Christopher Mackay’s Blog

arial or helvetica? a quiz from iliveonyourvisits.com.

It’s easy — the ugly one is either Helvetica or Arial.

A computer shop’s sales pitch: ‘We remove Vista’

From what I hear, Microsoft’s actually done a reasonably good job of improving security in Vista, but people really seem to hate it.

I still haven’t used Vista (XP & XP pro on the non-Macs here), and I’ve only seen it on one person’s laptop in the wild, and that person loved it (but found some of the changes to where things are stored took some getting used to, as compared to XP).

Sonic Solutions Online Store - Shopping Cart

So, I decide to get the new version of Roxio’s Toast, because Toast 7 is not Leopard-compatible.

But they have the audacity to charge a $16 premium for Canadian customers. At today’s exchange rate, $99.99 US equals $99.53 Canadian, but instead of fifty cents off, we get charged $115.99! If they think I’m willing to be ripped-off just for the privilege of not living in the United States, they’re nuts.

Interestingly, I’ve discovered that there’s upgrade pricing that does more closely follow recent exchange rates: the upgrade from Toast 7 is $59.99 US or $59.93 Canadian. That’s better. Now I’ll buy.

They also have a $20 rebate on the full product. But instead of selling the software at a discount, they take the sleazy route and do it as a mail-in, even though you’re buying direct from the manufacturer. Talk about a transparent attempt to skim extra profit from customers too lazy to bother. I suppose I should be happy the rebate’s not for $19.91 Canadian…

Things are improving, though: when I bought Toast 7 about a year ago, the rebate was only valid in the United States, something they didn’t bother pointing out until after the transaction was completed. Beyond contempt.

Katemonkey.co.uk: X-UA-Lemur-Compatible: “Lemur 11: It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had an Internet riot. Let’s go for it.”

The blue Zeldman toque is an instant internets classic.

(Via Digital Web.)

YouTube - ZENN on the Rick Mercer Report: Zero Emissions, No Noise. Of course, there are emissions, they come from the power plant, not the car’s tailpipe (it doesn’t have one).

According to Who Killed The Electric Car?, though, even coal-fired power plants are radically more efficient than gasoline-powered cars, so it’s still a major net-benefit (6 fewer tonnes of carbon emissions a year per car, according to the president of Zenn).

5min - Penn & Teller: How to Do the Saw Trick - Video: breaking the magician’s code.

YouTube - Google Maps: OMG this is funny… This is what YouTube was made for.

(Via Digg, natch.)

Twittering From My Newton on Flickr - Photo Sharing!: Grant Hutchinson out-geeks us all…

I really should fire up the old eMate again…

(Via John Moltz.)

5min - How Evolution Happens - Video: an interesting visualization of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

(Via Digg.)

Apple’s calendar software, iCal, has taken unfortunate steps backwards in Leopar, Mac OS X 10.5, which were not remedied by the 10.5.1 update.

When users of iCal under Mac OS X 10.4.x invite users of 10.5.x to an event, the behaviour is quite different than it used to be. Regardless of the calendar the sender had assigned an event to (e.g. Home, Work, etc.), when inviting a Leopard iCal user, the event arrives as part of the Home calendar.

Worse, it’s impossible to edit the event or its notification/reminder. You can’t change the Calendar to which it belongs, it will have a 15 minute alert — even when the sender chose an hour — and there’s no way to confirm or decline the invite.

Here’s hoping 10.5.2 addresses some of these issues.