I wrote recently about Melbourne Uni using Museo in an ad heading.

Today I notice that RMIT are also using it in some advertising. Any more unis care to get on board?

Argh! What's going on? I wrote a letter in OpenOffice and saved a PDF copy – different fonts. So I read the help and learnt to turn on this option:

"PDF/A-1
Converts to the PDF/A-1 format. This is defined as an electronic document file format for long term preservation. All fonts that were used in the source document will be embedded into the generated PDF file. PDF tags will be written."

Still not displaying with my chosen fonts. WTF?

I think it's changing it to Helvetica. It's like it's refusing to use non-standard fonts. If I make some text Times New Roman, that makes it into the PDF okay.

EDIT: Sounds like OOo has a known bug with using OpenType fonts in PDFs. Grr.

I'm booked in to see the knee doctor. :-)
On Thu 6/Aug. :-(

In the meantime, I shall sit and dwell over how the problem is within the joint and may therefore require a knee reconstruction. With no health insurance.

I just received a meeting invite for a walkthrough that I'll apparently be running for a project that I'll apparently be looking after until the current BA (her contract was not renewed) is replaced.

Good fun. Although I'll admit that they'd get a more effectively hand-over by, you know, telling me...

Apparently I'm already reviewing the requirements and wireframes ready to dive right in. At least now I know!

A while back I said that "if God had intended for us to use em dashes, he would have included it on the QWERTY keyboard".

And up until that point, I was happy with using hyphens as dashes. But times are changing.

I still hate the em dash. It's ugly! It's typically bunched up next to the words it separates and it's too long to use with spaces. Another thing I dislike is the silly idea of using two hyphens as a dash – just use a single hyphen! But the en dash – now that's a different story.

The turning point was looking at some Australian style guides after listening to a Grammar Girl episode about dashes. I was pleased to discover that in Australia, preferred usage is often a spaced en dash (" – ") rather than an em dash ("—").

So, now I concede that the hyphen is a little short and that it is worth using an en dash instead. It helps that it's pretty easy to type... on a Mac (Option-hyphen).

But what the hell is up with Windows? You're seriously telling me that I need to remember a code (Alt-0150) and that it will only work when I'm sitting at a keyboard that has a numeric keypad? Given how frequently dashes are used in writing (even if most of us just use a hyphen or rely on a word processor to do substitution), you'd think there'd be some quick and memorable keyboard shortcut.

So there you have it. I've been converted on the en dash issue, and I'm even considering moving from "eg." (my personal yet wrong preference) to "e.g." (which is correct, but looks long and ugly to me). But don't hold your breath waiting for me to use an ellipsis character instead of three periods. Or to start using proper quotation marks. That's just taking things too far.

I did it! I finally snipped off the jack from my headphones.

And it was all downhill from there...

Aside from the minor inconvenience of having no soldering experience, I have since discovered that the cable on my Sennheiser PX 100 headphones has wires that are notoriously difficult to solder. You can't just strip off rubber insulation: they insulate with a paint or lacquer coating that requires experience and determination to remove.

Any suggestions for a repair place in Melbourne?

Then Sally called back and asked how I felt,
And she said: "I know how to help -
Get over Alice".
She said: "Now Alice is gone,
But I'm still here,
You know I've been waiting
For twenty-four years..."

That's a bit presumptuous, isn't it? Yo, Sally (whoever the hell you are): he doesn't want you. He wants Alice. What makes you think you can be a drop-in replacement? Who are you? Mrs. Lovett?

Look, if he wanted you, he would have said something. Well, okay... he wouldn't have... But the point is, you're not the one he was pining over for 24 fucking years. And anyway, just being as much of a wimp as him does not mean the two of you are the perfect couple.

I've just discovered that it's not a good idea to plug an iron into a UPS.

"Let's do it like they do on the Discovery channel," sang the kids, loudly, as we wandered around the winery. That's what I get for playing The Bloodhound Gang's The Bad Touch the previous day and repeating it for them at Jesara's request.

Josh's other favourite lyric: "your sex is on fire"...

Why%20can't%20people%20see%20that%20spaces%20do%20not%20belong%20in%20filenames?.doc