Electrickery is caused by Amps. These small tiny creatures live in batteries.  If they can be sure of getting back home, they can be persuaded to run along burrows called wires, and the sometimes they have to squeeze through very tight holes such as the lights.  Squeezing through tight holes is hard work, which makes the Amps very hot.  That in turn makes the lights work because the burrow gets white hot. 

They will do this trick on their own but get very tired of doing it and soon stop running through the wires.  Which is a bad thing if you are out at night.  This causes the old saying “Many Amps make light work”.

If they can be persuaded to run through a dynamo it acts as a sort of works canteen where the Amps can feed, but like any canteen there has to be some sort of control of the queues at the servery.

When the canteen is closed the Amps will try to crowd in and this will cause chaos when they discover that there is no food for them and they will set fire to the place.

The canteen door that stops this happening is called the cut-out.  When the engine is stopped the canteen door is closed keeping the Amps out.  Starting the engine opens the door allowing the Amps in for their dinners.  You still have to control the hungry crowds of Amps and this is done by means of a sort of turn-stile called a “regulator.” The turnstile works at varying rates according

In a Swiss mountain inn:

SPECIAL TODAY - NO ICE-CREAM.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen:

WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

A laundry in Rome:

LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Sign at a Methodist Church, N. America:

DON'T LET WORRIES KILL YOU. LET THE CHURCH HELP.

Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner,

Japan:

COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT JUST CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN

YOUR ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

On an Athi River highway:

TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

A sign seen on an automatic restroom hand dryer:

DO NOT ACTIVATE WITH WET HANDS. 

Hotel catering to skiers, Austria:

NOT TO PERAMBULATE THE CORRIDORS IN THE HOURS OF REPOSE IN THE BOOTS OF ASCENSION.

Supermarket, Hong Kong:

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, WE RECOMMEND COURTEOUS, EFFICIENT SELF-SERVICE. 

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong:

GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

It seems like such a simple task, "Can you convert this .avi to a flash video?". My first question was um, why? Followed by a string of expletives. But instead of explaining why I didn't want to do it, I decided to give it a go. Or rather I asked someone else how to ... thank you Handyande http://andy.elcock.org/

So, the process of creating a flash video from an avi is as follows (Using Mcc OS X):

1. First you need fink. What is fink? Well I fink that ... sorry bad pun. Their website says "The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X". i.e. they want to port UNIX software to MacOSX and make it available for people like you and me. 

So go to http://www.finkproject.org/download/srcdist.php and download the fink file. I downloaded fink--0.29.10 which was released in September 2009. 

Then follow the instructions on the website ... It sounds easy and it probably is if you don't have a tendency to being blonde. The more comprehensive instructions are 

- open a terminal (swear, try and remember what a terminal is, find it in the applications folder under utilities, sigh)

- cd to the folder where you downloaded the fink file (probably /Downloads) 

- type tar -xvf fink-0.29.10.tar OR tar -xvzf fink-0.29.10.tar.gz depending on if you have a .tar or .tar.gz file downloaded

- hold your breath

- when everything works continue to follow the instructions on the Fink page and type in ./bootstrap

- a whole

Meeow! I love cats, they are a million times better than dogs. This particular cat is a very clever cat. 

cat stands for "concatenate and display". (Don't ask me how, I think it was developed by someone who thought t was the same as d) It is also a commad that tries to multitask, and doesn't really manage it very well. It must be male. 

So let's deal with the display part first. cat displays the content of a file. It works fine if you have a short file. However, if you have a large file the contents will fly rapidly past you and you will only see the last page. That's great if you just want to see the last page, or can read like the robot in Short Circuit. If you want to see any other bits of the file then try the more comand instead.

The other thing that cat does is the "concatenate" part. The OED says that concatenate means "to chain together". It combines the contents of two things into another thing. 

1. Open a terminal

2. Type cat file1 file2 > destination_file

3. Press return

More details:

More is about as simple as things get. This command lets you look at the contents of a file. And (wow!) lets you skip through it page or line at a time. 

1. Open terminal

2. Type more and then the file name you want to know more about

3. Press return

4. The first page of the document will be displayed. To display the next line press return and to display the next page press the space bar. To go back type b. 

5. When you are bored of reading press q to escape. 

This is probably the best place to start with anything computer-wize - how to write a list. The ls command lists the files in the current directory. 

Stage 1: open up a terminal

Stage 2: type     ls

Stage 3: press return (This is really as easy as things get around here)

Stage 4: watch as pretty lists appear as if by magic (unless you are in an empty directory when you will be disappointed)

Useful added extra options:

ls -a lists all, ie includes hidden files

ls -l lists extra lists ie it tells you about the file

ls -F shows the type of file with a \ for a directory, * for an executabe file, @ for a symbloic link (I have no idea what that is, but I can now identify it in a list)

ls -alF tells you everything (but I wont understand it)