Payton Place

Ever catch yourself writing or speaking to someone, mention a catch phrase or idiomatic string of words, and wonder, “Will they know what that means?” Since my Daddy is from the south I’ve heard all manner of southern phrases from him that when repeated (instinctively) by me leave numerous Yankees with a puzzled look on their phrases.

Here is a perfect example: Today I typed “That’s All She Wrote!” in an e-mail response to a colleague. Considering the fact this was mentioned in a note to a New Englander of Brazilian descent, I thought perhaps I’d better research that phrase for the inevitable, “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” [remember that one?]

Here is what I discovered at Word-Detective.Com:

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the phrase, “…and that was all she wrote?” Who was “she,” and why did she decide or have to stop writing? Was it some Jane Austen/Emily Dickinson why-do-I-have-to-call-myself-George-Eliot-just-to-get-published type of pre-Women’s Suffrage male oppression deal? It’s puzzled me for years. — Melanie Waddell, Bethpage, New York.

You and me both, and everybody else to boot. The origin of “That’s all she wrote” (which is how it’s usually phrased) is a subject of considerable debate, although the male oppression angle you suspect is almost certainly off the mark. Most theories about “That’s all she wrote” actually leave men holding the short end of the stick.

“That’s all she wrote” is a catch phrase, a kind of popular saying that probably began in reference to a particular situation or was drawn from a specific joke or other context, but which has since taken on a life of its own and is used in a variety of contexts. When we say “That’s all she wrote” today, we mean “that’s all there is” or “that’s the end of it.”

The standard theory about “That’s all she wrote” is that it arose during World War II and refers to the “Dear John letters” received by many servicemen from their sweethearts back home bluntly announcing the end of their relationships. Such letters were so common during the war that “That’s all she wrote” may have originally been the punch line to a joke: a GI (in some versions, not even named John) receives a letter containing only the salutation “Dear John,” with the “It’s over” part left unwritten and implicit. When questioned by his buddies about the rest of the letter’s contents, he replies, “That’s all she wrote.”

When my colleague William Safire explored that theory in print a few years ago, however, he received several letters suggesting that the phrase may have come from a variety of popular American songs about brides abandoned at the altar, or men dumped by their sweethearts. The rupture was invariably communicated by a terse note, leading to the refrain “And that’s all she (or he) wrote.” Unfortunately, no one has yet managed to pin down the exact song in which the phrase occurs, so the jury is still out on “That’s all she wrote.”

Interesting, eh? So the next time you spew a similar phrase . . . consider not only the source but also the recipient!

~SP

When plagued with original photos, images, or graphics which contain jagged pixels (jaggies), you can quite often clean-up the appearance of that file if you simply reduce it’s overall size without resampling it at the same time. Granted, most garden-variety image editors provide no control over this resampling step. But if your editor has a field to specify resolution, which is a number indicating pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi), then you’re one step closer to improving image quality.

The concept behind this issue is called effective resolution. An excellent description of what this signifies is located at Digital Expert.

Raster images have a specific resolution (i.e., a specific number of pixels per inch), scaling a raster image involves the distribution of available pixels across the designated space.

Image resolution subsequent to scaling is referred to as effective resolution. If an image is enlarged, unless additional pixels have been added by means of interpolation (resampling), then accordingly the size of each pixel must be increased?consequently, the enlarged image will have fewer pixels per inch (lower resolution). Conversely, if an image is reduced, unless existing pixels have been discarded (downsampling), the size of each pixel must be decreased (higher resolution). Although scaling reduction generally is less problematic regarding visible defects, unnecessary resolution can contribute to excessive physical file size.

Cropping the scanned image to the size intended for print also will benefit toward the reduction of physical file size. If an image will require scaling, scanning resolution should be adjusted accordingly. When placing and scaling images, you are changing what is known as the image effective resolution.

Effective resolution is a calculation of the actual resolution factored for the scaling performed in the page layout application. The math works out so that if you reduce the scale of an image in the page layout, you increase the effective resolution. As you increase the amount of scaling, you will decrease the effective resolution. The equation is:

(Actual Image Resolution) / (scale) = Effective Resolution

So if you have an image that is 640×480 @ 72 dpi and looks jagged, you can improve it’s look by reducing it’s size by 50% which yields a greater resolution of 144 dpi. Try it on some of your own images and let me know what you think!

~SP

A recent article at TechRepublic reports Dell web site qualifications of a PCs running Windows Vista. It appears a new branding category is emerging as a method to sell legacy hardware for use with Vista.

Dell’s interpretation of “Windows Vista Capable” definition adds the following description for such hardware:

“… the ability to boot the operating system, without running applications or games.”

Isn’t this ludicrous? Sure you can boot the operating system but can’t do anything once you get there! This is a stretch of the official classifications published by Microsoft, Vista Capable and Vista Premium Ready.

The official Microsoft Windows Vista classifications are as follows:

A Vista Capable or equivalent PC needs to have at minimum an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB RAM and a DirectX 9 class graphics card. A computer that meets these requirements will be capable of running all editions of Windows Vista although some of the special features and high end graphics options may require additional or more advanced hardware.

A Vista Premium Ready PC will take advantage of Vista’s “high-end” features but will need at least a 1.0 GHz processor, 1 GB main memory, and an Aero-compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB graphics memory and supporting the new Windows Display Driver Model.

If you wish to check the capability of your current machine to run Vista, Microsoft has a Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor available at their website to see which mode you can run without upgrading!

~SP