In addition to their execrable spelling the Gammonariat also has ,,,,,, an annoying habit of ,, spraying superfluous commas around ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, like confetti.

[T42]

Then there's the Curse of the Amazon Wishlist. Leave it empty and you get complaints that "there's nothing on your wishlist" which is usually followed by "so we sent you an Amazon token", which at least has the merit of letting you know your value to them (£25 drawn on Amazon UK, FFS).  I suppose another tactic might be have a few items on the list with the comment "buy it elsewhere" but when you're in France and they're in FOREIGN that doesn't really work.

[Jaded]

Could be worse.  In addition to their execrable spelling the Gammonariat also has ,,,,,, an annoying habit of ,, spraying superfluous commas around ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, like confetti.

I fing hate ,like that ,not confetti but just in the wong order .

[rogerzilla]

Then there's the Curse of the Amazon Wishlist. Leave it empty and you get complaints that "there's nothing on your wishlist" which is usually followed by "so we sent you an Amazon token", which at least has the merit of letting you know your value to them (£25 drawn on Amazon UK, FFS).  I suppose another tactic might be have a few items on the list with the comment "buy it elsewhere" but when you're in France and they're in FOREIGN that doesn't really work.

I avoid this by not using the tax-dodging tat bazaar.

[cygnet]

Oh Mr Ambassador CFO, with these cornflake covered chocolate nut things three drinks tokens and 0 food you are really spoiling us.

[Clare]

We are sat outside the Brew on the Quay having a beer, they are playing Christmas songs. It's only the 1st of December.

Bah!
 

Is that the Brew on the Quay in Auckland by Britomart?   If it is then I'll check that out when we're staying at the Britomart Hotel next March . . . can't wait for the trip to start.

That's the one, they have a wide selection of bottled beers from around the world and a good selection on tap as well, be aware that not all the bar staff understand how to pour bottle conditioned beer so you might need to say "I'll pour that, thank you". Food is also OK here, although limited vegetarian choice.

If you are a fan of Belgian beer I would also recommend The Occidental on Vulcan Lane, huge choice of Belgian beer and if you like moules it is (apparently) the place to go. If you are veggie the choice of green salad with disappointingly greasy dressing and a side of fries is a bit of a turn off.

[robgul]

We are sat outside the Brew on the Quay having a beer, they are playing Christmas songs. It's only the 1st of December.

Bah!
 

Is that the Brew on the Quay in Auckland by Britomart?   If it is then I'll check that out when we're staying at the Britomart Hotel next March . . . can't wait for the trip to start.

That's the one, they have a wide selection of bottled beers from around the world and a good selection on tap as well, be aware that not all the bar staff understand how to pour bottle conditioned beer so you might need to say "I'll pour that, thank you". Food is also OK here, although limited vegetarian choice.

If you are a fan of Belgian beer I would also recommend The Occidental on Vulcan Lane, huge choice of Belgian beer and if you like moules it is (apparently) the place to go. If you are veggie the choice of green salad with disappointingly greasy dressing and a side of fries is a bit of a turn off.

Thanks - I've added The Occidental to my list for NZ places (moules will be consumed!)

[alfapete]

Thanks - I've added The Occidental to my list for NZ places (moules will be consumed!)

Me too .

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Today’s nativity story:



Baby owl discovered in US family's Christmas tree

The family was "shocked" by the discovery of the owl and at first thought it was a prank.
The bird has since been released back into the wild.
..

Plenty of people commented with similar stories of finding squirrels, possums and even bats in their Christmas trees.

[hellymedic]

Good.  I have an entirely disproportional dislike of random double-spaces in the middle of sentences.  Some people seem to just not see them.

Partner dislikes double spaces after full stops. IMHO they look 'wrong' on computer screens. Those of us who had formal typewriter instruction in the 1970s or before were taught ALWAYS to double-space after full stops.

Old habits die hard when you're a dinosaur…

A boomer.

[TheLurker]

Those of us who had formal typewriter instruction in the 1970s or before were taught ALWAYS to double-space after full stops.

Yup.  And the youngsters who don't like it can just bloody well lump it.

[arabella]

Those of us who had formal typewriter instruction in the 1970s or before were taught ALWAYS to double-space after full stops.

Yup.  And the youngsters who don't like it can just bloody well lump it.

hear hear.  those of us who did a 3-day typing course in the '80s were also told about double spaces after full stops.

meanwhile, apparently my face was a sight to behold when I cam in and saw that /someone/ had put up some decorations in our corner of the office (it's open plan and not all corners are decorated).  We also had a "christmas party" as well as the obli-xmas-meal.  I ended up discussing with a colleague normally resident in india what precisely christmas was about*.  I started off by explaining it was a christian festival plonked on top of yuletide and got bogged down shortly after. 

*it having been diwali not so long ago "wear traditional dress" so I dusted off my shalwar kameez, to various people's delight (and no-one laughed, or even pointed).

[chrisbainbridge]

Definitely double space reads much better.

[SteveC]

It depends on the font.
If you are using a standard typewriter, with every letter being the same width (monospaced font), then a double space after a full stop looks right.
If you are using a proportional font, when each letter has a different width (e.g. an 'm' takes up more space than an 'n') then the 'correct' typesetting convention is to use an 'em' which is a space the same width as the letter 'm'. This is larger than the standard space between words (which I think uses an 'en') but smaller than two spaces.

[Cudzoziemiec]

My employer requires double spaces at the end of sentences but with exceptions for certain end clients. Occasionally people get carried away and put triple spaces but it doesn't matter, it's trivial to correct with change-all. There's also a rule about non-breaking spaces in the middle of names and another about using full stop instead of colon in time references, which everyone seems to ignore and no one has ever been known to complain about. I have no preference.

[De Sisti]

Some posters on cycling.uk don't even put a space after a full-stop. What is just as bad, is not
having any 'white space' when posting a large piece of text with no spaces after a full-stop.

I have a list of some of the people on that forum who do that and have blocked them to avoid
becoming frustrated trying to read what they've said.

(I was taught to type In 1985, as part of my trade training in Trade Group 11 in the RAF).

[Jaded]

My employer requires double spaces at the end of sentences but with exceptions for certain end clients. Occasionally people get carried away and put triple spaces but it doesn't matter, it's trivial to correct with change-all. There's also a rule about non-breaking spaces in the middle of names and another about using full stop instead of colon in time references, which everyone seems to ignore and no one has ever been known to complain about. I have no preference.

If a full stop is used in a time instead of a colon then the time is not recognised by a computer.

[Jaded]

Could be in the Provinces thread, but I am putting it here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-gloucestershire-67730683

[Kim]

Good.  I have an entirely disproportional dislike of random double-spaces in the middle of sentences.  Some people seem to just not see them.

Partner dislikes double spaces after full stops. IMHO they look 'wrong' on computer screens. Those of us who had formal typewriter instruction in the 1970s or before were taught ALWAYS to double-space after full stops.

Old habits die hard when you're a dinosaur…

A boomer.

I infuriate barakta by doing the double-space at the end of sentences thing.  I keep pointing out that while she lives in a twisty maze of PDFs, all different, I spend most of my computing life in monospaced fonts.  It's not like any text formatting system worth its salt doesn't ignore spurious whitespace in the markup anyway.

The infuriating boomer thing is putting a space *before* the punctuation !

A GenXer.

[Mrs Pingu]

I have just found the effinbirds.com site and I am amused.

[Mr Larrington]

The infuriating boomer thing is putting a space *before* the punctuation !

A GenXer.

People who do that should be shot.  And their families.  Stuff like:

Code: [Select]

aux[1] : { 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 }
is encountered all too frequently round here, along with lines that end in some, or more, whitespace, lines that look blank but aren’t and files ending in – yep, you guessed it – MOAR whitespace.

Also tEh GaMmOn HaBbIt ,,,,,, of putting random strings of commas in the middle ,, of sentences.

[Kim]

The infuriating boomer thing is putting a space *before* the punctuation !

A GenXer.

People who do that should be shot.  And their families.  Stuff like:

Code: [Select]

aux[1] : { 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 }
is encountered all too frequently round here, along with lines that end in some, or more, whitespace, lines that look blank but aren’t and files ending in – yep, you guessed it – MOAR whitespace.

A random mix of tabs and spaces, no doubt.

On balance, I think the tab key was probably a bad idea.