Today's Equine URL

My sister keeps horses, and I was bitten by one as a child (don't try to feed a hungry horse with an apple), but it seems that some horses are quite discriminating in their propensity to mate.

Today's Software can be deadly URL

Those of us who work in the software testing biz know that one of the sorest points in software development is localisation. That is, making sure that local variations on items such as spelling, font, alphabet, time and date, and the like actually appear correct to the people who are using it. Easy examples: Dates in the US are usually showed as mm/dd/yyyy (04/29/2008). Dates in most other places are shown dd/mm/yyyy (28/04/2008). On the 20th of April it is not too difficult to tell what date is referred to, but try it on May 2nd. This is localisation at work.

In Turkey, orthography is much different from that which we who speak, write, and read English expect. There are many accents and other letters which do not seem important to us but which make a huge amount of difference in Turkish. This is similar to the ano/año pair in Spanish, where "¿Quantos años tiene usted?" means "How old are you?" and "¿Quantos anos tiene usted?" means "How many as*h*les do you have?"

This tragic couple was let down by an absence of Turkish localisation. Very sad.

Today's Natural History Wonders URL

It seems that the lowly tubeworm has a relative that has the unfortunate Latin name of Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, which means Chaetopterid worm that looks like the rump of a pig. Read all about it here

Today's Caffeinated URL

HWMBO and I often go to Starbucks for a coffee after a long afternoon at an art gallery or museum. I hope that we have never been to this branch, though...