Coolest Jargon in Your Area of Geekery?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So? The thread title pretty much sums it up: what phrases, number codes or other shorthands exist in your area of geekery that you think are cool / interesting and that an outsider might have no clue about? An example sentence for usage would help.

As usual, I will use my guitar obsession as a starting point - some silly sample jargon includes:

  • Diming, or To Dime: To turn the knob to 10. “Dude, when it was time for my lead, I dimed my Strat to get that screaming tone.” And no, there is no need to invoke “but this one goes to eleven” from Spinal Tap…

  • Hairiness, Getting Hair: turning your tube amplifier to that point where the tubes are just starting to NOT be able to process all the signal being pushed at them. They start to break up and the tone starts to get distorted. Finding that sweet spot is great because if you play softly you can stay clean-sounding but if you whack the strings, you push the tone so it sounds crunchy and cool. “Dude, I had my Blackface Deluxe Reverb* just getting hair when I set its volume to 7 - total Keef** tone.”
    *A vintage Fender amp known for a black front panel
    ** Keith Richards, known for using BFDR’s and getting hair in his tone…

  • 335: A very well-known guitar, the Gibson ES-335 (link to photo at an online store). You know - the kind BB King, Chuck Berry and countless others play (actually most are playing other-numbered variations, but they all started with the 335 and are part of that “family”). Clapton used one for his solo on Crossroads with Cream, and Keef is holding one in those new Vuitton ads that feature him - see here . Known for being super versatile with extensive use in rock, jazz, etc. “Dude, I needed that open, woody tone that a Les Paul can’t bring, so I whipped out my 335 and was totally there.”

  • G.A.S.; to Be GASsing: Guitar (or Gear) Acquisition Syndrome. To always want the next cool guitar or gear. “Dude, I am so GASsing for a 335 - the hair they get when you dime them through a BFDR is just ridiculous.”

And no, we guitar types don’t start every sentence with “Dude” - but when we don’t, we kind of mentally insert it at the front of the sentence anyway… :cool:

So - what’cha got in your area?

2

Dude! Actually, I just had to say that. My sister started working for Fender this week. Apparently she gets an incredible employee discount, plus free guitar lessons. She doesn’t play, but I think it’s neat that they offer.

StG

3

The Turkey City Lexicon is filled with great jargon used in critiquing science fiction. I especially like Squid in the Mouth; You Can’t Fire Me – I Quit; Jar of Tang Story, “As You Know, Bob,” and the ever-popular I Suffered for My Art; Now It’s Your Turn..

I often use these in critiquing, and “Squid in the Mouth” is useful to describe real-world situtations.

4

“So are you a Locavore or not?”

5

It’s a 50/50/90/10 situation. If you give certain persons a fifty-fifty proposition, they’ll over think it so much that they’ll get it wrong ninety percent of the time. (All brains and no common sense is a corollary.)

Radcon math. i.e. 2+2~5; 2[sup]3[/sup]~10, 2[sup]5[/sup]~100 etc…

6

Not sure if it’s necessarily cool or not, but I have found interesting some of the lingo generated in the classic video game collecting hobby, pre-NES era. Since the Atari 2600 dominates the pre-NES collecting field, most of the lingo arises from and for that system…

“Coxed” carts-- cartridges that have had something (usually an owner’s name) written in big, bold indelible letters over the label. This arose on the USENET newsgroup rec.games.video.classic years ago, from someone’s (otherwise decent) haul of 2600 carts that had the name Carol Cox defacing every label. Thrift stores often Cox carts with prices, but Coxed carts usually come from collections that saw heavy trade/swapping among school kids in the 80s.

Heavy sixer/light sixer/Darth Vader: various iterations of the Atari 2600 console.
-The earlier “sixer” consoles have all six primary console switches on the front panel (power, color/B&W, left difficulty, right difficulty, select, reset), while later variations moved the difficulty switches to the rear of the console next to the joystick ports (4-switch). Some games utilize the difficulty switches, and it’s generally desirable to have easier access to them, so “sixers” are generally preferred.
-Heavy and light refer to the relative weight of the systems; RF shielding was made of thick steel in early sixer systems, while being quite thin in later revisions. Likewise, early sixers were made of thicker plastic, later models of thinner plastic. A heavy sixer is one of the earliest models, having both the heavier case and heavier shielding.
-Darth Vader is a 4-switch 2600 model that dates from the era that Atari stopped calling the system the “Video Computer System” in favor of “Atari 2600,” and they stopped ornamenting the front of the console with faux woodgrain. Instead, the system was all-black and shiny, like Darth Vader.

Frying: the act of rapidly turning a system on and off in order to glitch the game, sometimes causing errors favorable to the player (infinite lives, games starting at later levels). A good fryer has a light, rapid touch on the power switch-- you have to be able to do it fast enough to throw the system into confusion, but be able to stop rapidly flicking the switch the instant something odd pops up on screen, so you can try the game and see what the glitch is. “I was frying Battlezone yesterday, and my tank came up without its turret. When I started, I had infinite lives!”

Actiplaque: A cartridge label stain that looks like grease and/or tar stains, probably caused by adhesive problems; it’s believed that improper storage and environmental factors can speed the process, and some people think it can be contagious. Light cases of Actiplaue look like a bit of cooking oil spatter, severe cases look like motor oil and tar soaking the label (and often causing the label to fall off). Notorious on (and named for) the labels used by Activision, but it can strike any manufacturer, and can also occur on diskette labels. “I finally found a copy of Cosmic Commuter, but the label has so much Actiplaque, you can barely read the name.”

Cooper Black: starting to fade out in favor of “Zellers carts” or “Taiwan pirates,” Cooper Blacks are pirated 2600 games manufactured in Taiwan, many of which were sold in Zellers department stores in Canada. Early 2600 data compilers in the US kept finding these cartridges in their finds, and, not knowing that the majority were from a Canadian store, named them after the typeface used on their labels. “Yeah, that Cooper Black I got at the garage sale was just a hacked Enduro.”

“Finding … in the wild”: describing the act of purchasing classic gaming stuff from a thrift store, flea market, garage sale, estate auction, or some other location that indicates a serendipitous (and probably inexpensive) bit of luck on the part of the purchaser. For many in the hobby, classic gaming started as an inexpensive pursuit (often because the gamer didn’t want to get involved in the expensive current-era game consoles), and there has been resentment about the fact that the hobby has become more commercial, complete with price guides and certain hobby segments where only the deep-pocketed can afford to play. A “find in the wild” is often a badge of pride, indicating that the games found have been found in a pure state, rather than just bid for on eBay or bought off of a dealer; many times this is shared by the purchaser to encourage others to go out and hit their thrifts/fleas/etc.

7

So many areas of geekery, so little time. Let’s go with painting.

Engage the format – Dark value shapes that go to the edge.

Eye stopper – Shape that prevents your eye from skidding off the page.

Steelyard – A particular compositional layout.

Scumbling – Dragging a dense or opaque color across another color creating a rough texture.

Body Color – Opaque paint.

Saving the Whites – Not painting over everything.

Wet-in-Wet – Not as dirty as what you’re probably thinking right now.

8

Info security can start to sound a little dangerous at times.

We kill processes on servers.
When someone no longer needs administrative access on the mainframe, they get dead. (de-admin)

9

A few from kimono collecting:

Iki - invoking a sense of nostalgia. Mae West is iki for American culture.

Shibui - a typically Japanese feeling. Basically the ultimate compliment for a gaijin wearing kimono.

Shibori - Japanese tie dye that usually involves tiny little dots. It’s faked often, but true shibori has the coolest texture.

Taisho - an era (1912-1926) with very bold and bright patterns and colors and a western influence.

Hime - (named after a magazine) a modern style that includes lots of western influences and playing with kimono tradition

10

Dude! I love the language and jargon of falconry. One of the neatest things about it, for me anyway, is participating in an activity that has a documented history going back around four thousand years. The language, along with the skills and equipment used, are very nearly the same today as in the earliest existing references. The names for parts of the bird and the equipment are some of the best.

Alula- Three small, stiff feathers that control the flow of air over the wing in flight. Coverts, crines, crural, mail, pendant, primaries, principals, secondaries, sarcel, remiges, beam, retrix/retrices, train, and deck are also names for specific feathers or feather-areas.

Austringer- A falconer who specifically flies shortwings, forest accipiters. Eagle hawkers sometimes call themselves eagle austringers.

Bowse- To drink.

feak- striking the beak back and forth to clean and polish it. A sign of a happy bird.

hallux- The “thumb”, the killing talon for broadwing hawks.

Snite- To sneeze

Yarak- a state of extreme, sharp readiness for the hunt, denoted by posture and attitude. Not aggression, exactly, but hyper-alert, ready for the sky, and looking for something to kill. If your bird is “in yarak”, life is good.

Some equipment or parts of equipment: jesses, halsband, bal-chatri, knurl, gauntlet, mangalah, varvel. You don’t open or close a hood, you strike or **draw **it.

In terms of describing a bird’s physical actions, you may see your bird bate, bind, bowse, cast, crab, feak, man, mantle, mute, put over, slice, stoop, strike, throw up (not what you think), wait on, or warble. Two of those are names just for particular ways they stretch their wings when relaxing.

Here’s a nice hawking story out of the California Apprentice Guide:
I slipped my intermewed tiercel eyass gos at a flush. He pursued, checked, then struck, binding hard. He carried it over the ridge, so deep I couldn’t eyeball him. I pulled out the yagi and got a bearing, then made in on my hands and knees, baiting with a tidbit to transfer to the glove. Drawing the hood has never felt so good!

11

NajaNivea - How geeky am I that I’ve never flown a bird but could still easily read that paragraph. I’ve studied falconry for years but I’ve never apprenticed because I don’t think I have the guts to deal with killing things.

StG

12

That’s okay, I’ve studied hosses my entire life, can name every point from foretop to fetlock and I haven’t had the opportunity to ride in almost ten years :frowning: :frowning: :frowning:

13

Even though I am a computer programmer, my favorite jargon terms all come from playing Bridge (the card game).

My tournament convention card listing some of the common bidding treatments my partner and I play include terms such as: Splinter bids, Snapdragon doubles, “Texas Transfers”, “Grand Slam Force”, “Flannery Defense”, “Michaels Cue Bid”, “Unusual vs. Unusual No-Trumps”, and “1430 Roman Key Card Blackwood”.

Then on the card-play side of things, I can try to pull off plays called a Trump Coup, an Endplay, a Loser-on-Loser play, or best of all, a Squeeze play (which has sub-variants called a Simple Squeeze, a Positional Squeeze, a Strip Squeeze, a Squeeze Without The Count, Double or Triple Squeezes), even try to force a player to squeeze his partner (a Suicide Squeeze).

14

Gotta be Net Positive Suction Head!

15

Got to be one of the best threads in a long time. so much better than computer jargon.

16

I work in an area called automated reasoning, a branch of computer science and logic, trying to automate the process of “doing” mathematics. Researchers here are all involved in an arms race, trying to out-do each other with the names for their techniques.

The resolution method gave way to hyperresolution, paramodulation, lush resolution etc. etc.

17

In planetariums that use slide projectors, you sometimes encounter a problem where you’re trying to put a picture of a planet on the dome, but the black on the slide around the planet isn’t quite dark enough. Light from the projector shines through the black part of the slide and the effect is easy to see on the dome when the room is dark. The same thing happens when you try to use a typical LCD video projector - the blacks aren’t really completely black.

In either case, you get the dreaded GRIS: Grey Rectangle in Space.

[sub]There are eight ways to put a slide in a slide projector. Seven of them are wrong.[/sub]

18

The brokerage industry.

A bull call spread. I’ve always loved that name.

You buy an option contract at a lower strike price and sell an option contract at a higher strike price. You think the stock is going to go up.

bull call spread

19

You’re just saying that because I started all my sample sentences with “Dude.”

:smiley:

Good stuff so far.

20

Hey, whatever jargon I use is the coolest.

I set the standard, man. :cool:

[sub]in the area of Tolkien-related recovering addict/alcoholic maximum security prison medicine & surgery[/sub]