pocra's Journal: Ewan Quiz I

The Daily Ewan Quiz - an explanation

Every working day, I set my colleague Ewan Carmichael a short quiz. Here, for example is today's quiz, with an explanation of the reasoning behind the made-up answers....

You did so well yesterday that I'm going to be nice and give you mulitple choice today... all words are from the Jargon File; select the correct definition from the choices given. a) Adger 1) A Suit who overuses certain descriptive words (such as groundbreaking, exciting, conceptual) 2) A network card which can spoof other machine's identities 3) To do something obviously stupid, such as deleting files at random

1) - The "adg" at the start sounds rather like "adj", so a definition relying on this seemed like a possible red herring; Ewan is familiar with the term (and is a) Suit, so I thought this might lend an air of credibility to the def. Though most suits are more guilty of nouning verbs and verbing nouns. 2) - I'm sure there was a logical reason for this at the time; I suppose the word "adger" just has connotations of being a concrete noun, and this was a random piece of technobabble.

b) Baggy Pantsing 1) Wearing combat trousers in order to be able to carry more gizmos/tools 2) Sending messages from a terminal someone else has left logged-on but unattended 3) Ordering takeaway food more than twice in the same night

1), 3) - Stereotypical behaviour of Geeks and Hackers, both of which might literally require baggy pants (the real definition has the connotation, I believe, of the victim being a 'clown').

c) Chickenhead 1) A user whose typing skills equate to pecking at the keyboard 2) The Commodore logo, which looks a bit like C= 3) A disk which has been formatted below-capacity to comply with out-of-date software

1) - Obvious pun on pecking/chicken 3) - The word has slight connotations of non-working-at-full-capacity.

d) Dusty Deck 1) Legacy code; Old, old software that new software must still be made compatible with - notionally so old that it's still on punch-cards. 2) Mainframe hardware that is now unused but no-one is willing to dispose of 3) A motherboard that has burnt out due to too much dust being deposited on it over time.

2) - Another obvious pun - this time on DEC 3) - Okay, I admit it, I couldn't think of a decent alternative definition. Happy?

e) Easter Egging 1) Replacing hardware components at random in the hope of fixing a problem 2) Hiding "suprises" in software to entertain the users 3) Mocking others online for their Christian beliefs

2) - Hopefully will wrong-foot him with the association with "Easter Egg", which doesn't exist, strangely, as a noun. 3) - Mixture of egging and Easter... obviously.

f) Farming 1) Searching through webpages for email address, either to compile a directory or (more usually) to spam 2) Distributing a highly data-intensive program's activity amongst several machines (for example, SETI@home) 3) The activity of a disk-reading head when it savagely 'ploughs' furrows into the disk surface.

1) A slight play on 'harvesting' 2) And another...

g) Glark 1) To deduce the meaning of something from context 2) The sustained noise made when a program crashes while producing sound 3) To copy a file from one machine to another by retyping it by hand.

2) - Doesn't it sound a bit onomatopaeic? 3) - Couldn't this be the noise of horror you make when you've got to do this?

h) Hamster 1) To try to understand code by following it through on hard copy. 2) A deregotary term for a preogrammer working in a cubicle 3) A cordless mouse ('a mouse without a tail').

1) Associations of following your finger through the code, like a hamster running through a maze. (Do hamsters run through mazes? I know it's normally rats, but I'm sure I saw a hamster doing it on the Simpsons once...) 2) Do you really need an explanation? Sheesh!

i) Ice 1) Collective name for workers at Pacific Bell (from the fact the Pacific class of steam trains was designated 4-6-2 (462 in hex being 1CE)). 2) Graphics software that ignores perspective 3) Code designed to detect malicious hackers and overload their machine, causing it to hang irretreivably.

1) Exactly as I said (though I first converted 1CE to decimal, then did a search for "4-6-2", hoping to find it was the name for a formation in some sport, and found many many pages about Pacific steam trains. 2) A contraction of "isometric"

j) Jello 1) The silicon paste used to keep the processor in contact with its heatsink 2) The point in any faulty assembly program where things go wrong (notionally 'jump and load oblivion') 3) Usenet Spam that is spread over many newsgroups.

1) Doesn't it seem a bit like Jello? 2) JLO - could be something to do with Jennifer Lopez instead?

k) Kyrka 1) The Swedish name for the "clover-leaf" key on a Macintosh (as it is similar to the sign used on Swedish maps for historical churches). 2) A program that is nearly, but not quite, a clone of another. 3) The right-wing cult that COBOL programmers are legendarily rumoured to be members of.

2) A play on Circa, pronounced as it should be. 3) A play on KKK

l) Lobotomy 1) To truncate a word by removing the low-order bit. 2) To remove the processor from a motherboard, in order to replace/upgrade it 3) The drop in bandwith that occurs when more users join a network

1) I know a high-order bit can be called a hobbit - sure a low-order bit can be a lobbit? Surely the removal of this would be a lobotomy? Surely this makes more sense than the real definition? 3) A contraction of low-bandwidth. "It was late and I was tired".

m) Mickey 1) A Microsoft Certified Engineer; by extension, any worthless quailfication. 2) (Obsolete, contraction of 'microfloppy') a 3.5" disk, as opposed to the (at the time) usual 5.25" disks. 3) The resolution unit of mouse movement.

1) Abbreviations, again... 2) And another contraction...

Good luck! Live long and prosper! Spread the joy! Exclaim the mark!