Click Frenzy

Australia had its own version of the US Black Friday sales today. It's still going on now, but good luck to anyone who can manage to buy anything at all. Looks like the organisers sorely underestimated the amount of people that want to get on the site. The only click frenzy I was doing was constantly clicking on refresh to try and get past the 'File not found' or 'server too busy' errors.

In a silly mood

I am in a silly mood at the moment, due partially to sleep deprivation, caused by my 5 year old son. In this state, I decided to see how easy it is to set up a Facebook page. Answer is, very easy as long as you are not a terrorist organisation.

You see, it was perfectly easy to set up https://www.facebook.com/superheromrincredible about an ugly superhero but when I tried another page for an organisation named "Al Qaeda", strangely enough Facebook would not allow it.

So I checked why....

Obviously Facebook would only accept this page name from Osama Bin Laden or, perhaps
Ayman al-Zawahiri these days.

Apple iPad Mini

Yes it's smaller.

I don't really have anything more to say about it, but as I usually post something derogative about the newest Apple hype, I wasn't going to let that stop me.

On second thoughts, yes I do have one thing to add...I'm not really sure I like the idea of a seven inch tablet, be it the Google Nexus, the Kindle Fire or whatever. I have to admit, I'm with the late Steve Jobs on this one when he suggested it was too big to be a phone and too small for a tablet.

Anyhoo, now that it's out it will probably ignite a massive market for 7 inchers, and it may even eventually make 10 inchers look big and bloated for most folk.

We'll see.

I am sick of Chrome Instant

I love to Google.I love the way it has become a verb and so it should be as it's definitely an action word. However, I hate the new auto-complete feature known as Google Instant.

For the uninitiated, Instant is a feature that allows Google to 'fill in' the rest of your search before you even type it, based on what you have searched for before, and what others have searched for.

So you might be looking for the Carsales website for example, and you type "car", and sales gets added in at the end without you doing anything. Fine (and rather handy) for the times it gets it right but sometimes extremely annoying when you were actually going to search for "cartography".

I am not a touch typist and therefore when I type I spend the majority of the time staring at the keyboard as I type and then occasionally lift my eyes towards the screen to double-check spelling, typos etc. So it maddens me no end when I am typing into the Chrome address bar, and what I have typed is now been deemed by Google Gods to be something completely different.

For example, today I typed "Canterbury Council" and got "Canterbury Council elections, who to vote for". Not what I was looking for.

It's usually worse when you are trying to type a short word such as "spa" and before you look up you hit enter. Then when you do look up at the screen you realise you have googled "sparklebox" (huh?)

It seems to be a problem relating to Chrome Instant, not Google Instant. At least with Google Instant the suggestions appear below the box and you need to actually select the choice. Chrome just replaces the result automatically. 

By the way, I did read the other day that it has caused a bit of a problem in France, when it suggested the French word for "crook" at the end of a search for an Insurance Company name, and also 'prostitute' after a politician's wife's name search. Whoops.

For those interested here's the link to the "how to's" for disabling the feature

How to disable Chrome Instant

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177873

How to disable Google Instant

https://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&form=bb&answer=186645

Censored by the Sydney Morning Herald

I made a comment on this article in the Herald today. It got rejected. Seems you can't criticise journalists on their website. Yet, they'd be the first ones heralding (pun intended) freedom of speech if someone censored them.

My Muslim Mates..

There's a lot of negative media reports recently about the recent disruption in the Sydney centre by a group of protestors who were there to protest against an anti-Islamic film which apparently appeared in some version on YouTube.

From my experience in protests over the years, I hold an open mind over who provoked the violence that ensued, but any way you look at it it cast a pretty bad shadow on Muslims everywhere.

There has also been some interesting debate since, about whether Muslims should be falling over themselves to apologise for the tiny minority that caused all the fuss, as society would not expect such things from other religious groups (Christians being a good example).

Personally, I think the current Islamaphobia inflamed by the press in Australia is a joke and should be countered by any possible means people have on hand. Which brings me to the below video, produced by the Community Relations Commission for A Multicultural NSW entitled #MyMuslimMatesAre

Cranky old man?

A friend of mine called me today to tell me she'd come across my blog, and what a cranky old man I'd become.

So, in light of this, can I just say that the world is lovely and everything is coming up roses (whatever that means).