Velocipede, not Velociraptor
Whenever I write about velociraptors, my spellchecker always suggests “velocipede” as the word I’m most likely trying to spell. Curiosity eventually got the better of me, so I looked up the meaning of this rather odd word:
The velocipede was a series of human-powered vehicles created in the late Georgian era. There were designs with two, three and four wheels. Some two-wheeled designs had pedals mounted on the front wheel, while three- and four-wheeled designs used treadles and levers to drive the rear wheels. Later two-wheel versions had increasingly large front wheels, directly driven by bicycle pedals, and a smaller back wheel—these leading to the penny-farthing.
Now you know…
I was updating my XKCD velociraptor solution webpage with a link to someone’s more mathematical solution (he defined differential equations for the human and raptor positions and then ran it through a numeric solver).
i have a question: why are you writing about velociraptors frequently enough to keep noticing this? i hadn’t even noticed my spell checker catching it before. i guess i’ve been hoping my dream was unrealistic, and promptly forgot about it, but maybe you know something i don’t.