Author: Neil Robinson

Microsoft — Now writing satire

It certainly seems that Microsoft are moving into the scathing humour industry when one looks at this press release entitled “Microsoft Brings Holiday Cheer on a Budget to Hispanic Families With Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 Language Pack in Spanish.”

Honestly, that really is the headline. Holiday Cheer on a Budget! With Microsoft Products! Now in Spanish!

It’s either satire, or Microsoft are using their system administrators to write press releases.

An excerpt if you can’t be bothered to click through and read the article yourself:

“With the current economic situation in the U.S., families are looking for ways to save money and still celebrate the holidays,” said Fred Studer, general manager of U.S. Information Worker Business Group at Microsoft. “This alliance with the Boyle Heights Technology Youth Center will give us the opportunity to interact with Hispanic families and show them how to prepare inexpensive and creative holiday solutions for their homes, using easy technology tools from Microsoft Office 2007.”

What the hell is a “holiday solution”? Microsoft, you are trying to market Office 2007 Home and Student editions to Hispanic families in the US. I understand Hispanics to be typically working class people. I’m not sure they want a “holiday solution.” I’m not sure anyone does. A term like that completely pollutes the concept of a holiday. I don’t want to be laying on a beach on a tropical island somewhere, thinking myself clever to have solved my holiday problem (or is that work problem) with such a cunning holiday solution.

Certainly, I’m taking liberty with the disconnect between what America thinks a holiday is, and what the rest of the English-speaking world thinks it is. Microsoft’s Fred Studer isn’t suggesting anyone develop a creative vacation solution. But let’s look at some of the things Office 2007 offers to simplify the holiday season:

The Microsoft Office 2007 system and the Office 2007 Language Pack — Spanish offer a great deal of tools to help simplify the holiday season, with special templates and features that allow families to create fun projects such as these:

  • Personally made holiday cards, family calendars, gift tags and decorations using Office Word 2007
  • Holiday budget management using Microsoft Office Excel 2007 templates
  • Dazzling presentations for a posada gathering using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
  • Holiday recipe organization using Office Word 2007 templates

Aside from everything that the Microsoft Office 2007 system and the Office 2007 Language Pack — Spanish offer this holiday season, the software also is the perfect gift for every student and parent.

Are those bullet points what Fred means by “holiday solutions”? Aren’t hand-made cards more beautiful? Isn’t Excel 2007 a little overpowered for a holiday budget? PowerPoint is a problem — not a solution to anything. I wasn’t aware holiday recipes needed to be organised. I’m rather glad that’s been cleared up for me.

Creepy Dolls

Apparently, Baltorina’s [jpg] “…make one-of-a-kind collectable dolls that are so lifelike they are often mistaken for real babies.”

Shouldn’t that be “often mistaken for zombies,” because these things seem to plunge quite swiftly, and land hard into the uncanny valley.

More disconcerting images are available at the Baltorina’s home page. Can you tell which is real, and which is the doll?

Another reason, other than scrapbooking, to keep away from HobbyX.

US Motor Industry wants a hand out too

The US Motor industry want a piece of that financial aid the US government seems to be handing out to irresponsible bankers at the moment. The motor industry have already been given $25 billion to develop gas-not-guzzlers, but a cleaner environment isn’t really their focus at the moment. They’d rather use it to prevent bankruptcy.

But Congress, or the Senate, or whoever it is who makes the decisions in that loopy superpower country, isn’t really buying in to the story.

The day’s hearings, before the House Financial Services Committee, got off to a rousing start when panel chairperson Barney Frank asked how the government could justify a bailout for banks and insurers, but not the automakers.

“Frankly, there seems to me to be an inherent cultural bias,” Frank said. “Aid to blue-collar employees is being judged by a standard different than white-collar employees.”

But is the aid the motor industry asking for really going to help the blue-collar workers on the shop floor?

Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York, noted the irony of the CEOs flying on private jets and “getting off with tin cups in their hands”.

“Couldn’t you have downgraded to first class or something, or jet-pooled … to get here?” he asked. “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in a high hat and tuxedo.”

The executives on Wednesday’s panel — GM CEO Rick Wagoner, Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli — all flew to the hearings on private jets.

The Onion couldn’t make this stuff up!

All excerpts from the Mail & Guardian

The Long-Awaited Photos of Jethro

I’ve got over my previous distress regarding my soggy house. It’s still going to be expensive to fix, but I’m probably in denial about it all so I feel just fine.

Thus calmed, I felt inspired to get some of those photos of my spawn out there for you to see.

Go fetch!

Jethro Montage – October and November 2008

I have considered whether to post these pics up on Paternity Ward, but things appear to be at a standstill that side. At least we have a trickle of syrup flowing over here at Waffle Group, although it is cold, viscous syrup.

A handytard’s dream!

People are asking me for news of Jethro, for photos of Jethro, for happy uplifting information, for rays of sunshine, for things like that.

I’ve been meaning to oblige. I really have. Sadly for you, you still ain’t gonna get no satisfaction. Perhaps some other time when I feel less demoralised.

Instead, I need to get something off my chest and this is the forum I’m going to use. I don’t expect to creating particularly interesting reading-matter, and neither should you expect to find any in this post.

Those who are frequent readers of this weblog will recall that some 8 months ago I bought a nice, shiny, new house. Useful pictures of it are available via Picasa Web Albums. I need to update those pictures with some real gems. A possible forthcoming attraction.

Becasue, as it turns out, the house is more soggy than shiny. It has rising damp. It has extensions that are falling away from the original part of the house, creating cracks in the roof and allowing water to infiltrate there too. The extensions don’t appear to have been built to standard building specifications, with the water-proofing layer below ground level in some places.

The building insurance guy came and had a look yesterday and his summary was: “Sorry for you. Existing damage. Take it up with the previous owner.”

He did at least give me good advice on what to do and who to contact in getting things fixed, but it seems like the bill will be entirely on me — unless I can get the previous owners to pay (Bah! What are the chances?)

A damp-proofing/rising damp expert is coming to have a look this afternoon. I hope it’s not as bad as I instinctively feel that it is.

Enough of being coherent and well-mannered.

Fuck fukc fuckfu kfu kfuckfcukfuc kffuckfuck ufkcufkfuckfufkfufkfuckfuffuckfuckfufckf uf kfu ,kfcufkfu kcfuck  fufkcufk fuck fuckfu kcukfuck

SagCAD: The briefest of reviews

SagCAD Does it save?

I’m looking for CAD software on Linux, and I came across SagCAD. The only value I derived from my interaction with the software was the above dialogue box. The software is horribly unintuitive and crashed when I tried to open some of my existing dxf files.

It took me 15 minutes before I figured out how to draw a line, and I’m usually quite good at unravelling mystifying user interfaces.

In conclusion — leave SagCAD alone. Use QCAD instead.

Edit: The manual is in Japanese, but they’ve helpfully provided a machine-translated English version. Hilarious. Here is an extract to whet your appetite:

< Note > The active layer (the current layer) it inserts the data which is inserted. Because of that, it is becoming one layer it becomes the figure in the layer of here and there, confused.

Edit again: I promise not to edit this post again, but this is too good to pass up. The original message asking “does it save” has been superseded by this from the SagCAD manual:

It is undo

Halloween Whippersnappers. No sign of them

Here in South Africa, Trick-or-Treat and Halloween festivities are not broadly practised. I’m not certain why.

Perhaps we had Apartheid instead of Halloween, where white people dressed up as white people and trampled on the human rights of black people dressed up as black people. It was always Trick in those days, and never Treat. Now that we no longer have Apartheid, nobody knows how to treat, and since everyone is used to tricks, that’s all they expect to get handed out when Trick-or-Treating.

And yet, last year some small children appeared at my door, dressed amusingly and raising the question, “Trick or treat?”

They seemed very disappointed with my offer of homemade rusks (all I had in the house at the time), declined them, and skulked off.

I felt so bad about it that this year I went on a special mission to buy treats. I bought Smarties, liquorice, chocolates and toffees. Unfortunately, this year it was my turn to be disappointed. No little whippersnappers arrived at my door. Not even white kids dressed as white kids, or black kids dressed as black kids.

Angie and I now have to eat the treats. How horrible for us.

Fashionista — Part 2

Click for Part 1

At long last, some of the follow up photos that we didn’t have time to shoot on the first set. Grant is supposed to be giving me a copy of his magazine that he put together, and I’ll check whether he minds me posting some of the photo-shopped versions of the photos I took.