shrinking in the wash

well, not that many of you care, but I have changed the theme used for my blog. Admittedly, the theme is pretty boring, but it means that I can pass off huge long rants more easily as there are more words per line. I noticed with the previous layout that a couple of my posts ended up over a screen high! So, although the content hasn’t shrunk or anything, perhaps I can fool you into reading the whole post, because it doesn’t look quite as long. I can only hope.

An even better technique would, of course,involve learning how to write shorter posts, but that sounds too much like effort and not enough like fun. So, while you may groan about this, don’t expect the lengthy… lengthiness of the posts to die easily. They just look better (or something like that).

Well, I spent a while thinking up a witty name for this post (well, actually only about 2 seconds…) and it reminded me of another thing that I don’t quite understand: why do some clothes shrink in the wash? I don’t actually understand the physics involved here, but understand that there is some, so I guess I can’t just pass it off as evil gremlins inhabiting the laundry. Surely, after umpteen-thousand years of mankind wearing clothing, and even a few washing them, some crazy boffin could solve the problem? Oh well, it is one of those things that will just have to stay unsolved (what with global warming, recession, and the unprecedented price of screwdrivers, we have enough to worry about).

This post was fairly boring, and not even that short, so a suitably amusing witticism would probably cheer people up and drag them out of the near-suicidal boredom that often accompanies perusal of my blog. It would be funny if there was something to laugh about.

MS Office 2007

Well I know a lot of people have an irrational hatred of Microsoft, or at least their newer products, such as Office 2007 and Vista. Well, here I am, preparing myself to launch into the defence of Office 2007.

I have used Office 2007 ever since it came out, as I got it in a free upgrade from 2003 edition (ok, it wasn’t quite free, it was $27, but that’s near enough to free…). Personally, I love everything about it. The first thing you notice is that it all has pretty colourful new icons. Then once you have opened up, you notice the major change in 2007: the “Fluent User Interface”, including the ribbon. While it takes a little bit of getting used to (not too much fortunately), you will soon be working faster and more efficiently than ever. It makes it a lot easier to apply formatting, layout, etc. all changes, and it allows you to discover new commands and features that were previously buried away in menus. Admittedly it isn’t quite perfect, it would be nice to have some form of customisation in the ribbon, but it usually shows the most relevant commands. Now if you have any interest in Office 2007, you have undoubtedly already read a lot of detailed information, so I will not go about it in too much depth.

Although most ‘new’ features are actually just undiscovered features from older versions, there are some features that are genuinely new. I can’t remember all of them, but two really useful features that I use a lot is the ability to write blog posts directly in Word, and Outlook RSS reading. So basically instead of using a clunky web-based interface, I can write blog posts in word at superspeed, and then publish them in one click, no stress. In Outlook, I can subscribe to blogs, news, and other info and have it automatically deliver these straight to my computer- no manual checking required. Very useful, both of them.

I must wrap it up there, not just because it’s getting long again, but because I am about to go out. Anyway, enjoy, and look into Office 2007. It is very good.