Wednesday 10 April 2013

German Compound Words

I've been having a friendly debate with a German speaking colleague at work about the utility of German compound words.  She thinks they're great, I think they are confusing and pointless but also strangely amusing, which is why I keep the debate going.  A case in point, I was excited to come across a new one today: Flüssigmetallblasensäulenreaktor or liquid-metal bubble column reactor from our good friends at the Karlsruher Flüssigmetalllabor (Karlsruhe Liquid-metal Laboratory) itself another cool example of the genre which amazingly manages to create a word with a triple "L", excellent Elling there from the lads at KALLA as they are confusingly known - you'd think it would be KF, wouldn't you?

Interestingly after reiterating the same old guff that she thinks they are great and doesn't have a problem working out which word is which she then misread it as Flüssigmetallblasensäurenreaktor or liquid-metal bubble acids reactor - which could be a problem if you were trying to build one.  If I had been making a point that would have proved it, whatever it was.  Fortunately I wasn't, they just make me laugh.

Anyway, I don't see how liquidmetalbubblecolumnreactor is in any way better than liquid-metal bubble column reactor - unless you are tweeting about them.

That is all.

Mrs Mungo On Streetview

This isn't exactly news, but I finally got round to grabbing some screenshots.  The good Mrs Mungo was snapped on Streetview.  Interestingly she totally failed to spot the car driving past with the giant camera on the roof!  Also note the slight failure of Google's face blurring technology in the first grab.  Google thinks her face looks like a shoulder, not quite sure what to make of that.  And why is she driving my car?  Why is she getting in without closing the passenger door?  These mysteries will never be solved.





Tuesday 9 April 2013

New Moon

I had another go at photographing the moon a while back.  This time I actually thought a little about what I was doing and used filters and such like.  They definitely turned out better:



Monday 8 April 2013

Supersized Toys

I think the manager of our local Sainsbury's has been spending too much time playing with his foam farm: