Monday, June 22, 2009

Out of Comm Range

I had a problem with Blogger not automatically posting postdated entries this week, and had to force a couple posts manually. If you see me stop posting for a while, it's because I'm working somewhere without Internet and either Blogspot is not doing its job, or I underestimated how long I would be gone and my buffer ran out.

Likewise if you see a whole flood of posts at one, I haven't turned into Phil. It means that Blogger fixed its autopost problem while I was out of range.

Either way, I'll be back in about a fortnight with more posts.

Update: the autopost seems to be working now, so you now only have to worry about me not posting far enough ahead of myself to keep up with intermittent Internet.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

I never have understood what a fortnight is ... maybe you can blog this for me? ;-)

Aviatrix said...

A fortnight is a two week period, but I know you're asking why it's called that. I looked it up for you. Astonishingly simple: it's fourteen nights.

A Squared said...

Hmmm, a place without internet, in this day and age, is probably pretty......exotic.

Aviatrix said...

Locals may have to resort to more traditional forms of entertainment. Like exotic dancers.

dpierce said...

Most people in the US won't be familiar with the term "fortnight". If it weren't for this blog, I wouldnt've realized it's used in Canada. (I thought it was strictly a UK thing.)

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot

Another interesting unit of measure used by geeks and now Google Earth. Try it out on your customers and see if they know it.

Probably not as usefual in flight planning, but then again with an E6B one can do anything to pass the time in flight.

Aviatrix said...

And here I was thinking that Americans used all the old British measurements. A fortnight is really as obscure as a Smoot to you? I'd never heard of the latter, but I love that they made the guy lie down for each measurement instead of creating a smootstick, and that the renovators sectioned the pavement in Smoot increments.

I guess you don't use stones for weight though. Neither do Canadians, but there are the same number of pounds in a stone as there are days in a fortnight.

A Squared said...

And here I was thinking that Americans used all the old British measurements.

ehhhh not really. As you probably already know the US gallon is nothing like the Imperial gallon. (and I'm old enough to remember when the imperial gallon was what you got in Canada, nobody, not even the Canadians knew WTF a liter was) The feet we use are different that the feet that the english used, although the differences are a number of places to the right of the decimal point.


FWIW I've known about fortnights since I was a kid, but it's not a common term.

Nobody ever uses "stone" unless they're trying to appear british, or alternately poking fun at the british. I would say that "stone" is less common, and less likely to be understood than "fortnight"

dpierce said...

I've had trouble convincing some Americans that the "stone" is used as a common measure of weight in Britain, and that I wasn't completely trying to pull one over on them.

A quick e-mail poll of eight people here in the office found that nobody knew what a fortnight was. One suggested a night in a fort. Of course, I doubt this crowd has studied any Shakespeare or watched any Britcoms, but that's probably representational of the majority.

Unknown said...

As dpierce points out, one must have some exposure to British media to know what a fortnight is. If not their TV at least their books. I learned what a fortnight was when I was a kid, from Enid Blyton's Famous Five books. That and the fact that the British send their kids to bording school to be raised...Strange concept for a Canadian kid to understand.