The Smoking Gnu has cracked my computer!

[tealin]

Error message on my computer:

The semaphore timeout period has expired.

Never seen that one before ...



BBC Quote of the Day:
Money can't buy you love, nor can you purchase happiness, but you can buy ecstasy.

This journal does not condone the drug trade or recreational stupidity ... it was just funny.

Comments

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of that error message... And there was I thinking that technology had progressed so much further than waving flags around.

According to my local museum (and some thought), the Clacks are based on the Murray shutter telegraph, which four hundred years ago was the fastest way of getting a message from Aberdeen to Edinburgh.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes they were! Do you know how long it took me to find George Murray's name? Searching for semaphore tower reference was like pulling teeth, but once I got his name, I found a book at the library that had pictures! Pictures!! Hence the ecstatic post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/twirlynoodle/2005/05/04/) from last May.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

There was this wee interactive screen, where you had to choose from three scenarios and get a message across in the fastest way possible. For that one it was ship to Aberdeen: Fire a cannon. Aberdeen to Edinburgh: Clacks (sort of). Edinburgh to London: Carrier pigeon.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think it's rather closer to two hundred years, actually. Being roughly around the turn of the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries. If memory serves. I didn't know they had a line in Scotland; I had only heard of the Portsmouth-London line. You learn something new every day...

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I can't really remember; I seem to recall something about the scenario being set in the 1600s.