Every once in a while a phrase I hear in conversation catches my attention. It tends to be something that someone else will use as if it is something everyone is using as a part of regular vocabulary. Over the past two weeks a couple of phrases have captured my imagination because I’d personally not heard them and quite frankly had to seek out their definitions. One evening Aimee was explaining some frustrations with…
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As anyone who starts using Office 2007 likely knows, one of the more dramatic changes is the elimination of traditional menus and toolbars. These have been replaced with what Office calls the Ribbon. The short explanation of this new user interface is that more commands are displayed at a time without having to hunt through various submenus, dialogs and toolbars. While the Office team has done work to try and support Office 2003 hotkeys…
Leave a CommentAs I mentioned in an earlier blog post, at least one U.S. court has said that our currency needs to be made more accessible. Since that time things have heated up a bit. The treasury department has appealed the court decision largely on what the treasury department sees as the cost of making currency accessible. But in their petition to the appeals court, government lawyers argued that varying the size of denominations could…
One CommentI read a lot of news coverage but rarely do I read the same article appearing in two different media sources when one is just a reprint of the other. Today I happened to read two versions of an article talking about the impending execution of Saddam Hussein. The original appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the reprint in the Seattle Times. Sad that the news media does not agree on even two…
Leave a CommentNPR’s Weekend Edition featured accessible audio games today.
Leave a CommentAimee’s been a long time Frank Zappa fan. Not so for me. Quite honestly I’ve never really had much exposure to Frank’s music beyond the times Aimee’s playing it. Even then I guess I tend to notice only the more humorous lines and tunes from his work. Tonight we went to the Zappa Plays Zappa show at the Paramount theater. Dweezil Zappa is taking his father’s music on the road in this show–both trying to…
Leave a CommentThe daily flood of advertising promising to get you a bigger house, lower your mortgage payment or otherwise basically give you free money astounds me. I counted tonight and in 30 minutes of radio and television I was offered no fewer than 10 different opportunities to lower my mortgage, get cash back and the rest of the wild schemes the mortgage industry has come up with to keep the housing shell game going. The…
Comments closedComputer gaming is one of those areas of technology that’s never really held my attention. From time to time I’ll play a card game over on All inPlay or try some of the games described on AudioGames but I find myself quickly losing interest. Then too when I read about people doing things like selling their virtual characters for thousands of dollars or paying folks to play the entry rounds for them in games I…
Leave a CommentSports journalism is an interesting arena. Where else does new grass make headline news. I read ESPN reporting about a new playing surface for Lambeau Field. Then too I still have a box of packaged dirt from a previous resod of Lambeau back when the Packers were playing in Super Bowls. The team sold boxes of the dirt at $10 a pop and donated the money to charity. What won’t sell when a team’s doing…
Leave a CommentEach time I visit Madison I’m astounded by the changes happening in the city. The neighborhoods I once knew like the back of my hand have changed dramatically since I left the city in 1994. Oh sure, I know change is inevitable and all that but each time I read about another of the places I used to visit closing, I feel a twinge of sadness for the city as I knew it. I now…
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