While the FM-switches and the green-light digits keep in touch with the world outside

[venta]

Well, I promised trivia from The Calendar, and here's the first bit. It's not relevant to anything but it interested me.

Schott's Calendar seems to provide a random burst of information each day, coupled with a note of something completely unconnected which happened on this day in another year. Today it offers me a list of 70s Christmas number ones, and tells me that the first international distress call (CQD) was established in 1904 on Jan 7th.

I'd never heard of CQD before, but found this page on Wikipedia about it. It suggests CQD stood for nothing, but was developed from the radio operators' habit of using CQ to mean "seek you" - so CQD was "Seek You, Danger". Nice to see that applications like ICQ are still sticking to century-old traditions.

My only gripe so far with this calendar is that it doesn't have the day of the week on it, thus leaving me permanently slightly unsure whether I've ripped off the correct number of days, and whether it really is the 7th of January today. The daily trivia is otherwise delightful - and there's something very debonaire about writing one's shopping list on the back of a page listing the horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Your calendar has no day of the week on it. Mine has no space to write stuff. Maybe if we somehow synthesised the two...

[venta.livejournal.com]

You should swap calendars with triskellian, you know (http://www.livejournal.com/users/triskellian/118835.html).

[triskellian]

Y'know, I almost bought the origami calendar, but was put off, as with pretty much all other desk calendars, by the fact that it only tells you what today's date is. I didn't particularly want a calendar with space for writing stuff in it, it's just a side effect of a calendar that tells me what all the dates this month are.

Anyway, given that I've already started writing stuff in it, and from the sounds of it, so has lanfykins, I'm pretty sure the suggestion's a bad one, cos I don't want to find myself accidentally going to Cam events, and I doubt she wants to accidentally go to my work meetings ;-)

Anyway - hands off my Emily! She's sweet and I'm not letting anyone take her!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, I have a diary, for the looking-at-future-dates stuff. My desk calendar's sole function is to provide me with something interesting to read/look at each morning. I only want the day of the week on it so I can make sure I'm reading the *correct* something interesting, and not encouraging you to commemorate the death of Dizzy Gillespie on the wrong day. (That was yesterday, by the way).

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Hmm. A diary. Yes, that's what I need. A nice small diary, that goes into my handbag and has a pen attached (because unattached pens get eaten). Or maybe a really cheap PDA. Anyone got any recommendations?

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I will admit that at least one motivation for that comment was to get you to repeat your advice of last night somewhere where I stood a chance of remembering it...

[triskellian]

I have a currently-surplus-to-requirements Palm, which I think is a Zire, which I could chuck you in exchange for some Earth pounds. It has Minesweeper ;-)

Um. I'd need to find it first, though...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yay! My journal is the new ebay :)

I'm willing to offer neutral territory in which all parties may exchange goods/payment. And have tea and biscuits.

Though mostly because I haven't seen you in a while and it seems like a good excuse.

[triskellian]

So what you're saying is, I can palm my Palm* off onto lanfykins without either driving into the wilds of South Oxfordshire or tidying my house enough to make it fit for visitors, and you'll provide tea and biscuits? This plan has no downsides!

Although I'm not sure how much I believe in your existence outside of LJ, The Far North and various gig venues... I know you claim to live in Oxford, but I'm not convinced ;-)

*Somebody please shoot me now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I suspect the schedule which makes this meeting difficult might actually be lanfykins', not mine :)

I'm currently involved in complex negotiations to get half a dozen busy people to meet up in the next couple of weeks, so am trying to keep as many days un-booked as possible. Once that's sorted, I'll offer you a range of days for escrow and tea.

And dammit, if Lanfykins doesn't want to buy, come round for tea anyway ;)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Approximately how many earth pounds...? :)

[triskellian]

Umm... fifteen of them?

Disclaimers: I need to find the thing, and then to confirm once and for all if smiorgan wants it (unlikely cos I think the only thing it does that his ipod doesn't is play Minesweeper ;-) I've also got a red leather case for it, if you're interested?

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

That seems like a reasonable number of earth pounds to me :)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

jessop@marble:~ $ cal
    January 2005
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
                   1
 2  3  4  5  6  7  8
 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
jessop@marble:~ $ cal 02 2005
   February 2005
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2  3  4  5
 6  7  8  9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28
jessop@marble:~ $

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Or double-clicking on the time in your Windows System tray.

Although that's dangerous, as viewing any other month strays farf too close to resetting the computer's clock.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Pah! We ain't got no steenking time in my Windows system tray, I have Dave's Quick Search Deskbar instead. Right-clicking which gives me a calendar, as it happens.

[triskellian]

Yeah, yeah, I know there are other ways of finding out. And an earlier version of The Calendar Plan (before I fell in love with my Emily calendar) was to print out listings like that to stick to the side of my monitor, and then buy a cute desk calendar of the entertaining-rather-than-useful variety. But then I was Emily'd...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh. So it does.
I never knew that.

See, I am useful

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Two bits of windows trivia in two days!

In a related question, does anybody know whether it's possible for firefox to display tabs in a smaller space than the entire firefox window?

In Opera, if you want to compare two web pages, you just open them as two different tabs, and then tell Opera to tile the tabs within the current window. Voila: you get two web pages side by side.

Last night's equivalent acttion with firefox involved opening the second web page in a new window and using the Tile Windows from the taskbar. Of course, this requires minimising all the unwanted windows first.

Re: See, I am useful

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

this requires minimising all the unwanted windows first.

You're not allowed to whinge about operations that require only one mouseclick.

Re: See, I am useful

[wimble.livejournal.com]

One? Given a mess of windows, in arbitrary places, of an arbitrary size, that you don't really want to affect.

Windows-M to minimize all the windows.
Right-click + Restore on the taskbar for each window you didn't want to minimize.

That's considerable more than one.

(And then Windows-Shift-M to restore all the original windows afterward.)

But you're sidestepping my original question.

Re: See, I am useful

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

But you're sidestepping my original question.

No, I'm ignoring it because I don't know the answer. I've not come across anything in Firefox which suggests to me that it's possible.

Re: See, I am useful

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Right-click + Restore on the taskbar for each window you didn't want to minimize.

Eh? What's wrong with left-click?

Re: See, I am useful

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Ask venta...

You're right. I'd got confused in the specific circumstances.