gribble n.
Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise
characters in a data stream are displayed as gribble. Modems with
mismatched bitrates usually generate gribble (more specifically,
baud barf). Dumping a binary
file to the screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the
bell/speaker is active) headaches.
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grilf // n.
Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and
filk, a typo reincarnated as a new
word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1992 on Usenet. [A friend tells me there was a Lloyd
Biggle SF novel "Watchers Of The Dark", in which alien species
after species goes insane and begins to chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A
human detective eventually determines that the word means "Liar!"
I hope this has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet
term. --ESR]
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grind vt.
1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code,
especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and
comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
prettyprint was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe
source. 3. [common] To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to crunch or grovel. Grinding has a connotation of
using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk,
network, etc. See also hog. 4. To make
the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind
grind' excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
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grind crank n. //
A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a
monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the
computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind
crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and
noise. See grind.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a
grind crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of
the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also
known as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The
Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run
switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping
through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a
crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the
single-step button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of
code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near
the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console
typewriter, and then keep on cranking.