Cheryl on the Web

Tonight Tim and I watched the movie Barcelona with a couple friends sort of on a last-minute impulse. Apart from the fact that it was nice just to casually get together with people at the last minute, I enjoyed the movie which was casual-dialogue-philisophical style .. otherwise classified as alternative .. or independent. You know what I mean. Hopefully.

The movie is about a couple expats in Barcelona, each with their own set of quirks and oddities; and in particular, the European view of Americans seems to come up a lot in the dialogue. At one point, the following analogy was made which I found quite insightful:
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It wasn’t until I moved out of the US that I began slowly to realize the general lack of awareness within America of the challenges developers (should) face and address when building multi-cultural websites or applications. Microsoft writes books on the topic but seemingly few people read them. I sometimes get the impression that, in particular for websites or applications published only in English, American developers tend to think, it’s all the same language, how hard can it be for someone in Europe to use this? “Obvious” differences between cultures like date/time formatting, number formatting, and printer paper size are usually ignored - sometimes because the developers aren’t even aware a difference exists or, even worse, because they consider the difference immaterial.

My grievance today is related to a “cultural oversight” bug in the immensely popular, open-source blogging tool I use, WordPress. (more…)

I’ve got so much to say today, partly because I’ve been trying to spend less time on the computer in my free time, and more time doing .. anything else .. and that only gives me more to talk about on this blog. So, sorry to those dedicated blog readers for the lack of updates, and here’s hoping you’ll enjoy this one.

First thing to report, is that a cute little bird built her nest in the back corner of our outdoor storage area about two weeks ago, and her chicks hatched last week! For a week now we’ve been watching anxiously to see if she manages to feed the four little heads that we every now and then see sticking out of the nest. The nest is about as wide as Tim’s open hand, so you can imagine how small the chicks in the picture really are. It seems she’s doing her best, but how in the world she feeds herself and all four of them is beyond my comprehension. I imagine she can tell you it’s hard work being a mom. It’s supposed to rain off and on this week, for which we’re glad, since hopefully that will get those worms up out of the ground.
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If you read my post about alarm clocks around 2 weeks ago, you may remember how happy I was to have finally found a great new alarm clock from Grundig, after arduous searching. So, you can imagine my disappointment when, shortly thereafter, I discovered that the very first “1” on the alarm clock displayed more like a “d” than a 1. At the Media Markt, the store where I bought the clock, I returned it for a new one .. so you can probably understand my growing frustration when the replacement had an alarm that incremented one minute every second. Set the alarm for 07:00, wait 60 seconds, and then check it, only to discover the alarm is now set for 08:00! Even cooler: hold down the alarm button to view the alarm time, and watch the alarm magically increment itself.
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I’ve crossed a new frontier in terms of things it is hip to do in the 21st century. What might I have done, you wonder? (and, even more interesting perhaps, what is on my list of things hip to do in the 21st century?) Well, it wasn’t video chatting on a mobile phone (I don’t even have one); it wasn’t the purchase of a new 8-megapixel camera (though that would be nice); and it wasn’t online game play (even though that’s out there and I could in theory if I wanted). No, after having purchased a new Canon printer almost a year ago, I finally managed to print some digital photos this week! But the road was long and full of setbacks…
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I could Google it and find out what in the world that is. But I’m actually enjoying the mystery a little. I can tell you it’s the reason I get work off on Thursday, when seemingly everyone else still has to work.

For those of you who don’t know, Germany has a very fair way to decide what days are holidays. The majority of each province effectively “wins”, and whatever holidays are associated with their religious beliefs are the official ones. So here in the southern-most province of Germany, Bayern, the majority is Catholic. That means that people working in Bayern get holidays that aren’t celebrated in the neighboring province, Hessen (think Frankfurt) - since Hessen is majority Protestant. This is a useful way to maintain separation of church and state; by treating religion as part of culture, the big religious holidays can be days off work without making the things they stand for part of what the government stands for.

Of course, if you work in Bayern and your partner works in Hessen, there will be a few days in the year your holidays don’t match. But who cares? Just means you’ll get the house, the TV, and the sun or snow to yourself for those extra hours :)

All around us, technology is improving: in computers, in cars, in games consoles, in mobile phones, even in our cable boxes. But one device in particular seems to be lagging behind the rest of the crowd. Any ideas what I’m referring to? (more…)