Computer jargon can be a peculiar thing. My favourite jargon word is TWAIN, which stands for “Technology Without An Impressive Name”, proving that techies do have a sense of humour… of a kind.
But I’ve noticed that quite a few bit of jargon are food related.
Cookies are things that websites use to store little bits of information on your computer (what you’ve got in your shopping basket on a shopping website, for example).
Google named their versions of Android after various sweets (Lollipop is the most recent).
And there are even “Easter Eggs”. Not the chocolate or painted kind, mind you.
In computers, easter eggs are little hidden extras in programs. Usually they’re silly things put there to amuse, or a daft thing to entertain the programmer.
For example if you go to www.google.co.uk and type in askew and see what happens to the results.
But there’s a new one – or at least, I’ve only just found out about it.
You go to maps.google.co.uk and look at any particular area, one with a decent number of roads in it. Down on the bottom left of the screen there are a couple of buttons.
One is to switch to satellite view, so you see photos instead of just a map.
The other one, though, is labelled pac-man. And if you click on it, you can use the cursor keys on the keyboard to play the old computer game from the 80s… but on the streets of Lancaster or wherever you were looking at.
It amused me (and my wife) when we discovered it. Not for too long, I hasten to add… but it made us chuckle as we were planning a route.
The only snag is it wouldn’t let me play it on the roads of Cumbria, the bit of the map I was looking at. “Not enough roads” it said.
Anyway, that’s all for now – it’s a day off so I’m off to play with the boys. Back to work tomorrow… and the new books should finally be arriving from the printing company. Find out more here.
I don’t know about TWAIN but I think these people should join an organisation that will get them out from in front of their computers more.