Friday, August 29, 2008

Balance on Channel 4 News

So, McCain announces his running mate.

Channel 4 News leads with the Democrats' line on the announcement ("inexperienced candidate a heartbeat from power...") and Obama's attack on McCain in his speech last night.

They later introduced the Governor of Alaska as a former beauty queen.

We know how much Channel 4 News (and the BBC, of course) want Obama to win but can't they at least pretend to be balanced?

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Is the economy even *worse* than it looks?

Passing through Bank yesterday evening, I would guess that over 80% of the advert slots in the corridors between the DLR and Central platforms contained TfL adverts, rather than paid-for ones.

Surely the advertising market can't have gone so bad, so quickly?  I've only been out of the country for a week!

Friday, August 08, 2008

Faster Payments

Wow...

I'm in the process of moving my money resting in various accounts to First Direct in preparation for switching to an offset mortgage.

I transferred a chunk of money just now from Barclays. I then switched to my First Direct account and the money was already in it.

It took less than a second.

Seriously impressive.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

I think they're trying to tell me something

First they closed off the Wapping-> East London Line -> Jubilee -> Waterloo route to work.

Then they forced me to use Bank rather than Tower Hill/Gateway to get from the DLR to the District Line.

And now they're closing Blackfriars too!

So, as of March next year, my only viable route to the office will be Limehouse -> DLR -> Bank -> W&C -> Waterloo.

Wonderful.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

"Please return item to the bagging area"

Arghhh!  Who designed the self-check-out machines that have proliferated of late?

Regardless of the store, the self-checkout machines have exactly the same design so somebody, somewhere, is making a lot of money selling them.

I can only assume the manufacturer has a rock-solid patent that is keeping rivals from competing and protects their sordid little monopoly. How else could they get away with failing to fix gaping defects in the user interface that have persisted since they first appeared several years ago?

"Item removed from bagging area"

... yes. I know. The bag was full.

"Please return item to the bagging area"

... WHY?!!!  WHY SHOULD I?????

"Unexpected item in the bagging area"

... YOU JUST TOLD ME TO!!!!!   I want to cry now :-(

Useless, useless, stupid, stupid machines.

 

I see I'm not the only one who hates them...  (the date on that post also shows that the user interface stupidity has persisted for at least a year.)