the day the lolcats died

If you’re like me and woke up feeling rather clueless because you couldn’t tell the difference between a SOPA and a PIPA so you went to Wikipedia to get some info and found a black page with the ominous message that the Intrawebs as you know them will be forever damaged but why should you care because you’re not living in the USA and have never had a congressthingy to write to…

…the following video lays the issues out very clearly.

I was going to join the wordpress.com bandwagon and black out this humble blog for a day of protest, but unlike them and other heavyweights like Wikipedia, I’d rather have a laugh instead.

This guy’s kind of out of tune, but he’s funny:

Almost trampled by fake ugg boots

The red-haired girl needs warm boots for the winter, so we go online for some UGG boots.

“And they’re really a great price,” she says.  ”Only 64 euros.”

Completely unaware of the hundreds of sites out there selling fake UGG boots, of which the list at left is merely one page of dozens to scroll through, and also unaware that these boots go for about four times the website’s price in German stores, I go to uggbootssale-de.com, register, and order the boots.

I key in my Mastercard details and hit Payment, but get an error message.  Something about the bank fraud scan failing, and that I should try again with another card.

Hah, but what’s this?  The message is written in sing-song English, has a number to call in case of error with a Chinese country code, and hey, why is there Chinese writing up there in the top corner?

Then I go back for a closer look at this dog’s mess of a website over which I’d just spewed my credit card information right down to the three-digit code on the back.

Now, I’m not saying they’re selling fake UGG boots.  Maybe they actually are the real thing and they just fell off the back of a truck, but take a look at that site.  Gawd, what a mess.  The formatting is all over the place.  The home page is in German, but when you register, you hit a button labeled login in English.

Then when you click on an item to buy, up comes another page with the text in English and the buttons in Italian.  So I now know that Aggiungi al carello means put in shopping cart, sucker.

Already having ignored so many red flags I thought I was standing blindfolded on Tiananmen Square, I write an email anyway asking why, when I key in my credit card details, I get an error message from China.

Back comes the answer overnight:

Dear,

     We have accept  pay with a Mastercard. You can try it again or you can use another card to pay it. Thank you !

 

Right.  Fully aware my credit card could be in danger of being hit for something I now want nothing to do with, I phone Lufthansa’s Card Control hotline.

 

Whenever I buy something online, I get a text message right after it goes through saying what was ordered, where, how much it cost, and the time of transaction.  At the bottom of the message is a number to call.

 

So I called it and got them to temporarily block the card.  I also wrote an email to them detailing the site I’d ordered from, asking them not to process any transaction that might be coming from them.

 

So the red-haired girl gets a lesson, and I get a reminder: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Like this woman who bought an iPad for 180 quid in a McDonald’s parking lot only to find she’d picked up a great bargain on a block of wood. 

Facebook planking craze hits Hamburg!

Planking, the Facebook craze destined to last at least a few more hours one more week, has gone global.  Even the sleepy backwater of Hamburg, Germany has caught on.  We in Hamburg are more sensible than the rest, though.  Understated refinement is how we go about things here.

And because already at least one person has plunged seven storeys to his death in pursuit of the perfect planking position, in the interest of safety the editor and staff at Letters Home recommend you at least be sober before attempting your plank.

OK, so I bent a few of the official rules here.  But the penguin IS lying rigid on a 31-year-old German turntable.  Top that, plankers!

Apples from Deutsche Telekom: the great bait-and-switch

The other day I saw an advertisement for apples.

The ad said for 35 euro I could get 16 apples every month, plus all the cheddar cheese I want to go with it as long as I eat the cheese in Germany.

Because they looked like good apples, and I was currently only getting around 6, I phoned up a friendly lady who asked for my phone number, clicked away at a computer, then said yes, you can indeed get 16 apples a month, and we’ll set it all up for you.

But three weeks later when the first delivery of apples arrived at my door, all I found were 3 apples.

So I phoned up the lady again and asked her why I didn’t get my 16 apples.

“I don’t know,” she says, “you’ll have to talk to our driver.  Maybe some of the apples fell off the truck”

So she puts me onto the driver who tells me that yes indeed, 3 apples is all I’ll get.  “It’s because the road to your place is too long and bumpy.  The apples fall off all the time.”

“Is it also because there’s sometimes a lot of traffic on the road?”

“No,” he said. “It’s because of the road.”

“But why didn’t the lady who sold me the 16 apples tell me that in the first place?” I asked.   “I can’t be the first person at the end of this road ever to have ordered the 16 apples a month.”

“Yes, but…”

“And the price is exactly the same!” I wailed.  “Had I known, I’d never have ordered the apples!”

“I can’t change the way it’s set up,” said the mechanic., ” but you can go to a shop near your place, and maybe they’ll be able to help you out.”

Still hungry for apple pie I went with my sorry tale to the shop, where another friendly lady behind the counter said, “Well, if you’d have come here first for your apples, we’d have told you right away that you could only have 3 apples where you live.”

“So now I’m stuck with a two-year contract for fewer than 20% of the apples I ordered every month?”

She shook her head sadly.  “Yes, it’s too bad.”

“But if you like, I can offer you 50 apples a month.” she says, perking up.   “They’re delivered over a glass-fibre superhighway direct to your door.  It’ll only cost you 10 euro more a month.”

“But I don’t want 50 apples,” I said. “I’ll probably choke on them.”

“Sorry, that’s all you can get.”

And that, dear readers, is how Deutsche Telekom sells its high-speed VDSL Internet service to those looking for a fast – but not too fast – connection.

I would have been happy with only 6 Mb per second, which is what I was getting with another provider before their service went tits up and they refused to help me because the router I use wasn’t a router that they sell.

But when Telekom offered 16 per second I went for it, because it also offers free telephone calls throughout Germany.

Sure, they said, you can have DSL, but what they didn’t tell me was that because our place is too far from the main switch, I can only get a maximum of 3MB per second.  Sure enough, buried way down in the statement they mailed me after I signed up was a line that says 3MB/second.  I failed to notice that.  They certainly didn’t draw attention to it.  The woman I ordered from over the phone was too busy trying to sell me add-ons I didn’t need to concentrate on what I really wanted: a fast ADSL connection.

So, having given in, I’ve ordered their VDSL 50MB deal.  Fast, I know – too fast for what I need, but what the hell.  I still get the cheese, and maybe I can look up great apple pie recipes a little quicker.

Open letter to Lufthansa and Air Canada

Dear National Flypeople,  

I think your code-sharing system Star Alliance is a great idea – 27 airlines all working together to ensure we get where we wanna go.  

But I think you should re-name it.   Instead of Star Alliance, how about Stunned Abeyance?  Such is the state I was in after trying to check in online for my recent flight from Frankfurt to Toronto.

The first leg from Hamburg to Frankfurt went OK, and I printed out the boarding pass at home without a hitch.  But it wouldn’t allow me to check in for the Frankfurt – Toronto flight.  The Lufthansa hotline worker said that’s because it’s an Air Canada flight, code-sharing with Lufthansa.  “You’ll have to check in online at the Air Canada site,” he tells me.

Sounds fair, so I go over to the Air Canada site and try to check in there.  But even though I’ve waited until 24 hours before the onward flight time, it doesn’t let me check in.  I phone the Air Canada help number and after much fumbling and humming and hawing, they tell me that because Lufthansa issued the TICKET, I can’t check in online on the Air Canada site.

So let me get this straight.  Air Canada plane, therefore Lufthansa says no.  Lufthansa ticket, therefore Air Canada says no. 

So I phone Lufthansa again and they mumble a few apologies, assuring me that I will be able to get the seat assignment for the Air Canada flight when checking in my luggage in Hamburg.

Wrong! 

“Sorry, I can’t get in to look at that flight,” the lady at the Lufthansa counter tells me the next morning.  “It’s an Air Canada flight.”

In the end it didn’t matter much, because when I finally got a seat assignment from Air Canada at the gate at Frankfurt and settled in for the long flight to Toronto, I couldn’t believe my luck!  Free upgrade to Business Class!!!

Nööö…that would have been too perfect, eh?   Actually, I really enjoyed sitting in the middle of the back row of a fully  loaded plane, mashed between a twitching overweight fellow who smelled vaguely of fish  and what looked to be a long-retired Czech porn star who kept leaping out of her seat to visit the nearby biffies.  Hey, that reminds me of one of my favourite jokes!  Do you mind?  What’s the difference between an epileptic oyster-shucker and a prostitute with diarrhea? 

One shucks between fits.

Yours ever,

Ian in Hamburg

Google to buy Twitter in spin-off frenzy

A Definitely Not the Daily News Exclusive

Tech industry sources say the reason Google is in talks to buy Twitter is so that the search engine giant can spin off the immensely popular yet completely useless social media site into different channels.

“With Twitter, you have millions of people all on one platform,” said Kaushik Shridharani, technology analyst with Stiffe, Yall & Runn, an investment bank. “In simple terms, by spinning off Twitter into different branches, Google can reslabuftulate overlapping shintablatts without snaptifying their crubinta factors.”

Google is also out to stomp on millions of mommy bloggers who dare to launch Twitter-like sites.

“Don’t be evil?  Let’s get real,” said Shridharani. “Today’s Mama is going to be tomorrow’s dog meat when Google gets through with them.”

Scribblings deciphered from a scrunched-up paper napkin retrieved from the men’s restroom of a Mountain View, California McDonald’s reveal that Google already has several Twitter knock-offs in the works.

Among them:

Short bursts of laughter / short spurts o’ porn: Titter

Domestic Violence helpline: Hitter

For those that don’t swallow: Spitter

Tweets on the john: ( you figure it out)

Short bursts of rage and scorn: Bitter

Tweets from the Zoo: Critter

Low-level dispute resolution: Snitter

For those who work with wool: Knitter

While taking care of the neighbour’s kid: Sitter

Random ADHD for the caffeine-addicted: Flitter Jitter

Casually dropped garbage locations: Litter

Some search but never find it: Clitter

I’m outta here: Quitter

La Gomera public webcam birthday greeting

I’m sure a public webcam birthday greeting has been done before, but we thought it was a lot of fun anyway:

That tiny couple you see waving at lower-right are old friends of K. Over the Christmas break they ditched our winter cold on the barren flatlands for two weeks of golden afternoons on La Gomera in the Canary Islands.

At a get-together a few weeks back, they took me aside and told me their plan: starting at 1700 German time on K’s birthday, they’d be frantically waving in front of this webcam.

So as nonchalantly as I could on the big day – already full of best wishes of the normal kind from friends and family – I called K over to the laptop, clicked on the link and… voilà!

There they were.

Nice touch, T&T! You really made her day.

Canadian blog awards results

Careful readers of this blog will recall that this has happened before.

I make it into the finals, yet come in last.

No matter! Back in 1977 the race was broadcast live on TV, the winner blew past everyone, set a record that stood for years, and went on to compete for Canada in the Olympics.

In this year’s Canadian Blog Awards the race was live on the Internet, the winner of Best Personal Blog blew by everyone, and if her latest post is anything to go by, who knows where she might end up?

Knitnut gets some shots of some Ottawa cops after they’ve roughed up a woman on a downtown street. She refuses to give in to their intimidation, keeps the photos and publishes them. I hope that post – and her blog – get the attention they deserve.

Knitnut actually won two categories. Best local blog as well.

As they noted on the page announcing the winners, the personal blog category was especially competitive. Based on the number of votes cast, even the fourth-place finisher would have won had that blog been slotted in other categories.

Thanks to all who voted for this blog, and once again to Indeterminacy for the nomination.

Second place went to No Ordinary Rollercoaster, Meg Fowler third, The Peach Pit fourth, and Under the Mad Hat fifth. By careful process of elimination, that puts me in sixth.

A total of 57 blogs were nominated, many of which I think should have made it to the finals. Check out these, for example:

Matthew Good

It’s like I’m mmmagic!

Rigo’s Days

Notice to UK internet providers: ban this!

It’s a funny thing about censorship. Ignore something you find distasteful, and the rest of the world probably will too. But turn around and ban something on Wikipedia, and you can be sure the world will sit up and take notice.

So all you idiots at the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation who thought you were doing the world a favour by getting UK internet service providers to block access to a photo that’s been around for 32 years, will you please censor this post? You’ll have to ban access to wordpress.com, too, I suppose, but if that’s what it takes to make sure people can’t make up their minds for themselves what they can or cannot see, then so be it.

Of course, I have to provide something you twits think is worth censoring, so here it is: a link to a photo on an album cover that was released in 1976 and which you saw fit to censor from Wikipedia.

Guys, I hate the exploitation of children as much as any sane individual. I hate the idea there are children out there right now as you read this who are having their photo taken – or much worse – by people who don’t give a shit about them, who see them as a commodity to be exploited until they’re no longer of any use, tossed aside until the next crop comes in.

What the hell, there are plenty of street kids out there, the supply is limitless. Judging by the number of weird searches that for some reason turn up this blog, so is the demand.

And I realise, too, that there are laws against child pornography, its consumption and distribution, two things the Internet renders practically effortless. And that there are even newspapers out there – Europe’s top-selling Bild Zeitung for example – who sometimes don’t really look too closely at the age of the naked girls they stick on their front pages.

I also find the album cover distasteful.

But by choosing to tell 95% of UK internet users they can’t have access to even one page on one of the Internet’s most active websites, you’ve now called much more attention to that photograph than it ever would have received had you just ignored it.

As this article at The Register points out, the page in question is now among the most popular on the English-language version of Wikipedia.

But thanks, anyway. Growing up in a culturally and economically deprived Canadian backwater in the 1970s, I somehow missed out on it the first time around. Then again, I wasn’t a fan of sleazy German heavy metal either, so perhaps I just skipped over them on a rare trip to a Vancouver record store.

In fact, by 1976 the only chance I’d ever had to even glimpse anything close to what’s on that album cover was the time my friend Mark and I snuck under the floorboards of the girls’ changing room at the town swimming pool one summer afternoon to ascertain whether our schoolmate Lisa McC. was growing roots or not.

Oh, and I’m sure the Scorpions thank you too. Though the cover’s been changed, that same album is available at amazon.com on CD. They’ll appreciate the extra royalties.

Update:  The Internet Watch Foundation has now – five days later – decided to lift their ban:

The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.