That's a superb Douglas Adams anecdote! Mine is smaller: I was MacUser magazine's Technical Editor for many years. A short while after Adams's death someone from his company in London contacted us to ask if we wanted his old iMac. I of course jumped in a cab immediately and picked it up. It was a nice Graphite all-in-one iMac, but no hard drive of course (dammit!) and non-functioning for other reasons too. I kept it for a while as a cool 'guess what we have?' thing but eventually recycled it.
Keith > On 15 Jul 2026, at 19:55, kee nethery via use-livecode > <[email protected]> wrote: > > The very first instance of babelfish that I’ve seen, on screen, is in “Space > Sweepers” a KDrama on Netflix. > > In the show, many characters speak different languages and they all have a > pod in their ear that does real time translations. The spoken languages I > think I recall were Korean, Russian, English, French. Everything was > subtitled in English (my selection). The conversations were fast paced and it > really seemed like exactly what you’d expect from babelfish. I know StarTrek > had universal translators but not the same. In Space Sweepers, they were > speaking their native languages and that is exactly what we heard. It was > kind of shocking and pretty cool. We are not that far from something similar. > > Kee Nethery > >> On Jul 15, 2026, at 7:16 AM, David Bovill via use-livecode >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I see a collection of stories Georges - I'd love to connect you to the >> writers form H2G2 and also the creative writing communities and book towns >> that we have been engaging. How such interactive stories are reimagined as >> Guides - should naturally build upon / learn from the history of such >> multimedia story telling - and take it somewhere else. They should of >> course be in many natural languages - as we have the Babelfish. >> > > > PS: I “knew” Douglas Adams. Long ago I decided to make a special tie dye > t-shirt for Kagi’s first customer. [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > in London. Email bounced, postal mail bounced. Wondered, hitchhikers guide > douglas adams? Saw him at an SF MacWorld and asked him if he had ever bought > Anarchie and he said multiple times. Confirmed he was once [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> and asked his shirt size. He said as large as > possible and gave me his postal address. > > We made up two 3XL shirts with “First Customer” embroidered on them and > mailed them to him. > > Six months later at an Apple party in NYC, I was in the crowd going one > direction, saw him coming the other direction. We caught eyes > Me: Did you get the shirts? > Him: Yes, too small for me but women like them as sleepwear. > Me: OK, we’ll get bigger. > > And the crowd carried him away. > > The fun thing about that conversation was there was no conversation set up. > It was as if our conversation 6 months earlier just had a 6 month pause. > > Called the T-Shirt company to get 4XL and 5XL tie dye shirts made. > Me: We’d like another order but with 4XL and 5XL tie dye shirts. > Him: No one makes 100% cotton t-shirts that big and we can only tie dye on > 100% cotton. > Me: Bummer, I’ll let Douglas Adams know we can’t do it. > Him: YOU MEAN THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE DOUGLAS ADAMS? > Me: Yes > Him: I’LL FIND SOME! > > And he did. I mailed them off to Douglas Adams in southern california and > next thing I heard he had had a heart attack. > > Bummer. Sorry he died so young. He’d be so thrilled to use Wikipedia on a > smartphone. > _______________________________________________ > use-livecode mailing list > [email protected] > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
