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katlalog

081029 00:14 LOL

Today's laugh-out-loud moment: German police foiled by an example of the famous British sense of humour.

081024 01:02 Unicorn chaser

Just found this gorgeous wallpaper for horse lovers and fantasy fiends.

081021 04:11 Wetware

Vindicated: People are at their most creative late at night.

The poll of 1,426 people showed that a quarter of us stay up late burning the midnight oil when seeking inspiration.

081019 02:33 Computing

First Monday, October 2008: Reasons for the non-adoption of OpenOffice.org in a data-intensive public administration.

All the factors you expect indeed play a role here: users are used to Microsoft Office, they've set up macros that are difficult to convert, they use MS Office at home, support staff are experienced in MS Office, management and users can't see the benefit of changing their current office suit.

I've had some success in suggesting OpenOffice to students, non-profit organisations, organisations in the educational support sector and such as a no-cost alternative that can also handle documents created by and for a networked office or academic environment which without fail uses MS Office. But the findings from the study of such organisations show that it's currently impossible to convert the mainstream. Microsoft really dominates that market. But maybe those students we tell about OpenOffice today are the managers of tomorrow that will deploy it in their work environment.

081017 01:15 Society

The Idler's Glossary - the high art of slackery

He's suggesting that our hyper-productive work values are skewed. We need to be idle more often, need to have time to read and ponder, so that we can dream up better worlds instead of just living in this crappy one.

Exactly!

081017 00:08 Web dev

Opera study: only 4.13% of the web is standards-compliant

081009 01:55 Graphic novels

The King of Dreams twitters. That's Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

My sister comes. I must prepare. Should I wear black ...or black?

081007 17:22 Society / Religion

All respect to religions. I have nothing against them as long as they don't interfere with my life. I'm just wondering if you will still find women claiming to be perfectly alright with covering their whole bodies except for one small slit for the eyes when that one slit is reduced to one hole for one eye, as suggested by another male who's trying to impose his will on all women. The India Uncut Blog has a great counter suggestion:

I have an alternative solution to your problem. I suggest that you introduce veils for men that cover both their eyes. That way it will make no difference if the women are winking, blinking or, heaven forbid, naked.

081005 14:32 Usability / Comix

UserFriendly has come up with a captcha that finally defeats spammers and their bots.

081004 01:55 Science

And this years Ig Nobel Prize of Improbable Research goes to, among others,...

Physics: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for mathematically proving that a heap of hair or string will inevitably tangle itself into knots.

Chemistry: Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson for demonstrating that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and Chuang-Ye Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang for discovering that Coca-Cola is not an effective spermicide.

081002 14:20 Web dev / Accessibility

I've been looking into the accesskey issue again (assigning keyboard shortcuts to main navigation items on webpages). So far i've been using numbers only because most letters are used by assistive technologies such as screenreaders. But you run out of numbers quickly and i just discovered that ALT+1, which i use for 'Home', starts 'Heading reading mode' in JAWS. Crap! So i'm throwing in the towel. I'm going to stop providing accesskeys on my sites.

This is the article that helped me make up my mind: Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it?

081001 16:26 TV

Bureau42 sums up my opinion about this fall's TV season in its review of the latest Fringe episode:

Low Point

The fact that Joss Whedon struggles to get his stuff on the air, and real SF rarely receives decent adaptations, but the TV powers-that-be will throw millions at a bad-to-mediocre series derived from a 90s cult show.

When this crap fails and Heroes' ratings continue to plummet, the message they'll take away is, "see, that SF/fantasy trend on television is dead," instead of, "build a good genre show and the nerds'll tune in en masse, tell friends to watch, buy crappy merchandise, and keep the flame burning for years.

081001 16:06 Web dev

In 1998 Lycos took over Wired's very prolific web development mailing list MonkeyJunkies and claimed intellectual property over all content. People left the list like rats leaving a sinking ship. Some evacuees formed evolt.org which became the new very prolific web development mailing list. Evolt is soon celebrating its 10 year anniversary.

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