[rab] Noooo! You were great. I guess it must be difficult to explain mathematical modelling to laymen, and for a presenter to pick up the gist of a study involving lots of people over several years and squeeze the right questions into a five-minute interview. I guess you're dealing with a lot of variables, but you summed it up pretty well. If I do my job properly, I get to put a lot of Woodland Trust people on the radio, and usually guide the presenter into asking the right questions: "You might like to ask why XXX happens, and what it means in the long term" etc. I didn't realise universities had press offices and the fact that it got picked up by so many publications means yours wrote a good press release and sent it out to the right media, with a view to possibly attracting the interest of potential funders...

[pen] The press officer I spoke to - for about an hour - is an ex-journalist, so he distilled it into a newsy-sounding story. (The version on the BBC website is basically the release verbatim). The presenters' briefs/scripts seemed to be cobbled together through informal chats with researchers/producers a few hours ahead of broadcast. 'Twould have been nice to have seen a copy myself beforehand, but I guess you can't have everything.

You're right about funding though. Probably the most useful thing about all this is that I can stick it all in the case for support to demonstrate interest beyond stuffy academia.

[rab] Cool interview and work - well done, and well explained. New Zealand is nice and small, making it a lot easier to study than its behemoth of a neighbour, even though exactly the same process happened in Australia (albeit some half a century earlier) and it's been developing in interesting ways ever since. I'd be interested in the publications to date, if you've got a list somewhere. I have an interesting documentary about the australian accent, too, if you're interested.

[flerdle] So that Google doesn't link my uni page to this one, perhaps I should suggest you type my name into the venerable search engine, click the first link (at least, the first link in our part of the world), and towards the bottom of the page you can find a link to the relevant preprint. I heartily recommend the books by Gordon and Trudgill if you really want to get into the details of the empirical data, as opposed to our modelling.

Trudgill rings a very faint bell. But well done you - I enjoyed the interview.

[nights] He is one of the more notable names in dialect research, especially in the UK; it would be hard not to have heard of him at some stage if you've looked into this field much.
[rab] Thanks very much.

Ah yes. I did a study of dialect changes amongst adolescents for A Level English Language. It was good fun. Got an A and everything.

Ah, A-level English Language. How long ago it seems now ;)

A level English Language didn't exist when I were a lad. I had to make do with English Literature, and I failed that. So now I don't read much. But I do write for a living. :oD

English Language "A" levels? Comes from having so many furriners in t'country. When I were a lad, everyone just knew 'ow t'speak proper English wiyout paper t'prove it.

[SM] Ah, but at the time it was the perfect complement to A Levels in French and German, enabling me to have a thorough understanding of my own language before I grapple with others. Don't quite know where I went wrong...

(nights) You need Latin. Only with that can one get to grips with the meaning of such terms as fellatio and cunnlingus and begin to enjoy life to the full. You know it makes sense!

Spot the typo.

Was woken at 1am by the most almighty scratching and clattering noise from behind the skirting board in the bedroom. I had to decamp to the spare room to get away from it. Dave, our friendly neighbourhood pest controller (who will probably be able to retire on our flat), thinks he's worked out what's going on. Next door is having its bathroom renovated, which has probably disturbed a habitat, so they've decided to move in to ours. What we're hearing is probably the removals. The bait has been lain!

Apparently we did a good job of flushing out the ones in the kitchen with our trap - three in the end, and none for nearly a week. Removing the panel under the units, Dave remarked "Missed one" and picked up a cardboard mouse by its tail. At least the source of the slightly musty smell has now been explained.

[rab] Have you been making up all these rodent stories these past weeks, just as an extended set-up for the title of that last post?

Our entire building smells of roasting meat. Great, now I'm hungry.

[CdM] I wish. We plucked up courage to return to our bedroom last night, and it seemed to be a clatter-free experience. Looks like Dave was bang on the money.

It was quite odd - I said: "my wife saw running feet behind the skirting board there", pointing to a wall in the bedroom. Dave immediately went into the bathroom and fumbled around the pipework. I'm sure this guy must have been a mouse in a previous existence...

[rab] Why don't you just ask this "Dave" why, when you mention mice behind your skirting board, his first instinct is to fondle your pipe.

1234567__765432129605

[Sierra Mike] Your last three words may have triggered the imagination of the following poster :-0

It's a bit of a shame our main influx of new players these days only play one move and then vanish into the ether again. I mean, where's the stamina?

Orange MC has had a fair flurry of spamtastic attacks recently too, for those of you who are mornogamous.

[Tuj] It appears that Chalky is on to you, old chap.

[Duj] I'm trying to figure out what you mean, and I just can't. Have I missed something?

[Tuj] Duj will explain ;-)
[Duj] You know me too well ;-)
In other news - it's my birthday today. All being well - hope to have landed safely in Dublin by 9.20 am. Hope the stalled AVMA has been solved by the time I return later in the week.

[Duj/Chalky] *remains confused*!
[just Chalky] I'm pleased to be the first here to wish you a very happy birthday, and enjoy the Emerald Isle =) I may have to take up the AVMA gauntlet for you, but I'm not that good at it...

[Tuj] No harm meant, sir. It is merely my interpretation of Chalky's "the following poster".
Happy birthday, Chalks, a witch with prescience though you be. ;-) I am advised that Dublin is a fair city and worth a visit whether a birthday treat or not. I hope that you find it so.

[Duj] Gosh, I'm easily confused, aren't I!

Chalky] Happy birthday - have a glass of the black stuff for me!

- Times headline from the football section today. Will there one day be a Wembley MC server then?

Shhhh! We're applying for Lottery funding and everything

[penelope] Next time your miller gets in at 00:58am, ask him not to drop his super-sturdy clogs quite so heavily :-)

[Phil] Right ;-)
Actually, the epicentre was under a village much closer to my mother's house, in Ludford on the Lincolnshire Wolds. It woke me up, though - everything on the dressing table rattled, and I thought someone was at the foot of the bed, shaking it. I think I might have dreamed it was the Dutch miller trying to remove his clogs...

Just upgraded the server... this site at least still seems to work.

[rab] Oooh, nice :o)

[pen] I was sitting at my computer at the time, conversing with an Australian when it happened - it was rather startling with the doors and windows banging and rattling. In fact, it was hard to tell when it stopped...i couldn't tell if it was me or the earth shaking :-)

Hello there - I'm going to do a little upgrade, so I'll turn posting off for a short while. Hopefully not longer than 10-15 minutes.

Seems to have worked.

p> It doesn\'t mean you can do anything you couldn\'t do before, incidentally...

Oh bollocks.

Seems to have worked.

It doesn't mean you can do anything you couldn't do before, incidentally...

But if you do notice any oddities be sure to let me know.

Hidden text

I've upgraded php4 to php5 and have found one place where the two seem to behave differently so far.

The whole of the internet and computerkind is against me today. It has just taken me four hours to make a media outlets search. The process should take about 20 minutes. Hmmph.

[rab] On posting to the Limericks game, the move was posted ok, but this appeared at the top of the page:

array(3) { [0]=> string(3) "" [1]=> string(39) "Wore clogs that war werkelijk te groote" [2]=> string(4) "" } Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/rab.org.uk/server/STEAM/HtmlRewrite.php:376) in /var/www/rab.org.uk/server/Rou.php on line 122

And something similar again on posting this.

Just done the same to me in Limericks. Perhaps it likes not the Dutch?

And here, so not the Dutch.

[Raak] Oh dear...

Left in the debugging information...

A pox on Barclays and its unco-operative PinSentry system.

[pen] Hmm yes, it can be frustrating that. Mostly works fine for me, but I don't really want to carry that gizmo between work and home ever day in case I need to do some banking. Still, work is forcing me to ditch Barclays so I won't have to deal with it soon.

Is this some kind of card-reader thing? RBS introduced one of those and it's one of the reasons why I'm switching to the Halifux. (That and I get to spend my wife's shoe fund on beer).

Natwest sent me one of these sometime last year. I am an active on-line banking user, but have never needed to use the thing once. Don't even remember where I put it.

[rab] You drive this site with php? Do you use a framework of any kind or have you done the whole thing from scratch? I'm also impressed with the clever "hide" widget-thing. Presumably done with javascipt? The reformatting on display and hide is very clean on my browser. It must have taken some work to prevent it to screwing up the markup when it opens up. Do you pull it off with clever CSS trickery? Sorry to sound like a kid after consuming a large coke and 99. This stuff is like sweets to me sometimes.

[rab] yes - it's a security measure that ensure that you are the right person to access the account as you need the card, its PIN, the gizmo, and the log-in details to get in to the account or set up a new payment. Not a bad idea all in all, but a bit of a pain sometimes.

[SM] As it said at one time on the front page, this site is powered by STEAM which is a few php scripts I threw together over a few wet Sunday afternoons to handle the stuff. It's all basically straightforward stuff, apart from the hide widget which is done by Javascript. The hardest part of that was to get it looking sensible for people who don't have Javascript enabled. Not much CSS trickery - although even then the old version of IE made a pig's ear of it.

[GIII] Whereas I think it's completely over the top. They already ask me for some user name that I can't remember, random characters from a password and a secret code. The card-reading gizmo has removed the one thing that made online banking useful - the fact you could access it anytime, anywhere. (Very handy when you're travelling).

[rab] Barclays at least has removed the requirement to remember passwords and secret codes. I'm inclined to agree with you however on the travelling point.

[GIII] Ah ok - RBS ask you to scan your card in addition to all the other stuff when you want to do something like, oh, pay some money into an account you hold elsewhere. The not-having-to-remember-your-password thing seems pretty sensible; in fact, the worst thing about one of my online accounts is that the password is easy for me to remember (since I chose it) but the username is some 8-digit number I'll never be able to commit to memory.

Project tiddles has been installed. The instructions said that she would hide behind a sofa, not want to talk to us nor touch her food. She's generally wanting to be where we are and is wolfing down her food. Katharine's just introducing her to the sofa... let's see how it goes.

Ah no, false alarm - just the coat cupboard. It was a bit of a harrowing trip bring her home. We were going to get a taxi, but with the Scotland-England rugby in Murrayfield all taxis were booked up for three hours! So she had to endure the number 16 bus. She did very well...

[rab] Don't expect to have exclusive use of the sofa now.

Right - the name that came with our cat is, I'm ashamed to say, Cuddles. We're trying to think of something more appropriate but whilst we can think of lots of great names for a male (Armitage, Jeremy, Theodore, Pooch) we're a bit stuck for a girl. Pictures here.

Don't be too embarrassed, rab, we too have had a recent arrival; it's allocated name was 'Bananas'. When the lass at the vet's advised of such I blinked and said something along the lines of "Ey? Do you run through the dictionary, one letter at a time, to pick out names for these poor homeless creatures?" She laughed and said, "Yes, that's exactly what we do". An image of 'ours' will be found here.
As far as naming goes, it's hard. Given the sly eyes of your new master, the fact that she is indeed a she and looks like she'd eat anything put before her on a platter, might I suggest Salome.

Try here.

[rab] Pandora - the all-gifted

With those eyes, and those teeth, I'd go for Bowie.

Marilyn. Manson or Monroe, you chose.

She's quite cute and cuddly really! Anyway, we got through the first night ok - she better than me. I need to learn to delegate the duty of listening out for strange sounds in the middle of the night to her, since she's much better at it than I am. She seems to be bonding better with Katharine than me, and I think both of us together is a bit much for her at the moment.

As far as names go, we've toyed with Beatrice and Felicity but are still open to suggestions.