Timber's Career Moves N° 27

Quite apart from not being able to live in the same place for any length of time - 24 years of Timber and 13 addresses so far - I am also, since my first job as a paper delivery boy at the ripe old age of 14, proving to be remarkably inept at keeping the same job for more than a few months at a time. Or indeed even remaining within vaguely the same field of work.

This year, frog sample, Timberblog followers will note I have been mostly working as a translator, receptionist, teacher, and professional musician. I suppose if you look hard there are some transferrable skills in there somewhere. Which doesn't explain why, this month, I am a web site developer.

In fact a girl I met in April did ask me, within I suppose a few hours, "so... do you actually have a direction in life?" Actually, perhaps it was more tactful than that. But, you know.

Anyhow, it's only since being a web site developer that I have truly realised how fundamentally useless Internet Explorer is.

You see, it's a bit like preparing a romantic meal for the immaculately well brought-up girl you invited round for dinner in a fit of misplaced optimism about your unreliable cooking skills. What happens is you throw in ingredients, such as "head" and "body" and so on, stir them round a bit, add some seasoning, and then just when the dish is all lovely, ready to take off the heat and serve piping hot to the webby table...

PING! thwack

(sorry, I seem to have overstretched the elastic of my metaphor here, bear with me)

(ok I think I've got it back, hang in there)

...yes, as I was saying, immediately before serving it obviously you want to taste it to see if it's good. So generally you run it through a couple of tests, which involves looking at it in different programmes and asking friends to check it on different computers. Just to make sure it looks fine to everyone. And generally it does, with one notable exception.

You may not know this, but Internet Explorer was specifically designed for the sole purpose of irritating the hell out of designers. It's the single most useless programme ever invented for looking at the Internet. And it also happens to be the one that comes free with your PC, and which therefore nearly everyone uses.

Observe:

Sophie's lovely new website, as displayed in A Sensible Internet Browser

Sophie's lovely new website, as ruined by IE's refusal to handle transparent png files in any sort of mature and responsible manner

Worst of all, I know that Sophie herself uses IE.

If YOU are using IE right now, please consider changing to Firefox (or telling your company to do so). You can get it here - on a fast connection, you really have no excuse at all. It's free, it's safer, it's faster, it blocks pop up advertisements, it's morally more sound, hell, it'll even make you more desirable to the opposite sex.

(Although not as much as purchasing a new digger.)

Thank you for your attention.