facepalm

  • Robins named stand after folker Fred

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities

    image of Fred WedlockThere’s an astonishing revelation in today’s Bristol Post, the city’s most unreliable source of news: the late Fred Wedlock (pictured right), the local folk singer best known for his UK hit single “The Oldest Swinger In Town”, has had a stand named after him at Bristol City‘s ground at Ashton Gate.

    This emerges from a report written by Ian Onions, the Post’s political editor, over a lifelong Robins fan’s wait for the club to honour its pledge over its 1990s ‘Buy-a-Brick’ campaign.

    A screenshot of the article is also shown as confirmation of the existence of the Fred Wedlock Stand.

    screenshot featuring wording Fred Wedlock Stand

    photo of Billy WedlockIan may be a knowledgeable chap when it comes to politics and the skulduggery down at the Counts Louse (Bristolian for “City Hall” © Mayor George Ferguson. Ed.), but when it comes to the beautiful game, he really doesn’t know his onions, since it was dear old Fred’s grandfather Billy (pictured left) who played for and captained the Robins, as well as playing for the England squad and it is after him that the stand is named.

    Ashton Gate also has a Williams stand. I wonder if Post reporters believe this was named after Andy of that surname rather than a former player. 😉

  • Can’t tell Norwegian from English? It must be Bing Translator

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

    According to Wikipedia, Bing Translator “is a user facing translation portal provided by Microsoft as part of its Bing services to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages.”

    Or it would be if only it could actually recognise languages accurately.

    Twitter uses Bing Translator as an interface ostensibly to help users with languages they do not know.

    However, Bing Translator still has some way to go before it recognises languages accurately, as shown by the following screenshot.

    Bing Translator mistakes English for Norwegian

    Whilst it is understandable that online machine translation tools can occasionally get confused between closely related members of the same language family (Google Translate has been known to confuse Norwegian and Danish. Ed.), this is the first time I can recall such a back end helper being a real tool and getting muddled over languages as distinct from one another as English and Norwegian.

    Perhaps any passing Microsoft developers would care to explain this anomaly in the comments below.

  • Microsoft sits in homophone corner

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

    This blog has discussed homophones before (posts passim). Homophone corner is a space to which people who cannot distinguish their homophones are banished to consider the errors of their ways – rather like the corner of the classroom to which misbehaving children were exiled during my primary school days.

    It now appears as though the curse of the homophone is spreading to the giants of the technology world, as shown by the following tweet from Nix Tran Stories.

    image text reads Dear Microsoft spellchecker, For the umpteenth time: No! I don't want to change Your Ref. to You're Ref.

    I’ve used Microsoft Word/Office since the days of Windows 3.1 and its spelling and grammar checking tools have in my opinion never been particularly good: I’ve always run rings around them; and now it appears that the spellchecker has been coded by an illiterate.

    I suppose the least I could do is pat the leader of the MS Office team on the shoulder and mouth the platitude “their, there, they’re!“. 😉

  • More culinary sexism

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Perhaps taking its lead from a city centre café in Bristol (posts passim), multinational junk food chain McDonalds has now introduced sexism onto its menu.

    The advertisement below was spotted on Easton Way, Bristol this morning.

    McDonalds advertising poster featuring manly sausage and bacon breakfast muffin

    Once again bacon and sausage are apparently foods exclusively for men. If any woman is ‘man enough’ to ask for them, what would that make her – a tomboy or a butch lesbian? Or simply unfeminine?

    Answers in the comments below, please McDonalds.

  • Inspirational motto meets immovable object

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    When I worked for Imperial Tobacco many decades ago, I used to hate the inspirational texts that came on the desk calendars with which all office staff were issued. Another pet hate is company mottoes, which usually have that same inspirational or aspirational element.

    Given my hostility to these forms of literature, the photograph below could do nothing else but provoke a smile: a truck driver – presumably on the road to success – tries do effect a short cut of his own and reduce the height of his trailer to 10 feet using a convenient railway overbridge.

    truck with text on trailer reading on the road to success there are no shortcuts trapped under bridge

    Hat tip: Harry Tuttle.

  • Braking bad

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    The Bristol Post, no stranger to the pages of this blog, has a sister paper, the Western Daily Press.

    Both used to be produced in Bristol and were printed at the – now vanished – print hall of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth.

    There used to be an old Bristol joke about the local press. It ran as follows: there are 2 newspapers in Bristol; there’s the Western Daily Press, which carries stories about far-flung corners of the West Country such as London, Manchester and Edinburgh (or any other 3 major UK cities of your choice. Ed.), and the Bristol Evening Post (as it was then called. Ed.), which carries stories about far-flung corners of the West Country such as London, Manchester and Edinburgh and 50 pages of classified advertising.

    However, both the Post and the Press have more in common than their heritage and ownership. They are both badly written.

    Thursday’s Press carried a piece which puts it firmly in homophone corner with a dunce’s hat on its head, as shown by the following screenshot.

    text reads Motorists reported the lorry broke hard as it approached a roundabout

    For the benefit of passing Press “journalists”, here’s where your anonymous colleague went wrong.

    You confused the heterographic verbs to break and to brake.

    The former, which you used, is a strong verb, also called an irregular verb; these verbs form the past tense or the past participle (or both) in various ways but most often by changing the vowel of the present tense form. In this instance, break (present tense), broke (past tense), broken (past participle).

    The latter, which you should have used in this case, is a weak verb. These (also called regular verbs) form the past tense by adding -ed, -d, or -t to the base form (or present tense form) of the verb (e.g. call, called).

    Got it now?

    Good! 🙂

  • Sexism in café society

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Social Media

    An unnamed café in Bristol is apparently serving his and hers breakfasts.

    café menu board featuring his and hers breakfasts

    Yes, that’s right! Men get to scoff tortilla, bacon, sausages, 2 token items of fruit/vegetables (tomato and mushroom), Cheddar cheese, ham roll and butter, whilst women are supposed to pick their way daintily through muffin, poached egg, smoked salmon, salad leaves, cherry tomatoes, avocado, red onion, blueberries, yoghurt and pumpkin seeds.

    Men can obviously let their figures go to pot (and blood cholesterol levels too. Ed.), whilst women are automatically assumed to be on a diet; women have “gotta stay slim for our men obvz” in the scathing words of one on social media.

    This isn’t the first time that sexism has emerged at breakfast time (posts passim).

    Update 30/04/15: The his and hers labels are being removed from the menu according to the Western Daily Press, which also revealed the name of the establishment as Caffe Be On. In addition, this post was quoted in yesterday’s Daily Mirror.

    Hat tip: MarinaS.

  • Post exclusive: Bristol Rovers change kit

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities

    There’s a hidden exclusive in today’s online edition of the Bristol Post. Unknown to the fans and probably the club itself, the Post reveals that Bristol Rovers now play in “blue and white stripes“, as shown by the following screenshot.

    screenshot featuring text But it turned out to be Sabadell fans, who were decked out in their home kit, which looks similar to the Rovers's blue and white stripes

    For the benefit of passing Post journalists, here are the three strips currently used by Bristol Rovers. Please note the only stripes are on the alternative away colours and have one thin blue stripe. The pattern used on the regular strip is commonly known as “quarters“.

    image of three current Bristol Rovers strips
    Image courtesy of Wikipedia

    The Post also mentions in the article that Catalonia’s CE Sabadell FC (who are in the Spanish Segunda División. Ed.) play in a strip “similar” to that of Rovers. FC Sabadell’s current strips are shown below and yes, the home strips do look very similar, even if the teams’ respective league positions do not; Rovers are chasing promotion from the Conference, whilst Sabadell are fighting relegation.

    Sabadell strips from Spanish Wikipedia
    Image courtesy of Wikipedia

    Let’s hope the players of both teams are more on target than Bristol’s alleged newspaper of record. 🙂

  • There, their, they’re Bristol Post

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    The minions of the Bristol Post, possibly under strain from toiling away at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth looking for the city’s blandest news content, seem to have particular difficulty with homophones, i.e. words that are pronounced the same as another word but differ in meaning and may differ in spelling.

    This was amply illustrated below by a photo gallery posted this morning on the local organ’s website.

    screenshot of gallery headed Pictures of Bristol Rovers fans during there Bristol Rovers v Southport game

    Should the Post’s ‘journalists’ wish to cure themselves of acute homophonia, help is at hand up at Bristol University.

    Its website has a handy grammar tutorial page for the illiterati on the simple differences between there, their and they’re.

    To quote from that page

    There is the place, i.e. not here.

    Their is the possessive form indicating belonging to them.

    They’re is the contracted form of “they are”.

    Have you got that, Bristol Post, if so Bristol University’s site also has a useful exercise to check whether the lesson has sunk in.

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