Last skylight from 2008 in Noumea, New Caledonia.
Last skylight from 2008 in Noumea, New Caledonia.
Don't you think that, in 2003, it's an absolute shame that a character as common as ç can still cause such trouble for most information technologies out there? [...] I can't tell you how many times a day I struggle with registration systems, cookies, etc. that cannot properly swallow my first name. François is my second name :(.
I think I've found the worst example of the US ASCII monoculture with Offbeat Guides. Here's what it does with my first name, François:
Spooky. Is it really that hard for American coders to learn about something else than US ASCII? Is Unicode an extra-terrestrial character encoding that's unknown of or out of reach for you guys?
Apparently, exporting IT jobs to Mumbai didn't help a bit ;-p.
For the record, Joel Spolsky wrote The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) in 2003 with this pearl:
So I have an announcement to make: if you are a programmer working in 2003 and you don't know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, I'm going to punish you by making you peel onions for 6 months in a submarine. I swear I will.
P.S. Wow, I got a response from David Sifry exactly 3 minutes after I sent them an email to point this out. That was fast! It's a bug, not a design misconception, as he tells me everything is stored as UTF-8 internally.
]]>I will no longer put up with this. And you, my readers, are going to help me.
Nice wish from Josh Bernoff. Now we'll see how long, and well, that goes along with Forrester (as in "It might not be human to call out prospects or customers like that" ;-p).
]]>Awesome! (Some ducks are getting really friendly at the end ;-)
]]>Disclaimer: I've happily worked with Happycog in the past and, while first approaching Jeffrey Zeldman and Douglas Bowman for a big redesign five years ago, I've been extremely careful to hide a certain number of those traits — unfortunately common to the inner politics of many companies — beforehand and, more importantly, to shield the working team from them during the whole project. Funnily, although not really a coincidence, I gave a speech last month at Paris Web 2008 around the same tell-tales, signs for trouble, as seen from the other side of the mirror: the client's side. (It's in French, but not everything has to be written in English ;-), sorry.)
I guess it boils down to learning how to work with people, not just get people to work for you. (And do I need to explain that working with great people is infinitely more fulfilling than working for anyone?)
]]>That won't probably be the same scale in France, due to a more restrictive legislation (banks can sit down on bad debts if there is the slightest proof that they irresponsibly lent money to someone), but the current crisis doesn't seem to have any effect on the plethora of pre-approved credit offers that continue to fly by mail.
]]>P.S. to Californians, you have it backwards.
]]>P.S. Yes I missed these stories:
- Can You Count on Voting Machines? where "some Santorum voters complained that the iVotronics “flipped” their votes before their eyes". [Thanks Pierre for the link]
- Votes Reportedly Flipping from Repub to Dem in TN. [Found from Mark Crispin Miller's site]
[T]he well-organised villain struck as an armoured van was picking up cash from the a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Washington. Wearing a dust mask, safety goggles, dayglo vest and a blue shirt, he pepper-sprayed a security guard and grabbed a bag of cash before fleeing briskly.
Responding plods were hampered in their pursuit by the fact that a dozen other dayglo-vested, masked, goggled and blue-shirted men had congregated in the vicinity - just as the legion of bowler-hatted suits assembled in New York's Metropolitan museum in the latest Thomas Crown film fatally embugger the authorities' efforts to bracelet the eponymous billionaire blagger.
In this case, it appears that the anonymous miscreant recruited his unsuspecting dupes on Craigslist.
King5.com quotes one of them, named "Mike", as saying "I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour."
The ad purported to be hiring workers for a road maintenance job. After responding, Mike was emailed instructions to turn up at the bank wearing vest, goggles, mask "and, if possible, a blue shirt," he said.
This is the best flashmob ever.
(Who said mobs are smart, already? ;-)
]]>My last good laugh at it is from a box of Carman's "Original Fruit-Free Muesli". After the compulsory "100% Australian Made and Owned", we find this fantastic declaration (emphasis is mine):
We always try our best to source our quality ingredients from Australian farmers. Unfortunately, that is not always possible and sometimes we have to import ingredients from other countries.
What an horror! Shame on those Australian farmers who force Australian muesli-lovers to eat imported junk from overseas(*). Shock and awe!
And I gotta love this last one: "Proudly Printed on 95% Australian Recycled Board." That leaves us with infinite speculations about the remaining 5% of that board. Not recycled? Imported? As inconceivable as it seems, could it possibly be both?
No, seriously, what is this compulsive need for displaying proudness all about? You've got a continent of your own and you're afraid of the outside world?
Note:
(*) Which can be the only explanation for that piece of tooth-breaking stone we found in this Carman muesli pack.
Methink, reading Andrew Anker's comment about Vox, that I should try something about anonymous comments: register with a valid email address or pay 1€ for commenting anonymously ;-).
]]>This may, or may not, have an impact on this blog. I've discussed the subject of separating my professional writings from my personal ones over the years, but I've done that more on my french blog than here. Although I started this blog in english about 6 years ago, my french blog has taken precedence and has grown quite differently. I've become used to writing more freely and in a more eclectic way in french, and to reducing my writings here to more technical, less personal subjects. Also, and that adds a bit to my frustration, my French audience is significantly more vocal and contributing than the anglophone one, making me less and less motivated to continue a standalone professional blog in english (under my personal "brand" that is).
That is not to say that I will stop writing in english. But this 6-year old adventure of mixing pro and personal blogging in two languages under the same roof is likely to end soon. Unless you tell me otherwise, or unless I suddenly find the right way to design such a site properly for once.
]]>