Archive for September, 2008
Three good things and one bad one
Good: The new Christopher Brookmyre, James Lee Burke and Ian Rankin novels.
Bad: The new Girls Aloud single.
Thoughts on EasyJet’s Speedy Boarding service
When you fly, it’s traditional for two groups of people to board first: people with mobility problems, because they need extra time/assistance to get on the plane; and parents of very young children, so that everybody else can avoid sitting anywhere near them. This is particularly important on evening flights, where the children are up way past their bedtimes and they express their displeasure in the only way they know how: yelling.
In its great wisdom, though, EasyJet has changed the Natural Order Of Things with Speedy Boarding, a service designed for… well, bastards, really. If you pay a couple of quid extra for SB, you board *before* the people with mobility issues and *before* the parents, smiling smugly at them as you breeze past.
If it weren’t for the smug smiles, they’d probably get away with it. But they don’t, because even the most sleep-deprived parent is still capable of remembering a face for ten minutes. So we take a mental note of the smuggest speedy boarders, and when we get on the plane we make a conscious effort to put our overtired, overstimulated, teething babies in the seat immediately behind them.
Of course, not every parent can arrange this. Some of them are further back in the cabin. But they can still play their part. Because the smuggest Speedy Boarders sit right at the front of the plane, guess where the parents of the screamiest babies go to try and rock their little darlings to sleep? Yep!
That SB on your ticket? It stands for Screaming Baby. In your face!
[Tangent: if EasyJet actually dimmed the cabin lights at night and refrained from yelling "BUY THINGS!" messages through the intercom every ten seconds, the babies might actually sleep. But instead, you get a chain reaction: one baby gets furious because it wants to sleep and can't, and all the other babies get upset by it. Which is shit for the babies, shit for the parents and shit for everybody else on the plane. Nice one, Stelios.]
Back in a bit
I’ll be away all next week. More ranting when I get back.
Better e-book readers are coming
Excellent news. We’re not quite at the point where I’d want to dump my daily paper for a digital Daily Me, but we’re getting closer.
The iRex Reader 1000 offers a 10.2-inch diagonal E-Inkscreen, far larger than Kindle’s 6-inch screen or even iRex’s own 8.1-inch diagonal iLiad, its last e-book model. That stretched display is designed to work with any file format, be it an e-book, a full-sized PDF, a Word document or HTML. Like earlier iRex devices, it sports a stylus and touch screen for taking notes and marking documents.
…Business-targeted readers also come with business-sized price tags. Though Plastic Logic won’t yet reveal the price for its device, iRex says its basic reader will start at $650. (By contrast, Kindle sells for $360.) Adding a writable screen to the iRex reader will cost another $100, and equipping it with wi-fi, Bluetooth and a 3G cell connection for downloading documents will raise the price to $850.
But nonbusiness consumers, take heart: Cheaper, book-focused e-readers are also likely to be revamped soon.
“RealPlayer: like the Black Death, but made of software”
Feeling ranty? Techradar’s just uploaded “48 things we hate about tech“, which enabled yours truly to cheer himself up by being nasty about things. Any I’ve missed?
State-sponsored punching
Hurrah for Ealing Primary Care Trust, which has decided to liven up people’s cigarette breaks by providing people you can punch. At least, I think that’s the idea.
‘Smoking police’ will target people at betting shops, bus stops and shopping centres to shock them into giving up cigarettes… A team of 11 young people have been employed to approach smokers, in a similar way to charity fund-raisers - nicknamed ‘chuggers’ - who ask passers-by for donations.
Not to be outdone, it seems that the Scottish NHS wants to give fat people the opportunity to punch complete strangers too. As the inimitable Mr E puts it, responding to the story that “Armed with measuring tapes to check waists and equipment to test blood pressure, the “Street Nurses” are policing busy shopping centres, supermarkets and community centres. Any man with a paunch, or woman with an “apple-shaped” body whose waist measurement is higher than recommended limits is given diet and lifestyle advice or referred to local slimming classes”:
if there are people out there who honestly and genuinely believe that it is the role of government to walk the streets policing this shit, then we have a real fucking problem here.
Don’t buy a phone from a place called Dick
A customer was shocked to find pornographic images on a mobile phone she had just purchased, even more so when she discovered they were of employees from the store where she had bought it.
The Australian university student was given an ex-demonstration model as it was the last in the Dick Smith Electronics shop…
Metallica: too loud, and not in a good way
Here we go again. Metallica appear to be following in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ footsteps, releasing an album that’s so compressed it’s painful to listen to. And that’s painful in a “shit sound” way, not a “woo! Scary metal!” way.
the released CD version is - to coin a technical phrase - smashed to f**k.
According to the mastering engineer, responding to Metallica fans:
I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction, I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case the mixes were already brick walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice it to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.
Why let an author’s death put an end to a series?
Following on from the news that Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowl books, will be writing the next book in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I have my own announcement: I’ve been commissioned to write the sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Obviously I can’t say too much about it, but I can promise that it’ll feature more car chases than the original.