bitful

1. The UK bans advertising of promoting infant formula for babies under the age of six months. Glamour model Jordan was this week shown feeding SMA formula to her new-born baby in OK magazine, right next to an advert for SMA formula for older infants. Clever, if hardly legal. Sadly, it is not illegal for Jordan to call her daughter Princess Tiaamii.
2. One of my gay friends was bisexual. But I thought he was gay. And now he's not bisexual any longer. If that's what the Facebook 'Interested in:' tag means. Used to say 'Women, Men', now it only says 'Men'. The same thing on his boyfriend's profile. I guess that's why their status was for both 'In a relationship (it's complicated)'. Now that they have both removed 'Women' they have also removed the '(it's complicated)' bit. Ah, Facebook. Hours of innocent fun at the expenses of the privacy of friends and colleagues. Beats Sudoku any day for me.
3. Lee Jordan (Quidditch commentator)in the Harry Potter films is played by Luke Youngblood (Project Catwalk season 2 finalist). I did not care much for his creations per se, but I appreciate his unbridled imagination, and he did add a dash of colour to the show (and to Oxford Circus tube station ticket hall a few weeks ago, when I saw him strut about sporting a big 'fro and two Japanese friends/testimonials to his wicked fashions.
4. Native MPEG4 decoding is very bad under Vista. I was outputting video in Windows Movie Maker and the lower half of the screen was systematically green. And no, the video was not shot in a park. Bernie Zimmermann has instructions on how to fix the green bar problem in Windows Movie Maker.
5. Facebook is not exactly (or not any longer) the walled garden I thought it was. There is now a Netvibes Facebook widget that displays your notifications and friends' status updates. I was an enthusiastic Netvibes user until I discovered the brilliant simplicity of Google Reader, but I gave the Facebook widget a try anyway this week. Not for me unfortunately, as I already get all that Facebook information pushed out to a Twitter account and thus sent to me by text message anyway.
6. Bratislava (in Slovakia), the only capital in the world that borders two other countries (Austria and Hungary), is only 60 km from Vienna.
7. Someone just decided that it is now illegal for men to kiss in public in Italy. Two gay men were arrested, then released, in Rome for engaging in "lewd acts in public". The pair say they were kissing in a gesture of affection. I guess now I've got one more answer for people who ask me why I've left such a beautiful country: because I had had enough of being treated as a second-class citizen. There you go.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and last modified on December 23rd, 2007 at 6:41 pm, and is filed under 7 things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.