Feb 8, 2006

Que Syrah^4 part 1

Lovely. a Blog Ring experiment.

I spent tonight in a wonderful restaurant with many of my Liberty Alliance cohorts. A splendid dining experience in food, spirits and company. "La Sora Lellea". _VERY_ highly recommended, and a very fine Sicilian Syrah (x 4 bottles).

Located on the the Tiber river island of Isola Tiberina in Roma. What a fabulous restaurant. This, i think, is my attempt as 'doing as the romans' in Rome. The service and wine were fabulous. Tahs to Hellmut for the recommendation.

Of course, you have to like ox tail, pig cheeks, and tripe. but hey... when in Rome...

next

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Feb 7, 2006

Localization Nits

NIT:

HTTP has the ability (and most browsers support, AFAICT) to convey language preferences... and almost every site i go to seems to merrily ignore it.

NIT:

Every time I encounter a language selection list, each language is expressed in the native language of the page (not the language being listed).


Case in point. I'm in Rome this week, and Google (as my homepage) comes up in Italian. Why? Cause they 'sense' that my IP address is in Italy, so hey, i must really want the Italian Google page (nifty feature, but not helpful, generally, except maybe for them, as a traffic management and performance solution). But google.it does not mean i want italian, right?

So then i go stumbling around on their links, i find the language preferences, and all the languages are in italian. Not very helpful. Since 'english' in Italian is 'Inglese', it makes for fixing this in the preferences page. FWIW, for future reference, the url for language selection is http://www.google.it/preferences?hl=it ... so change the hl=it bit to hl=en, and walla!

These sorts of usability issues are hard for some. We all could do a better job in localization, not just Google.

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Feb 3, 2006

From the Ironic Names Committee

An article on Hundreds of Dead Pets found in woods, I couldn't help but chuckle at the spokesmans name:
The U.S. Forest Service is also taking part in the investigation. Woody Lipps, a spokesman for the agency, said one of the dumping sites was in George Washington National Forest and the perpetrators could face stiff fines.

"Dumping debris on federal property is a federal misdemeanor, but the attorney's office could decide this was hazardous material and if that's the case, the fines and jail time increase dramatically," Lipps said.
What a great name.