The Fatal Bean

I finished reading Agatha Christie's "Curtain", in which Hercule Poirot fights his final battle. Agatha Christie was always a great fan of poison, having worked in a dispensary as a young woman, and in this book the posion in question is physostigmine. As the book explains, this comes from the calabar bean, which comes from tropical Africa.Some of the native tribes used this bean to determine the guilt or innocence of persons accused of heinous crimes, such as murder, or witchcraft. The accused ate some of the beans, and if he or she died from the poison, then they were guilty. If instead they managed to throw up before it took effect, then they were acquitted.

There are obvious advantages to this form of justice - they must have saved a fortune on lawyers and jails, even if it wasn't very just.

In the book, the fatal poison is, appropriately enough, administered using the product of another deadly bean - coffee. I know that some of you have been advised to give it up on medical grounds (as opposed to coffee grounds), and you may be wondering what to do with any of the stuff that might be lying around your house. Well, wonder no more, because here is the latest in eco-tecnology... the printer that uses coffee instead of ink.
This printer won some kind of green award, and will be especially useful to those of you who have been forced to give up the evil deadly drink, replacing it with decaff, or vodka, or some such thing. Though having to prepare brew ups for your printer might be a little irksome.

Presumably the eco-deskjet doesn't take milk or sugar, and it doesn't say whether you can have colours. Other than brown. I'm also willing to bet that it's not very good and gets clogged up with dried coffee. After all, it's only a first attempt, and it will probably need development and productization. Which it won't get, since the printer companies presumably make most of their money selling ink cartridges. It would be cheaper for me to buy a new printer than buy replacement cartridges for my budget deskjet.

Another problem is that the cost of coffee will rise even higher, if people start pouring it into their printers as well as drinking it. Perhaps there might be better things to use. Blood springs to mind, as there are readily renewable sources close to hand, though you'd really have to be a serious eco warrior to buy a bloodjet.

Personally, I'm going to stick with ink. At least for the time being.

It's Geek Party Time

Today is one of those special anniversary days. This has nthing to do with Lincoln and Darwin's bicenteneries, but Unix/Linux fans all over the world will be partying later this evening. Why? Because at exactly 23:31:30 the Unix Time will be 1,234,567,890.

Unix Time counts the number of seconds since the Epoch. This great Epoch is not the birth of a religious leader, or the founding of an empire, but simply the start of 1970.

I'm not sure if there's any particularly good reason why they chose it, except that Unix was invented round about this time (in 1969), and so it was a reasonable place to start counting. I'm about 3 million seconds younger, so I'll be 1,234,567,890 seconds old sometime in mid-March. You become a billion seconds old while you're 31.

I won't be joining in the festivities - in fact I only remembered it was happening when I looked at one of the Greek Linux blogs. Of course, having a mathematical background, I don't really believe in these "magic" numbers, but I must admit that I might just be sad enough to run "date +%s" on my computer at the appropriate time.

Almost there...

If you feel like partying, there's a list of venues online. Just look for the groups of people holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a laptop in the other. This Unix date thing couldn't come at a better time. After all, none of them will have dates for tomorrow...

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Update: In the end I wasn't sad enough, and missed the magic second. Google didn't, though, and had this banner up for a short period:

Wordy Wednesday

Small Blizzard, Not Many Dead

Most people managed to get to work okay,
despite the adverse weather conditions.

I'm going to be very un-British and not talk much about the weather, despite the fact that we had a load of snow the other night. It didn't seem to affect traffic, though the pavements were slushy and slippy all day, so was a bit of an anti-climax, really.

How to Keep Looking Young


I went and got my haircut, since I wanted to be able to see again, and as usual I marvelled at how these professional tonsors are not only able to find grey hairs on my head (I can't, and I'm sure no-one else can see them), but they also manage to cut so many of them. By the time the guy was finished, I was surrounded by a sea of grey. Luckily he didn't cut any of the brown ones.

I'm not at all worried about going grey, especially since I can't see my hair (at least not now it's been cut). When it eventually happens, I'm sure that it will make me look even more distinguished. My only worry is that, combined with my youthful good looks, people will feel sorry for me that I've gone grey at such an early age.

"I Can Recommend the Cocaine"

On the recommendation of Chris, I spent £40 on the complete box set of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes programmes (16 DVDs' worth). This was reduced from £120, so even though I have a stack of other DVDs I haven't watched, I thought it was a good idea to get it now.

Jeremy Brett's characterisation of Holmes is certainly a lot darker and less likeable than Basil Rathbone's, and is a lot closer to the original drug-addicted detective.

Now, for my next trick...

Life of Crime

And that's it for this fine, but rather cold Wordy Wednesday. What with all the Agatha Christie books (another three arrived yesterday), and Sherlock Holmes, I shall be spending the forseeable future immersed in murder...

...And Everything in its Place

I've just finished reading a book. Agatha Christie's The Clocks, one of her later Poirot novels. I believe that she had become sick of writing them and had wanted to kill him off, but, like Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, "public demand" insisted that she didn't. Which is probably why he's hardly in this one - he swans in near the end having checked old marriage records, therefore knowing something that none of the readers could ever have possibly worked out, and consequently he's managed to finger the culprits, unlike us. What a dirty rotten trick. No wonder Dame Agatha didn't like him.

Anyway, having got to the end, I put the book in it's place on the shelf. If you look closely at the picture, you will see that there are a lot of books with yellow bits top and bottom. At the top of each is a number, so I put those ones in numerical order.

The Clocks is the fifth yellow book from the left.

The numbering scheme is the publisher's, and has nothing to do with anything, so it occured to me that I ought to rearrange them into date of original publication. I found a list on the Agatha Christie website. There they recommend that you read her eighty books in this order, and they also give a few instances of pairs of books where reading one before the other might end up with spoilers.

I'm sure that very few people, having never read one of her novels in their lives, have started from the beginning. Maybe they do. The first one I read was And Then There Were None, which is 36th on the official list. Luckily it contains no spoilers.

I'm now about to embark on her very last novel - Curtain. This is the book where she finally killed Monsieur Poirot. I've decided not to wait until I've definitely read all of her Poirot novels, and certainly not until I've read all of her other books in Greek, which, of course, may not even be possible - they might not have published them all, and I might not live that long, having only read about 10% of them so far.

Interestingly, she wrote Curtain in 1940, and the idea was for it to be published postumously, altough in fact it actually came out a year or so before she died. I've only read two pages so far, and already there are references to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, something the Agatha Christie Website didn't warn me about. Through carelessness a few months ago, I also managed to learn the identity of the murderer on Wikipedia...

I'm doing rather better with CSI. Every single episode that I've watched of all three series has been in order. This is because I've never seen them on TV - I just watch the DVDs. I was rather put out when I found out that DVDs for some of the series come out before others - CSI: NY is about a year in front of CSI: Miami. This became a problem when they had a crossover story with Part I transmitted on CSI: Miami one day, and Part II CSI: NY later that week (at least, if you were watching them when they first came out in the US). I had to watch Part II first, and then wait months for Part I. To add insult to injury, a "Special Feature" of the relevant CSI: Miami box set was, you've guessed it, the Part II CSI: NY episode.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. I was watching some episodes of a certain series which I can't see on TV or get on DVD, so was reliant on seeing some that had found their way onto the web. I knew that the suspicious character in one episode was about to become a member of the cast, since I'd seen some of the later ones.

Incidentally, the Greeks have a wonderful copy of CSI set in Greece. The only thing that's missing is the expensive graphics, and it doesn't really make any difference to the enjoyment factor. I hope they bring it out on DVD, then I'll be able to see all the episodes.

"CSI" - Greek Style

I had a look around, and found someone who puts multi-volume editions of books in "reverse order", because then the pages are all in the right order (since the first page is actually at the right hand side of the book). This made me feel a little less obsessive. A lot less obsessive, since those 8 Agatha Christie books are just about the only ones in any kind of logical sequence on my bookshelves, but am I still weird, or do other people try and follow things in the right order?

Would-Be Woman Driver

Have you seen this story? They say "If at first you don't succeed", but one South Korean lady is taking this to extremes in her efforts to get a driving license. She has failed 771 times. Actually, that was yesterday, so it's probably 772 now, since she takes the test almost every working day.

To be fair, she hasn't actually got to the practical part of the test, because she keeps failing the theory. You'd have thought that by now she'd had all of the possible questions many times. And learned all of the signs.


She's spent $3000 so far on test fees, which is a real bargain, because if she had passed first time, she'd have shelled out far more buying, maintaining, insuring, taxing and fuelling a car over the last four years. In fact the government should be subsiding her, because by failing she's also helping the environment.

If she does ever pass the written exam, I pity the examiner who has to take her out on the road. Of course, she might well be an excellent driver, but I suspect the examiner will be checking his or her life insurance. And taking along spare underwear. Just in case.

I wonder what she'd be doing with her time if she wasn't sitting all these tests - taking flying lessons?

Wordy Wednesday - Wonders of the World

Prepare to be amazed...

Unless you've been living deep underwater for the past few days, you will no doubt have heard the news that in Google Earth, you can not only go into space, but now also undersea, to look at all the weird hidden parts of our planet.

This is only the beginning, of course. Soon we will hopefully be able to explore even more hidden Wonders of the World:

Google Handbag - The most ambitious of Google's projects will look inside the feminine Tardis that contains everything but the kitchen sink. Or will we find that in there too?

Google Attic - No, this isn't a special Greek edition. I'm referring to that space in your house where people rarely go. Although Lorne Spicer and co have been finding all sorts of hidden antiques and rubbish in Cash in the Attic, it's going to take Google's high technology to uncover this largely unexplored world.

Google Sewers - Have you ever wondered what happens to the various items that you flush away daily? Well, now you can follow them all the way through the pipework, processing plants and then back to your tap. A real revelation.

Google Fantastic Voyage - Miniature submarines will be placed into volunteer's bodies to map their insides. They'll have to find a younger replacement for Racquel Welch, herself in her heyday one of the wonders of the modern world.


Whilst we're waiting for the clever folks at Google to do all this, there are still lots of wonders on the surface of our planet. I love the "boat" on land in Hong Kong at 22o18'14.69"N, 114o11'23.84"E. Apparently, it's a shopping centre.


And here are some more. Incidentally, the video is best viewed full screen in HQ mode (move the mouse over the triangle at the bottom right whilst the video is playing and choose "HQ").

Hope You Are Well and Having Weather

In one of the "Jennings" books that I read as a child, Jennings (a young public-school pupil) writes a note to the Chief of Police, or some such personnage, beginning his missive with "I hope you are well and having weather."

There certainly seems to be a lot of it around. Weather, I mean. The Aimilia Hour had a report about an "Adventure" when Cyprus Airline's newest jet slid off the runway in snowy conditions whilst landing at London's Heathrow Airport. One of the passengers said the landing was "one of the smoothest", and breathlessly described the lack of panic and injuries. Exciting stuff. Of course, once they finally got off the plane and realised that they wouldn't be able to go anywhere by road, rail or tube, the panic probably did start...

Meanwhile the bad weather appears to be plaguing a large part of Europe. So much so that they didn't have time to show pictures from West Virginia, which has been on the news over the past few days.

Snow in the mountain regions of Cyprus this weekend.

Australia have exactly the opposite problem. The thermometer has been consistently above 40 degrees Celsius (over 104 American degrees), and they have had the worst forest fires for a long time.

But the worst weather story on tonight's news was the one from Tuvalu, which scientists reckon will be the first country to disappear entirely under the sea, probably in the next 30-40 years.

As a result of all this, I've decided that I won't complain too much about the few millimetres of snow we've had. And I hope that you're well. And not having too much weather. It's all the Groundhog's fault...

"Well, It's Groundhog Day.
Again."