So, apparently the White House's Apple App Store-listed app is rated 12+ (albeit in the United States version of the store) for the reason of 'Infrequent/Mild' references to or use of 'Realistic Violence[,]... Alcohol, Tobacco or Drug[s]'. Overall, I am rather amused by this! I doubt, however, such a government institution would be encouraging illegal drug use or underage alcohol use.

Seriously, I would have thought that such ratings would be thrown out for clearly educational apps such as something from the White House, like with nature documentaries in some countries (otherwise said documentaries like Nature would basically be rated for sex scenes). Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I support the US Government -- the White House in particular -- for making the app, but not the rating they got, presumably from Apple, for their efforts. Anyway, the obligatory screenshots (the first of which is also uploaded to Flickr for some reason):

So, here's the screen shot of the apparent, albeit possible madness. And you're probably not bothered enough to zoom in on the screen shot, so this is the requisite bit.

(There's almost certainly other bizarre examples in the iTunes store, mind, but this one seems rather odd to me.)

And, in other news, I'm looking at getting the 1986 report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System on PGDP fairly soon, as I now apparently have the clearances lined up for that with their copyright people.

... It is, well, snowing, right now, still:

Or, earlier this morning, it was this bad.

It is, now that it is the early evening, far worse.

In the meantime, I am still mesmerised by the Sirocco Kākāpō incident:

My original post: http://www.jessicalind.org/blog-posts/windowsvistacontinuestosuprise-unboundlimit at jessicalind.org (or the one where the spouse talks her way on to her husband's online diary slash journal slash blog thing)

I have been suffering with my computer lately with my screen going black and then claiming that my drivers are having problems. My husband says this is probably from something called "kernel panic". All I know is that my C:/ drive had started to fill up rapidly. I take lots of pictures so I thought it was my fault but it was starting to get ridiculous. My C:/ drive went from about 100 GB to only having 2 GB left at 287 GB. I tried to figure out what could possibly be wrong. I had a feeling that it had a problem with the System Restore points but I couldn't be sure. So we logged onto my computer's dos prompt and found a startling issue:


I felt like Strong Bad in the virus episode on Homestarrunner.com, "Holy Crap. That's a big number!" What this means for those who have no idea what this is: Vista system restore had filled up my computer with 120 GB of restore points. I had heard on the internet about this problem that Vista should naturally have a 15% of drive limit. My computer had no such limit, thus being unbounded. It could have potentially gone on and on if there was unlimited space. This makes me think of my calculus courses where I could make a word problem about this. I wonder though if I get the award for most storage space used up by the system restore points.

How could this have happened? Thank goodness I have IT knowledge and knew to look for this but this was difficult to figure out what the problem was and it was making my computer crash in kernel panic. 

I want to thank How to Geek for his recommendation for solving this problem at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/

OK, so Gmail and Gmail-hosted domains can now send e-mail via an external SMTP server if it supports authenticated SMTP.

There is just one very, very small detail someone missed out somewhere: this only seems to work with Gmail's webmail interface (including their iPhone/iPod webmail interface), as far as I can tell so far. If one sends their Gmail or Gmail-hosted domain e-mail messages to Gmail via authenticated SMTP, Gmail does not then on-send it via that external SMTP server; the message is sent directly from Gmail. That and the address in the Sender: header you were hoping to completely hide ends up in the Return-Path: header instead.

Oh well. It is a start, somewhat.

So, tonight I look back at the directions that I wrote to the venue for my wedding (the Catholic ceremony, that is, for those who must know), which included a Google Maps pointer for the church, naturally.

To cut a long story short, not only is the smallest incorporated place (population 29, that is) in Ohio now in Google Street View's coverage (all five or so streets and two intersections in the town limits, albeit just an intersection view of side streets from the main road of the town), the said church can be seen. And there's the church hall across the road, too.

It's a massacre!

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Time for some alarmist titles, methinks. Well, first some disappointing news from my university, then something possibly a bit happier.

And after some more marital bliss-inspired absenses from tph, I wake up to discover that the 2009 papers catalogue for GEND at the teachers' college/university that I graduated from (twice, even) is basically empty. Really. Take a look. (Thanks, Kerry. She's a fellow GradDipArts graduate in GEND.) Trying to finish the undergraduate major might be amusing, let alone an honours year or graduate diploma. Sigh.

And in far more cheerful (possibly) news, Kiwibank now have a Visa debit card with prettier designs than Westpac New Zealand's offering -- and, at first look, cheaper fees, too, especially with regards to the foreign currency fee; 2% versus Westpac's 2.5% might well be worth it. Sigh. Again.

I wonder if I will qualify to receive a card...

Or even if it is worth it. I will have to think about it.

I hear some other queues in Ferguson Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania's polling places are better, and much better at that. But walking past the same local precinct (that I was standing outside of earlier, waiting with my wife for her turn to vote), Mike's Video, TV & Appliance, shortly before (hence the bad photographic quality of the Motorola V325), I came across the following:

Basically, I saw a queue that went in to a neighbouring bank's carpark.

But that was just a preview of the rest of the line:

The queue then went around part of the polling place's carpark quite happily, then past the front of the building ... where it finally went through a really narrow front door.

I write this at around 7.08, with a shade under an hour left. I passed by in a car just about 5 minutes ago, and the queue was about 5 metres shorter at that point.

So I turn up at the local polling booth with my wife. Basically, she's previously been half an hour or so late and is usually the first (give or take) to vote. This year she was voter number 63 and we waited an hour.

While she was inside, I decided it was safer to wait outside and have fun (as much as can be had by a resident waiting for their citizen spouse to finish voting) watching the queue snake around the booth, while I sat there hoping the embassy will actually count my vote in the NZ elections later this week.

Or, the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand; you might well find my original scans of this inquiry report (also known as the McMillan Report, after its chairperson, a certain Labour politician called David Gervan McMillan) useful. I'll write some comments about it in the next fortnight.

(Disclaimer: And, in case anyone thinks otherwise, the release date of this title to PG had nothing to do with the current NZ general election; I can not and do not control these release dates in any way as I only submit the scans to be proofread and I only keep a small sort of guidance on this process in terms of the quality of the proofed text while it is being proofread. Or so I think that is what I was told to do. Sorry.)

Voted

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And the said overseas ballot papers (having become available this afternoon) are now about to make their way through the postal system to the embassy in DC.

Thank goodness that is all over.

For now.

(And no, I'm not going to tell you whom I voted for.)