I think I will phone my grammar about this

Having experienced a number of issues recently regarding grammar I decided to look on the interwebtubenets for a suitable program. Word is famous for its abject failure of a spelling and grammar checker. i.e., it does not work as it should do.

The lack of proofreading hits even mainstream sites. Yahoo egregious mistakes all of the time. Here is one from today. 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence.

I found this site. Somehow they will need to convince me a lot more than by their 'Dear User' introduction on their front page.
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Dear User,

Our grammar software and spell check software accurately grammar checks and suggestions grammar corrections. Grammar check anywhere works in all your current programs you love and use everyday. Our grammar checker is essential to proof and correct the grammar mistakes of documents, emails, and presentations.

To see how effective is our grammar check, download the free grammar check trial, then go to the NYTimes.Com (NY Times Newspaper) web site, copy and paste an article from there. Paste it to our grammar check. Our grammar check software will find grammar mistakes even in a published NYTimes.Com articles.

Spell Checking & Grammar Checking Happens Just As If The Original Application Had Spelling Check And Grammar Software Built In

This means that whenever you are ready to spelling check and grammar check, you simply press the F11 hotkey on your keyboard. Our grammar checker takes it from there and integrates with your application such as word, outlook express & web forms.

Our Grammar Software Has Accurate
Grammar Checking And Spell Checking

Accurate grammar check as can be done by computer today. The following is the grammar options screen:

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And, elsewhere on the site:

"We also provide a slide-bar allowing you to indicate how aggressive do you want it to be in deciding something is a grammar mistake or not."

"While having your work professionally proof read for grammar by an actual human proof reader is the best way to get your documents neat. However, a human proof reader is expansive."

"This includes, but not limited, to the following applications:"

"Our spell check & grammar checking also comes with thesaurus."

"To grammar checking in Outlook or WordPad for instance, just press the f11 key on your keyboard."

AND THIS WONDERFUL BLOCK OF TEXT...

"

Grammar checking by computer is a software program that scans your text for grammar mistakes.

This is done with a sophisticated text search engine that can differentiate between verbs, nouns, adjectives and etc.

This text search engine looks for similar sentences by sentence structure. And looks for specific text that is usually involved in grammar mistakes.

For example, after "to" always comes a verb. Therefore, if the search engine finds the word "to" and after a noun, such as "to car". It knows that probably there is a grammar mistake in this sentence.

In the same way, the grammar check is done by considering thousands of specific grammar mistakes, and making general rules for them to be picked up by our sophisticated text search engine that is aware of verbs, nouns, and general sentence structure.

This technique while it works well, sometimes can fail and mark something as a grammar mistake when it is not a grammar mistake. But with common sense you can figure out pretty easily if the grammar mistake is real or not.

When checking out our grammar checker, please make sure that you do not make up some weird grammar mistakes to see if our grammar check will catch. Our grammar check is built to find real world mistakes and not made up ones. It is therefore best for you to pickup some real text you wrote and check it against Grammar Check Anywhere."

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The last one is a real killer.... it only checks for mistakes you deliberately make... apparently.

There is NO hope!

Butt dust?

Kids huh?

JACK (age 3) was watching his Mom breast-feeding his new baby sister. After a while he asked: 'Mom why have you got two? Is one for hot and one for cold milk?'

MELANIE (age 5) asked her Granny how old she was. Granny replied she was so old she didn't remember any more. Melanie said, 'If you don't remember you must look in the back of your panties. Mine say five to six.'

STEVEN (age 3) hugged and kissed his Mom good night. 'I love you so much that when you die I'm going to bury you outside my bedroom window.'

BRITTANY (age 4) had an ear ache and wanted a pain killer. She tried in vain to take the lid off the bottle. Seeing her frustration, her Mom explained it was a child-proof cap and she'd have to open it for her. Eyes wide with wonder, the little girl asked: 'How does it know it's me?'

SUSAN (age 4) was drinking juice when she got the hiccups. 'Please don't give me this juice again,' she said, 'It makes my teeth cough.'

DJ (age 4) stepped onto the bathroom scale and asked: 'How much do I cost?'

CLINTON (age 5) was in his bedroom looking worried. When his Mom asked what was troubling him, he replied, 'I don't know what'll happen with this bed when I get married. How will my wife fit in it?'

MARC (age 4) was engrossed in a young couple that were hugging and kissing in a restaurant. Without taking his eyes off them, he asked his dad: 'Why is he whispering in her mouth?'

TAMMY (age 4) was with her mother when they met an elderly, rather wrinkled woman her Mom knew. Tammy looked at her for a while and then asked, 'Why doesn't your skin fit your face?'

JAMES (age 4) was listening to a Bible story.. His dad read: 'The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.' Concerned, James asked: 'What happened to the flea?'
The Sermon I think this Mom will never forget ..

This particular Sunday sermon...'Dear Lord,' the minister began, with arms extended toward heaven and a rapturous look on his upturned face. 'Without you, we are but dust...' He would have continued but at that moment my very obedient daughter who was listening leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her shrill little four year old girl voice, 'Mom, what is butt dust?'

The Jon Stewart v Jim Cramer Interview

This is pure interview poetry... here. Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) interviews Jim Cramer (financial 'expert' on CNBC) about the stock market plunge.

Bull-pucky...

Looking to "provide a loving and secure environment for their child." It would appear that it was more a case of political expediency than family values. Here.

Good utility for laptop users

Battery-Bar does 'what it says on the tin' i.e., it monitors your battery status. The real benefit is, the more you use it, the more accurate it becomes in determining the amount of time available to continue using your battery. The Pro version adds a number of features. At $7.50 it is a real bargain.

There's something not quite right...

... about this. Here.

A 50 year old joke

It is difficult to imagine an Indian meal without papads/poppadoms. It is similarly difficult to imagine that one of the best manufacturers of these is reaching its fiftieth anniversary. Here.

The joke? Rowan Atkinson did 'The Indian Waiter Sketch' a long time ago also. This sketch remains one of my favourites but the link provided is a little flaky. If you can find a better version (or just the original audio) I can truly recommend this. In it he plays the role of an Indian waiter in a restaurant after all the pubs and bars have closed and a drunken crowd arrive. It is pure Atkinson magic. In an Indian accent he says something like "You want poppadoms. I see. You want me to poppa-dem on the table there. Very funny, sir. It is the first time I have heard that joke." (As an aside) 'In the last five minutes'.

Francis Rossie has his pony-tail cut off

Here.

How to bring a rude audience to a standstill

Simply robotics... here.

Doing Doo-doo

The information on the interwebnettubes is most diverse...



So, there IS a number two, three, four...

Wonderful Wondermark Comic

An excellent comic again from Wondermark... here. reminds me of South Park and Towely...

RIP Ali Bongo

The obituary in the Guardian does not really do this man justice. His ability to capture your attention with wit, humor, and brilliant magic was second only to Tommy Cooper. Here.

The World's Hardest Game

This game will drive you crazy... here.