Agree with all above. Also, from experience, when In The Chair - it's worth considering how attentive you can be for the following few days. DrQ's 'mineral' moved along fairly swiftly, even though there were plenty of questions - all down to the fact that he was 'here' and could reply quickly. Ten bob please.

Under the circumstances, shouldn't the Pants link icon be removed from the main page?

What's a suitable period of mourning after, and if, the illness is terminal? Perhaps we should await completion of the Coroner's enquiry.

Dead as a Dodo. Mandatory period of mourning - one more day.

Coroner, sir/madam, you are the most prompt and effective government official whom I have had the pleasure to meet. Now; rab's laid out the welcome mat - ta! Cushions, check; sofa, check; glass, check; whoops! where's the bar? ... ;-)

[flerdle] Sorry, just read your post re your slithery friend. I suspect the D.Python. Welcome to the south, sorry about the cool weather; now if you'd been here las......

[Dujon] Ta. I *likes* the cool weather, and yes, I consider it cool, rather than cold, which is a good thing. But then again I'm near the coast right now, and it has been up to something like 15 C. The weather was really good until this afternoon, when it started raining. Oh well, more time for hot chocolate drinks and good books. There go the plans for rock-climbing tomorrow (although I would have merely been watching). We have managed to watch not one, but two movies in a couple of days - remarkable considering I haven't gone to the movies in a very long time. I would heartily recommend Pirates of the Caribbean. Hrmm, Lara Croft etc etc (2) is passable; I admit I'm not a fan, I hadn't seen the first one or played the game or read the comics or whatever else there is to know about it; I kept being distracted by her lips (not attractive, I'm afraid), and Chris Barrie trying to be serious (?!?)

Oh, and I have another photo, but that will have to wait till I get home. It was near the foodscraps bin this time...

Yeah, Pirates is pretty good, and fitted in well with the ride. I just saw Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things yesterday, which I'd also recommend.

Has anyone been watching QI? Fabulous! Incidently, what is the plural of genius?

And what is the plural of platypus?

Platypi. And very tasty it is too...

Five hours in Frankfurt airport and a hangover. Yum. But yesterday was another day.

[Inkspot, a while ago] Although using an abbreviation might be classed "cheating" I really cannot find a way to explain the meaning of 3er WG using anything shorter than "communal dwelling shared by three people" in English. WG stands for Wohngemeinschaft, btw. And 3er is not an abbreviation. It's a genetive, of all things.

[Darren, et al, re links] I refer you to this comment I recently made on the subject.

Angus] 'Sbeen good, hasn't it? Heard one review saying it was the ISIHAC of TV, though I wouldn't quite go that far. Though it's closer than anything in a long time.

I keep missing QI, it's the type of programme I love, so I must really make the effort..

It's not ISIHaC, in my opinion - not even close - but it's a superb half hour's entertainment. Fry is magnificent [isn't he always?] and last week Alan Davies was not just very funny, but even managed to 'outbuzz' Jeremy Hardy.
I must confess that I'm about to switch on Ch4 and watch that eejit doing his 'live on air' russian roulette thing.

Oops! I missed it. Is he dead?

snorgle]He missed.
Rab]The only 3er I know about is the conker my son Owen has. I shall get my revenge! there were some great conkers in the churchyard round the corner from us.

I once kept a conker for a year after it survived the school conkers season. However, in its first match next season - it was a 67-er, mainly by virtue of picking up all the points from other conkers in the "last man standing" stakes - it didn't so much shatter as squish.

Some time ago, I lived on the Northants/Cambs border. A small village nearby, Ashton, played host to the Annual National Conker Championships. Serious stuff. I wonder if it still does? *wanders off for a quick google*

What-ho, ladies and gents. How are we all this fine eve? My sincere thanks to Dr.Q for informing me of the sad demise of Pants MC. I think a minute's silence sould be observed. Nobody post here for another minute. Thank you.

OK - minute's up. Hi Thrax :-)

Where have you been, Thrax?

Blimey - that Conker thing I mentioned - it's the WORLD Conker Championship, no less. Second Sunday in October. That's a week today.

Hey there, you two. I've just been hither and thither. I've just had a go at the Pants game, but for some reason my entries didn't come out right. No bold, and all my 'return's didn't work. I feel glum.

[Thrax] A couple of pages back, DrQ posted some helpful hints for highlighting text which includes the 'tags' for Bold, Italics, Small Font and Drawing a Line. If you use the same symbol pattern that he has shown - ie. the pointy chevron ones to the right of the letter 'M' on your keypad, the tag for line break is 'br', and the one for new para is 'p'. Usefully, in here you can 'Preview' your entry before you 'Submit' it.

(Dr Q)"small" (got to type it like that) doesn't seem to work with me. I tried it in a comment in the Limericks. If I just use "s" as a tag it gives a crossed out word. Any ideas?

[Rosie] It did work. If you are comparing the size of your comment type face with that of snorgle, don't. She used a specific font size command (on this occasion size 4 - that is, '<'font size=4'>' before the comment text and '<'/font'>' after the comment. (without the apostrophes - DrQ is more clever than I when it comes to HTML; I have no idea as to how to show code as text. I think it's a 'tt' and '/tt' command, but I'm not sure as to what else is required)

Whoops, sorry Rosie, that should have been -4. See the difference below. 4 is obviously the larger.

Hello

Hello

[Duj]
&lt; = < , &gt; = >

&lt; = < , &gt; = >

Let's try that again, then.

<font size=4> This is it
<font size=-4> This is it
<small>This is it

This is it
This is it
This is it

Sorry, I was experimenting and hit the wrong button. Turns red and disappears.

In the past I have used browser friendly colours on this site - but they came out oddly. They seem to be working now, according to the preview button. Let me know if you see anything different...
FONT COLOR="BLUE"
FONT COLOR="RED"
FONT COLOR="MAGENTA"
FONT COLOR="GREEN"
FONT COLOR="#63bdb5"
FONT COLOR="#006B84"
FONT COLOR="HAMPSTER"

[BtD] The first four and the last have come out as "named". The two variations of green [nos. 5 & 6] are very pretty and have codes within the "...". Was that intentional? I have attempted to post this in "hampster". It may end up as a dead hampster, ie. blue.

For lots of colours that can be used with most browsers put this in your favourites

Sadly, a blue "hampster". Yes, the hexadecimal codes were intentional because there are no names for these colours.
If I had to name them...
Hospital Corridor
Blue Pants In With Whites

Ah, the famous 'pants left in wash'. As for your hospital corridor, I've never seen one that colour... It is the colour of the disposable drapes we use for knee replacements, arthroscopies and various other orthopaedic procedures. Also the very flattering hats we have to wear in theatre.

[Angus] You're an actor? Or perhaps a theatre critic? Oh, how thrilling! I don't care. I've switched off my brain because I'm going to Nice for a holiday tomorrow :o)

Actor on the weekends. The rest of the time I'm a nurse in theatres, getting to see peoples insides. Such fun!

Pen] Your namesake laid TWO eggs yesterday! Have a good holiday. Angus] Adds a new dimension to the phrase "break-a-leg".

Does too. Tell you what, never getting me on a motorbike - seen too many remnants!

Angus] My Mum was a radiographer and made me swear I'd never ride a motorbike.

(Dr Q, Dujon) Thanks. I must save this page. BTW I still can't get used to typing "Rosie" instead of "ro987". Whoops, what a giveaway.

I doubt anyone will have the opportunity to use it now, Rosie, hehehe.

Of course, although HTML doesn't list all the colours by name, you can get some nice colours by putting a random word or phrase into the 'color' bit. So this colour, for example is 'Werewolves of London'.

Of course, that's where the Hampster colour comes from. I wonder if you can reverse engineer that to find a phrase from a colour?

Swansea Summer
Conservative conference hair
Road Squirrel
Nurse!!!
New Labour

[penelope] I hear it's very nice in Nice. Here's a Colour Chart for guidance:
How about ...
Before the Côte d'Azur
Day 1 in the Côte d'Azur
Return from Côte d'Azur
[Ibid, BtD] I think Newborn's Nappy is more apt than the Werewolf thingy.
This is a wonderful distraction. I'm supposed to be revising for a computer exam tomorrow. Playing with font colours counts ... erm ... doesn't it?

[BtD] Interesting how your "New Labour" comes out in proud Tory blue... Quite suitable, really...

Chalky - your 'return from Cote D'azur colour' is me after stepping outside my front door in December! I burn so damned easy...

[AP] Then you'll be in need of Bob the dog's Nurse!!!

[Dujon] re: displaying codes as text; what you're after are a couple of HTML entities for the '<' and '>' characters - these are < and > respectively. The <tt> tage you mention only changes the typeface used to display the text, although I usually prefer to use <code> (as you will see if you view source). In summary, then:

You type	You see
&lt;	<
&gt;	>
&amp;	&
<tt>teletype text</tt>	teletype text
<code>code sample</code>	code sample

Note Be very careful with these - it is tremendously easy to miss out a semi-colon and completely wreck the effect. Use Preview if you can!

People seem to be missing the simulpost messages, so I guess I ought to check they're still being displayed.

And then...

Yeah, I guess that's not as in-yer-face as it could be.

was it a trick??

[Dunx] Thanks - I did try the code tag but, because I did not use the commands for the greater than/less than, it obviously fell over. One lives and learns!

The AVMA players may find it easier to be less chatty now - you can be stance-free if you're still managing to be apropos.

See?

Stands

snorgle]on Dujon's shoulders I see.

As promised, another photograph; you have been warned. Huntsman. A small one. Note the different shape of the legs, much more crab-like.

Makes me really glad that I live somewhere boring like the UK. I would also wager that one of its legs is missing, and I'm not sure if I find that more or less preferable to a fully kitted-out version.

Yes, it may harbour thoughts of revenge..

[rab] Nicely done on the greyed out links. I shall probably just remove them, I'm afraid.

I saw David Blaine in Tescos this morning. Do I win £5?

[flerdle,rab] "The spider we want is the one who tore off that leg."

I didn't have it, but I do now! Yeeks! Please tell me such a thing has never been seen in good old blighty! Having just spent twenty minutes watching 'Infested', bugs are not on my hot list right now. Made the mistake of watching Life of Grime too - never again...

[rab] It's not unusual to see the odd 'peg leg' wandering around.

Which reminds me ...
At the risk of boring you to death. About six or seven years ago I was sitting in the 'bar' (actually the garage) of a mate's place and was positioned next to a largish double sliding glass door which gave access to the rear of the house. Whilst enjoying the afternoon sunlight beaming through the glass (that's the door, as well as the hand held one!) I noticed a wasp wandering up the pane. It was about 2" to 3" long and was dragging a huntsman spider up the door. I had heard of wasps paralysing spiders and laying their eggs within but had never seen the act. Anyway, interesting as that was at the time, some twelve months ago I had a wasp buzzing around in my workshop - it's not unusual and usually ignored - which finally got itself tangled in my hair (what's left of it.) Naturally I brushed it away. When I did it dropped its load; a load that I had not realized it was a'carrying. The bounty which it had lost landed on the keyboard of my computer which I was using at the time; it was the legless body of a huntsman! Urrgh! It turns out that the wasps paralyse the spiders, nibble off their legs at body level and then lay their eggs and secrete them within the little dirt cells that they build. It gave me the shivering quits for a couple of days, I can tell you.

[Duj] Thanks for that. I suddenly find that I can't face my Weetabix this morning.

[Dujon] I refer you to my previous remark.

[Dujon] That is possibly the most traumatic thing I have ever heard. Thank God that disgusting item didn't land IN YOUR HAIR. However, I was under the impression that the things that paralyse spiders and lay their eggs on them so that they get slowly devoured by grubs are not wasps but ichneumons, which look similar. Ordinary wasps, however, do carry body parts in the way you describe - I once watched a wasp attacking a bee, which it did by sitting on its back and systematically chewing through its thorax. When it finished it flew off with the abdomen - presumably the yummy bit - leaving the front half of the bee staggering around until I mercifully squashed it. Perhaps what you saw was the aftermath of a similar act of piracy. The mere existence of the ichneumon, by the way, was partly responsible for the Victorian "crisis of faith", because many found its existence impossibly to square with the notion of a good creator God. Incidentally, I will keep your anecdote for when I need to terrify my girlfriend. She refused to come to bed last night because a SMALL MOTH was sitting on the wall. Well, that's what she said anyway...

[Spiders] I see your spiders (*shudder*), and raise you The Japanese Spider Crab: The biggest crab is the Japanese Spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi), which lives on the floor of the north Pacific Ocean; it has a 12 ft (3.7 m) leg span.

[breadmaster] Moths are awful! Quite why they have to mistake my face for a lightbulb I will never know! [Nik] I hope it stays there!

Incidently, why is no-one playing the long game any more? My move is there to be ridiculed/praised/gasped-in-awe at/smirked at/ruled illegal...

[AP] The complexities of the long game can take some time to calculate. Moves can be irregular and often come in bursts. Yours was a cunning move and it took me some time to see a gap in the web of LV currents to make a move to benefit me.

Oh, I am the veritable prince of cunning. 'Cept when I'm not.

I just came across this - fell off my chair; I don't know whether or not it's been done before but, if so, I have not seen it;

As found in the Canberra Times, Personals section...

'Wanted: A tall well built woman with good
reputation, who can cook frogs
legs, who appreciates a good fuc-
schia garden, classic music and tal-
king without getting too serious.

Interested? Then please only read
lines 1, 3 and 5; still interested?
Call me at...... ***********'

I'd heard of that sort of thing as a joke, but actually printing it... ??