Afraid to say 'always'

I'm puzzled by '24/7' for 'all the time'

If it is necessary to supplement '24 hours per day' by adding '7 days per week', we need to supplement that in turn by '52 weeks per year'.

If we don't need the 52, we could drop the 7 as well and say '24' for '24 hour per day'

Even easier would be '1' for the proportion of the time the speaker claims to be available, though anyone who likes to show off with numbers could say '3.1*10⁷', the interpretation of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Seasonal Sentimentality

This morning I spotted the first snowdrops of the year, stimulating a feeling that 'Spring is in the air'.

Even when I reflect that Spring is months away, I still feel a little reassured.

Our Prime Minister Applies His Mind to Education.

Watching a televised meeting addressed by Mr. Cameron, I heard him say:

"Sometimes I think we should take everything out of the curriculum except for food and sport"

Has he forgotten sex ?

Too Young to be Soldiers

A few days ago I heard someone protesting against the recruitment of 16 year-olds into the Army.

Alexander the Great commanded an army in battle at 16. It would have been a foolhardy person who told him he was too young.

Let's have Christmas in the Summer.

I'm always glad when the Christmas and New Year holidays are over. With two bank holiday weekends, preceded by a couple of weeks when the shops are uncomfortably busy, and separated by a few days of semi holiday, it is a uniquely messy holiday. This year it seems to be lingering even longer than usual.

Even today, the 3rd of January, buses were running only a Sunday service and the market was closed, though all the city centre shops were open and busy.

It is odd that the longest period when nearly everyone is on holiday should be in the Winter. If it were transferred to the Summer we should not risk frostbite while waiting for infrequent and crowded buses, fewer people would feel a need to travel to somewhere warmer, and those who did would be less likely to be frustrated by the weather.

Chrome takes the lead

Google Chrome is now the most popular browser among visitors to my web site.

Figures for the last month are:

Chrome: 40%
Windows Explorer: 26%
Firefox: 24%

I do most of my browsing with Chrome, so my visits will have biased the result a little, but I usually visit my site only to check alterations, and when I do that I usually use Seamonkey.