The rise and rise of fan-created random off ofs

The 2006 edition of Lake Superior State University's Banished Words List is out. Sadly it doesn't include any of my latest pet peeves so I intend to bore you with them here instead. 'Off of'. An imbecilic, infantile and totally redundant John Wayneism, yet it's everywhere you look at the moment. I'm convinced people are deliberately shoehorning it into the most inappropriate sentences simply to wind...

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Filtering Google search results by date range

Supposedly we are able to use the operator 'date:3/6/9/12' to limit search results to only those added to Google's index within the last 3 months, 6 months and so on. In practice you may as well not bother because all this tweak does is return pages which include keywords such as "Date: 12 December 2006". Chocolate fireguard anyone? An alternative, undocumented, super-secret operator you can use...

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Excluding trashed items from Spotlight search results

By default, OS X's Spotlight results include whatever is lingering in your trash can waiting to be permanently purged from the system. This can be confusing if you're engaged in a seek and destroy mission because the files you banish don't disappear from view until the trash is manually emptied. To fix this you can exclude the trash can from Spotlight's search results by dragging its folder into the...

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Bollardial impalement

Normally the merest mention of 'hilarious, must-see' YouTube movies has me yawning in record time, but when they feature an area of your home town you pass by almost every day, any old dross is worth a peek. This one (YouTube video since deleted) depicts screw-loose motorists trying to beat the...

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Tread carefully and carry a big ski pole, or two

Whenever I'm out exploring the countryside I see people - who clearly consider themselves to be serious, die-hard hikers - carrying ski poles. No skis, no snow, no dry ski slope, just the poles. I've always assumed this is some sort of cliquey, ramblers club fashion statement and left them to their...

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Botched with NVU

Oddly enough you can't snag a show-your-support badge like this from the NVU home page, only the 'made with' ones. NVU is a streamlined, free alternative to the clunky Dreamweaver WYSIWYG HTML editor. Sounds great in theory doesn't it. In practice it's wonkier than a drunken giraffe bowlegged with rickets, totally incapable of performing the simplest of tasks - inserting a *gasp* ...table for instance. It...

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