Skip to main content

The mysteries of technology

As you may have gathered by now, I rather love my iPad and use it all the time. When, for example, I get sent proofs of my books to check through as PDFs, I tend to fling them over to the iPad and read them on there, as I find it much easier to read a document that way than on a computer screen. But the only danger is that you are at the mercy of the quality of the software interpreting the PDFs, which don't have as straightforward a file format as an image file. I discovered this recently when I was looking at the proof of a page from an illustrated book I've got out later this year. Part of one of the pages looked like this:

  
You can see there's a statue of Galileo to the left and to the right, bleeding across to the next page is a strange bit of hieroglyphics like something out of the Da Vinci Code. Very nice, I thought, but what does it mean? 

So I sent a note to the editor, who came back swiftly, something to the effect of 'Isn't it obvious? It's Galileo's signature.' Well no, it wasn't obvious. But then I was struck with one of those IT inspirations. I thought I'd take a look at the same PDF on my computer. And this time, this is what I saw:


Now this is exactly the same file. All that I have changed is the device I'm looking at it with (and hence the software interpreting the PDF).

I'll continue to use the iPad to read PDFs as it is so much better an experience than doing it on a conventional screen. But in future, if anything looks strange, my first port of call will be to check what it looks like back on the old dinosaur machine.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope