Hover-dogs

Highest standard of living

Bizarre keyboard shortcut

If anyone reading this is using Vista on a Mac via Boot Camp, please could you tell me whether the keyboard combination Ctrl+Shift (yes, that’s right, just Ctrl+Shift) changes your keyboard mapping? On mine, it switches the mapping between United Kingdom (Apple) and United Kingdom. Most odd. Is this behaviour documented anywhere? It isn’t mentioned in the official Windows Vista Team blog post about keyboard shortcuts in Vista.

It’s not only a very unusual mapping - in that it uses modifier keys only - it’s also an extremely annoying mapping. I frequently use keyboard shortcuts that involve pressing Ctrl+Shift+something, and if I don’t press the something quickly enough, or linger on Ctrl+Shift, my keyboard mapping changes. Worse still, this happens without any feedback until I notice that the keys suddenly aren’t giving me the characters that are printed on them. As a touch typist, who isn’t always looking at his input, this can really slow me down or, alternatively, just mess up my input without me noticing, neither of which is acceptable from such an expensive operating system.

(Incidentally, I’d happily get rid of the United Kingdom setting, which doesn’t match the physical layout of my keyboard’s keys, but Vista won’t let me do so. If I want to use United Kingdom (Apple), Vista insists I must enable United Kingdom as well.)

A partly fictional dialogue with George W. Bush

GWB (to press): He’s the head of a state sponsor of terror, and yet, an institution in our country gives [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] the chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not so sure I’d offer the same invitation, but nevertheless, it speaks volumes about the greatness, really, of America. ^[1]

SPK (as reporter): Mr Bush, you do realise, don’t you, that the comment you’ve just made implies that your own choices do not speak volumes about the greatness of America.

GWB: I’ll, ah, I’ll leave that to the American people to decide.

SPK: Isn’t that a little out of character?

Architectural artefacts

If you look at the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in Beijing in Google Maps at certain zoom levels, it appears to have some odd spikes pointing south from the interior rim of the northern part of the canopy. Are these imaging artefacts, physical structures, or evidence of sloppy editing by a censor?

How to print screen under Boot Camp on a Macbook

The magic, but surprisingly elusive, combination is: Shift+Fn+F11

Documentation generator for shell scripts

I would love to see Doxygen or similar made ready to work with shell scripts out of the box. I’ve consulted Wikipedia’s comparison of documentation generators, but it doesn’t list any as being able to work with shell scripts.

If there’s already something out there that will generate documentation from shell scripts, please tell me about it!

Curved

I had an email from the bike shop people today, who are being remarkably polite about things - at least, compared to many of the London and Cambridge bike shop staff I’ve encountered. The replacement Piccolo frame Dahon sent them is “not compatible” with some of the components on my Piccolo (I assume it is a frame for a Piccolo model of a different vintage to mine), so my new frame will be that of a Dahon Curve.

Crimmed, cracked, curved… What’s next?

A dramatic monologue* that came close to being, but was not, uttered

You don’t know who he was? That’s no excuse, it just shows you’re as lazy and arrogant as you look. You bastard, you goddamn bastard. You should be hanged just like him, for you’re more guilty than he ever was. All of you - the whole damn company - should be put on trial for murder. You’ve got blood on your hands, Charlie, and I never want to see you again.

*About Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Caved

My Piccolo had to be sent back to the dealer to have its frame replaced. After a few days reduced to walking - so slow and time consuming! - I caved in and hired a bicycle.