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Tuesday, 14 May 2002 |
The exhibition opens in the Foyer, Council House, 27 St George’s Terrace, Perth, on Thursday 16th May at 6PM.
12:58:07 PM 
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In order to ease the collaborative editing process, I have placed a group of 60 images from the A Poverty of Desire project up on a website. Click the subheader above to see them.
10:35:01 AM
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The most annoying word mispronounciation to appear in recent spoken Australian English is an imitation of the English Home Counties upper class drawl.
Wherever there is an a in a word, the speaker drags it out so long that it sounds as if they are saying aaaarr or aaaaahhh instead. So the word crab becomes craaaarrrrb. English seafood chef Rick Stein mispronounces crab this way, and it sounds horrible every time he does it.
“I’ll caaarry the craaaarrb baaaarck to the caaaarrrrfé in the taaaaarrrxi carrrrrb.”
10:14:37 AM
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Why oh why does everybody seem to double-click EVERYTHING?
9:17:06 AM
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Or have you noticed how so many computer newbies, and not so newbies, invent their own words and their meanings for computer things? It makes it bloody hard communicating rationally with them, or trying to help.
“I have web. Do you have web?”
“Yes, I have Internet access.”
“I have my own Web!”
“So you own the World Wide Web, huh? Better send a note to Tim Berners-Lee to inform him you’re now the official owner of the whole damned thing. He’ll be pleased.”
9:11:56 AM
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Here’s another one. Ever been speaking with someone over the phone and perhaps you have sent them a PDF they are trying to open in Word, or their network is down, or their printer does not work, and you really need to do whatever you can to help so they can deal with that damned document?
So the first thing you do, obviously, is ask them what operating system they are using, so you can start narrowing things down. And they say, “What’s an operating system?” So you say, “Well, you’ll be most likely using either a Windows or a Macintosh computer.”
And then they turn out to be so visually illiterate they cannot even tell you if there is a Start menu at the bottom of the screen, or if there are menu items at the top of it. Or even what sound the machine makes when it starts up.
Most often, though, the average office worker will tell you their operating system is Word. Or in the case of someone yesterday, they told me their operating system is Words!
That makes my own operating system Thought, Speech and Images.
9:04:12 AM
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How many times have you asked someone on the phone or face to face what their email address, so you can send them a follow up later? Then they say, “Ooh, I don’t know my email. I’ll have to ask someone.”
And then they give you an email address, and when you send your mail the message bounces back. Or they give you something that is quite patently not an email address at all, but looks like something they just made up on the spot!
8:55:38 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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