'Objective' opinion on Strictly Come Dancing

There was a brilliant letter in yesterday's Metro newspaper regarding the recent John Sergeant / Strictly Come Dancing fiasco. I say brilliant, because it ended:

And before anyone comments, I don't watch the show so my opinion is objective – neither am I a dance purist.

Objective? That's like saying your opinion on a novel is objective because you've never read it, or your opinion on a political party is objective because you don't know what its policies are.

Palin as president of Campaign for Better Transport

One of our news stories today mentioned Campaign for Better Transport, an organisation that speaks out against "excessive flying" and encourages individuals to reduce their carbon footprints.

I was amused to read that the president of Campaign for Better Transport is travel presenter (and comedian) Michael Palin.

Although Palin is a supporter of 'greener' forms of transport, especially rail, he must have one of the largest carbon footprints in the history of humanity – having travelled around the world, from the North to the South Pole, around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, and through the Sahara and the Himalayas – to name just some of his adventures.


Website: Palin's Travels

Product review: Azor from King of Shaves

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about blogging and product reviews, and how through Fuelmyblog I've been given the chance to review some slightly more mainstream products than pinhole glasses and e-books about facial tics.

Hopefully I can use this opportunity to find out more about the whole 'blogger review' business, as well as get some goodies to give away to Engine Room readers.

Anyway.

I can reveal that the first product I've been sent for review is an Azor razor (as pictured on the right) from King of Shaves. It came in a nice little media/presentation pack with shaving gel and a CD of logos and images - plus-points for KOS there, as it means I don't have to inflict my photography on anyone today.

I have to admit that I already use King of Shaves tea tree shaving gel (although the company didn't know that). Being tea tree, it's quite tingly, and it doesn't foam much, so I can see what I'm doing when I'm shaving. That's all I have to say about shaving gel.

As for the razor itself, it looks like something from a 1970s vision of the future - a good thing in my book. It's light, and being smooth plastic it doesn't get grubby. Most importantly, I've not managed to cut myself with it once in three weeks of use. This might be down to its rather odd 'tuning fork' shape, which means I have to hold the razor quite far down the handle. Makes shaving my top lip a bit tricky, though.

Moving on to the marketing side of things, I'd like to mention one of the slogans KOS is using to promote the Azor: "Prepare to shave closer, longer, for less." Shave closer: well, yes, great, as long as I don't cut myself more. For less: less money or less effort, either is good. But shave longer? Why on earth would I want to do that?

(I can only assume that it means the blades and/or handle last longer than the competitors'.)

And in the promotional material I was sent there's a quote that includes a nice portmanteau. "'Wilkinette' have a brilliant future behind them'," says the designer's dad.

Lessons learnt:

• Companies with good products are indeed willing to send them out to blogs for review.
  
• Those companies should include media packs with information and photos.
• Portmanteaux are good. Ambiguous promotional slogans, less so.
• It's OK to quote your dad sometimes.
  

Overall, I have to say the Azor is a winner. Hopefully I'll be sent something bad to review next time so I can really slate it and see whether that effects my chances of getting further products.

One last thing. I know I said I would try to give away any review copies of products to readers of the blog, but I doubt anyone would want a used razor. And if anyone did want a used razor, that would suggest they were exactly the sort of person not to be trusted with a used razor. So I'm keeping this one for myself.

The Engine Room, eLearning and the apostrophe

Just a quick one today. One of the photos from The Engine Room's Flickr account has just been used (with permission) in an "eLearning module on the apostrophe".

The module is actually quite fun, if you like answering multiple-choice questions on apostrophe use. OK, maybe not for everyone but I think it's snazzy.

To see it, go to www.writing-kit.com and click on 'Apostrophe Review'. The Engine Room's photo is on slide number 15 (and originally featured on this post).

I feel strangely proud, seeing as I took the snap with my cameraphone and I'm certainly no photographer.

Alphabet fun with MAN

In the course of my job this week I found out that German truck manufacturer MAN offers 'driver behaviour analysis' in which it rates HGV drivers from A (the best) to G (the worst). Not so interesting, perhaps. But I'm tickled by what the ratings stand for:

A – absolute stars
B – benchmark performers
C – competent and could do better
D – development required
E – economically and environmentally expensive
F – frightening
G – goodbye!

Obviously someone at MAN likes playing with language. And is it GCSEs or A-levels that have a grade of 'N' for 'nearly a pass'?

I'm half a headline, get me out of here...

Right. After today I'm going to stop picking on the freesheets for a while.

Spotted this on page three of yesterday's London Lite (and sorry about my wonky cutting and scanning):



Yes, there's part of the headline missing. Is this an honest mistake (and we've all made them) or the result of a sub trying to suggest that the celebrities in reality show I'm a Celebrity... are actually nonentities?


(For those who can't see the scan, the headline reads: "Deadly storms threat to the I'm A ".)

McCain makes high-profile apostrophe error

I don't want The Engine Room to become one of those blogs that is fixated on misplaced, missing or inappropriate apostrophes (not that there is anything wrong with that in itself, of course; it's just that other blogs do it so much better).

However, this one is a real cracker (click for a larger image):



So this is an ad by multi-billion-dollar food company McCain. A full-page ad, on the outside back cover of the London Lite newspaper – which has a readership of 1.1 million. And look at that apostrophe.

I suddenly feel much better about my own mistakes. And can anyone come up with a higher-profile apostrophe error?

I do quite like 'caressive', though.


(For those who can't see the image, the copy in the advert reads: "Stop! Stop! I lied, as I bit into the pert roundness of the goose fat smothered potato, instantly sending caressive plumes of steam gushing from it's soft, fluffy centre like a hot breath on my lips.")

Text messaging: Gingerous makes 60 sounds while martial arts drinking

We've had an email from Gingerous regarding a couple of unintentionally amusing mobile phone text messages (SMSs) that he wrote recently. Fortunately he remembered to check them before sending them.

Gingerous says:

The first was a simple grammatical error. When describing my plan for a particular evening I wrote “martial arts drinking”. As exciting as this sounds, it should have read “martial arts, drinking”. Still, it amused me.

The second one was a predictive text error. Instead of “Today was a good day, I made 60 pounds whilst off work”, I ended up saying “Today was a good day, I made 60 sounds whilst off work”.

I think both of these highlight the importance of checking your texts.

When I was at university I used to frequent a club called 'The Rig'; more than once I texted people to tell them that I was 'going to the pig', or more worryingly, 'already in the pig'. Predictive texting, eh?

'More people living in Britain'

An unintentionally ambiguous start to a story in today's Metro (under the headline 'We are, in fact, proud to be British'):

More people living in Britain see themselves as British first and foremost - whatever their background.

Is that 'more' as in the majority, or 'more' as in more than before?

The former, according to the rest of the story, although I would have assumed the latter.