Which is shitty enough on its own, but more than that, she was fired for posing some really funny spoofs of her own announcements on her website. Where's your sense of humor, London Underground? I'm reposting them here for everyone's enjoyment, and to show a little support.

Also, her website is here, but it looks like she's been pretty swamped. Check it out when you can.


"Do not drop litter on the train. Please use the tramps provided."
boomp3.com


"Warning, this is an emergency. I've chipped a nail."
boomp3.com


"Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read a paper, but is actually staring at that woman's chest, please stop. You are not fooling anyone. You filthy pervert."
boomp3.com


"We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loud."
boomp3.com


"Passengers should note that the bearded gentleman's rucksack contains the following items only: Some sandwiches, a library card and a picture of a bare ankle and is no cause for concern."
boomp3.com


"Passengers are reminded that a smile is actually a friendship signal - not a sign of weakness."
boomp3.com


"Would the gentleman in the pinstripe suit and £1000 glasses who obviously works in the media, please take one step forward on to the track as the train arrives. Thank you."
boomp3.com


"Residents of London are reminded that there are other places in Britain outside your stinking shithole of a city, and if you removed your heads from your arses for just a couple of minutes, you may realise that the M25 is not the edge of the Earth."
boomp3.com


"Passengers are reminded that, like all voiceover artists, I probably look nothing like you imagine and may turn out to be somewhat of a disappointment."
boomp3.com

"Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they're just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers."
boomp3.com


"Here we are again, crammed into a sweaty tube carriage. And today's Wednesday - only two more days before you can binge drink yourself into a state of denial about the mediocrity of your life. Oh, for Goodness sake, if you're female, smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He's probably not had sex for months."
boomp3.com

Emma Clarke [From The Wally World Front Page]

Posted by jehan at 10:31 AM | Permalink

A vulnerability in Apple's Mail.app that allows commands to be executed in the terminal without warning. It's been found. Again. Boo, Apple.

[From Apple Mail in Leopard with the same old error - heise Security ]

Posted by jehan at 2:49 PM | Permalink

As assembled by Mark Pilgrim.

[From The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) [dive into mark]]

+1

Posted by jehan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

Kindle is all the talk, today. Here's Gruber's take on it, he did what he does, and put it very well.

So the Kindle proposition is this: You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion. That’s no way to build a library. [From Daring Fireball]

Essentially, Amazon is asking you to give them four hundred bones to have the privilege of buying files from them can't be shared, and may not be any good in the future. Oh, and you get an ugly-ass reader, too. Seriously, that thing looks like ass. The screen might be awesome, sure, but those keys? Thick white border? It looks like it was designed in 1994. Actually, it looks like the Simpson's Newton.

Posted by jehan at 9:11 AM | Permalink

I think the most standout of the things wrong with Amazon's new e-book device and service is its name. And I'm definitely not one for burning books.

[From Amazon.com: Kindle]

Posted by jehan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

On Monday, FileMaker Inc. released a public beta version of their new app, Bento. This much we know. John Gruber of Daring Fireball put together a nice write up of exactly what the app does, who it's for, and speculates about how the app came to be. It's an excellent write up, and if you're at all interested in a kind of "at home" database to keep track of, well, everything, then you should absolutely take a look at this.

[From Daring Fireball: Bento]

Posted by jehan at 10:24 AM | Permalink

Kurt Suther released the b1 of his excellent Chax enhancement for iChat. I used to use it primarily to add tabs, but the big good feature, now, is auto-accepting text chat invitations.

As with beta software, there was a hitch getting the damn thing installed. I tried a couple things with no luck, then decided to read the comments (novel idea!); commenter Zev recommended installing Plugsuit to track down any old version of Chax I had installed, then reinstall. Worked like a damn charm.

[From Chax » Blog Archive » Chax 2.0 Beta 1]

Posted by jehan at 9:53 AM | Permalink

JAWESOME!

[From ze's page :: zefrank.com: strike #2]

Posted by jehan at 1:54 PM | Permalink

Daniel Miessler's website (aptly named dmiessler.com) is a solid resource for intorductory knowledge on lots of stuff, and more in-depth knowledge for lots of other stuff. In this episode, he tackles something near and dear to my heart: horsepower v. torque! Awesome!

I learned a couple things in this article, and if you're at all into cars, it's nice to see the correlation broken down like this.

[From dmiessler.com | study | horsepower]

Posted by jehan at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Essential Keystrokes put this up some time ago, and I actually just happened upon it, today. It's funny, 'cause this was the first time I've switched hosts, and this was what I did. I just didn't have the logical structure that is laid out in these 6 easy steps.

For most hosts, the biggest trouble will be making the backup (which is made easy by phpMyAdmin (if your host rocks the cPanel) and getting that backup restored on your new host. After that, it's all more or less a wait and see game. You make a change, wait. It takes affect, you wait. You make another change, and it starts again.

If you're going to switch hosts, definitely look into this. Worth reading, probably worth saving.

[From 6 Easy Steps to Making a Web Hosting Switch]

Posted by jehan at 4:28 PM | Permalink

Radiohead's In Rainbows has been all the news since it was released just over a month ago. Making news not only for being a pay-what-you-feel digital download with no DRM, but also for being a phenomenal album, and a follow-up to 1997's OK Computer.

Now, there's a whole to-do about Thom Yorke's ideas behind the ones and zeroes that seem to permeate the release, and it's sister album. But, Puddlegum turned one of those theories into a playlist, and it's really good. Take the 3 minutes and make the playlist, and just enjoy. I know it'll make the rush hour drive home much nicer.

[From » Radiohead: 01 and 10 :: Puddlegum ::]

Posted by jehan at 3:17 PM | Permalink

I don't think I ever got into the problems I had with my old host, 2MHost. Honestly, I was pretty worried that if I put any honest reviews about them online, they'd make my dealings with the even more of a trainwreck than they already were. Now that I've moved on, though, I'm going to give you a taste of what it was like.

This exchange took place last Thursday. I was "Live Chatting" with a CSR over there, trying to get my domain transfer expedited. Not an uncommon request by any means.

(16:05) me: requesting chat
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) me:
(16:05) tech. support: chat request accepted
(16:06) me: sweet.
(16:06) tech. support: Hello
(16:06) me: Hi.
(16:06) tech. support: How can I assit you?
(16:06) me: I've been waiting for contact from sales since early this morning. I need to check the status of my ticket
(16:07) me: #11802
(16:07) tech. support: Please place a ticket for that
(16:07) me: THat doesn't make any sense at all
(16:07) me: I've already placed a ticket
(16:07) me: I provided you with a ticket number
(16:08) me: now, I need it resolved.
(16:08) tech. support: they will update you on ticket
(16:08) me: It's been 6 hours.
(16:08) me: I really cannot wait.
(16:08) me: well, 4 hours.
(16:08) me: my mistake.
(16:09) me: regardless, it's been long enough.
(16:09) tech. support: Sorry for the inconvinonce caused to you but thich is a technical support department and we do not have access to to the sales department
(16:10) me: You should have access enough to be able to escalate this to someone who can help me resolve this.
(16:11) me: I appreciate your help, but the lack of any type of phone communication is a real pain.
(16:11) me: Because I can't convince anyone aside from you, Tech Support, to talk to me.
(16:12) me: And, honestly, I have no idea if you're a real person or not. Every time I've contacted tech support, I'm told to put in a ticket.
(16:12) tech. support: I am sorryfor the inconvinionce caused
(16:12) me: Honestly, you'd fail a Turing Test really quick.
(16:12) me: so. Let's resolve this.
(16:12) me: apologies do me no good.
(16:13) me: can you provide me with a company phone number?
(16:14) tech. support: Sorry we do not have phone no.
(16:15) tech. support: Is there any thing elese I can assit you with ?
(16:15) me: you can get me a manager
(16:16) tech. support: He is not available right now
(16:16) me: easy for you to say. managers are never available over there
(16:17) tech. support: Session closed by staff

And that's where we were. I'd just gotten hung up on by my host, for requests that are far from unreasonable. Typical of them, though.

Honestly, that's the only thing I didn't like about 2MHost. The price wasn't bad, I got all the typical features, and billing was as you'd expect, and the uptime was excellent. They responded quickly when the website got hacked a couple years ago. But, their customer service is terrible. God awful. Pretty much the worst ever. No phone support, no emailing with one person, and all communication has to go through a "Live Chat" or the ticketing system. And nobody seems to even come close to speaking English well, despite their supposedly being based in New Jersey (my server IP, though, showed an empty lot outside Houston).

Also, "Live Chat" keeps going in quotes because the scripts the CSRs use are so bad and predictable that I seriously doubted I was talking to a person. I still don't think that a person even looks at the chats until after "Please place a ticket for that." Christ, my blood boils just thinking about it.

Posted by jehan at 10:36 AM | Permalink

I moved us over to A Small Orange (finally, 2MHost can fucking suck it) and took the time to upgrade to MovableType 4.01. Regular (irregular?) posting will start up again tomorrow, and I have some new pictures! Woo! Looking forward to it.

Posted by jehan at 10:51 PM | Permalink