OT: oh rats

fixmypcmike

My college roommate was going crazy on the final project for a compiler course. He couldn't track down the library that had the function MASM, which sure looks like an IBM mainframe assembler subroutine. Turns out a friend who had done some typing for him was reading his H's as M's.

SlimerJSpud

LeatherGryphon said:

Actually it's not all that bad. Here's the Russian alphabet in cursive.

I imagine that if in English we wrote in cursive using words composed exclusively of the letters w,u,v,i,n,l, and m that we'd make some "waves" of our own. Fortunately we don't have many words that collect those letters in long strings.

Yes, that is correct Russian cursive. The previous picture was somebody's idea of a joke. Try Armenian cursive. It really DOES look like that. Here's "alphabet" in Armenian: այբուբեն Oddly enough, both the Russian and Armenian alphabets were invented by monks.

As I remember, it only took a couple of weeks to get past the Russian alphabet. Once you know that, then the real fun begins. :-)

Try Mount Umunhum. There's some waves for you. Umunhum is Ohlone Indian for "resting place of the hummingbird". It's near Santa Cruz, CA.

SlimerJSpud

namffuak said:

Peter Wade said:

I agree, spelling is low down the priority list when I'm programming. I concentrate on the logic and rely on the compiler to spot the typing errors. A program never compiles on the first attempt (at least not for me) so I might as well clean up the typing errors while fixing other problems. I evolved this technique years ago before IDEs when we did everything from the command line. Of course these days with intellisense and stuff like this you often don't do much actual typing, just selecting from a list of things the IDE thinks that you want to type.

The one typing error that can be tricky to find is if you mistype a variable name so that it comes out as a different variable. And with languages like Basic where you don't have to declare variables, any mistyped name just creates a new variable and that can be a nightmare to track down.

And there are logic errors and logic errors - I worked with a Burroughs system for 6 years and got to see a real beauty when we converted to the Honeywell system. We re-ran the previous year's financials to validate our conversion of the COBOL programs. Accounting looked at the reports and said "What do you mean our net income was only $1,200,000 last year? It was over $9,000,000". Indeed it was - it was $10.200.000. It seems that if you do "add A to B" on the Burroughs and the result won't fit in B as defined - the Burroughs system toggled the overflow condition and did NOT store the result. Every other system I'm aware of would toggle the overflow condition AND store the result, loosing that left-hand digit. While the add construct allows "Add A to B on overflow " I've never seen it used in non-financial companies.

I gather there were some interesting discussions on the executive level and in the board room after that; seems the numbers had been low for three years running and no-one noticed it, even though other reports would have shown discrepancies. Luckily it was a privately held company so they didn't have to advise stockholders or such.

I worked at a company that was bought by Honeywell. Motherwell, we called it. They forced us to use a Honeywell computer at one point. After a year of unsuccessfully trying to get Berkeley Spice running on it, they finally caved in and bought us a VAX. At one point, that company I worked for was the world's largest supplier of mask-programmed ROM chips, mostly to Atari for game cartridges. I designed a chip for them that went in the Apple ][e. As a subsidiary of Honeywell, we could not turn down any Honeywell chip designs, no matter how unprofitable. I designed a chip for Honeywell Scotland that went in a home thermostat. We named the chip "Nessie" after the legendary beast. :lol:

LeatherGryphon

Yeah, the Cyrillic alphabet isn't much of a problem once you rewire your brain. Typing practice has helped me a lot. There's still a few letters that I have trouble pronouncing correctly.

Carelessness and sloppiness in any writing can lead to some strange or dangerous or hilarious misinterpretations.

There is a famous old Russian story and film and music that uses that situation for comedic and satiric effect. "Lt. Kije"

Here's the Wikipedia synopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Kijé

Here's the movie with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbb539QZZXo It's old but the plot has been used in newer works.

Here's the Lt. Kije suite of music by Sergei Prokofiev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbaY7p5ahZo
Old timers might recognize the melody beginning at 9:35 for a minute or two. I believe the totally politically incorrect British comedian Benny Hill used some of the music themes from this suite in a few of his skits. I remember one skit where he had "Dalek"-like chairs or carts running around the stage to one of these melodies in this suite somewhere. Another memorable melody that you might have heard somewhere else is at 11:45 and 15:07

Edited to fix the links to point to the correct film and music

Here's one more link to an excellent video tour through the plot of the story and the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-qe28e0cWM

DestinysGarden

LeatherGryphon said:

Spelling: Remember You can see a rat in "separate".

Good thread Gryphon, and thanks for that tip. Separate is one of my challenge words too. I think I can remember to look for a rat though.

Cypherfox said:

(snip)
Handwriting is laborious; painful and slow, and nigh-on-unreadable unless I go even slower. Before computers, I actually handed in a book report in audio tape form, once we understood what was wrong. I was probably around 7.

The computer made everything better. I 'obtained' word processor software (Electric Pencil) for the TRS-80 when I was around 11, and from then on I wrote EVERYTHING in that, from book reports to something roughly akin to what we would now call fanfic. ;)

I have been told at times, by my mother (whose memory is sadly not the best) that I was dyslexic, ADHD, and some folks have suggested that I was on the Aspergers spectrum.
(snip)

My son is like this too. He was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome in the fourth grade. His 4th grade teacher would give out 20 spelling words on Monday, and the assignment was to write each word five times, and use the word in a sentence, due the next day. It was painful and heartbreaking to watch him struggle for hours to do this. The assignment counted for spelling, vocabulary, and handwriting. The handwriting part was also extra hard for him as he is left handed and it is difficult to get proper spacing between your words and letters if your hand is covering what you just wrote. We asked his teacher if we could get the words on Friday, so he could work on it in little parts over the weekend, instead of taking four hours every Monday night. The teacher agreed and suggested we get him tested for Asperger's, as he was also showing other social disorders, and a severe aversion to the acoustics in the gym and auditorium. From that time on, he has been allowed to type anything that was not specifically a handwriting exercise, and he types much faster than he can write. In 7th grade and up in his school, they get Ipads to use for the year, and he has a USB keyboard so he can type all his class notes.

Razor 42 said:

For a start we can't even all agree how to spell a lot of words, grey or gray, Analyse or Analyze, color or colour, forward or forwards, Barbershop or Barber's shop...

I ran into this one when I was about 10 or so. I got downgraded on a paper for "colour." I showed my teacher the C.S. Lewis Narnia book I was reading, and it was clearly spelled with a "u." I then got the explanation on British versus American spellings, and was told I had to spell it "color" from then on in order to be "correct," but I think I got the points back on that one paper.

English is full of these kinds of inconsistencies and double meanings.

1) The bandage was wound around his leg to cover his wound.

Good ones!
Bears will grin and bear it, but rarely bare it all.
Reed likes to read in the reeds. He has already read the red book.

I used to have a rat.. really nice pets.

I'd love to get a pet rat, but my husband thinks it is a bad idea since we have three cats. Plus, he doesn't like their tails.

My writing was so bad when I was little... (snip)

My spoken language is totally different from my written language. Many of the more complex words I prefer when speaking are just too hard for me to spell and so I go with a simpler word. I also can hear incorrect speech where I can't see it in writing. Which is sort of funny since I stink so badly at learning from audio input.

This is me. I didn't learn to print legibly until I took a drafting class in high school, and it was required to use block print on our projects. Something clicked in my brain to "draw a picture" of the letters instead of "writing" them, and that made all the difference.
I also have a tendency to use an easier to spell word when writing then I would while speaking. I have the same block about auditory learning, which I am overcoming by listening to audio books.

Axe Swipe

Methinks me smells a rat! ;-)