This post comes from Germany, where we’re staying with family. Having a great time – more to come on an exciting couple of weeks later in the week.
Monthly Archives: December 2010
A Christmas Disclaimer
Found this little greeting on The Blue Room Technical Forum – not sure I can link to it as I think the sub-forum it was posted in is hidden from unregistered members.
I wanted to send some sort of holiday greeting to my friends and colleagues, but it is difficult in today’s world to know exactly what to say without offending someone.
So I met with my lawyer yesterday, and on her advice I wish to say the following:Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress , non-addictive , gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious / secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendar of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that Australia is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/him or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. The wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
Best Regards (without prejudice)
Name withheld (Privacy Act).
The italics are mine, in recognition of the fact that this piece was apparently written in Australia, where they’re currently enjoying summer. Didn’t want to rub that in…
Two cool toys that could work nicely together…
Image courtesy Audiocookbook.org (Image link goes to the article - hope nobody minds!)
Came across the Korg Monotron while hunting for possible Christmas gift ideas/wishlist items. What a cool thing – their very own version of the Stylophone!!
Then while browsing for demo videos of the Monotron I came across this on YouTube – someone’s actually converted a floppy drive to become a reverb unit - how cool is that?!!
Yup. I’ll keep the Geek card thanks.
Lessons for web development…
Been having some issues with ParcelForce and some other companies of late due to their bad website content. These fails tend to be because information is incomplete, only available via Flash/ActiveX, or just laid out badly.
All of which got me wondering about how to advise companies of the correct usage of web standards so that their systems are available to all without unnecessary hassle. Some quick Google searching took me to this site explaining good HTML practice in plain and simple terms, and I stayed long enough to read what the author had to say.
Yes, I really am that terminally sad that I care about this stuff, even if I abuse it myself rather too often!
UPDATE:
Hee… and in a fit of splendid irony, I just tried passing the home page of this blog through the W3C Standards validator. And lo, 90 errors, with several warnings. Probably more now that I’ve just abused the href tags in that last sentence!
Good to see WordPress doing their bit too! ;o)
Recession puzzle
I’m puzzled. We’re being told all the time about how we’re in a recession, that jobs are being lost in droves, and that we must make massive austerity cuts for the sake of the nation.
And yet… People are moving around in vast numbers, and spending a small fortune for the right to do so. It seems that road traffic numbers have never been higher, London Underground has claimed highest ever usage figures earlier this week, and whenever I take a train out of London I’m amazed at increasing numbers and the sheer money on display – the nice suits, nice new laptops and fabulous watches are all around. Conversations between friends and colleagues swirl around their worldwide travels, gains made in investments and making sure everyone around them knows how important they are as they shout managementspeak over each other into their snazzy new Blackberries.
And yet, we’re cutting back. Amazing.
Even more interesting is that I make these observations sitting on a train to Bristol, typing them into my iPhone 4 while supping a station-bought coffee.
