Cillit Bang reaches these shores!

Cillit Bang! is a pink fluid that can apparently eat anything and is very good for cleaning stuff with, partly cos of it’s cleaning power, but mainly cos of the silly name. I used it in Norway, and was surprised to see it advertised on ITV the other day.

The website is http://www.cillitbang.co.uk, if you are interested in their outrageous propaganda.

Note that it’s Cillit Bang, just like in Europe, not Jillit Banj, or any other nonsense like that.

Teh Suboptimal iTunes 5 Install Experience

I was hoping it was an x.0 bug, but no, they haven’t changed it.

Installing iTunes 5.0.1 just now, I was struck by a couple of things.

First, a dialog telling you to quit it appears first. Didn’t the installer just use to quit it for you? Furthermore, the dialog in question doesn’t have the app. icon on it, just plain text and a big gap… and it keeps asking you to quit iTunes, after, um, you’ve quit iTunes. Buggy. Ugh.

Second, you have to agree to the licence twice, firstly when downloading from Software Update, then when you first open the app. That sucks.

Hopefully the app itself will be fine…

& finally…

This is a new cgi platform

This post is a little test of MarsEdit. As of 21 september 2005 the blog will only be available at this address.

[That address is no longer available. All posts are here now. Comments closed due to silly spam peoples.]

iTunes Moans

1. Having to open the prefs to adjust the encoder specs. Easy to turn it down for some mono, not very good, did it yourself years ago and fancy having it on the iPod, track, then forgetting to turn it back up for weeks… perhaps some system of presets would be in order, like the EQ ones. You could pick from a sub-menu in the context menu. “Import” button would use the one you set as a default…
2. Pedantic Alphabetical Order. This is actually two things:
   1. Artists are sorted in first name alphabetical order! Still! After all these years! I’m used to it, but how I wish it was surname alphabetical order… surely not impossible to parse that…
   2. Albums are listed in alphabetical order. I’d rather have em in chronological order (e.g. Felt Mountain then Black Cherry). Not exactly rocket science.
3. Classical music, and baroque music, and so on. Very difficult to mark up tracks in a senseible way without loosing scads of info.
4. Gapless playback has been ranted about everywhere. I’d like to put a word in for including the gaps between tracks, e.g. pre-roll. Essentially, you’d end up with not only the tracks from the CD in the Library, but the exact timing of the way the tracks connect into each other… wow, I’m expressing this badly! But it would sure help clumsy transitions between songs that mix into each other when shuffling…

Time To Go

Well, my three months here are up. I apologise to my three or so readers for not posting more obvious things about Norway–there’s an ambigous phrase if ever there was one–but as it turned out the most obvious thing was there was very little time to write stuff down, as I was too busy actually doing things. But there you go. Next time I will try to do less stuff.

The blog itself will continue, with probably fewer Obvious Things About Norway, but more Helensburgh, Mac and Uncategorised stuff instead. And in a few months, hopefully, some Obvious Things About Bulgaria. And maybe even a domain name, and a link into one of them accumulator thingeys, if I can figure it out.

Parting thoughts? I don’t want to go. I DON’T WANT TO GO, AAARGGH, DON’T MAKE ME GO HOME. Well, maybe not that bad. I have something called a New CGI Platform to deal with. And some unpaid bills!

The best country in the world on several measures may not be perfect. 300 kr for a wine box, for fecks sake! Two or three bits of litter here and there, for all that’s holy! However, the most obvious thing about Norway of all is that it is a wonderful place to be.

The Great Jif Conspiracy

Not so long ago, in a country not so far away, a major re-branding exercise was undertaken. “Jif” that slightly sinister white fluid that was just the thing for the quarterly cleaning of the bath but left your hands feeling really funny, was renamed “Cif”, a spectacularly pointless and unnecessary change, about as popular as the renaming of Marathon to Snickers, or the partition of Germany.

The reason cited for this painful but necessary realignment of reality? Apparently in Europe, Jif was already known as Cif, and it was cheaper to change the name in the country not so far away too.

So I came to Norway, and sitting on the shelves were bottles of… Jif. I was stunned, flabbergasted. The whole Cif thing had been a terrible lie. Jif was still Jif in Europe, but in the country it was INVENTED in, it had been renamed! What perfidious fate, what dreadful, er something else.

It became clear to me that this was a conspiracy, a conspiracy to rid the UK of any distinguishing characteristics by removing familiar parts of our cultural landscape and replacing them with made up bollocks.

For instance, the silver paper on Kit-Kats.

This conspiracy has nothing to do with Europe; as Jif is still Jif here. Europe is oblivious to us. So it must be for some other reason. Shits and giggles perhaps.

As it turns out, Jif is called Jif in Bulgaria too. So presumably it is in the rest of Europe. Perhaps next year I shall embark on a great Jif Exploration of Europe to settle the matter once and for all.