Relatively Ignorant Blog

I have found another really bad bit of punctuation. This is a heading from a full-page advertisement in a cycling magazine. It is for a cycling clothing company with a line of women’s jerseys that support breast cancer research (the giving back):

Are they questioning their own commitment to breast cancer research?

I can’t fathom why the magazine editor allowed this egregiously sloppy copy into the magazine. It makes the advertiser look stupid and doesn’t reflect well on the magazine either.

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I found yesterday at work that images in recent blog entries wouldn’t show up. Everything else was served OK; seemed that they might be corrupted. But the images loaded correctly at home.

Last night I discovered the cause. The images were all exported from Lightroom with EXIF and all the other metadata. Some of the metadata was being blocked by the security filtering at work.

My recent picture of a bicycle pedal screw does not show up at work:

Here is the same photo, exported from Lightroom with the Minimize Embedded Metadata checkbox selected. This one does show up at work:

The ‘lightweight’ image still has minimal EXIF metadata, including the colour profile information.

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Last year I bought a pair of LOOK Kéo Carbon pedals from an America eBay store for about $50 less than I would have paid in Australia. I knew that warranty repair might be a problem but assumed they would not break (old-design LOOK pedals have some reputation for being indestructible).

I was wrong – they did break, and right – warranty repair is a problem.

I received no help in Australia (mechanics at the bike shop I use didn’t want to attempt a repair). Next step is to try both LOOK and the the seller via e-mail to see if they will help. (I tried to register the pedals via the LOOK website but I couldn’t find a valid serial number on the box.)

The cause of this grief? A single screw fell out of the left pedal. It simply fell out, on the road somewhere. It screws into the end of the axle for the sprung flap that holds the cleat into place. The complete right pedal looks like this from underneath:

The incomplete left pedal looks like this:

The missing screw appears to be made of aluminium alloy and has a very strange thread:

A replacement one of those screws is all I want.

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I have discovered iusethis mac software and have been nominating the software I use.

It’s a great way to learn about other Mac software by seeing what other people use.

A bonus – you can log in using OpenID. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had to create a new online username and password.

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I bought some bicycle pedals from an overseas dealer (via eBay).

One of them broke recently, less than six months old. Under normal circumstances, it would be a simple warranty replacement case (LOOK Kéo pedals have a two-year warranty, according to the box). But I bought them via eBay, at a reasonable (but not huge) discount. I should still be able to claim the manufacturer’s warranty directly from LOOK directly and I will try, but it might be a bit tricky.

I rang the Australian distributor of LOOK products about getting spare parts. After telling the man that I bought the pedals overseas he said, “Isn’t it a bit cheeky asking for parts from us?” His premise is that they are willing to assist someone who bought products through their distribution channel, but not otherwise. I told him I was happy to pay for the replacement part but that made no difference to his attitude.

I understand their position, but it is bad business. The onus is not on the distributor but on LOOK to replace defective parts.

Wake up guys! We are in a global marketplace.

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