once were journalists
Posted in writing on Apr 23rd, 2009
I was always happy with hitting Enter once and getting one carriage return – you knew where you were with the deal – but Word 2007 has better ideas.
If its default behaviour – which is to insert two line breaks each time you hit Enter – bothers you, here’s how you turn it off:
1 [...]
Posted in writing on Apr 22nd, 2009
I got given a new laptop at work, and had to go through the usual rigmarole of correcting the dictionary language, turning off AutoFormat, and fixing the default paragraph spacing.
I forgot to disable the grammar checker, but fortunately it’s set to nag you by being no bloody use whatsoever. In this case, by taking exception [...]
Posted in technology, work, writing on Sep 3rd, 2008
I’m hereby submitting a new support incident to every single helpdesk in the UK, asking that you each please make your monkeys set up computers for the correct country.
Posted in digression, technology on Aug 8th, 2008
Because that’ll work.
Posted in internet, technology, writing on Jul 29th, 2008
Click here to go straight to step-by-step instructions.
Anyone who’s used Word will know that, by default, it replaces bog-standard straight quotes (and here I’d demonstrate what they look like, but our theme will change them to curved ones) with curved ones. It also changes hyphens (-) to en dashes (–).
No big deal, you’d think. After [...]
Posted in digression, technology on Apr 20th, 2008
We’ve been bashing Microsoft a bit lately, though I don’t notice anyone but Scott rushing to their defence. It’s a lazy pastime, so I promise to be nice to them. After this post.
I started thinking about the opprobrium heaped on Microsoft by bloggers, commentators and anyone else who’s used its products. Much of it unfair, [...]
Posted in marketing, technology on Apr 18th, 2008
I’ve just read that Microsoft was spoofing itself with the Vista SP1 video.
I’m not so sure – they’ve got a pretty long and rich history of making shite promotional films, such as this one, which just keeps on giving.
Still, fair play to MS if it is a spoof – I certainly believed it. They haven’t [...]
Posted in marketing on Apr 17th, 2008
I will contribute some text to Hackbash at some point soon. But for now I just wanted to share this very special and beautiful thing.
They seem to have cut off the bit at the end where Charlie Brooker appears on stage with an Uzi.
Perhaps we have to pay Micro$oft more money before we get that [...]
Posted in internet, politics, technology on Apr 16th, 2008
This is sort of the second half to the earlier Microsoft post, where I was rambling on about people running lightweight operating systems on lightweight computers, and only requiring lightweight applications delivered through a browser.
I’m reminded of the Network Computer, or NC, something that a consortium of manufacturers and the database company Oracle tried to [...]
Posted in internet, technology on Apr 12th, 2008
A TechCrunch post yesterday helped focus my mind on something that’s been dawning of me of late: Microsoft is in deep shit.
XP refuses to be killed off and Vista is flat-lining, while people are increasingly inclined to dabble with Linux-based OS like Ubuntu. Meanwhile, Office is bloated, expensive and hideous to use. Open Office is [...]
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