wake up and smell the copy
Aug 14th, 2010 by handolio
This is great; an error message from Google (in US English) telling me it couldn’t provide content in my language (UK English).
I’ve whinged about regional settings before, but it turns out I’m bilingual. Who knew?
Jul 10th, 2010 by handolio
…the first assignment of a crack police comedy squad ends in tragedy
May 18th, 2010 by handolio
I thought I’d take a moment to share this story from the Mail – apparently it isn’t from 1974.
Susanna Reid had to stand in for Andrew Marr after he was late arriving for the paper review part of his weekend show. I guess that’s vaguely interesting to those with an interest in politics or media, or anyone who’s a fan of Reid. How did she do?
The 39-year-old host was wearing a chic dress, just the kind of outfit that has helped her to acquire an army of fans during her time on the BBC
Great, but, er, why was Marr late?
On BBC Breakfast News on Sunday Susanna is usually behind a table – so, to see rather more of her was no doubt be a treat [sic] for her fans
No, but, surely as an experienced presenter there was a difference in the programme’s style? At the very least there’s a weak Marr/Reid coalition joke to be had, no?
Susanna’s internet fans think she is the sexiest presenter on the BBC and regularly post up videos of her wearing short skirts or unintentionally flashing her bra through her blouse on air.
So we learn that Reid has many fans, all of whom she’s won because she has tits and legs.
How does the BBC work? I don’t know if a 15-year-plus veteran such as Reid – who has a degree in politics, philosophy and law, which she followed with a postgrad diploma in broadcast journalism – gets any bonus for standing in, but I do hope she spends it on something pretty.
May 17th, 2010 by cpev
May 13th, 2010 by handolio
(from BBC News)
May 7th, 2010 by handolio
The election’s over and we’re in for a hung parliament. It looks like we may get a Tory/Lib Dem coalition. It’s probably not a great result for anyone, but there is a chance it could deliver electoral reform.
Did you vote? How do you feel about the result and its potential implications? Please complete our short electoral reform survey so we can work out how different things might have looked under PR, and whether there’s a case for electoral reform.
May 5th, 2010 by handolio
What it is about me and marginal constituencies? Between elections I’ve moved from Guildford (Con majority 347) to Hove (Lab majority 420).
Back in Guildford it was an easy choice. In 2005 the incumbent MP was Sue Doughty; a Lib Dem who I’d voted for in 2001 and whose policies strongly reflected my beliefs – particularly in her opposition to the war in Iraq. She lost to shadow health minister Anne Milton, whose chief distinctions are to vote against gay rights and yet look like Julian Clary.
In Hove it’s a two-horse race between Tory Mike Weatherley and Labour MP Celia Barlow.
Stonewall research shows that Celia has a great voting record on lesbian, gay and bisexual equality issues, but a look at her entry on They Work For You reveals an MP who has also never voted against the Labour whip.
This means that Celia:
-Voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.
-Voted very strongly for allowing ministers to intervene in inquests.
-Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
-Voted very strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
-Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
-Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards.
So why would I vote tomorrow for a Labour candidate with whom I utterly disagree on some of the most important issues of the day?
I’m not sure that I can, but our electoral system is fucked: the alternative may be seeing the Conservatives come back into power – and knowing that I’m one of the few thousand people in perhaps 20 constituencies who could have done something to stop it.
GRAPHICS: both from BBC News
May 4th, 2010 by handolio
I’m aware I’ve posted a lot about Word lately, but since buying the new netbook I’ve been determined to knuckle under and really try to work with Microsoft’s software rather than just bleating about it. It’s been wild.
I’ve discovered what many of you will know: Internet Explorer is beyond rescue, Windows 7 is fine after a bit of tweaking and – a surprise to me at least – Word can be quite good if you can be bothered to change the behaviours that annoy you*.
The remaining one on my list was Word’s default behaviour when pasting text you’ve copied from another source – it tries to preserve the formatting, which normally means the wrong font and point size for your document, and often the wrong alignment.
You can paste text-only on a case-by-case basis by choosing Paste Special from the Paste menu of the Home ribbon. You can also customise the Quick Access Toolbar as I’ve done on the right, to include a Paste Special shortcut (and one for Word Count, in my case). Do this by dropping down the little black arrow thing you see to the right of it.
But try as I might, I can’t think when I’d actually want the default behaviour of preserving the source formatting, and it’s easy to change it:
-Click Word’s nameless round button
-At the bottom of the menu that appears click Word Options
-Click Advanced in the left-hand pane
-Under Cut, copy, and paste (Bonus points are available here for not giving a fuck about the Oxford comma), drop down the box next to Pasting from other programs, and change it to Keep Text Only
-Click OK to save the change
*For the record, Scott Lawson has pointed this out on multiple occasions and I chose cheap insults rather than to listen to him. What can I say? Some people just won’t be told.
May 3rd, 2010 by handolio
Sky has taken out print adverts promising “Britain’s first high definition election night programme”, which rather sums up everything that’s wrong with British politics.
Doubtless the extra pixels will give their swingometer unrivalled accuracy, but it’s unlikely to do much elsewhere. Polling stations – invariably primary schools, Baptist churches and village halls – rarely prove cinematic in front of a hasty-put-together piece to camera, while vote-counting runs through dreary hours in a thousand strip-lit municipal centres. These places do not need HD.
Nor do our politicians, to whom it should be denied. We may suspect many of being self-interested, mildly corrupt, out of touch, high-handed, ignorant, duplicitous and even mendacious, but we know for a fact that there are no lookers among them.
I, for one, wouldn’t cyber-stalk the corridors of power.
As long as the meeting points between politicians and the public are run by PR people, we have a problem. Brown will likely lose – more because he can’t play the comfortable everyman than for anything else. Cameron talks a nice line in it, having apparently met everyone the other day. Clegg seemingly hopes that not being either of them will be enough.
And perhaps it will. “Vote for change” must have sounded like a great slogan a few months back, but I hope the Tories are regretting it come 7 May. We’re warned off a hung parliament, but what if it brings electoral reform – and with it an end to these meaningless politics of presentation, gesture and the party line?
So, no; we don’t need to see democracy in high definition. And in the days before we vote we don’t even need to see it.
We should just be listening, and thinking.
IMAGES by cole007, based on the transcript of the second leaders’ debate (on Sky).
Apr 30th, 2010 by handolio
It’s possible to suffer a minor irritation for so long that it becomes part of the scenery. Even though, deep down, it still annoys you, it blends into the background chatter of irritants. Such is the case with the way Word handles the selection of text.
Recently, as I’ve gradually found the options that make Word act like a grown-up word processor, this had started to get annoying again: if you’ve got a netbook or anything else with a smallish trackpad, it’s easy to place the cursor at the beginning of your selection before accidentally flicking it the wrong way – at which point Word will include the word before the one you wanted to start at and you’ll need to begin the selection again.
Narg.
Anyway, after some self-editing made more tedious by the problem I was inspired to look for an option. To be fair, it’s an easy one to find:
-Click Word’s nameless round button
-At the bottom of the menu that appears click Word Options
-Click Advanced in the left-hand pane
-Un-tick the second option: When selecting, automatically select entire word
-Click OK to save the change
You can do the same thing for Outlook 2007 by following the above instructions from an email you’re reading or composing, but choose ‘Editor Options’ rather than ‘Word Options’.
Selection shortcuts
The downside of making this change is that you have to be slightly more accurate when marking the start of your selection. The upside, however, is that the application won’t fuck it up for you when you do get it right.
No doubt many users prefer this to be the default behaviour, but there are other keyboard shortcuts for selections that are easier to use in practice, particularly where it’s hard to give accurate mouse inputs. Moreover, these should work in all Windows applications:
Shift and cursor keys – select text
Control, Shift and left/right cursor key – select text one word at a time
Shift and page up/down – select text in big fat lumps
Control and ‘a’ – select entire document/dialogue/element (depending where the cursor is)
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