Showing posts with label Nokia®. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nokia®. Show all posts

Friday 20 April 2012

66 DD brassiere

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


21 April

According to Wikipedia®, the word 'brassiere' was not either simply taken from French or used in English until 1893 (and, to judge from the content of the same source, it does not ever seem to have had the grave accent that a related French word, brassière, has).

However, I estimate that it is probably in danger of extinction in that form (i.e. rather than 'bra'), morceau than 'refrigerator' is with 'fridge'*. Similarly, although I cannot quite picture what a 66 DD would be like, I would also imagine that the future of the woman who required such a support might be threatened by health risks associated with being that size.

All of which is a mere excuse for the following, since 66 DD is actually one of a set of UK number-plates** of which I have taken judicial notice (the car that displays it appears to belong to someone two villages distant).

Likewise (taking out the offending spaces, as the owners often do), PEN1S*** and - balancing things up - VA51NAS.



I infer that the following should exist, but I have yet to see them:

* PI55 OFF

* MI55 SEX

* PA55 OUT

* PA55ION

* 4 5KIN


Likewise, PI55 UPS, MI55 SOD, etc., etc. Happy watching, but do keep an eye on the road, too!


End-notes

* I come to that conclusion on the basis, primarily, of which term tends to appear on packaging.

** Which predictive text curiously renders as 'number-slaves', so one can, again, speculate on what the compilers of Nokia®'s knowledge of words thought that the phones' users would be writing about...

*** I believe that PEN 15 must also exist, and (despite remembering otherwise) I may, in fact, have seen that one: I saw this number-slave** twice.


Tuesday 24 January 2012

My phone 'doesn't do trashy'

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


24 January

No, I don't know what that phrase means either* (but it doubtless has at least one dubious import, in the right place at the right time...)!

What I meant, by catching (or trying to catch) the attention with that heading is that the phone knows 'trash' - we are talking, here, that language PT, or Predictive Text - but, if I try going further, with that terminal 'y', the wave-front of the word breaks down**.


The result:

Upbriz


Two possibilities occur to me, both of which I shall disprove (but maybe not now):

(1) This 'word', and I cannot see that it is the beginning of anything (a Chinese musical instrument, maybe, about which I might have to send a text-message some day?), could have been loaded into the standard dictionary*** for every Nokia® of its kind.

Perhaps it was deemed that the key-combination that would have given 'trashy' was too trashy (the word isn't even there as a second choice), and needed some class - with 'Upbriz' (forgive me if it is a leading name, such as Prada®, but I don't think so).


(2) By mistake (or - in a fit of utter insanity - troubling to do so), I have saved this combination of letters into my customized add-on to this 'dictionary'.


As I say, I can offer a proof against both hypotheses - and I can identify no others - but, for technical reasons, not very soon, unless there's a great demand for it!


End-notes:

* Though Trashy McAlister might (when not flicking through her rare copy of Homer's Arctic Lay)...

** According to Michael Frayn (whom we worship after Copenhagen and then Spies), Werner Heisenberg would know what I'm taking about.

*** By the way, I thought that that word denoted something that tells you what a word means, or its translation into another language - this is just a glorified list, Nokia®!


Thursday 19 January 2012

Every Veran helps! (1)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 January

Anyone who has ever used so-called predictive text (that terminology probably calls for a whole posting of its own) on a Nokia® phone will know that the software is programmed to know the name 'Nokia', but not the name that comes out as 'Veran', which, if you will ever be writing a text-message to say that you have called in to one of its shops and is anything needed, you will have to spell and save - but nothing will alter the fact that the first option always comes up as Veran*.

Well, my local Veran, in a sign prominently stuck on the self-service machine such that it impeded the scanner, proudly announced to-night that, between midnight and 6.00 a.m., I could use the machine - and, if I didn't want to, they would open a till! (I can see that being a really popular request - from the point of view of how it would be received, that is...)

The point was that not a single till was then operating, it was well before midnight, and so I was disenfranchised from this marvellous offer of having a human being serve me. The slogan 'Every little helps' may well have disappeared (it only ever was a little, and it helped damn all), so perhaps the new one is 'Lump it or leave'.

Plus whatever happened to their much-vaunted 'Value' range, whose products I realize, all of a sudden, that I don't recall seeing for a long time - were they so choked with toxic ingredients that you could buy a kilo of Value peanuts for something of the order of sixty-nine pence, but, within a week of finishing them, you'd have ingested such a high dose that planning a funeral would be in order?


* And I know well enough why that is - some geek's supposition, in setting it up, that, just as I am more likely to be writing 'Dear Nun' than greeting my own mother, I want to write about the verandah to the recipient of my message, not concerning a well-known chain of supermarkets.

(I've not tried the key-combination, but, as a message to Anna always comes up as 'Dear Bomb', for all that I know the phone is programmed with supposedly useful things like 'dacha', 'veldt', 'lebensraum', 'samovar', etc., etc.)