Madd0's Tech Blog

The more I read product labels, the more I have trouble understanding what goes through the minds of the people that write them.

Take this bottle of beer for example. I think we can agree that the bottle was bought because it contains beer. Beer is described on Wikipedia as: "the world's oldest and most popular alcoholic beverage. (...) It is produced by the fermentation of sugars derived from starch-based material — the most common being malted barley; however, wheat, corn, and rice are also widely used (...)." Is it really necessary then to specify on the bottle that it contains malted barley ("contient du malte d'orge")?

I know it says there's "beers" (yes, I'm the one adding the quotes) that do not contain malt, but this is more an exception than the rule.

OK, let's say I'm just a nitpicker. In that case, if we have to specify what's obvious, how is it obvious that a... ...yes, let's say it's a woman's silhouette, fat and holding her back is a pregnant woman? And the fact that she's crossed out, what does that mean? Not recommended? Forbidden?

Well, you'll excuse this off-topic post, written during a rugby match that wasn't that good. I was bored...

Most tins/cans nowadays come with easy-open systems (ring-pulls or whatever you want to call them). Some don't, in which case you need a can opener. I had never heard of people before, though, that would want to open an easy-open can with a can opener. Honestly, what's the point? (Except if the easy-open system's broke, in which case I'd understand, but it's not the case here...)

Even worse, I had never seen an easy-open can provide instructions on how to open it with a can opener:

Why are we wasting ink on this kind of messages? It's like the "Warning: hot contents" on coffee, or Tesco's "This product may contain fish" on, well, their fish. Where's the world going?

(I'm just ranting here, so I won't translate.)

I have taken the Eurostar at least 7 times in the last month, coming and going between London and Paris. If I believe the tickets I keep in my pocket, this is my 8th trip. Every time the routine has been the same:

• I show up 30 minutes before departure to check in.
• I go through outbound and inbound passport control, and accept the fact that my Costa Rican passport will always surprise immigration officials. Depending on whether I'm leaving Paris or London, this step may actually come after the next.
• I empty my pockets and put my suitcase, backpack and jacket on the X-Ray machine.
• I go through the metal detector.
• Go straight to the train.

Things rarely change. Except today.

Today I got to St Pancras at 14h45 in order to collect my reservation for 15h30. I was supposed to check in by 15h00 and be on the train shortly after.

Here's what really happened:

I got to St Pancras at 14h45. The machine didn't seem to know I had a reservation, so I had to wait in line for an actual person to hand me my ticket. But what's the main characteristic of people that gets them replaced by machines? People are slow! This means it was already 15h00when I got into another line in order to go through security. As usual, I emptied pockets and put everything on the machine. I went through the metal detector and nothing happened. But on the other side, things really didn't go as expected.

For some reason, the Swiss Army knife I've carried with me back and forth in the last 7 trips (and that's not even counting all the other times before this month I've taken this train) seemed suspicious. In the world of trust that we live in this translated into the following scene:

Security Officer: Is this your bag?

Me: Yes, it is. So is that one and this jacket.

SO: Can you step over here please?

I follow her to the table nearby.

SO: Can you open the bag please?

Me - to myself: Like I have a choice... I open the two main pockets of my backpack, where I keep most of my stuff.

SO starts emptying every pocket separating it into two piles: tech stuff and the rest.

Me - worried I might miss the train because I still have to go through immigration: Are you looking for anything in particular?

SO: Just watch me while I take your things out. (Yes! she actually said that!)

SO keeps emptying my backpack, which contained everything I described on Channel 8 yesterday. (Well, 2 clementines today...)

Me - freaking out because I feel I'm going to miss my train: Please, I have to get on the 15h30 train, can I help you look for something?

SO: It seems like you have a knife...

Me: Yes, I do. Here it i— SO pushes my hand away and takes the knife.

SO - to colleague: Is this OK?

Colleague looks at her putting on a face that really makes you want to trust security...

SO 2: Huh?

SO - to other colleague: Is this OK?

Me: It has to be OK. I've had it with me for the last 10 trips! I use it for work.

You know how sometimes, under pressure, you make mistakes without realizing it? Well, apparently, letting SO and SO 3 know that they were wasting my time and implying that I could probably do their job better than they do, was one of those.

SO 3: What do you mean, it "has" to be OK?

Then she gave me a bunch of BS on why it didn't "have" to be OK, on how "knifes are not allowed onboard", on how "if the police were here, they would've taken it away" and bla, bla, bla... But since she was nice and considered that the blade wasn't big enough (it's just a Swiss Army knife after all) she'd let me keep it.

It was already 15h15 by then and every single item in my bag was on the table! SO wiped one of those bomb-detecting-thingies all over my bag and finally let me put my things back in. I quickly started putting things back inside while SO tried to help, but it was my turn to push her hands away.

I then went through immigration and finally got on the train on time.

Fast-forward a few minutes and now I'm in the train's restaurant wagon. And what do I see all over the place? F***ing plastic knifes!

If those knifes are supposed to cut through whatever crappy food I'm served in there, they will also cut through whoever or whatever I would eventually want to cut with my pocket knife! And I'm talking "poor people's knifes" here. I'm willing to bet that the people in first class get metal knifes. And we all know that terrorists like to travel with style...

This same kind of absurdity goes on in planes, too.

I'm sick of it.

And things only get worse, when you think that they actually missed the knife I keep in my pocket and that both of my knives would have easily gone through if they had been in my suitcase (which is right above of me right now, next to my backpack)...

Since I moved into my small apartment in Paris, I've become rather obsessed with "de-cluttering".

One of the things that I have the most trouble getting rid of is my old lecture notes. If only I had had a laptop and OneNote at the time, I wouldn't have this problem, but today the fact is that I have quite a lot of notebooks and photocopies taking up valuable space.

What I decided to do is to start scanning and recycling. I use Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) to scan and perform OCR. I stated a while ago on a flatbed scanner at home, but that took forever. Fortunately, we have one of those multipurpose photocopiers at the office with an automatic feeder that will quickly scan my documents, even the two-sided ones.

Now, things have not been as smooth as they should have been, though. Mostly because, and I'm sad to say it, bugs in Microsoft software.

Bug number 1 was when MODI started crashing every time I was going to save a document. That was annoying because unsaved images are not really useful. So I started to try to figure out what was happening and realized that the program crashed as soon as I clicked on the File menu. Since the menu itself is pretty static, I assumed the problem had to come from the only dynamic part: the Recent File List. In Microsoft software, these lists are often stored in the registry, so I open regedit and started looking for the right key. That wasn't easy, but I finally found it:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSPaper 12.0\Recent File List

As you can see, the path to the key is quite obvious when you know the name of the program you are looking for and the path to the executable:

%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI\12.0\MSPVIEW.EXE

(Yes, it's called irony)

Bug number 2 is slightly more annoying because it can't be fixed easily. It seems that Windows Desktop Search (WDS), the service responsible for indexing files on Windows Vista, is "too secure" to index the contents of TIFF files, which is what I'm generating, because I already have a bunch of lecture notes in this format.

You see, in order to index the contents of files, WDS uses filters or IFilters, which are libraries that are also used by other Microsoft programs. But it would seem that the IFilter for TIFF files (and MDI files for that matter) does things (probably creates temp files or something in an unauthorized directory) that Vista doesn't like, so the OCR contents of TIFF files are not indexed. And there's pretty much nothing I can do about it aside from finding a 3rd party filter, or write my own.

I didn't find 3rd party filters and I don't have the time to write my own, so I'm just waiting for the fix that Microsoft is working on. The only problem is that the only ETA I've found is "soon."

Other solutions would be to install Google's indexer (which I'm seriously considering) or to change format. But I'm not ready to do either one. So, for now, I'll just name my files appropriately.

(Disclaimer: although I'm all for constructive criticism most of the time, this is clearly nothing more than a rant, which by the way, does not even deserve translating.)

Lets start with a dictionary definition of the word seamless:

adjective. perfectly consistent and coherent

Now lets take a look at a quote from the website of a product I decided to work with while writing my book on WPF (highlight mine):

Expression Design is the perfect companion to Expression Blend, letting you quickly build sophisticated vector assets. Then seamlessly transfer — by way of XAML — your graphics to your Expression Blend projects.

Finally, lets take a look at what actually happens when the product in question "seamlessly" exports to XAML:

Do you see it too? How its not at all consistent or coherent, but rather the outlines become horrible thick black blotches and the gradients simply disappear? Ah, thank you... That's a relief. For a moment there I thought it was just me.

In whoever wrote that clearly fallacious marketing crap's defense, they do seem to know what the imputed word means. Take a look at this other quote:

Or seamlessly copy and paste your images into Microsoft Office while preserving transparency.

Ah, now this one does work, as you can see in this screen-shot:

You have to wonder what kind of black magic is behind this magnificent feat:

Oh, a PNG. Why not?