Yodel redefines the word Safe while John Lewis redefines Eco-Friendly

Last week-end I visited the John Lewis web site and bought a couple of Buiani folding chairs. I was advised that they would be delivered within 7 days via a standard delivery service, as opposed to the specialist delivery service you get when you buy larger items and who are very good.

So when I came back home on Wednesday night, I found a very large (more on that later) cardboard box outside my front door and in the letter box was this delivery notice:

Yodel delivery notice

You will note how they checked the a safe place box. They actually left the parcel outside my front door. Luckily I live in a relatively safe place so theft is unlikely. On the other hand, leaving an unprotected cardboard box outside, in London, in January, with something inside that may suffer from getting wet strikes me as a tad optimistic. Or did check the weather forecast before leaving the box outside?

Another thing that I found rather puzzling was the size of the box. It would have made sense had it contained normal chairs. But folding ones: surely they'd be shipped folded? All was revealed when I opened the box:

The big box

You will note the green stickers on the left side of the chairs with the FSC logo advising me that those chairs are made from wood from well-managed forests. Brilliant! Unfortunately the amount of Air Pad packaging filling in the box probably offsets all eco-friendly credentials imparted by the FSC logo. On the plus side, it probably means that I now have enough air pads to send presents to my two nieces until they reach adult age (uncles are meant to spoil nieces and nephews, that's part of the job description).

Crash of the Day

Received today from a colleague:

Please note that if somebody opens Build log excel in Microsoft excel 2007 and updates it while a filter put on any column, the file crashes.

So please avoid updating the build log in Microsoft excel 2007.

So we're talking about a fairy simple file created in Excel 2003 that crashes Excel 2007 if you try to update it while a filter is set on any column... Sigh...

Outlook Error

In the meaningless error category, let me present today's effort by Microsoft Outlook:

Web Site "Optimisation"

Seen today on a web site that shall remain nameless:

This web site has been optimized for use with Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.7 and above. Get your free browser update today.

I had to double-check my calendar to make sure I hadn't accidentally walked into a Tardis and been sent back to the last millennium.

Negative Unread Messages

Here's what LinkedIn had to say about my message summary today:

So I have a negative number of unread messages... Does it mean I've got to unread one of them to bring the counter back to zero?

It's all relative

I'm in Peru. We just spent a couple of days around the Cañon de Colca, one of the deepest canyons in the world. The place where we stayed last night, Chivay, is at 3700 metres above sea level and on the way there we stopped at a viewpoint that was 4900 metres above sea level, higher than Mont Blanc. The area around Chivay and the canyon is lush and green and if it wasn't for the thin air, you'd easily forget that you are at an altitude that is higher than most of the Alps' ski resorts.

Nobody told the locals either, as explained by one of the girls in the group this morning: she asked the landlady of the hotel where she stayed overnight whether she kept llamas or alpacas, to which the landlady replied "we don't do that here, only in the mountains". That'd be the steep bits above 4000 metres that we see in the distance then.

Bootnote

This was written on the bus between Chivay and Puno yesterday and uploaded today.

Updated Cow Analogy

I just received the following by email:

After the recent teetering-on-the-edge-of-total-economic-and-financial-meltdown couple of weeks it seems economic systems and their workings have pushed their way into the need-to-know-category. Well, we can now simplify this all by explaining 9 economic models with cows.

Socialism

You have 2 cows.

You give one to your neighbour.

Communism

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and gives you some milk.

Fascism

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and sells you some milk.

Nazism

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both and shoots you.

Bureaucratism

You have 2 cows.

The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

Traditional Capitalism

You have 2 cows.

You sell one and buy a bull.

Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.

You sell them and retire on the income.

An American Corporation

You have 2 cows.

You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.

Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

2008 Venture Capitalism

You have 2 cows.

You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

Parcel Delivered on Time Shocker!

I was expecting a parcel delivered today. As usual I was quoted a delivery time of between 8am and 6pm, which meant I was stuck at home until it arrived. I was fully expecting to wait all day, make several calls to the courier company and not get the goods delivered today, as has happened several times in the past and as recounted by Toastboy and Coofer Cat. But how wrong I was: the parcel was delivered before 10am by a courteous and smiling driver!

So credit where credit is due: well done DPD, it was perfect and I shall feed this back to the supplier.

Vegetarian Pie

Seen on the Pies of the Day board at Eat today:

Vegetarian: Fisherman's Pie

Maybe Eat are run by French people?

Getting One Back on Traffic Wardens

I was in France last week and heard this story on the radio. Apparently, a woman who was appearing in court for a large number of parking offences walked out free and escaped a fine because the law doesn't actually say that you have to prominently display the parking slip given by the meter. Therefore you can't prove that she hadn't paid the parking fee.

Pixel Lapse

I recently came across this small application called pixel-lapse. The basic principle sounds interesting: record a webcam image one pixel at a time. From the photo gallery on the web site, it looks like you get the most interesting results when part of the image is static and part of it moves. So I decided to give it a go and here's the first shot:

Working at the computer

Interesting result indeed! Shame about the watermark though. I'd happily pay a few quid for a version without the watermark but it doesn't seem to be an option on the web site.

In The Beginning

I received this story by email from a friend and it made me laugh out loud so I thought I had to share it. Enjoy!

In the beginning God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, with green, yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's bountiful gifts, Satan created Dairy Ice Cream and Magnums. And Satan said: You want hot fudge with that? And Man said: Yes! And Woman said: I'll have one too with chocolate chips. And lo they gained 10 pounds.

And God created the healthy yoghurt that woman might keep the figure that man found so fair.

And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 12 to size 14.

So God said: Try my fresh green salad. And Satan presented Blue Cheese dressing and garlic croutons on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said I have sent you healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them.

And Satan brought forth deep fried coconut king prawns, butter-dipped lobster chunks and chicken fried steak, so big it needed its own platter, and Man's cholesterol went through the roof.

Then God brought forth the potato: naturally low in fat and brimming with potassium and good nutrition.

Then Satan peeled off the healthy skin and sliced the starchy centre into chips and deep-fried them in animal fats adding copious quantities of salt. And Man put on more pounds.

God then brought forth running shoes so that his Children might lose those extra pounds.

And Satan came forth with a cable TV with remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering light and started wearing stretch jogging suits.

Then God gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite.

And Satan created McDonald's and the 99p double cheeseburger. Then Satan said You want fries with that? and Man replied: Yes, and super size 'em. And Satan said: It is good. And Man and Woman went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed... and created quadruple by-pass surgery.

And then... Satan chuckled and created the NHS.

For those who don't live in the UK, the NHS is the National Health Service and the subject of many a joke and disaster stories.

The Dangers of Alcohol

I am in Chesterfield tonight, for work. I just had dinner with colleagues and came back to my hotel, picked up the key from reception and started walking back towards my room. On the way there, I met a couple who had had a few too many drinks. They were so pickled with booze that they first needed a few minutes to identify which room was theirs. Then they realised that inserting the key into the lock was way too challenging so they asked me for help. I obliged and the lady managed to spittle a drunken thank you. I have the feeling that tomorrow morning will be a difficult time for them both.

Road Rage

Why is it that being at the wheel of a car transforms most reasonable people in arrogant aggressive maniacs? I was just walking down the road when I saw this guy change lane, cutting off the driver behind in the process. Of course, the guy behind sounded his horn briefly to tell him he wasn't too happy about that manoeuvre. And what did the guy in front do as a result? Show him the finger. Well done for being an arse!

Gmail Spam Filter

Gmail used to have the best spam filter ever: I would never get spam in my inbox. In fact, until a few weeks ago I would have been unable to say when was the last time I had pressed the Report Spam button. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks, I've been clicking on that button more and more, the last time being 5 minutes ago. I only get a few a day at the moment but the worrying thing is that they are all email that look like they should be blocked by the most brain dead of spam filters. Is something broken in the Googleplex? In their relentless attempts at blocking the more devious spam messages, did they accidentally break something in the code that was blocking the simple ones?

Estate Agents' Reading Skills

After wondering at the Labour Party's members' reading skills, I now worry about the same skills with estate agents. I just had one of them trying to open my door in order to show a flat to a customer, when in fact he wanted the flat next door. Of course his keys didn't work. Now, my door has a big letter A on it, while the next door has a big letter B. This is meant as a clue that my flat is flat A, while flat B is next door. But apparently, that was way too complicated for him.

British Gas Customer Service

Unusually, I was home early tonight. I got a knock on my door so I went and opened.

Hello, I am from British Gas, can I ask you a few questions?

Yes, sure.

Can I ask you why you cancelled your electricity contract with British Gas?

I never had electricity through British Gas, I only buy gas from you.

Ah... So you never had electricity supplied by us? And you would not be interested in buying electricity from us, in addition to gas?

No.

Why not? We have good prices, you could save a lot of money.

I am happy with my current supplier.

Ah... OK, thank you, good night!

So now British Gas know that I only buy gas and not electricity from them. That's progress. It's only taken them 6 years to realise.

Labour Party's Reading Skills

I just got a call from a member of the Labour Party. I suppose they got my details from the Electoral Register. If so, said register clearly specifies that I am a French citizen. Therefore, asking me what party I was planning to vote for at the next General Election was quite senseless as I cannot vote for General Elections. Someone should teach the members of the Labour Party (and the others) basic skills like reading, that would save them quite a few phone calls.

Bad Interface Design

Apple Computers are reknown for some of the best user interfaces. Like everybody else, they can occasionally get it wrong. I just had an amusing example of this. If you go to the HSBC web site and download any of their PDF documents such as their terms and conditions, you will notice that there is a slight bug that adds ;jsessionid= followed by a lot of gobbledygook at the end of the file name, after the extension, thus producing a file with an unusually long extension that OS-X doesn't recognise. So the first thing you'd want to do is change that file name and remove all the jsessionid malarkey at the end of the file name. When you do that, OS-X thinks you want to change the extension and are in risk of ending up with a file name it can't handle automatically. So it warns you and asks if you really want to do this, assuming you don't, as shown below:

Error dialogue with inaccessible button

In this example, you can just about see the other button pushed all the way left and therefore click on it as you really, really want to change that extension. But if you had just one more letter or if you changed the j in the ID for an M, the right button would be that little bit much wider and the left button would completely disappear. As you can't change the dialogue window's size, you're stuffed and you have no choice but to click on the highlighted button and leave your file name as is. The only way I found around this is to open the terminal and use the command line to change the name. That's one thing that OS-X has going for it: as it's UNIX underneath, you can always bypass the user interface when it gets in the way. On the other hand, that's not something that is very accessible to the average user.

There are a couple of solutions that Apple could apply to their dialogue boxes when such a problem occurs:

• make the dialogue window's resizable and/or scrollable;
• extend the window accordingly, although you'd get the same problem if you got to stupid extension lengths as long as the width of the screen;
• make the buttons stack up and extend the window vertically.

The moral of the story is: when designing user interfaces, test them with very stupid values that make it break. Someone is bound to use such values one day or another, if only by accident.

Word of the Day

Dictionary.com's word of the day is potboiler. No, I didn't know it either. There you go, you learn something new every day.