Ölbaum’s Delirium

Since Steve Jobs unveiled Mac OS X 10.3 at WWDC 2003, several web sites started discussing an apparently new feature called Expose. As no such thing is mentioned on Apple’s web site, it called for a bit of investigation. The results showed that the sites in question are referring to Exposé, the new window switching mechanism of Panther, and led to a saddening conclusion: many webmasters are running their site on a tight budget and cannot afford the eighth bit necessary to turn their old, useless ASCII character sub-sub-sub-set into something useful, closer to this ancient but none the less wonderful invention we call writing.

Therefore, I decided to help you, webmasters with a tight budget, by releasing the 8-THB 4000. The 8-THB 4000 is the extra bit everybody’s missing and I am giving it away free of charge¹.

But that’s not all! If you order within the next millennium, I’ll be adding no less than 51 ready to use packets of eight bits, suitable for writing in many European languages. Don’t be mistaken, these are not your every day bytes. They have been carefully selected and manually sorted to guarantee first-rate readability as well as a high degree of scalability. Moreover, they come with a handy user manual, complete with examples of how to use them in words and expressions borrowed from foreign languages.

Are you tired of your 7-bit ASCII? Well, in any case I am, so wait no more and take advantage of this incredible opportunity! All you have to do is save the following characters in a safe place, along with their user manual below.

 The 8-THB 4000

Á  À  Â  Ä  Ã  á  à  â  ä  ã
É  È  Ê  Ë     é  è  ê  ë
Í  Ì  Î  Ï     í  ì  î  ï
Ó  Ò  Ô  Ö  Õ  ó  ò  ô  ö  õ
Ú  Ù  Û  Ü     ú  ù  û  ü
Ç  ç  Ñ  ñ  Ø  ø  ß

 The 8-THB 4000: User Manual

Using the 8-THB 4000 is easy. First, write all the letters of the foreign word that you can type with your keyboard. Then copy-paste the missing characters from the 8-THB 4000. Here are a couple of examples to get you started:

apritif — apéritif
dj vu — déj vu — déjà vu
tte--tte — tête--tte — tête-à-tte — tête-à-tête

Now try yourself with the following words. Don’t worry, it can be daunting at first, but you’ll get used to it in no time.

à la carte
à propos
exposé
maître d’hôtel
Schweizerkäse²
übergeek