The tabulus
The tabulus is at the heart of Colonel's break organisation. It is a list faithfully documenting every expense made by the Colonel's men during a break and who picks up the tab each time. Once the break is concluded, the spoils are tabulated and money is exchanged. Chris is the man who takes charge of the tabulus and has been known to spend hours chasing lost pennies should he find that the tabulus does not balance. The beauty of the tabulus is that you work it out approximately, but at the end of the break, if it turns out you are behind on the tabulus, you pay the balance exactly.
In September 2009, Steve received an email from Michael Bendler of Diehl Technology in response to a short exchange on Twitter in which Dave had mentioned that he may write a tabulus 'app' for the Android phone operating system. The email suggested that we may be discussing a software product of Michael Bendler's company called 'TABULUS', and he was presumably concered about development rights, copyright infringement and suchlike. To put Michael Bendler's mind at rest, Steve replied to him with details of what is referred to as The Tabulus by the Colonel's Men. This email exchange is shown below.
At least one of the Colonel's Men believes that the development of any automatic tabulation software is nothing short of abhorrent.
From: Michael Bendler [mike@tabulus.com] Sent: 10 September 2009 19:44 To: s.jones Subject: TABULUS
Hi Dr Jones,
You mentioned TABULUS for the iPhone as a app. Were you referring to our product TABULUS?
Best regards,
Michael Bendler VP Sales & Marketing Diehl Technology LLC
Sent: 11 September 2009 12:31 To: Michael Bendler [mike@tabulus.com]
Dear Michael Bendler,
Thank you for your intruiging enquiry. Perhaps I should explain the concept of the 'tabulus'. While travelling with friends it is often easier for one person to pay for a certain product or service on behalf of the whole group in a sinlge transaction. Rather than going through the inconvenience of each person paying back what they owe following each transaction, we record each transaction in a tabular format with credits and debits for each person on a sheet of paper (often a leaflet for a Vass exhibition or similar) using a biro - black usually but not exclusively. This sheet of paper, which holds important and iconic status throughout the trip is know as the 'tabulus'. The act of adding transactions to the tabulus is known as 'tabulation'. On each trip a single person is designated as the 'tabulator', a role of great responsibility and honour. Only a few men have risen to be great tabulators, the greatest perhaps being Christophe Moules, the legendary allotmenteer and patient hygeine technician. Once at the end of the trip, the total debt or credit of each individual is calculated and monies are exchanged between individuals until financial equlibrium is achieved.
The system works very well, the only minor irritation being the need for regular stops to perform mental arithmetic following each individual or set of transactions. M'colleague Dave hit upon the idea of creating some simple phone-based software to perform tabulation and remove the need for mental calculations which can sometimes introduce errors of up to 3 Euro cents (about 43.6 US cents) into the tabulus.
I hope this makes things clear. I wonder, pray tell, what is this TABULUS 'product' of which you speak? I assume it is very different and perhaps somewhat grander than our humble tabulus given its entirely upper-case name.
Best regards,
Steve.