I hate the expression “my bad” with a vengeance!
Where did it come from? A quick web search turned up a suggestion that it was coined by a basketball player about 20 years ago.
Recently this meme has become much more common via some unknown but virulent vector. I have heard a couple of people at work say it and now my son has started saying it a lot.
I react almost with convulsions when I hear it! It is so mistake!
Who is Silvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admired be.
Actually she is a coffee machine. About a month ago I bought a near-new Rancilio Silvia to replace my five-year-old Gaggia Carezza. Amongst coffee snobs the Silvia is considered the best quality domestic machine.
My Silvia has a secret. She is modded with an electronic temperature control that keeps the water temperature for brewing within 1°F of the set temperature. The normal thermostat in these machines typically only controls temperature to within 5–10°F. Some details are here.
I had a free coffee-making lesson with her at Di Bella Coffee and that has really improved my skills as a barista. Is it the new machine or my new technique that has resulted in my making better coffee now?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Over at Digg, they wondered if this musical prank had ever been done before.
Not quite as classy, but my dad told of his uni days where one of the academics complained about a student eating a banana in his lecture. Next lecture he gave, a group of students turned up as a small brass band playing (you guessed it): Yes, We Have No Bananas.
That was at the University of Melbourne about 60 years ago.
We are suffering a prolonged drought in much of eastern Australia and Brisbane is subject to long-term water restrictions. Our state premier recently announced that Queensland would start mixing treated waste water into the supply. There was going to be a plebiscite but he wisely decided to not ask for public opinion on what easily becomes an unnecessarily emotional issue.
The radio news announcer told us that by the end of next year, Brisbane residents would be drinking recycled sewerage! (Of course she meant recycled sewage.)
Perhaps the extra r’s could be put back into secretary or February.
Woo-hoo! The clouds were largely gone tonight and we got a clear view of McNaught’s Comet from our front deck!
I might never see another comet again in my life. I doubt the view will ever be as clear. In 1986 we got up at 2 am and drove out of Canberra (where I lived) to see Halley’s Comet. All we saw was a small, fuzzy, whitish patch in the night sky. Tonight’s view was much better:
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