Religious Spam
I just received some rather evangelical religious spam. It’s funny but it is actually quite unusual to get spam like this, although I do get a fair bit through the letter box and see it stuck to the bus stop. But then that tends to be a bit phobic in various ways.
This message was just too long to read, so I deleted it.
I did have brief look at it and sees that it mentions someone called Linda Newkirk from Arkansas. Searching for her on the Internet reveals the sort of things, that give Christianity a bad name in the minds of the well-read believer. But then people like this have always been around to burn Catholics or Protestants at the stake, persecute the Jews, Huguenots, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs, to name a small selection of those persecuted over the centuries. And I suspect the Homo Sapiens used to persecute the Neandertals before that!
If this mad woman had any faith, she’d be against capital punishment and would proclaim the fact, as it is still legal in Arkansas.
To me anybody, who believes in capital punishment and religion is a complete hypocrite.
The Camerons Get a Real Aussie Nanny
According to this report in the Standard, the Camerons have got a new nanny and she’s a real Aussie.
Interestingly for her employers, she admitted to shoplifting, smoking and drinking, but denied taking drugs “in the past month”. When asked if she swears, she replied: “f*** yeah.”
At least there’s no mention of sheep.
In some ways the most interesting part of the story is that the Camerons interviewed the nanny on Skype. I wonder how many of our Prime Ministers and/or their partners could have done that?
Boris Does It First
I wanted to send a message to Boris Johnson’s campaign for the Mayor of London. I actually sent a similar message to other candidates, so don’t imply any favouritism here.
But Boris had a new type of real-person checker or captcha, I’ve not seen before. Instead of asking to type in two obscured words, which sometimes I find difficult because of my eyesight, it asked me to do a simple sum.
So congratulations to Boris’s web site designer for being the first I’ve seen using it. It may be a lot commoner than I think. But so-what, it was the first I saw. On one web site, where I was trying to buy something the captcha was so difficult, I went elsewhere.
Are Blackberries the Cause of the World’s Ills?
I have said that to me, as a very experienced keyboard user, that the Blackberry is a piece of very bad design.
But it is loved by the great and good in politics and business, from Barack Obama downwards.
So if they choose such an obscure device can we trust them to make the proper decisions, that affect us all?
No Wonder Research in Motion is Doing Badly
Research in Mition, the maker of Blackberry phones is not doing well according to this on the BBC. Unless of course, you consider a $125million loss to be doing well.
But after trying one of their products for free, which O2 were kind enough to give me I can understand why sales are falling.
For a start the keyboard has been designed by someone, who gives the impression he’s never done any substantial typing on a proper computer. Good design always builds on what your customers expect. As an example, supposing a car manufacturer proved that left-hand-drive cars were safer and then said it wouldn’t make right hand drive ones for the UK. Would they sell any?
As an example here, I wanted to enter the @ sign, which is above the P. Which in itself, is a pretty strange place to put it! But then with a small keyboard that might have been the only place they have left.
So you’d think that you would use Shift followed by P to enter it! But no, it’s Alt followed by P. If that is logical to someone with forty-plus years experience of a computer and sixty years of typing starting on a sit-up-and-beg Imperial, then I’m a Chinaman. (By the way, is it allowed to use that phrase today from the past. It is only descriptive and I could have used the alternative form of Dutchman!)
If I taken the trouble to check that the keyboard was so strange, I wouldn’t have had one. No wonder they aren’t selling to well. Perhaps this keyboard means that new users aren’t impressed. I’m not!
In the day I used it, I never managed to send a text message, although I did receive a few and read them. On my Nokia 6310i, I just hit one button, choose Reply and I’m replying.
Others may like their Blackberries, but it is definitely not for me, so I’ll stick with the Nokia 6310i.
I know that doesn’t take pictures, but I have a little and battered Nikon Coolpix in my pocket to do that and also act as a visual aide-memoire.
I’ve Got Myself A Blackberry
Not a fruit, but one of those new-fangled phones.
Quite frankly I’m not impressed!
Typing With One Hand
I’ve now acquired a new Sony VAIO laptop with a wide 17.3 inch screen. I mainly bought it, as my old HP machine is getting rather tired and I was fimding I made the odd mistakes on the keyboard. As the keys were more widely spaced on the Sony, I thought this might improve my typing and a brief test showed that it appeared to be better.
I’ve now got the new Sony and this video shows me typing.
Not how I span with my right hand to work the shift and control keys.
It is my left arm and hand that is bad, as I said here. But the computer would probably work equally well with someone, who had right hand problems.
Apple Have Problems With iPads in Australia
According to this report on the BBC, Apple is having to give refunds on iPads in Australia.
Perhaps they don’t work upside down! Or is it all those kangaroos jumping about, setting up odd vibrations at the wrong frequencies!
My Zopa Spreadsheet
I have a spreadsheet written in Excel, that documents all of my Zopa investment.
What I find about Excel is that it is so illogical and nothing is intuitive. When I wrote a PC-based version of Artemis, that was a project management, spreadsheet and a graphics program, it was way in advance of Excel today for ease-of-use. But then it didn’t have all the features.
Am I being arrogant?
No! At my age and state of health I have that luxury.
On a more important theme, is the spreadsheet telling me what I should do with Zopa?
I think so and I’ll be making changes to my lending philosophy in the next few days.
Zopa Mentioned in the Guardian
My Google Alert for Zopa found this report in the Guardian. It’s not particularly relevant to Zopa or peer-to-peer lending as this extract shows.
Not all hairdressers are on one giant VAT dodge, otherwise there would have been some public outcry and we would all, by now, be doing each other’s hair (we would call it peer-to-peer grooming, it would be somewhere between Zopa and a zoo, and it wouldn’t matter what we looked like, because we’d all look the same).
But it does show that you should choose a unique name for your company.
The Anonymous Widower 