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[burakkucat]

On occasions I have recourse to think of the following dialogue --

Person one: "Expected time of arrival?"
Person two: "Oh, in several hours."

Can you deduce what that question and answer helps me to remember?

[roseway]

Christmas dinner?

[UncleUB]

Must be something to do with British Rail.

[kitz]

Obviously an acronym for something which I cant even begin to guess at

ETA 07h ?

[burakkucat]

Good tries. 

It's clearly a mnemonic which enables me to remember the sequence ETAOINSHR.

Does anyone have an idea as to the relevance of that sequence?

[roseway]

http://pineight.com/mw/index.php?title=Canonical_Huffman_code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etaoin_shrdlu

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_zdjwSLsbLZY5reJV-Soe_1UnFhmn2zz

My guess would be the first one.

[kitz]

ETAOINSHR

The order of the most commonly used letters in the english language?

---
Edit.. sorry eric, just read your second link, and putting that with your first link then I suspect my above guess was correct. 
Huffman algorithms are used in compression so it would make sense for the smallest code number to be assigned to the most commonly used letters.

..  and thank you b*cat for the mnemonic

[Black Sheep]

It's an anagram ....... it helps B*Cat remember his 'Senior hat' whenever he ventures out. 

[HPsauce]

Truncated though.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etaoin_shrdlu

[burakkucat]

Truncated, yes, to the first nine most frequently used letters in the English language. 

Unfortunately I can not give out bonus points to the first person who correctly identifies why I recently had recourse to that mnemonic . . . for Eric as already solved it! 

For the next eleven letters in the sequence, one can make use of --

Don't look up chimney, Mother. Father will yell "Potatoes? Good buy!"