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- You Got A Touchscreen, I Got A Touchscreen… « Revelations From An Unwashed Brain
Interesting "You Got A Touchscreen, I Got A Touchscreen… « Revelations From An Unwashed Brain" ( http://bit.ly/cQa33i )
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All this talk about preserving digital legacies got me thinking: What about the bits we don't want to leave behind? Y'know, the risqué material? Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
While writing our first book, The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man, we decided to throw a few old-time 19th century slang words into the text just for fun. While scouring old dictionaries for some words that would fit in the book, we came across many others that were beyond awesome but didn’t make the cut. Here’s a glossary of our favorite manly slang that was tossed about on the streets and saloons back in the day. These colorful words and phrases probably won’t ever come back into popular parlance, but they’re a real hoot to read through.
Admiral of the Red: A person whose very red face evinces a fondness for strong potations.
All-overish: Neither sick nor well; the premonitory symptoms of illness. Also the feeling which comes over a man at a critical moment, say just when he is about to “pop the question.” Sometimes this is called, “feeling all-over alike, and touching nowhere.”
Anointing: A good beating. A case for the application of salve.
Barking-Iron, or Barker: A pistol. Term used by footpads and thieves generally.
Bellows: The lungs. Bellowser, a blow in the ” wind,” or pit of the stomach, taking one’s breath away.
Bellows to Mend: A person out of breath; especially a pugilist is said to be “bellows to mend” when winded.
Blind Monkeys: An imaginary collection at the Zoological Gardens, which are supposed to receive care and attention from persons fitted by nature for such office and for little else. An idle and useless person is often told that he is only fit to lead the Blind Monkeys to evacuate. Another form this elegant conversation takes, is for one man to tell another that he knows of a suitable situation for him. “How much a week? and what to do?” are natural questions, and then comes the scathing and sarcastic reply, “Five bob a week at the doctor’s— you’re to stand behind the door and make the patients sick. They won’t want no physic when they sees your mug.”
Blinker: A blackened eye. Also a hard blow in the eye.
Bone Box. The mouth. Shut your bone box; shut your mouth.
Bully Trap. A brave man with a mild or effeminate appearance, by whom the bullies are frequently taken in.
Bunch Of Fives. The fist. Pugilistic.
Cat-heads. A woman’s breasts. Sea phrase.
Cold Coffee. Misfortune ; sometimes varied to COLD Gruel. An unpleasant return for a proffered kindness is sometimes called COLD Coffee.—Sea.
Colt’s Tooth. Elderly persons of juvenile tastes are said to have a Colt’s Tooth, i.e., a desire to shed their teeth once more, to live life over again.
Crab. To prevent the perfection or execution of any intended matter of business, by saying any thing offensive or unpleasant, is called crabbing it, or throwing a crab; to crab a person, is to use such offensive language or behaviour as will highly displease, or put him in an ill humour.
Cupboard Love. Pretended love to the cook, or any other person, for the sake of a meal. My guts cry cupboard; i.e. I am hungry.
Cut. To renounce acquaintance with any one is to cut him. There are several species of the CUT. Such as the cut direct, the cut indirect, the cut sublime, the cut infernal, etc. The cut direct is to start across the street, at the approach of the obnoxious person, in order to avoid him. The cut indirect is to look another way, and pass without appearing to observe him. The cut sublime is to admire the top of King’s College Chapel, or the beauty of the passing clouds, till he is cut of sight. The cut infernal is to analyze the arrangement of your shoe-strings, for the same purpose.
Dash-fire. Vigor, manliness.
Draw the Long Bow. To tell extravagant stories, to exaggerate overmuch; same as “throw the hatchet.” From the extremely wonderful stories which used to be told of the Norman archers, and more subsequently of Indians’ skill with the tomahawk.
Drumsticks. Legs. Drumstick cases-pants
Earth Bath. A grave.
Eternity Box. A coffin.
Fart Catcher. A valet or footman, from his walking behind his master or mistress.
Firing A Gun. Introducing a story by head and shoulders. A man, wanting to tell a particular story, said to the company, “Hark; did you not hear a gun?—but now we are talking of a gun, I will tell you the story of one.”
Fimble-Famble. A lame, prevaricating excuse.
Fizzing. First-rate, very good, excellent; synonymous with “stunning.”
Flag of Distress. Any overt sign of poverty; the end of a person’s shirt when it protrudes through his trousers.
Floorer. A blow sufficiently strong to knock a man down, or bring him to the floor. Often used in reference to sudden and unpleasant news.
Flying Mess. “To be in Flying Mess ” is a soldier’s phrase for being hungry and having to mess where he can.
Follow-me-lads. Curls hanging over a lady’s shoulder.
Gentleman of Four Outs. When a vulgar, blustering fellow asserts that he is a gentleman, the retort generally is, ” Yes, a Gentleman Of Four Outs”—that is, without wit, without money, without credit, and without manners.
Go By The Ground. A little short person, man or woman.
Gullyfluff. The waste—coagulated dust, crumbs, and hair—which accumulates imperceptibly in the pockets of schoolboys.
Gunpowder. An old woman.
Half-mourning. To have a black eye from a blow. As distinguished from ” whole-mourning,” two black eyes.
Heavy Wet. Malt liquor—because the more a man drinks of it, the heavier and more stupid he becomes.
Hobbadehoy. A youth who has ceased to regard himself as a boy, and is not yet regarded as a man.
Hogmagundy. The process by which the population is increased.
Holy Water. He loves him as the Devil likes holy water; i.e. hates him mortally.
Honor Bright. An asseveration which means literally, “by my honour, which is bright and unsullied.” It is often still further curtailed to “honor!” only.
How’s Your Poor Feet! An idiotic street cry with no meaning, much in vogue a few years back.
Hugger-mugger. Underhand, sneaking. Also, “in a state of Hugger- Mugger” means to be muddled.
Job’s Turkey. “As poor as Job’s Turkey,” as thin and as badly fed as that ill-conditioned and imaginary bird.
Keep a Pig. An Oxford University phrase, which means to have a lodger. A man whose rooms contain two bedchambers has sometimes, when his college is full, to allow the use of one of them to a Freshman, who is called under these circumstances a PIG. The original occupier is then said to Keep A Pig.
Ladder. “Can’t see a hole in a Ladder,” said of any one who is intoxicated. It was once said that a man was never properly drunk until he could not lie down without holding, could not see a hole through a Ladder, or went to the pump to light his pipe.
Lay down the knife and fork. To die. Compare Pegging-out, Hopping The Twig, and similar flippancies.
Monkey with a Long Tail. A mortgage.
Month of Sundays. An indefinite period, a long time.
Muckender. A pocket handkerchief, snottinger.
Nose-ender. A straight blow delivered full on the nasal promontory.
Nose in the Manger. To put one’s nose in the manger, to sit down to eat. To “put on the nose-bag” is to eat hurriedly, or to eat while continuing at work.
O’clock. “Like One O’clock,” a favorite comparison with the lower orders, implying briskness; otherwise “like winkin’.” “To know what’s O’clock” is to be wide-awake, sharp, and experienced.
Off One’s Chump. To be crazy is to be Off One’s Chump ; this is varied by the word CHUMPY. A mild kind of lunatic is also said to be “off his head,” which means of course exactly the same as the first phrase.
Off the Horn. A term used in reference to very hard steak, which is fancifully said to be Off The Horn.
Out of Print. Slang made use of by booksellers. In speaking of any person that is dead, they observe, ‘”he is out of print.”
Perpendicular. A lunch taken standing-up at a tavern bar. It is usual to call it lunch, often as the Perpendicular may take the place of dinner.
Pocket. To put up with. A man who does not resent an affront is said to Pocket it.
Pot-hunter. A man who gives his time up to rowing or punting, or any sort of match in order to win the “pewters” which are given as prizes. The term is now much used in aquatic and athletic circles; and is applied, in a derogatory sense, to men of good quality who enter themselves in small races they are almost sure to win, and thus deprive the juniors of small trophies which should be above the attention of champions, though valuable to beginners. Also an unwelcome guest, who manages to be just in time for dinner.
Rain Napper. Umbrella.
Rib. A wife.
Rumbumptious. Haughty, pugilistic.
Rusty Guts. A blunt, rough, old fellow
Saucebox. A pert young person, in low life also signifies the mouth.
Saw Your Timber. “Be off!” equivalent to “cut your stick.” Occasionally varied, with mock refinement, to “amputate your mahogany.”
Scandal-water. Tea; from old maids’ tea-parties being generally a focus for scandal.
Shake the Elbow. To shake the elbow, a roundabout expression for dice-playing. To “crook the Elbow” is an Americanism for ” to drink.”
Sit-upons. Trousers.
Smeller. The nose; “a blow on the Smeller” is often to be found in pugilistic records.
Sneeze-lurker. A thief who throws snuff in a person’s face, and then robs him.
Sneezer. A pocket handkerchief.
Snooze-case. Pillow case.
Snotter, or Wipe-hauler. A pickpocket whose chief fancy is for gentlemen’s pocket-handkerchiefs.
Sober-water. A jocular allusion to the uses of soda-water.
Tail Down. “To get the Tail Down,” generally means to lose courage. When a professional at any game loses heart in a match he is said to get his Tail Down. ” His Tail was quite DOWN, and it was all over.” The origin is obvious.
Tune the Old Cow Died of. An epithet for any ill-played or discordant piece of music.
Sources:
Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1823.
The Slang Dictionary, 1874.
Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present.
Dictionary of Americanisms, 1877.
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Shared by gregsmithsaysPretend you know better.
Smugly smug stuff
There is a widespread myth that search engines have taken profits away from news websites. A few months ago, Rupert Murdoch said: “Google has devised a brilliant business model that avoids paying for news gathering yet profits off the search ads sold around that content.”
The reality is that news is a lousy business. Period. Even Google doesn’t make money on it. For example, here are Google’s search results for the phrase “afghanistan war”:
Notice there aren’t any ads on the page. This is because ads for “afghanistan war” generate such low revenues per query that Google doesn’t think it’s worth hurting the user experience with a cluttered page. Google can afford to do this on news queries (along with many other categories of queries) because their real business is selling ads on queries where the user likely has purchasing intent. Big money-making categories include travel, consumer electronics and malpractice lawyers. News queries are loss leaders.
It’s an historical accident that hard news categories like international and investigative reporting were part of profitable businesses. The internet upended this model by 1) providing a new delivery method for classified ads (mainly Craigslist), 2) increasing the supply of newspapers from 1-2 per location to thousands per location, thereby driving the willingness-to-pay for news dramatically down, and 3) unbundling news categories, making cross subsidization increasingly hard.
The internet exposed hard news for what it is: a lousy standalone business. Google arguably contributed to this in many indirect ways, including by helping users find substitute news sources. But the idea that Google takes profits directly from newspapers is simply misinformed.
Zoho today announced support for Facebook Connect, which means you can now access its entire suite of applications using your Facebook account. This adds to its existing support of sign in using Google, Google Apps and Yahoo accounts.
If you don’t already have a Zoho account, then you can sign up with your Facebook ID.
If you already have a Zoho account, you can connect your Zoho apps to your Facebook account by linking them in your account preferences:
While this is good news for the 400 million-plus Facebook users out there, I’m left wondering at the continued lack of support for other popular sign-in options, such as Twitter and (more importantly) OpenID. I hope that they will be added soon.
Does Facebook Connect support make Zoho a more attractive option for you?
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We love lolcats here at The Inquisitr, but sometimes a static picture with caption just isn’t enough.
Animated gifs date back to the earliest days of the internet, but of late they’ve made a bit of a resurgence. Combine that with cats, and we get 12 awesome cat animated gifs.
[Nicholas] built an active tracking system using RFID tags. The system’s tags operate in the 2.4 GHz band and are used to track either people or assets. The readers are on a mesh network and can triangulate the location of any tag for display on a map. His system is even set up to show the travel history of each tag. [Nicholas] shared every detail in his writeup including some background about available hardware options and how he made his final decisions on what devices to use for the job. His conglomeration of software that ties the whole project together is also available for download.
In only a few years Google has become the king of the Web. It went from a college research project to the most popular search engine that rakes in billions of dollars every year. They’ve expanded to mobile, OSs and, in the past few days, promising the fastest broadband Internet to thousands of homes in the States.
We use the Google search engine on a daily basis, but Google has lots of other great services out there. Recently, we talked about 5 Great and Unknown Google Products. I want to dive back into that topic and share a few more services that Google has going that you should know about.
Aardvark is a social search service that finds people who can answer all of your questions. When you submit your inquiry, Aardvark searches your circle of friends and finds someone who can answer your question. The answer is sent to your IM, or you can check it on your Aardvark profile. The service was bought on February 11th, so just a few days ago.
Google Sets is a simple service that creates sets of items from a few examples you give. Simple indeed, but extremely fun. Let’s say you want a list of popular TV shows. All you have to do is insert two or three shows you know and Google will predict the rest. Voila, you have at least 15 other TV shows listed.
Let’s say you really want to know in what videos your favorite topic is mentioned. Google Audio Indexing is a technology that scrutinizes all the audio in YouTube videos. While it is only for politics now, the service will probably get expanded in the future.
How does news change through time? See it on the Google News Timeline. Results are shown in a timeline, with articles, videos and photos.
While major newspapers are not available in News Timeline, Google got together with The NY Times and The Washington Post in order to bring us Google Living Stories. This service shows news that is designed for the online environment. Stories are covered completely with all development gathered in one place.
If you’re planning to visit a big city and don’t know where to go sightseeing, go to Google City Tours and enter your starting address. The search engine will generate the best itinerary, telling you the time you will spend and draw you a route to follow for every day of your vacation.
After Bing announced Visual Search, Google decided to strike back with Image Swirl. Images are organized in groups (swirls) based on their similarity (whether visual or semantic). For instance, if you are looking for a jaguar, Google will organize the results in swirls: the car, the cat, logo. Additionally, images are organized by their angle, colors and so on.
Sure, you can find dictionaries all over the web, but Google Dictionary provides you with a little extra. When you search for a word, it gives you a definition, a phonetic transcription, synonyms, related phrases, related languages (if the word appears in other languages as well) and web definitions. Oh, and if possible, they give you a photo.
Squared is one of the niftiest services on Google, regardless of how simple it might seem. Let’s say you’re looking for landmarks in London. Squared creates a table with names, images, descriptions, locations and telephone numbers, but it doesn’t stop here. You can add your own columns: opening times, height, when they were constructed. The possibilities are almost unlimited. In case the list does not exist, you can help them and add it.
If you love news and you like to get it online, but don’t have enough time to check all the news websites, use Fast Flip.
I immersed myself in Google alternatives a few months ago, because I wanted to see what Google has to offer. I was very surprised at what I found. Google is really more than just a search engine. They are constantly trying to make your online experiences better. Many of the services mentioned are in beta, but they are all worth checking out.
In case you know other interesting and useful services by Google, feel free to mention them in comments.
(By) Alex is a blogger from Slovenia who loves internet novelties and runs the Renton Blog.
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Remember that “If You Printed Twitter” image that made the social media rounds two weeks ago? A similarly formatted graphic that describes the state of Internet use and adoption has been published today for your infotainment.
The focus is on exactly who uses the Internet, and how often. It breaks things down by gender, age, income level, and nationality. It even serves up average broadband speeds for both landline and mobile users at the bottom. Some of this stuff surprised us a bit — For example, desktop computers are still much more common than laptops. You wouldn’t guess that in day-to-day life in the developed world — at least not when it comes to personal use.
Here are some of the other points (the image itself is farther down):
- There’s no gender bias when it comes to the Internet; 74% of men use it, and so do 74% of women.
- The older people are, the less likely they are to use the Internet. 93% of people ages 18-29 use it, but only 38% of people 65+ do. 65 is where the big drop off happens, though; 70% of people 50 – 64 are online.
- As you might expect, the higher their income level, the more likely it is that someone has broadband access.
- Education is correlated as well. 94% of college grads are online, while only 39% of people with less than a high school education are.
- Internet use is up significantly in just the past five years. In 2005, 27% of people surveyed used the Internet “several times a day.” Now it’s 38%.
- 58% have a desktop computer. 46% have a laptop.
- Ages 25 – 44 make up the majority of people who blog. Only 7% of people under 25 do — that’s an even lower percentage than people 55 – 64! Have the youngsters latched on to other new media?
- 54% of bloggers consider themselves experts on whatever it is they’re blogging about.
- Norway is the country with the highest level of Internet penetration. The United States is in fifth place.
- Japan has the fastest Internet connections on average. No surprise there.
- The average mobile Internet connection clocks in at around 700 Kbps.
Tags: broadband, demographics, social media
