On my desktop PCs, the only Microsoft Word I ever had a licence for was 97. I had 2001 on a Dell laptop at the turn of the century, and by then, it had already turned into a monster when it came to exporting HTML code. So much irrelevant crap in there. Its predecessor was far cleaner.
Itâs never been my main word processor. Right now Iâm typing on WordPerfect, which Iâve used for over 30 years. The codes make sense, itâs far easier to use, and any Word diehards I recommended WordPerfect to (this was a long time ago) preferred itâonly to convert back in time as Word became the standard after Microsoft bundled it with Windows.
WordPerfect, apart from its handling of Unicode internally, remains superior, and you are reminded of that when you import Word documents. Sometimes the document will crashâa Word import can even crash InDesign and risk an entire issueâs workâand itâs not difficult to see why.
Below is the Reveal Codes window in WordPerfect showing an imported Word document. Word will output to HTML with all this extra junk, too. Itâs a shame that computing, like so many endeavours, is not one where the best solution wins the market. Ubiquity does that, even when the result is inefficient, unwieldy, and potentially loses you your work.
Agreed. They claim I let someone into my Associates' account as their reason for not paying my earnings. It's utter BS and they can't tell me who this mystery person is. Maybe their computers are this insecure?!
Yes they are. I explained I had unique passwords, additional security software, no one had access to my computer etc but their line is âitâs not us itâs youâ. The ICO upheld my complaint. @amazon would not accept responsibility. https://t.co/WnbHuWiASE
Itâs clearly a policy. Cheap products were bought from my account at exorbitant prices and sent to me. They tried to say first Iâd committed fraud. When I invoiced the ICO they said I had breached my data. When I explained why it wasnât possible they started sending me money.
You read correctly: Amazon is just as dodgy as the others I’ve criticized publicly. Just that I hadn’t got around to them on this blog, because there had been a lengthy dialogue and I wanted to get more facts. But above is where I’ve got to so far, and it seems I’m not alone.
A decade separates these two incarnations of Lucireâs shopping home page. Some Facebook gadgets were added during the 2010s and the magazine cover was updated, but it was woefully out of date and needed to be refreshed.
Itâs very unusual for us to go into the less-frequented pages in Lucire and adapt them to a new template before doing a major one such as the fashion index page. But sometimes you go with the creative flow, so it was the turn of the âNewsstandâ pages plus the shopping home page, which hadnât been updated in seven years (and most of it hadn’t been touched for ten).
Needless to say, on the latter, almost everything was out of date. Weâve removed the links to the shopping directory, which last existed to support the print magazine as it was in the mid-2000s. Since then, we havenât really had a shopping section in print, and we ceased to update it much online.
What was disappointing to note, after my lament about the disappearance of so many fashion websites earlier this year, that even more had closed down, so much so that the three âNewsstandâ pages have come back down to two (as it was in the 2000s). There are still some that have not been updated in years, but we have maintained the links for historical purposes.
Poking about the directories did lead me to lucire.com/xp, a framed page with content for our mobile edition in 2000 that was compatible with Plucker. Long before cellphones became the norm, we were already catering for portable devices. I knew we had a Plucker edition, but had forgotten about the xp directory till tonight.
The copy on that page reads, âLucire Express was the hand-held version of Lucire, powered by Plucker. With more recent developments in syndication and content management, support for Express has been discontinued.â
It seemed logical that cellphone browsers would be developed to reduce the content of high-res pages to make them readable, but that is yet to happen (unless one goes into a simplified view mode). To think that programmers found a way to do that in the 2000s. How times have changed, with what appears to be a slowing down of innovationâforcing us to adapt to the technology (developing mobile-friendly themes in-house) rather than the other way round.
Originally noted at NewTumbl, this is the sort of stuff that can annoy me in films.
This is a scene from Rocketman, where Elton John (Taron Egerton) arrives at the Troubador in Los Angeles in 1970. Car people, spot the problems.
If you’re like me, you’re going: Elton’s in a 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Car, thereâs a 1981 Chevrolet Caprice going by, past a parked 1975 Ford Thunderbird and a 1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Not being American, I may be off by one model year, but my point still stands.
To think they re-created the posters, the extras’ clothes in the ‘I’m Still Standing’ video, even the fur coats, but they couldn’t source a few motors. I really liked this movie, and scenes like this throw you out of its finely constructed world and you realize it’s just a film.
Sources
Volkswagen Gol G4âmore at Autocade.
The fake friends of social media being the junk food equivalent of real friendships, from this post by Umair Haque.
Stay at home, wear a maskâgeek humour shared from Twitter. Thaikila swimwearâseems to have an interesting history.
More on the Fiat 124 Sport Spider here at Autocade.
Jerry Inzerillo, first male on the cover of an issue of Lucire anywhere in the world, in this case the August 2021 issue of Lucire KSA. The story can be found here on our website.
It does seem the sun is setting, after 25 years, on Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei on RTL.
Last week, the network released three episodes from 8.15 p.m., and to heck with the low ratings of the last episode which would be far too late for younger viewers. Theyâre doing the same this week, and finishing up the season next week with the two last ones made.
Itâs no secret that the viewer numbers have been falling year after year, especially after the departure of Tom Beck, and the long-running actioner costs a lot to makeâtoo much for a show that now nets around the 2 million mark each week, with increased competition from other networks and forms of entertainment.
Last year, the show was revamped again, but unlike previous efforts, this was a very bumpy and massive reset. Shows donât always do well after this, especially a revamp that was bigger than Martial Law abandoning most of its original cast in season 2 as well as not resolving the season 1 cliffhanger. Or each of the incarnations of Blackadder. Cobra 11 survived most earlier revamps, such as the seasons with Vinzenz Kiefer, because it maintained some continuity. We didnât mind the anachronisms and the inconsistencies as long as the heart of the show was there. Over the first two decades, there was a humanity to the show, regardless of how much haters think it was a shallow actioner, and by that I refer to the home life of the main character, Semir Gerkhan, portrayed by ErdoÄan Atalay.
Viewers invested a lot into Semir and Andrea, and even with the 2014â15 seasons, we could count on that behind the emotional core of the series. It didnât matter that the bright, cheerful years of Beck had become a sombre-keyed drama, with the happy coupleâs marriage on the rocks, Semir sporting a full beard and not his goatee, and a major story arc. It was a return to the actionâcomedy tradition in 2016 with Daniel Roesner taking over from Kiefer, who I was surprised to see later in Bulletproof.
Semir and Andrea: the emotional heart of Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11.
With Roesnerâs departure, producers sought to get rid of everyone else on the show, wrapping up their storylines, so that 2020 would begin with only Atalay and Gizem Emre, who joined the cast in 2014, reprising their roles. We can deal with Semir pairing up with a female partner for the first time in 24 years (Vicky Reisinger, played by Pia Stutzenstein), having a new boss (a disabled character played by an able-bodied actor, Patrick Kalupa; and since we never had an episode about how the character became disabled, it seems a slap in the face to not cast a disabled actor), and an irritatingly dark set. But Andrea and the kids have been written out, not mentioned again; enter Semirâs estranged mother, who only became estranged a couple of seasons ago, since the character said previously that he called her every Christmas. To all intents and purposes, this was a new show with little connection to the old. And I think they may have gone one step too far in their efforts to present something new to viewers.
There is a slight return to the structures of the older scripts in this second block of season 25, with an emphasis on the stories over the action (as there had been at the start). There are moments where you even recognize the show. But if the first half of the season had put you off, you never would have found out, especially since RTL hasnât even bothered to show the action scenes in many of the press photos.
The scheduling is exactly what youâd expect a network to do in order to kill a show, to say that the average viewer numbers had dropped again, too far to be viable. Itâs the sort of show that might have a TV movie or two later on, but for now, Iâm not that surprised there are statements that this 25th season (28th, if you believe the network) is the last âsein wirdâ (for now). Another retooling for the 26th so it could return? Or time to wrap it all up?
I donât think it bodes well for us fans, unless they can tap into the Zeitgeist again for something that modern viewers are going to love.
Being self-employed my whole adult life, I havenât exactly been let go from actual employment, but there have been some gigs, paid and unpaid, that came to an end without me expecting it.
Iâve never been sore about losing them, but I donât agree with the way they were done.
Gig 1. Did a quarterly task for these folks, which soon became a monthly one. Lasted 14 years and was either the longest-serving or second-longest-serving in that capacity. Let go in a group email.
Gig 2. Voluntary one, told that I wouldnât be needed because the organization was going in a new direction. I wouldnât be replaced because of this new format. Found out later that there was no new format and I was replaced. Would it have hurt to tell the truth? After all, I replaced the previous person, and I would have been fine with them needing a fresh face. Itâs not as though I made any money off them!
Gig 3. Another voluntary one. Hadnât heard anything but then I usually didnât till pretty late in the game. Except this time I had to chase them up, given how late things got. When do you need me? Found out I was replaced and that the decision had been made months earlier. I was the last to know. Offered some inconsequential consolation, but no apology. Ironically this happened as my influence in this particular area grew substantially overseas, so the help I could have given them was immense, so bad luck and bad timing to that mob. Bridges burned.
Iâve let a few people go in the pastâone had so many allegations against him (theft, sexual harassment) that with hindsight I wonder why we took so long. Given the anonymous (and ineffective and illogical) letters heâs sent to some of my most loyal colleagues, I think heâs still sore. Others had to be let go when the financial winds blew against us. But Iâm pretty sure they all knew why.
The only mysterious one from our companies was one person who claimed I cut him off and stopped using his writing services. It was a complete lieâhe just vanished. At one point we re-established contact. We agreed to put it down to an email glitch (although this person regularly phoned me and stopped doing so, but in the interests of moving on, I let it go). Years later, he did it againâjust disappeared. He told a mutual friend of ours the same lie, that I ceased to have anything to do with him. I relayed the above story to that friend but I could see she didnât believe meâtill he did it to her a few years later!
