Friday, 21 October 2011

Pandora's Briefcase: Sucker Punch!


Yeah, you thought the briefcase had died, or disappeared, or burned in the fire (oh... I haven't told mum and dad about the fire... just keep it to yourselves...) but SURPRISE!

Today's little entry may remind you a bit of a previous posting (big non-prize for the first person to guess which previous item from Pandora's Briefcase!)

Let me present you with a box:

The crossed out writing says: Run 6/2    Swan Code
No; it does not contain a sheep, not even a small one. (Extra Non-Prize for identifying obscure reference)

The contents revealed.




And revealed a little more-so.
Let me introduce you to a roll of eight-hole punched paper tape- the name is somewhat confusing as, if you look at it closely, it isn't:

Eight Hole Punched Tape with ninth "mysterious" row of smaller holes.




As is usually the case with my Pandora's Briefcase entries, I shan't bore you with the history of this technology (this example was bought on ebay from the UK for less than AUD$10). You can knock yourself out visiting Wikipedia's entry, which will also explain why the official hole counter is actually right. And if you happen to have any 5, 6, or 7 hole tape lying around looking for a home, please drop me a line!



Posted by at
Labels:

11 comments:

  1. SamCarter22 October 2011 at 08:48

    Oooh! Oooh! Pick me ... pick me! Harry Potter's wand box. Or the recording wire one ('cos the boxes look kinda the same and they've got pencil writing on the outside). Do I win the non-prize? And "green" for the other non-prize? Interestingly, I still would have said 8-holed despite the extra column. I wonder how long the tape would need to be for the whole "Microsoft Office" suite!

    ReplyDelete
  2. SamCarter22 October 2011 at 08:50

    Delayed reaction: I just "got" the title. Doh. I'm a bit slow on the uptake at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SG-322 October 2011 at 13:57

    It was a bit of an obscure title; you win the first Non-Prize for your initial first guess, but I think the second Non-Prize guess is from the wrong source. The non-sheep was not green, nor fast asleep.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rob Torok25 October 2011 at 08:48

    I've got nothing on the sheep reference, sorry. I even asked the local sheep expert (he got *very* excited when he saw me doing a sheep related search in google), but still nothing...

    ReplyDelete
  5. SamCarter27 October 2011 at 22:48

    Okay, I give up ...

    ReplyDelete
  6. SG-328 October 2011 at 08:33

    *sigh* Your googles must be broken! OK, my audience of two; a clue:

    Ça c'est la caisse. Le mouton que tu veux est dedans.

    ReplyDelete
  7. SamCarter28 October 2011 at 09:38

    Ahh, now I'm feeling exuperent!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Caillin28 October 2011 at 18:31

    Little sheep, little sheep, let me come in.
    What does a sheep look like? Draw me a sheep.
    Can I draw you an elephant in a boa constrictor instead?
    No. Draw me a sheep. No horns. That'd be a ram. I want a sheep.

    Ok here you go, a sheep in a box.

    http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/framechapter2.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. SG-329 October 2011 at 10:47

    The Little Prince is essential reading in my books, and if you haven't read it, I am afraid I'm going to have to think less of you until you do! I'm not insisting on the original french- no one important speaks it these days after all! But I have found (so far) the Katherine Woods English translation (although apparently a little inaccurate in places) to be most in keeping with what Saint-Exupéry was trying to convey.

    ReplyDelete
  10. SG-313 November 2011 at 21:35

    BTW, I've just discovered on http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cnc-machining/memory-meters-bytes-157510/ that "the standard pitch forboth5-levelBaudot and 7-level ASCII is 10 characters per inch, or about 394 bytes per meter." O_o

    ReplyDelete
  11. SamCarter15 November 2011 at 07:04

    OK, so my Microsoft Office application folder is 1.05GB (this doesn't count other bits of Office that end up in other folders). That's approximately 1,234,800,000 bytes, which ends up being 3,100,000 metres or 3,100km ... which is a little bit more than the distance from Hobart to Perth.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)