gareth.halfacree.co.uk

Those poor apostrophes keep getting abused – left out in the cold in places they have no right being.

Take, for example, this woeful tale of a poor innocent apostrophe who found himself sandwiched between “DVD” and “s” at the Asda Living store in Forster Square, Bradford.

Clearly there was some twisted logic in the minds of his tormentors: after all, you use an apostrophe to indicate missing letters, right?  The ultimate D in DVD stands for “Disc”, which means there are missing letters – ergo an apostrophe is required, right?

Sadly for our poor, misused apostrophe: wrong.  An apostrophe, as I’m sure you are aware, never pluralises.  Remember: no means no.

Walking is fun. It gets you from A to B, and you don’t have to pay increased fuel duty.

Last Sunday I got to have extra fun walking thanks to the City of Bradford Metropoliton District Council – specifically, the Countryside division thereof – which organises guided walks around Bradford’s greener bits.

Described as the “Thornton Viaduct” walk, I was a bit disappointed that we weren’t going via the viaduct – it was closed for repairs – but it was a wonderful trip nonetheless.  Lovely sunshine, and the second half of the six-and-a-bit mile walk was via an alpaca and ostrich farm.  Geotagged images are available on Panoramio.

Walk details follow:

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Having been disappointed at missing out on buying the major Korean animated film Sky Blue – the chap in CEX was unable to find where they’d put the discs – I treated myself to a copy on Amazon.

When it arrived, I was thrilled to see that the two-disc collectors’ edition comes with a “limited edition film cell.”  Eager to see what snippet of this pretty impressive bit of animation – which combines miniature work with CG backdrops and hand-drawn 2D character animations – I had received, I opened the box and got out the card.

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It seems that Microsoft is scoring a bit win in the netbook sector, with claims doing the rounds that Windows XP has gone from a mere 10% of the market in February last year to 96% now.

As someone who uses – and likes – Ubuntu on most of his hardware, this is a surprise.  Sadly, it’s not that surprising – most people will always vote for the status quo.

I did write an article for Bit-Tech on the matter, but a real journalist did the same.  Accordingly, here’s the article that never made it:

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My laptop is now officially Powered by Ubuntu, thanks to System 76 and the Linux Emporium.

To snag yourself some free Ubuntu stickers, simply pop a self addressed envelope across to:

The Linux Emporium
Bridge House
17a Maybrook Road
Sutton Coldfield
Birmingham
B76 1AL UK

They’ll drop a pack of four by return of post.  I think you’ll agree that it looks much nicer than the old “Designed for Windows Vista” sticker it replaces.