I was watching Newsnight tonight – unusual for me, but it was on after The Apprentice – You’re Fired!. I noticed Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Secretary Chris Huhne quote the phrase “After you, Alphonse” in the context of the developed world not being prepared to tackle climate change until the developing world takes action.
Naturally, my immediate reaction was to get Googling to find out who Alphonse was. Here’s the answer:
Alphonse and Gaston were comic strip characters created by the American cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper (1857-1937). The popular strip ran from 1902-1920’s and featured Alphonse and Gaston, two inordinately polite Frenchmen. Their signature phrase was “After you, my dear Gaston” and “After you, my dear Alphonse.” The two soon became synonymous with exaggerated politeness or deference.
More on Opper at Wikipedia.
Off work today to get broadband and cable TV installed. Our TV reception (analogue and Freeview) was almost unwatchable for some channels, so it’s a pleasure to finally be able to watch terrestrial TV, plus have lots more channels and one of those “catch up” features that let’s you watch programmes from the last week, plus some On Demand stuff (a series of Lost, some Doctor Who etc.) that’s included in the subscription.
In addition, I’ve now got broadband at home. Next step is to get a wireless router and a wireless card for my laptop – any recommendations for a cheap but good router that works with Virgin Media (cable broadband)? The Maplin website looked more expensive than PC World, but PC World didn’t seem to have any of the cheapest boxes in stock.
As the cable guy left, he commented that I was the quietest American he’d ever met. Hmm…
Gosh, blogging for three years.
As always on anniversary day, here’s some self-obsessed scores on the doors. I’m not one for harping on about my hit count or Google rank every five minutes (not least because there’s not much to shout about) but once a year seems acceptable. Previous two years’ figures are in brackets, last year’s first.
- 2 (2, 2): number of servers this site has been hosted on
- 2 (2, 2): number of blogging applications used
- 873 (588, 226): total number of posts
- 1,350 (774, 444): total number of comments
- 1.55 (1.32, 1.96): average number of comments per post
- 259 (192, 119): number of number plates spotted (playing since May 2004)
- 70,993 (43,016, 6,322): total unique hits (counting since May 2004)
Top seven referring websites (excluding search engines):
Top nine referring blogs (expanded from five):
Top ten search terms:
- 10 (6): independent
- 9 (10): geek
- 8 (7): island
- 7 (3): guardian
- 6 (-): stephens
- 5 (-): toby
- 4 (5): doctor
- 3 (4): who
- 2 (2): kakuro
- 1 (1): sudoku
I can’t believe this came and went on Tuesday without anyone in our office knowing. Even if it only lasted three hours, I’m sure we could have made it to Covent Garden in time. We never have chocolate…
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