So I’m sitting in my office doing physics, with part of me distracted by the LHC, and another part keeping an eye on the Guardian‘s live coverage of the football match between Croatia and England. This involves a team of commentators who occasionally bring up the contents of some of the emails they receive during the match. To get quoted, one usually needs to be funny, wacky, or both.
During the first half there was some banter about old computers, such as the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. At half time, the following is reported:
Showing Off About Stuff dept: “All this talk of ZX Spectrums,” begins Steve Carbert, “reminds me of the time I wrote this really advanced basic program modelling the effects of superposed quantum states in a randomly fluctuating Hilbert Space and accidentally saved it on an old Barry Manilow cassette. Or was it the Troggs? But we digress. Can you give me more of a feel for how hostile the crowd is?” Yep, they’re quite quiet. Now can you tell me what the hell you are going on about? Fluctuating what? Eh?
HALF TIME: Croatia 0-1 England. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that for the half. “Your commentary seems to be lacking any mention of Frank Lampard,” writes Kyle S. Karinen. Yes, it does, doesn’t it.
You can’t escape us – we’re everywhere!
September 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
“Your commentary seems to be lacking any mention of Frank Lampard,” writes Kyle S. Karinen. Yes, it does, doesn’t it.
I actually find that funnier….
September 10th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I’m so bummed that after eighteen hours this is all we’re talking about.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Coming to think – did the Commodore 64 not mark the dawn of a tantalizing new era, was it not the LHC of its day?
Comment #1, I apologize for the certainly traumatic exposure to Commodore 64 talk & music that you had to endure from a certain office mate.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
If this is, in fact, all you are talking about, you should be bummed.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Fortunately Physics still cannot axxurately predict the result from the collision of two football teams,
otherwise life could become as boring as watching a match once you know the final result (or end of the story).
September 11th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Lol.
That’s the kind of thing that had I casually overheard the exchange, I would wonder if I was hallucinating. Seriously.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Them computers were the worst thing that could have happend to home computing, beacuse as I remember it they were rubbish! There was much better home computers out at that time e.g http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html . She had a lovley voice as well. Shame… if Steve had one of those he could have saved it on disk. At least England won, figure that one out!
September 13th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
By “us”, do you mean Barry Manilow fans?