Apr
24
I read them and for some reason this video kept springing to mind.
Apr
24
What’s all this about then? Go to microsoft.co.uk without the www and this appears:
Apr
22
Earlier today I wrote a really long post about Chris Phin and the comments on his blog and Digg regarding his entry about typography. It was very long and took in things like the mob mentality and other such things. However, I realised tonight that there was a much more succinct way to put my feelings in to words.
Some people who comment on entries on Digg are cunts.
Apr
17
Perhaps the reason the Vista video (below) looks so bad is becasue of the iPod packaging video (above) The Vista one just isn’t honest enough so at one level looks almost real. Therfore, you’re never quite sure if it’s meant to be a joke or if they really feel that way. The iPod video is brutally honest. The iPod video makes Microsoft look good because they’ve met the elephant in the room head on. Apple makes nice clean packaging Microsoft make stickered up stuff that looks a bit naff* It’s refereshing and it highlights the brand difference nicely.
The Vista video on the other hand looks like the managment team trying to do the same thing but within ‘company guidelines’. The elephant in the room is that Vista isn’t doing as well (in the press at least) as Microsoft hoped but SP1 should change all that and the sales team (the indended audience for this I assume) can use SP1 as leverage to overcome the objection that XP works fine. I could be completely wrong (I often am) but the expensive looking profduction does’nt help either. Dancing in the dark probably wasn’t such a good choice either why not Born to run?
(* I say naff because I like Apple packaging others may not see a problem)
Apr
15
If you spot a typo in something you’ve read feel free to smile to yourself at the inaccuracy, perhaps you might even write to the editor pointing it out. But for the love of God please don’t send a four page letter condemning the entire staff just because you spotted two it’s without apostrophes and a sub-head that read Windows 98 and 95 instead of Windows 95 and 98. Please try to bear in mind that a 96 page publication with no advertising that’s out every two months has quite a few words in it. The fact you spotted three errors DOES NOT make you a candidate for a non-existant sub-editors job nor does it mean that none of us is capable of editing a publication.
I’m sure that when you went to school standards were much higher and you were taught properly unlike everyone that works for me (and me), especially as we missed those ‘its’ and screwed up the style for Windows iterations. Try to keep in mind, however, that not everyone who works for the publication is the same age and some of them might even have gone to school at the same time as you. In the Kevin Kegaan sense I’d love it if we could print an issue with no errors or misprints but sadly, like Newcastle Utd. that year I think we fall short - not by much and certainly not through lack of effort.
Read the 11th April issue of MacUser, specifically page 23. In the bottom corner is a question: What frustrates you? The answer?
People that assume that my work takes no time at all and is somehow easy.
It takes time, it’s not easy, like every job if you’re not the one doing it you might not be able to judge just how difficult it is.
P.S. Your letter had three mistakes too, sadly the customer services manager won’t allow me to write back and let you know that. And no I’m not going to sack the proof reader he’s shit hot and there’d be more for you to complain about were he not doing such a fantastic job. Dullard.
* Mistakes on this blog don’t count because I didn’t get a proper education and there’s no staff to spot my crappy grammar.
Apr
10
Well that was fun. Six days with SQL ‘issues’ clearly the hamster powering the server died and the replacement was sent via Heathrow Terminal 5. The issues were compounded by me upgrading to Wordpress 2.5, however, it turns out that this had nothing to do with it and was simply a red herring.