Grumpy Old People

Google maps let me down again

I definitely don't live here.

But who does live at 9504, E 63rd St, Raytown MO, 64133?

The google maps search for "my house" must work for at least one person.

Punky Grumpy Re-design

Bruce Lawson has published the mission statement for his soon to be re-designed site:

• crap/ missing images
• broken permalinks
• dismally formatted text
• incomprehensible sequencing and chronology
• random disruption to the look and feel
• highly irregular posting.

I hope that the whole site uses newsprint text.

And he really must keep his psychopathic, chucky-esque 404 error page.

MP Idol

Too busy to produce a site, so I redirected mpidol.com instead.

The Usability of Singing Telephone Numbers

Bloody hell this really annoys me... People do it, businesses do it and it drives me crazy.

So, I get a message on my phone and they leave a number to call.... and they sing it... so sodding fast I have no hope of ever writing it down.

Now, to the person saying that number, it has become etched on their brain, so it rolls off the tongue very very quickly... But for the listener, it's new... chances are even the STD code is new... I just had a call I had to listen to 4 times to get the number... and because I'm not an ansaphone power user, I haven't learned the key codes to replay something, that meant 4 calls, each time getting more pissed off.

In terms of saying your telephone number, singing it (how you remember it) is NOT USER CENTRED... It's bloody self centered.... For instance... I could be struggling to find a pen, with traffic in the background, trying to swap hands as I start writing amonst another million things...

So, when leaving a number on my, or anyone else's ansaphone, break up the STD code (maybe saying "O1" as a separate entity) , break the number into collections of threes or fours (works for me), leave pauses and say it slowly and clearly... please....!

Can I respond to BBC complaints?

The BBC have a great complaints site where you can read some of the complaints they receive alongside the responses from the BBC.

This Dr Who complaint consisted of the statement : "Episode three of Doctor Who was too scary to broadcast at 7pm".

The BBC then gave a pathetic response that "The series has always been shown in the early evening and, while the monsters may be scary, the content is carefully considered for a pre-watershed audience."

I would have responded with this:

"Yes, it was bloody scary wasn't it! The purpose of Dr Who is to scare the hell out of children so that they have vivid memories of the nightmares induced by the show. This will ensure that they always associate the BBC with fond memories of their childhood as they will have forgotten all about Ant and Dec by the time they are 25."

And you may like to read my complaint that I have just passed onto the BBC.

Women and men

There were hundreds of papers and posters presented at last week's British Psychological Society conference, and much press interest (we even had a press conference for our own symposium), but the one all the newspapers published the next day was that...women are far grumpier than men.

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=343462005