ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

I believe the traditional answer is that the only certainties are death and taxes. Although it has been known for people to cheat death…

But in this particular case, it is the use of the word guaranteed that has intruiged me.

The poster says that there is a price hold, and that they are holding those prices “until 31st March 2009 Guaranteed”. Now here’s the pop quiz.

Is that text large enough to be readable?

Did you miss the asterisk indicating that there was a disclaimer?

Even knowing that there is a disclaimer, have you been able to find it, and read it?

Do you think think that there is somewhat of a discrepancy between the size of the text telling you something is guaranteed, and the text telling you when it is not, in fact, guaranteed at all?

What the disclaimer actually says is:

Unless we experience any exceptional cost increases beyond our control. Prices are applicable to each pub and may very per location

Now I have no objection to the second point, providing the poster is showing the correct prices for that location. What I object to is the idea that someone will say that they will guarantee prices don’t go up, and then provide a disclaimer. It’s hardly a bleeding guarantee, then, is it?

What they mean is “we will try not to put prices up uneccessarily”. But that doesn’t sound as good on an advert, so they have instead used a word which is unsuitable under the circumstances, particularly as what is considered to be an ‘exceptional’ price increase appears to have been left solely to their discretion.

So I got to wondering two things. Firstly, is it allowable for an advert to use the word “guaranteed”, when something — to my mind at least — is not actually guaranteed at all. Secondly, if you’re going to have a disclaimer, should it not be of a size which is actually vaguely readable?

What do you think?

Continue reading What in life is guaranteed? »

Tom McMadeUp was an events organiser, and was delighted to find that he’d been asked to arrange a big Church bash at a London hotel, with more than 500 ecclesiastical figures attending. Initially, everything seemed to be going well, but then one of his clergymen sidled up to him, indicating that he “needed a word”.

“What’s up?”

“I was flicking through the channels on my TV when I came across a plethora of filth. Scandalous pornography! In the rooms of highly respected religious figures! I don’t have to tell you how this would make us look if it got into the newspapers. Sort it out!.”

Tom was shocked and quickly ran off to find the hotel manager.

“Look, there’s erm… well, it’s one of my vicars, and he …. um …. I thought you had assured me that all the pornography on the rooms we’d booked was going to be disabled?”

“Ah yes, well I’m very sorry about that … we couldn’t get any of the disabled stuff, so we’ve just put the normal porn on for you free…”

Continue reading The Big Church Conference »

If you’ve ever wanted proof of the innate duality of mind and body; that each of us are two intertwined things, body and soul, then you might be interested in this photo of my son, taken at Pizza Hut, by my camera which is obviously psychically aware. As you can see, part of him, his ‘body’ is on the right of the picture, and part of him, his ’soul’ if you like, is on the left of the picture, because his attention is drawn to his mother sat beside him at this point, and his soul is therefore leaning towards her.

Alternatively, it might just be that the shutter speed of the camera wasn’t fast enough in this particular case, so he appears as a smear of movement. It all depends on what you think is more likely: that my souls exist and my camera has developed the ability to photograph them, or that for some reason the shutter speed of my camera — which has never had a problem taking shots where people are moving before — suddenly slowed down in this particular case. I’ll let you guess which one my money’s on…

Either way, I think it’s quite a cool photo, so I thought I’d include it.

Continue reading Souls or Shutter Speeds »

Yes, it’s my monthly trawl through the spam archive. This is becoming less fun; now 95% of the spam posts comprise solely of a series of links, which unless there’s something particularly stupid about them, means that they are considerably less interesting, as I don’t particularly want to actually have to read a long series of spam links to find interesting content.

However, as usual, this material may (read: does) contain words and concepts likely to offend. If you want to be on the safe side, do not read beyond the ‘more’ option, as they will be relatively tame until that point at least…

Fix Internet ExplorerSpammer ‘H’

As much as I agree with the sentiment, I can’t condone the method of delivery. And nor do I believe for one moment that this is what your site actually is about, judging from the URL…

Continue reading Spam Trawling »

Thanks to Chartroose for the meme, found over on Bloody Hell, It’s A Book Barrage. Standard pointless memyness. Do join in…

Have you ever…

Continue reading Have You Ever…? »

I came across a site the other day that allows you to apparently determine what rating your blog would have if it was a film. Obviously, it just scans through what it can find on your home page, rather than looking at the in-depth content, but apparently I qualify for parental guidance.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* death (3x) * shit (1x)What’s My Blog Rated?

Three deaths and a shit? Well, I hardly think that’s going to be up there with ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’…

It appears that I don’t discuss drug use, sex, or have enough blood, murder and gore. Nor am I swearing enough. But the odd part is, I remember my life being 18-rated.

Continue reading Rate My Blog »

Take a current newspaper story and use it as the basis of an opening for a story. Try writing the first paragraph of this story in the following genre styles: as a thriller; a romance; a crime novel; a children’s story; a work of science fiction; a literary novel. Which genre came easiest?BBC Get Writing: Finding the Right Genre

Okay, here’s the story…

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says. Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated. The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

BBC News: Hadron Collider Halted for Months

So we’re looking for thriller, romance, crime, sci fi, children’s story, and a literary novel. Although as I’m not entirely sure what makes a literary novel, I’m not so sure how I’ll do in that one.

Continue reading Creative Writing 2: Finding the right genre »

60 seconds

From Steve. Apparently I could survive for one minute and thirteen seconds if chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor. I’m not really sure how this helps. After all, after those seventy-three seconds, I’d be just as dead as I would have been if it had bit my head off in the opening second.

I suspect that the quiz might have had me living longer if I’d fought back a little more, but as one of the questions asked you what you would do after it’s bitten your arm off, I think anyone going for one of the ‘fight it off with the lost limb’ type answers is possibly being a little optimistic about how well you could cope after a dinosaur has just bitten your arm off.

In practice, my initial plan would obviously be don’t get chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor, although I would have a contingency plan in the unlikely event that my first place failed: I would simply avoid the fight in the first place by letting the velociraptor pick whether it wanted the top or bottom bunk.

Continue reading Velociraptor Survival »

“Laptops are very hot now, so hot that they are not ‘lap’ tops anymore,” said Avik Ghosh, associate prof at the University of Virginia.

“If we continue at our current pace … these devices will be as hot as the sun in 10 to 20 years.”

The Register

Hmm. May I suggest that this trend won’t continue? Indeed, I would expect that laptops will always be considerably cooler than the surface of the sun, if only because most people will choose not to by laptops that would set themselves, their desks, their houses and their offices on fire.

Laptops which cause their users to combust, I theorise, would not sell as well as those which do not, and therefore beyond a certain temperature, people will not buy ‘hot’ laptops. Of course, I’m not an economist, so we’ll just have to wait 10 years to see whether it’s me who is right, or the Associate Professor at the University of Virginia.

Continue reading Nonsense Trends »

It’s not new, exactly, having originally been made in 2005 (but obviously added to since, as some of the clips were filmed after that), it’s just a little homage to how often the phrase “what are you doing here?” crops up in Doctor Who.

For an added bonus, true Dr. Who geeks can play ’spot the serial’.

Spotted on B3TA (warning: may — indeed frequently attempts to — cause offense).

Continue reading What’s that doing here? »