STC Eastern Ontario Blog http://blog.stceo.net And out of chaos came order... Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:19:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Order of letters not important? http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:15:44 +0000 Kitty http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/ I’m sure most of you have seen this e-mail at some point. I can’t remember the first time I saw it but I remember the two last times because both happened at work, one quite recently.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I don’t know what possesses people to just blindly forward things like that on to every one they know without doing a tiny amount of research. It takes only a quick Google search to find Matt Davis’ page at the University of Cambridge, which analyzes each sentence of the meme to explain why that particular paragraph is easy to read and why it isn’t as simple as the meme itself would have you believe. He also shows examples of the meme in other languages.

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/03/07/order-of-letters-not-important/feed/ Samuel Estwick 1915-2008 http://blog.stceo.net/2008/02/17/samuel-estwick/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/02/17/samuel-estwick/#comments Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:50:30 +0000 Kitty http://blog.stceo.net/2008/02/17/samuel-estwick/ I received an e-mail today informing me that Sam Estwick, former member of the STC and editor of Stimulus way back when it first started, passed away on February 13, 2008, at the age of 92.

A celebration of Sam’s life will be held on Saturday March 1st, at 2:00 p.m. in Lupton Hall, at The Perley - Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre (PRVHC), 1750 Russell Rd, Ottawa.

In memoriam, donations in Sam’s name, to Perley - Rideau Foundation, Gloucester Senior Adults Centre, or charity of choice is greatly appreciated.

What a sad event. Mimi and I had hoped to talk with him last year about his history with the STC and technical writing in general but he was too ill at the time. My thoughts and wishes are with his widow, Louise, and his family.

Additional information about his life and career:

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/02/17/samuel-estwick/feed/ Dreamhost accidentally bills customers two years early http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/15/dreamhost-accidentally-bills-customers-two-years-early/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/15/dreamhost-accidentally-bills-customers-two-years-early/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:35:12 +0000 admin http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/15/dreamhost-accidentally-bills-customers-two-years-early/ Dreamhost, our Web host for this site and my personal Web host, ran an automated billing process last night that apparently had the wrong billing date set. So, instead of cleaning up billing up to Jan. 14, 2007, it thought today was Dec. 31, 2008. This caused it to (a) automatically deduct/charge the money for those people who were set up with automatic payment and (b) send an email to each account holder telling them that they were overdue. I must have been one of the first to notice as I was up and on the computer at the time the emails came through. Luckily, we don’t have an automatic payment set up so all we got was the email (well, I got two, since I also got the one for my personal accounts).

See the story at the Dreamhost blog as well as their status site (the former is interesting for the comments and the latter is interesting because it’s written by Josh, the guy who screwed up) and at news sites like Infoworld.

People are pissed. I don’t blame them. If I’d woken up today to find my bank account emptied or my credit card maxed out because Dreamhost made a mistake, I’d be livid. As it stands, I’m happy that I don’t have automatic payments set (though when I did it was limited to I think $30 in any one calendar month).

And I am a little worried what the state of Dreamhost will be when the dust settles.

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/15/dreamhost-accidentally-bills-customers-two-years-early/feed/ Why, it’s the best product on the planet! http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/10/why-its-the-best-product-on-the-planet/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/10/why-its-the-best-product-on-the-planet/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:12:36 +0000 admin http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/10/why-its-the-best-product-on-the-planet/ Check out the reviews on this lovely piece of classic technology.

They’re a bit pricey but don’t the reviews just make you want one?

]]> http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/10/why-its-the-best-product-on-the-planet/feed/ Build your vocabulary and feed the hungry http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/04/build-your-vocabulary-and-feed-the-hungry/ http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/04/build-your-vocabulary-and-feed-the-hungry/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:09:14 +0000 Kitty http://blog.stceo.net/2008/01/04/build-your-vocabulary-and-feed-the-hungry/ Free Rice offers a multiple-choice vocabulary quiz — for every word you get right, they “donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger”. It adjusts to your abilities — if you get a word wrong, it’ll bump you down to an easier level; if you get three words in a row correct, you move up to a harder level. There are 50 levels, but they say that “it is rare for people to get above level 48″.

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