READER Lucy Pumphrey tells us that her mother says her new camera works much better âbecause it has many more pixies than her old oneâ. Meanwhile, Lucyâs daughter is apparently excited at the discovery that âthere are millions of haemogoblins capering round the circulatory system, delivering parcels of oxygenâ.
As for Lucy herself, she says she gets along fine in life so long as sheâs got her elf (try saying that with a cockney accent). She wonders if other Feedback readers have noticed the presence of similar âdifferently realâ companions in their lives.
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âThe instructions for the digital barbecue-thermometer Robert Cailliau has acquired state: âThe sensible section of the probe is about 2 centimetres from the tipâ
What could a âboy thingyâ be?
DO YOU know what a âboy thingyâ is? No, we didnât either until Keith Walters told us about the net filter used by the .
Keith was looking for information about a digital camera sold by the Australian chain Dick Smith. Not much information was available, except that the same camera was apparently also sold by an outfit called âBoy Thingy Smithâ.
It took a while for the penny to drop. When it did, Keith was sufficiently annoyed to email us. âThese forum filters are getting quite ri-boy-thingy-ulous,â he says. âWho are they to boy-thingy-tate what a company is called? Whoever would have pre-boy-thingy-ted such a thing?â
Sweet-smelling amusement service
ANOTHER delightful product description from China. It is for a Diezhuang air freshener purchased by Cedric Lynch. âThis production can act on the foul smell particle in the air, rapidly,â Cedric learns. âIt can remove the peculiar smell⊠making the environment is fragrant, pleasant, and the health is comfortable. It is an indispensable good merchantable brand of family, office building, hotel, type, hospital and other amusement service place.â
When we run translation stories like this, we are sometimes asked: âSo how much Chinese do you know?â Fair enough â but for this very reason, if we were trying to sell something in China we would make sure we got someone who can write half-decent Chinese to translate our blurb for us â without, for example, describing a hospital as an amusement service place.
How big a can can the can crusher crush?
IF YOU are looking for a can crusher to, er, crush cans with, the obvious place to start, given the manly association of can crushing with cans of beer, is . And, yes, they do have them â but the FAQ section left a colleague in need of a can crusher bemused.
The question âWill the crusher crush 500 ml beer cans?â is answered with âYes, the can crusher will crush 500 ml cansâ. Next comes the question: âCan it crush 440 ml cans?â This time the answer is: âNo, only up to 330 ml.â
3040 years battery time remaining
PLAYING on his Apple iPod Touch, Xander Wijninckx was unsettled by a battery warning that popped up on the screen. It read: â74,024,608 per cent battery remaining.â
Assuming that a full battery gives 36 hours of music, as Apple asserts, he reckoned this should mean he had around 26,648,858 hours of listening time still available, or about 3040 years.
Xander wants to know what Apple makes its batteries out of. The worldâs energy crisis may have already been solved.
WHEN he was replacing a dead hard- drive in an ageing laptop, Timothy Morel discovered the importance of keeping such components well ventilated. On , he writes that he ânoticed that the original drive had a sticker warning not to cover the ventilation hole. It was covering the ventilation holeâ.
Your dear friend Princess Leia
IT IS commonly believed that no matter how preposterously unlikely the propositions in so-called Nigerian scams are, the scammers succeed in making money with them because, so long as they send out enough of them, there will always be at least one sucker out there who will fall for them.
Surely, though, can there be anyone on the planet who would fall for this one, received by a colleague in the US? It begins: âDear friend, I am Princess Leia Organa, only survivor of the royal family of Alderan⊠I was falsely imprisoned upon the imperial battle station âDeathstarâ when my planet was hideously destroyed and ended by the very bad Sith Lord VaderâŠâ
And so on, down to the usual request for assistance in transferring funds. The suspicion that this is just a joke is tempered only by the knowledge that you could say the same about all the others.
Book about discounts discounted
FINALLY, Yonatan Silver notes that Amazon has been advertising a 34 per cent discount on a book that piqued his interest. Its published price is $25.95, but when he looked it was selling online at $17.13. The book in question? Itâs , in which the author, Ellen Ruppel Shell, takes a critical look at the practice of offering discounts.
Article amended on 1 January 1970
When this article was first published, it misspelled Robert Cailliauâs name.
