Saw this on Freshly Pressed and I just couldn’t resist. There hasn’t been actual waffle here for quite some time.
Category: Waffle
Photo a day
In an effort to actually put content up here, I’ve decided to post photos instead of writing too much waffle. Whenever the opportunity presents itself pictures of waffles will be displayed, but it won’t be a deal-breaker if I don’t come across a waffle on a particular day.
One photo each day, taken on that day.
I’m instituting this policy on Paternity Ward too, which means I actually have to take at least two photos a day, one of which is of Jethro.
You may now place bets amongst yourselves as to how long this is going to last, but be warned that my camera goes with me everywhere now because I bought a nifty new camera bag backpack to transport it in.
Ebooks and Project Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which is generally considered a Good Thing—unless you are one of those heathens who proudly proclaim that, “I never even read my Matric set work!” followed by a sort of guttural grunting sound.
Another Good Thing is the public domain. People who know me know that I’m not even slightly impressed with this Intellectual Imaginery Property concept. One cannot own ideas. One cannot steal ideas. If concepts were not allowed to flow freely from one individual to another, we’d still be living in caves and still not too sure about how to cook food, let alone hunt it or cultivate it. Corporate copyright and patent jackasses—get over yourselves! The media wants to be free, ideas want to free, and you guys have got a little tube of silicon gel trying to plug a massive crack in the wall of the world’s largest dam. Good luck with that.
Project Gutenberg is yet another of those Good Things. That’s three now, and if you’ve been paying attention you might realise that I haven’t just been sprouting off random facts and opinions. I actually have a point.
Project Gutenberg ensures that books and other written works that have entered the public domain remain there, and are easily accessible. Getting a copy of some obscure, 100-year-old, out of print book was a challenge before Project Gutenberg. Now you just search and download the ebook, available in a bunch of formats, suitable for your PC, dedicated ebook reader, or cell phone. There are also audio versions of some books, if you’d prefer (but I haven’t checked any of those out).
So I’ve started reading books on my phone. There are a lot of public domain books out there, and I’ve got some catching up to do on the Classics. Never been that interested in them before, but now that I’ve managed to intertwine them into new technology, they seem suddenly fresh and inspiring to me.
I started with Flatland: a romance of many dimensions and War of the Worlds. I’ve also sought out ebooks that aren’t encumbered by that silly DRM nonsense, but aren’t necessarily free. Places to look for that sort of thing are Smashwords and Book View Cafe.
I admit I haven’t paid anyone for an ebook yet—but I probably will in the not too distant future. Even though I haven’t forked out any legal tender for ebooks, I felt bad about being a total freeloader on the system. Project Gutenberg is a project, right? I correctly guess that that meant one could volunteer to do something towards the project.
I’ve started proof-reading a couple of pages a day over at Project Gutenberg’s Distributed Proof-readers site. Essentially, I check scanned pages for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) errors, and make corrections to the text that the computer guessed the scanned pages contained. I like to think of it as noble work, but honestly it’s rather dull. Perhaps I should join a club?
Image credit: Edans “Sony eBook Reader – II”
Photography Project is Real
Back in the mists of time, I petitioned the loyal waffle group readers to assist me in my quest to choose a project, selected photography, and then ignored my choice.
From somewhere, momentum grabbed Quinn and me and dragged us back to a Camera Club Johannesburg. It then beat us around the head and made us give membership fees to the camera club. Having paid for something, we felt an incentive to participate.
Below are the photos I submitted to get me promoted up a notch from 1 star rating to 2 star rating. Camera Club Johannesburg are more forgiving in their assessments. They are not the photo-nazis. This is good.
Commitment Man — Limited Demo
The Adventures of Commitment Man now has some content.
Don’t get too excited though, it’s just a demo.
There is also a competition. I need a better logo — perhaps you can help?
Satan’s Poodle moves Home
And is now easier to read than ever before!
It is, unfortunately, not any more complete than before. I am working on The Adventures of Commitment Man, so it won’t be getting any more complete in the near future. Fortunately, lessons have been learned, and they will be applied in making The Adventures of Commitment Man a higher quality product of my warped imagination.
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.
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
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.
Fashionista!
There has been much talk of how quiet things here on Waffle Group, and associated blogs, have become lately. There has also been much talk about how, earlier this year, I claimed that I would embarking on some manner of project. The Photography Project was chosen (with the help of Waffle Group voters), and people have questioned my resolve to pursue it.
“You’ve been very quiet on Deviant Art,” they say. “No photos getting posted there,” they say.
I have been putting a few pictures of my new infant up on the internet, but presumably this isn’t interpreted to be pursuing the photography project. Arguably, I’m just taking snapshots. But I don’t feel like arguing right now. Instead I’ll get to the point.
On Saturday Roman and Grant had me over to their house and put me to work taking photographs for Grant’s fashion-school design project thingamajig. Grant’s artistic vision. My camera shutter-release. Thus I’m not responsible for the morbid obsession with all things black and gloomy, dark and doomy.
There are a bunch more photos than those shown in the gallery below (although the spectrum of colours available to the human eye is not better represented in those ones either), but those are the ones I liked best. Grant will be performing mysterious and arcane photoshop machinations to the photos I gave him. I’m keen to see what he does with the “stock” I provided to him. Hopefully, he’ll let me post some of the final product here. Not sure whether the fashion school attempts to appropriate copyright on the magazine Grant will be submitting.
But that’s not all. A photoshoot turns out to actually be work, and we underestimated how long things would take. Expect more photos in a couple of weeks time after I finish the last 4 shoots (Grant promises that the rest of the items will have less of an emphasis on black).
p.s. The Photo Nazis didn’t like my silly buggers photo that I called “Mad Cobbler” in that submission.
p.p.s. Why nothing posted on Deviant Art? More people, who actually know me, read this. I’m not that interested in other people because they are outside my Monkey Sphere.
Update: I’ve changed my mind about the p.p.s. Yes yes. Fickle Waffle Master. dA versions are Claustrophic Fear, Mary, and Mad Cobbler.
The Waffle Group 