This is

as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

. Here I write about many things. In the past I wrote about other things but the past is past. I write code for people to play with, I write about my life on Twitter, and I write here.

On I wrote Very cold fridge, on the subject of Humour.

So, there I was in Maplins today, and they were advertising a fridge:
AC/DC Mobile Fridge and Warmer; Holds eighteen 440ml cans!; Cools to 258C below ambient room temperature!; Also warms food to approx. 508C; Dual mains/in-car power supply; Cool silver finish; £59.99
Cools to 258C below ambient room temperature, eh? Well, ambient room temperature is normally about 20°C. So that’s approximately -238°C. Absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible, is around -273°C. So that fridge makes stuff really, really cold. I am amazed that it hasn’t been rushed off the shelf by university science departments and other ultracold researchers: that’s way colder than liquid nitrogen. And it’s only £59.99! Better still, it’ll heat up to 500 degrees! Wow! Not only could you cook dinner in it, but you could loan it to the craft department (when you’re not making solid nitrogen blocks with it) and they could fire clay. What a device! Get yours today!

matthew

That’s genius, what an advance in human development and consumer electricals that fridge represents.

Xian

The issue is with text encoding. Or maybe just with really bad typing. On a Mac keyboard to make a degree symbol you press shift-option-8 Like this: ° (That was the native Mac symbol, not sure how it’ll show up, here’s the html entity for it °).

So should probably be 25°C and 50°C.

Regardless it is most definitely a sing of way-crappy (nonexistent) proofing. The bullets on continuation lines is pretty smooth also.

Xian

So I can’t proof my own writing either. That should be:

... a sign* of way-crappy (nonexistent) proofing …

sil

Xian: I suspect that whatever Maplins print posters on doesn’t have a degree symbol. So they print an 8 and then the shop staff are meant to Tippex over the bottom loop of said 8, whch they didn’t do…

bilbo's dwarfen finger

Did you know that Cambridge University maintains that any text is readily readable so long as the first and last letters of the word are in the correct place (the remaining letters can supposedly be written in any order).
Ubneilveble tse azmanig pweor of tse hmuan mnid!

Well, this really is the most anal examination into the origins of a labelling error the world has yet seen. Keep up the good work folks!

DJ At Work

This is just great! It will keep my beer extra cold, and also have the ability to cook my steaks!! :)

oogabooga

oooooooo yea… i love cooking in my fridge :D

This website belongs to Stuart Langridge. Contact details are available. Don't eat yellow snow. Valid HTML5, at least in theory, except for the bits that aren't because I'm that futuristic that I'm ahead of the spec, oh yes. HTML5 help from Bruce Lawson, among others. Fonts from the superb FontSquirrel. End.