Thought Leadership

More of what I learned

I recently wrote about a project that my wife and I started last year. The idea was to think about what we had learned each day, record it and discuss from time to time. I shared some interesting examples of nuggets of new knowledge …

Today I would like to share a further selection, again having filtered out the personal or anachronistic ones:

  • King Herod’s 4th wife was called Doris.
  • Turbo Pascal was a real problem to Microsoft and offered the first IDE.
  • We have the kind of friends who accidentally buy a turkey.
  • The highest waterfall in the world is Angel Falls.
  • Bulls are castrated using a rubber band.
  • Microsoft bought the company that developed Powerpoint in 1989.
  • Paddington Bear was originally going to be from Africa.
  • In WW2, black GIs were not allowed to marry their British girlfriends as it would be illegal in 30 of the 48 US states.
  • It is bad luck to point at a rainbow.
  • The band Mungo Jerry got their name from the name Mungojerrie in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
  • Reindeer hair is hollow so it insulates well.
  • At blood donation, you now get an isotonic drink instead of water. This is the same as an energy drink, as used by athletes.

Colin Walls

I have over thirty years experience in the electronics industry, largely dedicated to embedded software. A frequent presenter at conferences and seminars and author of numerous technical articles and two books on embedded software, I am a member of the marketing team of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division, and am based in the UK. Away from work, I have a wide range of interests including photography and trying to point my two daughters in the right direction in life. Learn more about Colin, including his go-to karaoke song and the best parts of being British: http://go.mentor.com/3_acv

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.stage.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2020/03/12/more-of-what-i-learned/