If you’ve taken one of my classes at some point over the last couple of years, you may have seen me use a spotlight to highlight an area of the screen. Well, that tool, Omnidazzle, is now free. Grab it, and make every presentation or teaching session sing. Lots more than just spotlighting too — how about live drawing on top of your screen? Slick stuff. Don’t miss OmniDiskSweeper and OmniWeb while you’re there.

Things Hazel has said in the last day or two: “Hazel broke it” in relation to the clothes dryer knob (she did) and “One bucket. Two buckets. Green. Yellow.” to accurately describe buckets hanging outside the kitchen window. Sentences and plurals, woohoo!

Unassisted and unsuggested, Hazel’s latest: she found a Peter Rabbit book, then went looking for the matching Peter Rabbit soft toy. Then she said “same”.

[500th post!]

Two things about Hazel.

1. Her language is amazing. I was fetching her a peach to chop, and casually said “I’m getting you a peach, I’m a peachmonger”. (Random nouning is all the rage around here.) She immediately said “Monger. Peach monger.” Best. Parrot. Ever. Then she said “juicy” while eating it.

2. Hazel’s child care centre (2 days a week) has just sent home a note saying that some kids have head lice, and could we please check our child’s head for lice. Without our permission, they are unable to check Hazel’s head for lice as it’s “an invasion of her privacy”. They *wipe her arse* and won’t check her head without asking?

This is the steamiest pile of crap I’ve seen in a looong time: The Pepsi Gravitational Field, in which the expansion of the universe is compared to the multiplication of Pepsi logos. If you’ve ever choked back vomit at phrases like Establishment of a gravitational pull to shift from a “transactional” experience to an “invitational” expression then get your barf bags ready.

Remember, folks: you’re just selling sugary water.

Obscenely blah corporate speak obviously from yet another committee does not make a good impression, does not help “sell” a “vision” or a “mission”, does not endear you to your customers.

Microsoft’s new vision/mission/whatever is “Create seamless experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of the internet across a world of devices.” Really?

No, really? If you must *have* a slogan, why not “Seamless software everywhere”? If a slogan barely fits in a tweet, it’s too long.

My favourite part of the whole thing is at the bottom of the page, where it says “Microsoft Confidential. FOR MICROSOFT INTERNAL USE ONLY.” Ah well. Maybe they fired whoever had the job to not put this on a public site with plenty of links pointing at it.