GMT
Posted: Mon 27 October, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky Leave a comment »So – did you remember to put your clocks back?
As always, we’ve changed pretty much all ours now. The heating system only got changed this morning, because I forgot it last night, but other than that I think we’re pretty much sorted.
Mind you, I still think that the best thing when it comes to the time changes are the radio-controlled clocks that tune in to the Time Signal, and just change themselves. That, so far as I’m concerned, is just grand – and it makes me wonder why more things don’t do it. Even “just” the essential services (heating system, for example) would be nice, but having one’s cooker (another prime example) being auto-updated would make life a lot easier…
Camera Defaults
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Photography, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »One of the things that has surprised me on my photography course is the number of the people on it who haven’t really played with their cameras at all.
For instance, the great majority still even have the default (and highly irritating) beeps, clicks and whistles that accompany every keypress or option change. During the course, as the tutor describes certain options, you can hear them beeping through the menus, trying to find the things he’s talking about.
Now I have to say that as well as being bloody annoying, I do find that this is quite inconsiderate – both to the tutor, and to the other people in the class. For me, those sodding beeps are really distracting – and I’m sure I’m not the only one on the course who finds them so. But while they’re going through the menus, they’re also not really listening to what the tutor is saying next, which means he’s either got to repeat it, or they’ve missed it completely.
I think sooner or later I’m going to go and silence the cameras in question – but we’ll see.
I suppose that I just find it strange that people seem to be happy to buy a new device/gadget/whatever, and not fiddle with it and try all the options. And yes, I know, I’m a techie geek, and thus fiddling with new things is always going to happen with me, but all the same – wouldn’t you want to try out most of the options on a new camera as soon as you got it? And/or figure out what these arcane settings like Av, Tv, ISO etc. actually do?
English
Posted: Fri 10 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky Leave a comment »Apparently, facebook is now available in “British English”.
Now, if that’s that case, does Facebook class its original version as being in “American English”?
I’d rather see the definitions “English” and “American English”, but I bet that one won’t take off.
Twats.
All Caps
Posted: Mon 6 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Thoughts 1 Comment »Why is it that, even after more than 25 years of (even vaguely) generally affordable computers/computing, there are still people who think it’s acceptable to send emails written all in capitals? And particularly to do so in a business context.
I suppose that these people have just spent the last quarter-century living in a hole in the desert (or in Antarctica) with no clue about email etiquette, manners etc.
(Oh, and for anyone who thinks it’ll be funny or clever to leave a comment written in all caps, believe me, it’s neither.)
Shortcuts
Posted: Tue 30 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »When Firefox 3 came out, one of the things they trumpeted about was the ‘intelligent address bar’. In short, when you typed in a web address, it also checked through your history and bookmarks in order to save time typing – if you’d been there before (in the duration of the history) then the site name would come up.
Until recently, I found this quite annoying – if I wanted a site called (for example) the admin section of one of my sites, and started typing the first two characters of admin, I didn’t want to know that I could also go to D4D’s Add a post page, or Norfolk council’s Adult education page.
But I’m slowly coming round to the function, and seeing where it can be useful – well, so long as you set up the bookmarks correctly in the first place. For example, if I want to look at the news from one of our local papers, I don’t need to remember that it’s at the (fucking stupid) http://new.edp24.co.uk URL, I type in EDP and lo, Firefox has got it there, ready and waiting.
It’s not perfect – but I’m starting to see the use of it. Now if the bookmarks have been titled properly/usefully, I can type in a shortcode that actually works. (And of course I have to remember that, for example, my internet banking is done at RBS, not just by typing in banking, or internet banking – well, until I edit the bookmark, anyway)