Heinz's Email Blog February 2008 Archive

Two steps are all you need to take a walk in Italian: "due passi" means "a stroll". If you meander through the streets or woods for a while, you'll also ... Read More

"Your instructions." The inspector's laser-like eyes assemble letters to words, words to sentences and sentences to the world's dire state. Looking for that state's image at the horizon, he scrunches up ... Read More

Now stir, and stir in style. After your host has filled your cup with tea and added sugar, honey, lemon or milk, keep with the perfect tea etiquette: use your spoon ... Read More

It is "the vulgar," in Thomas Dinely's 1681 diary, who "superstitiuosly wear shamroges". Dinely goes on to explain what this shamroge is, and puts it to another use as well: ... Read More

"Typewriter" may be one of the few longer words that can be typed using only the top row of a QWERTY keyboard. "Europe", however, is the only continent. If "Europe" comes ... Read More

Move your lens closer to, say, a flower and you get stunning images — or a washed out overexposed sparkler impersonation. What happened? Chances are the flashlight is too close to ... Read More

A lawyer and an engineer are taking a car. The lawyer is in the driver seat. He's an avid talker, but intelligent and polite enough to pause frequently. Then he ... Read More

Sleep is for resting and rejuvenation, right? Myth, says Piotr Wozniak. Sleep is for defragmenting. During sleep, the brains shuts off just about all new input and what has been learned ... Read More

The Malay, it is said, said ginggang (or genggang) and meant "striped". Over time and via the Dutch gingang, it became "gingham"; the stripes, in the the 18th century's Mancunian ... Read More

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion caused by high gambling — a compost of greed and fear ... Read More

To make sure no milk is spilled too soon from screw-topped milk packages, a plastic seal awaits you underneath the screw plug. As soon as you you grab the seal's ... Read More

Those not graced with contact lenses need other ways to establish rapport, say contact glasses. At least that's what one of my high school friends maintained. I have seen neither contact ... Read More

Tea time! It's 4 o'clock, and here's the tea pot; but where does it go? Pouring tea is the host's exclusive privilege. So the pot should be placed in the pourer's ... Read More

Cupid, the youthful god of love, smelled the roses — the thorn-less roses. What he didn't know: a bee was doing just the same. The godly nose loomed larger and ... Read More

The Bat!, swift and precise flying email program, can now display remote images in emails — if you deem the server from which the graphic is loaded trustworthy. Version 4.0 ... Read More

Charles d'Orléans, during 25 years in English captivity, authored many beautiful poems including some of the earliest known Valentines. Finally freed with the help of Philip the Good and his ... Read More

From high in the sky, the male hummingbird during mating season dashes down in a big arc. At the lowest point, it sings a high note — but not with ... Read More

Valentine's Day, not too surprisingly, is the most important holiday for U.S. florists. 35% of a year's fresh flower purchases are made around the day marked by cupid's arrows. More ... Read More

Catherine II comes! Things have to look good, very good — and certainly better than they are. Thought Prince Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, governor of the Crimea; hid the beggars, brought in ... Read More

Under one of two pots, a ball is hiding. You've just been allowed a peek under one pot and could see no ball. So you go for the other one ... Read More

Daisy-wheel printer: sounds fun, doesn't it? A wheel with letter-shaped hammers inside, daisy-wheel printers worked much like typewriters and produced beautiful text (compared to, say, a dot-matrix printer). Of course, they ... Read More

You can re-size a photo by making every aspect smaller. Or you cut the unnecessary. By default, rsizr removes pixels that make no difference — pixels that blend with their surroundings. ... Read More

It's mating season soon — for the birds. That's one attempt, at least, to explain why February has been a month of human love and romance as well for so ... Read More

In medieval Europe, only sovereigns were allowed to use red wax for their seals; monasteries sealed in green, free cities in white, and orders of the knight as well as ... Read More

Encouraged by his wife, he took the old coffee mill and bent a short piece of wire around another, longer piece of straight wire; then bent another of the short ... Read More

Nian gao, the "sticky cake" can be sweet or savory. Made from rice flour, the paste is typically sweetened with brown sugar in its Cantonese variety, but the Shanghainese version ... Read More