Monday, September 24, 2007

Seen any carbon paper recently?


If it's week 2, it must be a social networking. Which means trawling around various sites like Bebo, My Space and Facebook. And here was I thinking that was a chance to spend some time at the pub with my friends and/or work colleagues. Doh!

That is one of the most bizarre things about the English language and the Internet/Computer age - take a perfectly good English word/phrase/idiom and apply it to a computer process or action and make it mean something TOTALLY different! Or just not quite what you'd expect it to mean. Close enough but not really, if you know what I mean. Just enough to confuse the heck out of you when you try and apply the usually rules of English entomology and semantics and come up with general gibberish.

Like carbon copy .... yes, that is what cc. actually means. Those of us that can remember seeing, typing, writing the odd cc. at the bottom of a page recognise that immediately. We probably all go misty eyed remembering the slightly metallic inky scent of carbon paper and the havoc it could wreck on your hands, skin, clothes and other surfaces. The crinkly, crispness of black carbon paper or the heavier smudginess of the blue sheets. The fact that one little mistake miraculously replicated itself indeibily on the sheet(s) below. Judiciously application of twink might, just might eradicate your error on the top page ... but stuck out like the proverbial dogs' bollocks on the carbon copy underneath.

So anyway, back to this social networking bizzo - had a trawl through MySpace - very cool - like the idea of the Comedy area. Avoided Bebo like the plague (you work at our library and you;ll understand the aversion) and set up a Facebook page. All in a day's work really:)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great to see you're trying everything out! Keep up the good work! :)