June 18, 2004
Firefox, Thunderbird and NVU
One thing a lot of people miss about open source software is that a lot of great programs have Windows versions too.
I just installed the excellent Mozilla Firefox 0.9 web browser today, and liked it enough to make it my default browser. I like Internet Explorer fine, but Firefox has some stuff I use quite a bit, especially tabbed browsing, which opens up multiple tabs - each holding a web page - inside a single browser window. This has the advantage of not clogging up your task bar.
Mozilla Thunderbird is a fantastic email program, one I've been using for about a month. It has a pretty good junk mail filter, one that gets smarter the longer you use it, but the feature I appreciate most is a really simple one that deserves explaining.
When you get an HTML message, the web browser inside your mail program calls back to the server to load up the pictures. This is one way spammers know that your mailbox is a real one.
Thunderbird gets around this by blocking images inside an HTML message, so that the spammers can't see that you've opened it. Which is always nice.
The last program to check out is called NVU (pronounced N-view), which aims to be an open-source alternative to Dreamweaver, and is built around Mozilla's Gecko web-page rendering engine. Pretty slick stuff.
You can get Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird for Windows, Mac and Linux at http://www.mozilla.org, and NVU for Linux and Windows at http://www.nvu.com.
June 16, 2004
I've got the face of a pervert!
  | From time to time I get to hear new slang from home. "Sucks to be you," was a phrase I heard recently, and it could probably be applied to the guy in this story by Jaroslav Krčál in yesterday's Blesk. |
In my own case, the only case of mistaken identity that ever happened to me happened when a few years ago, while laying by a hotel pool, a woman walked up to me and asked for my autograph, thinking I was Cesar Rojas of Los Lobos. But again I digress. Anyway, the translation is mine.
I've got the face of a pervert!
Jiří Forman had quite a scare yesterday morning. He opened the newspaper and saw himself - as a brutal criminal! A police artist's rendition published in the paper was completely similar to his own appearance.
"Look out! A wanted man is raping older women!" Forman read with horror. "And here it goes again," he thought.
Forman had had similar trouble two years ago.
The young man's voice mail box and email were full of messages from friends. Some were ironic, and there were even a couple who believed he was the real criminal.
"I immediately called the police," a shaken Jiří Forman recalled. "The same thing happened to me two years ago, when the police arrested me right on the street. I didn't want the same thing to happen," he explained.
Forman described his unenviable situation thusly: He was walking down the street in Hradec Králové, when a police car came randomly, uniformed men jumped out, and immediately arrested him. "It wasn't a really good feeling, when I was standing on the street pushed against the police car. Bystanders began to appear, and one old fogey yelled: "That's him! Give it to him!"
He only found out what was going on until later at the police station. Even then the police were looking for a criminal who raped old babičky. Everything was quickly explained, because at the time of the rapes he was working somewhere else.
"From that day, whenever I hear that someone is wanted for rape, I get a bad feeling all over my body," Forman shook as he recalled.
What's more, people remember his face from the TV, when he was a news editor for a private TV station. Now his voice can be heard on a private radio station.
"I'd be happy if they finally caught this jerk and put him behind bars for a while. Then hopefully he wouldn't look so much like me," Forman added. But he didn't laugh much when he said it.
Blogodárné učinky
Over at Ninja-level translator Alex Zucker's "Stickfinger" blog, he writes about confusion which Czech verb ending he should use for "to blog" in Czech:
"Neni to spis "zablogovat"? Nebo jak se vlastne rozhoduje, jestli vymyslene sloveso ma koncit v "arit" ci v "ovat"?
His friend Tomáš follows up with an excellent suggestion, that a higher rank of blogger could be termed "blogoslavený," as in "Alex Blogoslavený."
Never wanting to miss an opportunity to pun badly in a foreign language, I can only add:
Alexi, ti blogopřeju. Mělo to blogodárné učinky, a přispěje ke blogobytu.
June 15, 2004
Euro commentators
Seeing as I'm going to be spending some quality time staring at the tube for the next couple of weeks while the Euro 2004 championships are underway, here are a couple of notes I'd like Czech TV's announcers to keep in mind, with Sorry Magazine's "Kyselá Prdel" as my inspiration:
1. "We" are not playing the game. "We" - "you" the announcer and "I" the viewer - are watching the game. "We" get to hoot and holler when a great play is made. "We" do not have an effect on a team's success or failure. So please stop using "we" and "us" to describe the Czech football team. Otherwise "I" will personally have to start watching DSF or some other channel's coverage instead.
2. Czech TV commentators should get a smack for each time they use the phrase "standardní situace." Anybody who can explain to me how a "standardní situace" is different from a "nestandardní situace" will gain my undying respect and gratitude.
3. Post-game interviews are excruciatingly boring. "Well, we just went out there to play, and we gave it the best we could..." To liven things up, bring in a translator to translate what they're saying into Finnish or Dutch.
June 13, 2004
WTF? night
Beeeeeg surprises tonight on the teevee. First France beat England with, what, 20 picoseconds left? I have to say that my admiration for England's skills is as huge as my distaste for its fans. So I had really mixed emotions; sad for the team, but pretty happy to see all those lager louts having a bummer night.
And what is it with Beckham's tattoo, anyway? I thought you got your neck tattooed only in prison. Besides, now that it's all messed up with all that ink, how's he going to jack into the Matrix?
Further proof of the topsy-turvy night comes when Samer Issa gets kicked off SuperStar, setting up a showdown between Šarka and Aneta. I always figured Samer would win, but what do I know?
 | But for all those surprise losses, the guy I really don't want to be tomorrow morning - the Monday morning after his party gets blown out massively in the EU elections - is Vladimír Špidla. Not that I ever wanted to be him in the first place, mind you. But if I were him, I'd be rooting around the mud under the Charles Bridge, looking for Bruncvík's sword. He's gonna need all the help he can get in the next few days. |
Electric Boogaloo
I'm working on a DJ set that puts together a lot of the boogaloo and boogaloo-inspired stuff I have in my voluminous collection, which I hope to debut soon. But suffice it to say, it really is all about the Fort Knox Five and Jack Costanza and Gerry Woo, with a serious dose of Ursula 1000 in there for good measure.
Of course it'll be called "Electric Boogaloo."
A while ago, Bloopy asked if anybody had ever seen "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." I missed it, choosing instead to check out "Joysticks" instead. But maybe somebody has seen it...
