Tag: reflections

At the hotel I’m staying at in Alexandria for Wikimania, there is wifi from a closed network that requires login and that has no user-accessible way to gain increased access.

However, they have defined a set of "exceptions" to their closed network policy. The exceptions are described on the page users are redirected to upon connecting. Essentially, the exceptions boil down to any website that ends in google.com.

You can use Google search (but not click on the links), use GMail, Google Talk, Google Reader (but not see any images on the blogs you are reading), Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Checkout, Google Docs, and so on.

A few people at the conference seem only barely inconvenienced by the arrangement and most seem to be able to get work done! I can’t help feel like I’m experiencing some dystopian version of the Internet from 10 years in the future.

My friend Aaron is moving back to Boston and in the process getting stuff for his apartment from Ikea. A lot of Ikea stuff is secured with hard plastic strapping. Luckily, Ikea also sells scissors to help you cut your way through it! The scissors are secured with hard plastic strapping.

I’ve always been bothered by those "Property Of Blank University" t-shirts that used to actually be the loaned (or stolen) property of college athletic departments but have now become popular enough that you can find them, for sale, in nearly any university store or gift shop in the US. Few people would assume that somebody with a "Property of" shirt had stolen their clothing. In fact, it’s often impossible to find the shirts except on sale anymore — and rarely from universities themselves.

Here’s my response.

For those that don’t know (and that’s certainly many), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is the nineteenth century French anarchist and mutualist most famous for saying, "La propriété, c’est le vol!" In English: "Property is theft!"

You can buy my t-shifts (red on black, where possible), in my Printfection store. Source SVG is here. Please share variations in a comment.

My mobile phone has a 206 area code (Seattle). People sometimes ask me why I don’t have a 617 number (Boston/Cambridge). In fact, I had a Massachusetts number in college but switched to a 206 several years ago on a trip back home in order to get a "permanent" Seattle number.

With a move to mobiles phones, the idiosyncratic fact that US mobiles remain tied to geographic area codes, and the effective elimination of domestic roaming and long-distance, an area code in the United States is increasingly not about where you are but about where you are from. Or, perhaps more accurately, about where you want people to think you are from.

Thanks to Matt Lee for helping SVGizing my drawing.

Yesterday I speculated that Lamers Bus Lines was the most disproportionately photographed, unintentionally insulting, bus line name on the Internet.

Apparently not. Several readers pointed out that, while a Flickr search for lamers bus returns 81 photographs, a search for fücker bus and fucker bus return a combined 84 photos not unlike these.

With Lamers, PUTA, Fücker, SCAT, and the SLUT, I’m beginning to wonder if something very fundamentally wrong with the way human society is choosing the names for its mass transit systems.

I suspect that Lamers Bus Lines, Inc. (golamers.com) may be the most disproportionately photographed bus line in America by young Internet-savvy photographers.

These photographs, and many more, are taken from Flickr:

When it comes to the most insulting bus company, however, the unfortunate typography that rendered the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority buses dangerously close to “puta” may give Lamers a run for their money in Spanish speaking communities.

There are many blogs called No Comment. Most of them allow comments, but not all. Unavailable for Comment is in fact available for comments, although it seems that few have taken advantage of the fact.

Most blogs called Comment also allow comments although the blog Daily Comment (which is not daily) does not.

The blog Leaveacomment.com does not seem to have the domain leaveacomment.com but allows its visitors to leave comments.

Every since I found out that the first digits of any credit card denote the issuer identifier (i.e., folks can tell who issued a credit card and what type it is just from the first digit or two) I’ve been annoyed almost each time I have to input credit card information on the web. Any decent credit card system knows that if a sixteen digit credit card number starts with 4, it’s a Visa. And yet, each time anyone buys anything on the web, they must select "Visa" from the drop-down box. On a certain level we all know this; People in stores and restaurants never have to select the type of card before swiping.

When I’m feeling generous, I imagine this is so that the credit card companies can give an extra reminder that they only accept certain credit cards — not being able to select a card type in an "essential" input field constrained to multiple choices is a pretty strong reminder.

When I’m feeling less generous, I suspect it might be so that the companies can subtly remind us that they have their own brand credit cards that we might like to acquire.

I don’t think I’ve seen something this bad since Reebok accidentally named a shoe after a demon that sexually assaults women.

Want to contribute to my list of unintentionally offensive product names?

In Brazilian Portuguese, "bombeiro" is the word for both a fireman and a plumber. If someone asks you to call a "bombeiro," their statement is usually unambiguous due to context. Usually.

Both SVG source and t-shirts are available at cost.

I’m going to be visiting Mika’s family in Tokyo for the next two and half a weeks. We’re planning a trip to Kansai at some point as well.

Currently, I’ve got no free software related plans or meetings lined up but if folks in Kyoto, Osaka, or the greater Tokyo area would like to meet up for drinks, that would be great. Additionally, I’d be happy to put together something more organized (e.g., a short talk, workshop, etc). If you’ll be around and are interested in either, contact me and let’s figure something out.