Peterbe.com

At work we have a Windows XP computer that is used mainly to test websites in Internet Explorer to check the stylesheet compatability. The installed XP version is English and everything is therefore in English; except one thing.

Look at the screenshot and notice some weird lines of Swedish! Why??

Surely this is a bug. The reason why the deviating language is Swedish and not French or Icelandic is probably because the MS Office 2003 we have installed on it is Swedish. I already had a Swedish Office CD from Sweden from before and at the time we installed it we thought it would suffice because we didn't want to buy a new English version for a computer we very rarely use.

PS. If you haven't already done so, migrate away from M$ Office and move up to Open Office which is free and Open Source.

If you haven't started dropping in to Ask Yahoo! often, you should. A great thing about it is that all questions are available via RSS so you can look questions and answers in your personal RSS reader (I use Sage and Google Homepage).

One question that popped up yesterday was pretty interesting:

What state do the Simpsons live in?

Is this geeky, trendy or just practical?

"Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-powered, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser

the iWipe."

I don't really need a toilet paper holder but we do need a spice rack/shelve in the kitchen and I have an old medium towered PC box that one might turn into something. Perhaps a rectangular flower pot?

This is interesting, Webmasterbrain which is a SEO company has created a little experiment app. You search for something and it shows the first 3 results from the three major search engines google, yahoo and msn. You don't know which search engine gave which 3 results but for each 3 results you select which set was "Most relevant". When you've done that you see which search engine found those results.

I tried it a for a couple of search terms and apparently I chose the google results all times except one. I guess that means that my findings coincide with their results

"WOW!! 107 Days and I have lost 46.2 Pounds! Eating ONLY McDonalds!!!"

Here's a guy with some real self distance: Kevin O'Connor of MyMcDiet.com

"Super Size me was the wrong message! It's you, not them, that is responsible. Great idea Morgan, tell a fat guy it is not their fault. How about telling them to get off their fat butts and do something before they hurt themselves. You don't have to stop eating at McDonald's or anything else you like, you just have to match it with the appropriate amount of exercise! Watch me."

This is so cool. Kevin has set out to prove the Super Size Me film wrong. It's not about MacDonald's and it's evil corporate ideals. It's about the individual and her decision. Kevin understands that you remain/become a "big fat guy" from unhealthy food; but he also points out that unhealthy food exists elsewhere too.

"Yes I have elected not to buy McDonald's on occasion and went to the grocery store, just to find myself buying doughnuts and bearclaws! What would have been better for me, the bagel, egg and cheese with orange juice or 3 big fat doughnuts that made me crave more sugar all day. Get real people. Take AIM, at ourselves. Stand up for yourself."

This is definitely unique and you can guarantee that if you have one of these you'll get so much close-range attention and comments like "you're weird". It'll also be a guaranteed ice breaker conversation topic. Or like they say on their website:

"Stranger than your mother-in-law, the all new Radio Active watch just hit the stores in Japan, featuring an all new unique way to display the time. Looks hard at first but trust me after about one day, you can tell the time almost as fast as a regular watch. Guaranteed that everyone who sees it will ask you about it."

It's only ¥11900 ($100 US dollars or £60 British pounds) and my watch is starting to fall apart. Perhaps this is what I should get next!

Yes, Pandora is great but it too can make mistakes. All software make mistakes. When that happens it's important that you deal with the mistake/error in a constructive manner. Firstly you have to have your debugging tools set up to alert the developer(s) of the error with full details and correct integrity and secondly you need to report back to the innocent user a message (and in some cases a good plan of action for the user to take).

Pandora seemed to be struggling today when I started it and since I haven't seen that before I took a screenshot of the error message and here I write about it. What's good about this error message?

• it's honest ("We're having unexpected technical difficulties")
• it's informative with a twist (they're informing the user about what they're doing about it with a comical twist "scrambling to fix things")
• it's instructive ("Please try again later")

If you're American and plan to move to England, you do right in have a read through of this list. It's a ridiculously long list of cockney slang words but rather straight foward English common words.

I've heard most of them but some I don't dare to use because as a foreigner they'd just sound silly. Now I've learnt what Spend a penny and Porridge means at least.

As an update to my previously mentioned 3D sidewalk paintings I give you these new fascinating pics of 3D sidewalk drawings that must not be missed. Enjoy!

Brynhildur kindly points out that the English Semco website can be found on http://semco.locaweb.com.br/ingles/

Not a terribly good website but it works and I can read some more about the company I didn't already know. Since it's a bloody Flash site I can't link to individual pages I'd want you to visit, but when you go there be sure to find the "The SEMCO Management Model" which describes in simple and quick terms what this is all about.

There's also an interesting Timeline animation showing what they were up to in different years. Since I read the "Seven-day Weekend" a lot has changed in terms of their business offering. Nothing of what they do seems mainstream or at least they do well in rephrasing themselfs so that it doesn't sound mainstreamed.

PS. If you want to know why I'm blathering about this corporate website, read my review of The Seven-day Weekend