The latch on the bathroom door is broke

My idle mind might not quite be the devil's workshop but it's definitely a never-ending source of "how about we do this?" ideas. And would you believe it I actually managed to gain approval when I submitted the latest one to the committee of the Hubby? Well I did. And what is my latest hair-brained scheme? A new bathroom. Ta-dah!

We bought this house 6½ years ago. The year following purchase we got someone in to do a quote for a new bathroom. They quoted us over €3,000 for a new everything. You might think "ah, not bad", but our bathroom measures 2.5 sq m and we weren't having the floor re-tiled (just the walls). The plan to re-do the bathroom quietly died.

So anyway, I got this idea in my head that if I bought some tile paint & primer, I could paint the wall tiles and update the room a bit. And then when I went of my way while I was on the way to the DIY store to buy salt for our water softening thing, I stopped at the bathrooms & kitchens store and picked up a catalogue. And when I got home I took out my tape measure and got a pencil and bit of paper. And you know where this is heading.

Being that we have a microscopic bathroom, I flicked past the pages with walk-in showers big enough to host a cocktail party in and the fetching double-basin consoles to seek out the "compact" lines. So whaddya think? Except we like the mocha laquer finish and a gloss white countertop. Also I'm wondering about the wisdom of a glass basin. Won't I be wiping it down all the time? So we'd like one of those, a matching wall cupboard, and a new shower. A proper shower with a ceramic shower tray and glass shower doors. And a nice cream & coffee colour scheme going on with the walls.

We went at lunchtime to have it all priced properly (because of course, they sell you a tap for €155, but the flexi pipes to link it to your hot & cold water cost extra!!). And we asked them to quote for fitting while we were at it. It would seem Hubby and I have made a major career-choice error. We should be bathroom fitters. Going on their quote, it's a nice little earner so it is. Which means probably I'll just plead (shouldn't take much) with me Dad to come and help us.

Now I'm really excited about having a new bathroom. Hubby will probably announce we won't be getting a new bathroom until January by which time I won't want one anymore. Hope not. Can't wait!

And it will all cost less than one euro grand.

Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin world go round

I'll tell you the only decent thing about having a couple of extra kilos being fat: bosoms.

Genetics did not bless me with an especially generous chest, but I have made up for that by becoming tubby. Now when I cast my gaze downwards I can actually look down my top and not just at my toes! My 36B cups are full to the brim. Maybe I could even splash out on some C cups, but I still like to delude myself into thinking I can trick the 7 extra kg into melting away. Also I like the effect of the brimming B cup. Still a novelty, sort of.

Of course Hubby also enjoys this side effect of too much champagne and not enough exercise. But as a wise man once said, "more than a handful is a waste".

Champers alright for you, Pats?

Fabulous darling. Because I wasn't organised yesterday, I got the champagne in the fridge too late, and we couldn't celebrate thank Crunchie it's Friday. So we're celebrating Saturday instead. Cheers!

What a way to make a livin'

At work I regularly receive graphics files for translation. These are product communication materials (POS, catalogues etc). It's great being able to work directly on the native format (rather than send the translation to the execution agency in a Word document), because it saves a huge amount of time on two fronts: I no longer have to convert PDF files to text, the graphic execution agency no longer has to copy that text into the native file. We reckon it saves about two days. And it practically eradicates errors.

But it's not all roses. This week I received 80 product signs. They happened to be for bikes. The file format is indd (InDesign). Now we work with a translation memory package (essential tool for any translator). It supports InDesign files, but not the standard .indd format. I have to export the text content in a sort of xml file (.inx format). Then I can translate the text, save the translation as an indd file, and the only DTP required is to update image links and check the fonts. Great isn't it?

Only exporting the .inx file can't (to my knowledge) be done as a batch, it has to be done file by file. So I took my bikes signs, double-clicked each file to open them, clicked OK on the message in InDesign that tells me I don't have the latest modules, clicked again on OK at the message that tells me I don't have all the fonts in the file installed on my system, and clicked Don't repair at the message that asks me if I want to update links to missing graphics files. Then I hit Ctrl E to open the Export dialog. The default file type is pdf, so I opened the drop-down list and chose InDesign Interchange. Then I clicked Save. And I did this 80 times. I don't know how many clicks that adds up to. But it's a LOT.

Once I'd finished exporting it was time to create the translation projects. The translation memory software operates with projects. You create a project, import your source files (basically, extract the text), translate in a specific interface, then export the files (a process which recreates the original file with all attendant formatting etc.). So I created my projects. For 80 files. And sometimes, if the source file size is quite big, it doesn't import properly on the first go. So I reimported quite a few times.

So. Now I have my translation projects and I can get cracking. Except that I can't just yet. Translation memories work on the basis of "segments". The translations they save are not single words, but segment entries. A segment is usually a sentence, but most memories will also segment when they detect a line break in a text. Makes sense. Except that in my graphics files some text boxes are on quite narrow columns which means one sentence can have four line breaks in it. The translation memory duly segments the sentence into 4 lines. Only, in the memory database, the translation is saved as one line, not four! Fortunately, I can join together segments before translation, to stick together the sentence and thus obtain a match from the memory. So before running a pretranslate on my files, I joined up the segmented catchlines on 80 product signs.

Can you possibly imagine a collection of tasks with any less added-value than that?

Finally, after probably the best part of an hour mindlessly clicking, I was ready to pretranslate. And that made it all worth while. Because out of just short of 25,000 words, only 3,200 or so remained to translate. So an hour of brain-dulling, wrist-numbing and finger-fatiguing click-clicking is a good trade-off really. Because if I had to translate all that without the memory, it would easily take four days. Now it will only take four or five hours.

That's why the translation memory is such an excellent thing, especially for product communication. Because, with bikes for example, we don't bring out a whole new range every season. So POS and other materials don't radically change every 6 months. There might be a new size added, or a limited edition colour. But the bike still has an SRAM X7 drivetrain and a RockShox fork with remote lockout. And the marvellous translation memory has it all stored in its database.

Sorry for this lengthy and boring insight into my daily routine! Just thought I'd share the highs and lows as it were. But I did exaggerate somewhat about the number of bikes files. There were only 79 really.