No birds? No idea!
A bit of an odd one here … When I was making my way around Aus, I kept noticing a car rental company whose logo appeared to consist of a key and the phrase ‘No Birds’. I never did get what it meant - I just assumed it was some Aussie reference that I hadn’t got. For some weird reason, I was thinking about it the other day and felt I had to find out the answer, so I emailed the all-knowing Kitta who, it has to be said, did a grand job asking all manner of people what they thought. Here’s her response:
I can’t remember what it means. So I asked around, and it turns out that no one seems to know for sure what it means either. Here are some of my friends thoughts on the slogan…
My boyfriend Matt Googled it and found out that bird in latin means Avis, and since Avis is a competitor car hire company it might mean they are trying to be smart buggers. My best friend Candy seems to think it means ‘no shit’ or ‘no hassles’, while the witty Sab seems to think it’s their way of asking birds nicely not to poo on their cars. Neko seems to think they use it as an excuse to display pictures of sexy ladies on their stationary and JD thinks it means that they don’t need pictures of sexy ladies in their advertisements (I was quick to point out that they do have one on their website at www.bayswatercarrental.com.au and in the yellow pages.) This then started a debate on the use of sex in advertising.
My personal thoughts are that the ‘no birds’ slogan means ‘no worries’ or possibly means ‘no chick cars’. Interestingly the domain www.nobirds.com.au goes to their main website. The mystery remains unsolved young Jedi.
So despite Kitta’s excellent research, I’m still no nearer to understanding what the hell they mean by ‘no birds’! And why is this not in their list of FAQs? Surely it’s one of the most asked questions about this company?! If you have any ideas/theories - or better still, if you actually know what it means - please do let me know.
Think You Know HTML?
Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t - or at least not as well as you thought you did. Paul Haine is certainly hoping that you don’t feel in any shame in putting yourself in the latter category otherwise his hard work on HTML Mastery will be for nothing. The book, which is due out in January (but you can pre-order on Amazon), goes beyond the simple basics that many of use on a day-to-day basis, looks at some of the lesser-known HTML elements and their uses (and, indeed, the lesser-known ones that deserve to stay lesser-known!). It’s a great refresher for people who think they know HTML pretty well but would like to really master the craft, a task that is helped greatly by the chapters on Microformats and a look at the development of XHTML 2.0 and Web Applications 1.0. But what really makes this book a great read is Paul’s writing style - if you’ve ever read any of his blog entries you’ll know he has a great sense of humour, and this has translated well to the topic at hand, a topic that, in the hands of others, could have been a very stuffy affair.
So, congratulations on the book, Paul - it’s another great addition to the web standards armory.
Pre-order HTML Mastery from Amazon
[Disclosure: I provided the technical editing on the book, in case you’re wondering how I know what it’s like before its proper release!]
Pro CSS - On the Shelves Soon
I’ve had a lot of things on the go recently and I’ve been remiss in not doing a bit of self-promotion (and promotion for fellow authors Dan Rubin and Jeff Croft) for a certain CSS book. Pro CSS is the title and it does exactly what it says on the tin - it teaches professional CSS techniques for web developers/designers who already have a good basic understanding of CSS and want to refine their skills even further.
The book’s publication date (as far as Amazon is concerned) is the 27th November, so hopefully I’ll be getting my hands on my copies very soon (and I can tell you from experience that it’s a great feeling, although probably not quite as momentous as the first time, so to speak).
I’m looking forward to seeing Jeff and Dan at next year’s SXSW Interactive where we’ll get the chance to raise a (no doubt Yahoo or Google-sponsored) pint for a real celebration.
Fraggle Rocks
Well, it’s been almost two weeks since a little bundle of jaws, fangs joy came into the Lloyd household. She’s settling in quite nicely and hasn’t yet drawn blood with her wayward little needle-sharp puppy teeth. So, say hello to Fraggle!
She was puppy of the day over at dailypuppy.com yesterday which got all the dog lovers cooing over her scruffy cuteness, and there’s an ever-growing selection of Fraggle pictures on Flickr. Actually, that’s pretty much all I’ve uploaded there just recently!
The World’s Fastest MacBook Pro?
…. fastest to go to the repair shop, that is?
Yesterday I took delivery of a brand new MacBook Pro - it has the uprated 7200 rpm drive, but it’s not the brand spanking duo core model. It was, after all, an eBay purchase.
The box was sealed so I revelled in unwrapping it (although I didn’t take photos of each and every stage as some do - been there, done that, just get me to the machinerey ASAP, I say!). I then set it to migrate from my iBook and left it for a while. Once it had done its thing, I fired it up and realised that I’d migrated from the wrong partition (I’d moved across my music/DJ only partition. Oops!). So, I popped in the OS X 10.4.whatever install disk with the aim of wiping and starting again.
The CD went in a little ‘heavily’ then made a bit of a strange noise as it span. a noise that got louder as it span even more, almost shaking the machine with its ferocity. It felt like there was a cutting disk inside there (like you get on a grinder) judging by the noise, and was working about as well as a cutting disk might inside a MacBook Pro. After many fruitless minutes of it spinning but not mounting the disk, I switched it off and tried to eject the disk at bootup. Then the machine failed to boot *or* eject the disk. Nice.
Moments later I was on the phone to Apple to register the product and then immediately get it in for repair.
For a few fleeting moments, yesterday, I had a MacBook Pro but now it’s in the sick bay - I don’t even have a photo of it. It’s almost as if it never existed!
