Live from Austin!

Internet Explorer doesn’t render my web site properly. The navigation bars all appear at the bottom, instead of on the right where they belong.

It’s not a bug with the web site; the problem is that IE doesn’t support web standards properly. I’m not interested in working around your buggy browser when you can upgrade to something that works, for free.

Check out the award-winning Mozilla Firefox. It’s much better than IE:

• Firefox helps block viruses, pop-up ads and spyware.
• It’ll let you subscribe to my site and get told about updates automatically.
• It has browser tabs, letting you open multiple pages at once without having to juggle multiple windows.

Mostly for Dan:

“The new controller, in particular, gives the gamer unique control over their monkey’s balls.”

—Sega creative director Matt Woodley, on the new Super Monkey Ball game for the Wii

I feel like I ought to explain the whole Wii thing. Yes, it’s puerile, but that’s incidental. Anusol and Flatulex aren’t particularly funny because the brands reflect what the product is really about; but when you name a video game system after something from the bathroom, then it’s funny. Context. That’s what makes Mike Meyers’ jokes about Preparation-H funny; it’s in an inappropriate context.

I love mocking stupid corporate branding. I found it funny when we were sitting in a bagel shop in Cambridge and saw an Internet terminal branded “NetPecker“; the company went bust, surprise surprise. Otis Spunkmeyer describe their name as “fun and memorable”. Well, yes, sniggering at Spunkmeyer iced brownies is fun, I guess.

Branding disasters don’t have to be bathroom-related to be funny, though. It was stupid for the UK Post Office to rename themselves Consignia; they renamed themselves back a year later. Dumber was the UK railway company that had the stupid idea of naming themselves “One”. Station announcements for the 9:30 One train to London caused confusion, and they had to rename themselves again. Both companies were mocked, deservedly. Childish?

I’m pretty sure renaming PriceWaterhouseCoopers Consulting wasn’t a bad idea, but picking “Monday” as the new name was. The only thing that saved them from professional ridicule was being bought by IBM, who immediately killed the whole “Monday” thing.

Would you believe that a company is trying to sell dog and cat food under the brand name BARF? (Do they sell Kitten BARF and Puppy BARF?) Who at Coca-Cola thought that naming their new drink “Zero” was a good idea? “BlaK” was bad enough, especially at the start when they put a line over the ‘a’ suggesting that it was pronounced “Blake”. (They’ve now changed it to a Coke swoosh.)

Internet branding is full of stupidity. Remember when Palm renamed themselves pa1mOne? (Hint: any brand that’s 1337sp34k is stupid.) I can’t see Samsung’s WiBro taking off, fo’shizzle. And on a more trivial note, what possessed C|net to make all their URLs look like alt.cnet.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork? And the less said about Oui Oui Bebe the better.

Of course, it wasn’t Yeslam Bin Ladin’s fault that his plans for Bin Ladin branded perfume and clothing were ruined, but would you buy a Studebaker Dictator? I guess dictators were all the rage a hundred years ago, and you can still buy Autocrat coffee, though the Aryan supermarket chain Purity Supreme is no longer with us, having been bought by the shrewd but dull brand Stop’n'Shop.

Would you rub Nad’s on your body? Even with the apostrophe, it’s still a terrible brand name. Every time I see Nasalcrom I think of Conan the Barbarian; what do you think Zim’s Crack Creme is for? Worse still is POOLIFE®. Terrible. I can’t believe they went as far as registering it, let alone writing it in all caps.

Magazines pick silly names too. Self, the magazine about the person you love the most. Heeb, the magazine for Jews, current issue “The money issue”. Back in the 80s, Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky joked about a magazine for conspiracy theorists called Popular Paranoia, and now it exists. And at least Crochet Fantasy didn’t decide to call themselves Crochet Rocket.

So is it childish to laugh at such things? Perhaps, but people do it all the time. Childish jokes about sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend have been around for decades. Foreign Engrish remains a source of amusement to thousands. Yes, English isn’t their first language; but even if you’re Japanese or Spanish, you ought to check what your company name might mean in English.

Unfortunately, Nintendo fanboys get all bent out of shape and puritanical when you start mocking their favorite video game company’s products. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the GameCube has been dismissed as a “kiddy game” console for years?

Anyhow, the Nintendo Wiinies are now theorizing that it’s all a cunning publicity stunt, and that the real name for Wii will be revealed next week. Maybe Wii is intentionally awful, like Dogfish Head Golden Shower beer.

I’m doubtful; Japanese companies have a knack for bad product names. Even video game companies—consider Irritating Stick and Radiata Stories. (”I was bleeding the valve one time when scalding water shot out over the carpet…”)

I hope for Nintendo’s sake that that the publicity stunt theory is true. I mean, really, I have nothing against Nintendo—I own a GameCube—and the last thing they need is to attach a childishly silly name to their new console.

And if you want to flame me or call me childish, first tell me you didn’t laugh at any of the above. I’ll tell you that you need a sense of humor.

Nintendo have officially announced the name of their next generation console: Wii. Pronounced ‘wee’. I kid you not.

Congratulations, Nintendo. You’re up against stiff competition, and we weren’t sure you could pull it off; but with a branding decision like this, urine the running for sure. The guy who came up with this name must be a real whiz. How did you think of it? It’s a bit of a riddle, for sure.

No doubt there will be a shower of solid gold hit software—a veritable golden shower of games. You’ll be flush with cash in no time. I can see you being number one in the industry, oh yeah.

I hope you keep the multiple color options, I’m sure kids will love asking each other “What color is your Wii?”. I think the porcelain white looks good myself.

Today was a beautiful day; sunny, a balmy 23 degrees, with a light breeze. Inspired by telling Dan about bikes, I decided to take mine out for a quick spin. I hadn’t ridden it since we moved. I’d been walking for exercise instead, listening to radio shows on the iPod; but today was too good to waste.

About 10km later, I’d spent some time cycling along the waterfront, and I was discovering why they call it the Hill Country. It’s pretty much downhill all the way from home to the river, which made for an exhilerating start to the trip but an exhausting return.

I’ve been watching Life on Mars. The setup is: Manchester police inspector is in the middle of a very tense investigation and turbulent personal situation, when he’s hit by a car. He wakes up, apparently in the same spot, but in 1973. As far as he can tell, he’s really in the past—but from time to time, he also hears sounds that suggest that it’s all his imagination, and he’s really in a coma in a hospital bed in 2006.

He discovers he’s a police officer in 1973 also, and tries to make the best of the situation. The series reconstructs the Britain of 1973 in pretty exacting detail, and plays off the modern sensibility and policing techniques of the protagonist against the Sweeney-style approach. Manchester in the 70s was notorious for police corruption, and so bribery and fit-ups are standard operating procedure for some of his colleagues. The plots are twisty enough that I can’t predict the outcome, there’s a dose of humor now and again, and the series provokes thought about how much has changed in just 30-odd years. It’s the best TV show I’ve seen in years; I’d put it on a par with the new Dr Who. Thank goodness for the BBC.

BBC America will apparently be showing it later this year, so US readers should look out for it. Or, you could watch the inevitable shitty US network TV remake.

AP reports:

Saying surfing the web is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge has suggested that only a reprimand is appropriate as punishment for a city worker accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet.

In his decision, Spooner wrote: “It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.”

He added: “For this reason, city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance. Many agencies apply the same standard to the use of the Internet for personal purposes.”

This is something I’ve been saying for a while in the periodic arguments over whether businesses should try and lock down the Internet to only “approved” sites. Do the same businesses search employees at the door to make sure they don’t bring in newspapers, magazines or mobile phones? Generally not. (If you work for the NSA, your mileage may vary.)

Slacking is a time-honored tradition. If you ban the Internet, people will spend their time talking about last night’s TV, making paper planes, or whatever.

Now, get back to work.

Dole seem to be the major supplier of bananas to the supermarkets of Texas. Each hand of bananas has a Dole sticker on.

But whenever I see the name, I think of Bob Dole, Republican senator and advertiser of Viagra.

So, not entirely what I want to be thinking about when choosing bananas.

It’s a beautiful sunny day. The prickly pear cactus are flowering, doves are cooing, and the occasional vulture soars overhead.

I took a walk down the street to the new grocery store that has just opened. Partial list of items found therein:

Soy milk, tofu, incense sticks, books on graphic design, Belgian chocolate, fresh garlic, goat cheese, Mexican soda, GardenBurgers, organic coffee, San Pellegrino, focaccia, organic honey-sweetened granola.

There was a Prius parked outside too.

For the first time in my life, I just spilt liquid on a computer.

The computer was my ThinkPad; the liquid was plain water, from a glass on my desk. The entry point for the liquid was the usual one, the keyboard. So far, no ill effects; I’ve removed the liquid that got into the DVD drive, and will leave it to dry out.

Of course, this isn’t much of an event. A colleague at work reversed a car over a ThinkPad, which takes much more skill.