May 2006 Archives

McDonald's gets a whole heap of bad press, doesn't it? There's the world famous McLibel trial, news that its food contains 'transfat' or something and the big dispute about McJobs. Then there were those awful 'Sex and the City' ads, and their desperate attempts to convince us that their salads and sandwiches are healthy alternatives, despite being crammed to the top with battered chicken. I could go on, but we all have a range of McDonald's stories locked in our memories that make us shudder already: you don't need me to remind you of them.

So it's good to see a positive article on McDonald's for once. In this case, one of Spiked's good writers explains why everyone's 'favourite' fast food chain is absolutely perfect for autistic kids. It's actually quite heart-warming.

I got summoned for jury service recently. It couldn't have come at a busier time so I asked for it to be postponed to January. I was expecting all sorts of bureaucratic resistance, autocratic refusal (“you'll come when we tell you to come!”) and so on.

Instead, I got a nice little letter yesterday, accepting my request for postponement and giving me a date in January to turn up. Now how good is that? So I'd like to thank those nice jury service people for being so helpful and obliging. God bless you all.

I finally got my lazy arse into gear and uploaded week one of the Teach Yourself Instant Italian flashcards to the site. Grab them when you're ready.

I've finally released the beta of the next version of SCHWIF2004, my handy utility for creating complex HTML messages in Entourage. There's a few improvements:

• Added support for background images referenced using attributes in the body tag or in stylesheets
• Fixed a problem with Exchange server address books following previous Entourage update
• Improved the documentation slightly
• Added a warning for pre OS X 10.3 users

Grab it over at the SCHWIF2004 page.

A US government report shows what we should all know: immigrants are a good thing, whether they're illegal or legal.

UPDATE: Greatreporter.com also has a piece about an official report explaining why migrants are a good thing for countries.

I'm sure there's a reason why icWales has posted a list of celebrities who are afraid of flying. It just escapes me for now.

My new iMac Dual Core arrived yesterday. My old iMac was about three and a half years old and lacking modern features that were actually forcing me to turn down work, so it was about time for an upgrade: I'll be handing my old one over to my sister, so at least it's going to a good home.

There has, of course, been a lot of fuss about being able to install Windows XP on the new iMacs, with many asking the not entirely invalid question, “Who would want to do that?” Well, I would. In fact, I'm going to try to get Linux running on it as well. Why? Because I have to write about Macs, Windows and Linux. Take two computers into my front room? No, I just want to triple boot and go...

A friend of mine, Martin, has managed to escape from journalism after nearly a decade at the grindstone. So a quick shout of congratulations to him as he makes his way over to the writing team of Emmerdale. Good luck, Martin!

The New York Times indulges in a popular American pastime - pointing out how rubbish British dentistry is. Personally, I think asking a bunch of English pensioners about dental hygiene is going to give you an unrepresentative impression of British teeth, but many of the points hit home.

Guardian Unlimited's assistant editor Neil McIntosh says freelances should blog if they want to be noticed. I get the feeling he means freelances should blog well, because I'm not going much attention as a result of this blog... ;-)