Tipping over the edge July 31, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation.1 comment so far
Tipping is a strange ritual. Y’see, if one were feeling mildly saucy, one could assume that the price of a meal in a restaurant would cover a multitude of things; the cost of ingredients, the back-office staff wages, table rental, the candles, and most importantly, the waitering service. And of course it then follows that the more food consumed, the more resources used, the more table rental required, the more candles melted, the more waitering and therefore a higher bill. It just makes a kind of sense; you pay for what you use, not what you don’t.
These days however, that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least not when it comes to restaurants. Apparently we have to pay extra. And it’s not an extra of a fixed value, or even an extra for a specific service. Just a random extra. And it is expected.
Now, perhaps in my generous minutes, if someone has served me like I am king of all he surveys, maybe maybe I would give a little extra at the end of the meal, just to say thank you. I like the idea of saying thank you. It makes it a personal gift, from me to them. With love.
The problem with all of this is that my mum and dad brought me up to never expect anything.
I guess I don’t mind the gift aspect, as I said, going above and beyond perhaps should be thanked in such a manner. But perhaps that would be better with my return? Or perhaps me inviting friends back next week, or raving about the place to my family? Nah. Tipping is fast becoming an expected “service fee” automatically added to the bill, or added to the pin-number machine whilst paying to guiltily decline if so guiltily decided. Perhaps I’m on my own here, but I find this whole thing thoroughly obnoxious, and just another way to squeeze yet another buck out of an honest customer.
Taking things even further, some jolly joints actually make up some percentage of the wages of the waiters with these random gifts. Why? What makes the waiters any different to the cleaners, or the cooks? Oh, I know. They’re dispensable. Of course. If you have two arms, two legs and can carry things, you can wait tables. Therefore I get you to do miserable hours in miserable working conditions for a miserable wage, and expect you to smile, welcome and dance like an organ grinder’s gibbon in the hope that you get a random gift at the end of someone’s meal that will get you somewhere within spitting distance of the National Minimum Wage. Oh, or you’re fired.
So it goes.
Well, at least there is some semblance of sorting out being done by the powers that be, and about time too. With any luck, this one small step to abolish less-than-minimum wages for waiters will turn into one giant leap for being rid of the ridiculously random ritual of tipping altogether.
Stay fast, Apple iPhone! July 25, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation, Technology.2 comments
First I was going to buy one, then I couldn’t. Then I could, but, probably quite sensibly, didn’t. Version 2 of the iPhone was all set up to be the most exciting launch since Sunny and Cher, not just for me, but for everyone with an eye on technology, design or small, black shiny plastic things that look great sat on your coffee table. It sold in bucket loads, so well in fact that the buckets sold out too.
But why then did I put the brakes on my purchase? Well, the hardware is there, solid, beautiful, functional, everything a growing lad could need in the contents of his own pocket. But from all the reports flying around on the news about the crashes, creaks and groans of the iPhone software, it would, at least for the time being, remain just that; probably the best-looking pocket-filler-cum-paper-weight money and monthly charges could buy.
Which is a bit of a bugger really.
Needless to say Apple are working feverishly to sort everything out. Somewhere, in some packed, sweaty shoebox, programmers are slaving away to get everything ship-shape as soon as is humanly possible. Because you see, what they don’t want to happen is that customers start to skip v.1 of software, in favour of a more stable, less buggy v.2. When that starts to happen, you’re on a really sticky wicket, because as the saying goes, when you only have 50% uptake, you’ll only find 50% of the problems. And if this 50% shrinks, and people start skipping v.1 and v.2, well, traditionally at that point you go bust, because no-one’s buying your bug-ridden trash any more.
Well, I probably don’t envisage this happening to Apple any time soon, but I, like many others, so wanted this release to be perfect. Night after night I dreamt about bidding a cheery farewell to T-Mobile, skipping down to O2, credit card in-hand, holding back the gulp when they told me what my monthly bill was going to be, taking the box home, switching it on, stroking it, and even, perhaps, making a call on it. Well, one day I will do all those things. But not quite yet.
Space, the final frontier July 24, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation, Science, Technology.3 comments
The space race was an interesting thing. Born of politics and one-upmanship, the two superpowers wanted to show the world who had the biggest crown jewels by being the first to plonk them on the moon. Men huh?
Since then everything has kinda, well, slowed down a bit. There’s been a whole bunch of posturing and name-calling, but the race has become something of a historical side-note. Not that people don’t care any more, it’s just that the goings on in the Big Brother house are just so much more personal and immediate.
Fortunately we still have some brilliant minds on the job and it was gratifying to see yesterday that not only have Russia and Europe been working together, but that they’ve actually designed a new manned space vehicle. The USS Enterprise it most certainly is not, but then that was designed and built in the 1970’s, and we’ve learnt a few things since then.
The most difficult thing to reconcile at the moment is NASA’s seeming inability to find their own accelerator pedal. Actually one could be forgiven for thinking that they’re still finding it tough to get out of reverse, but hey, let’s not be too harsh on the old lady. She’s seen us to the moon and back before now after all. But these days it seems the only time that anything new can be designed and pushed forward is if people do it in their own time. I would have been happier if such actions had been applauded rather than met with stuffy-nosed bickering, but it seems to be the way of things in NASA these days. That said I’m still vaguely troubled by how old all of this technology still looks; I could have sworn I built one of those out of a couple of fairy liquid bottles when I was a twinklin’…
Still, if all else fails we know that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic team are continuing to break sweat and mop brow to get us off the ground, and with the designs of Virgin Galactic’s new SpaceShip Two now circling the internet, it really can’t be too far off now. I guess it’s just about time to start saving for a ticket.
RSS – Reassessing my Subjective Syndication… July 18, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Games, Observation, Technology.1 comment so far
In my all-consuming quest to stay abreast of all things new, it appears I may have found a a bit of a problem.
Walking around London, I came across a games shop. Typical fayre, shelves stacked to the ceiling with dusty boxes and weird dice, cards that will probably never be shuffled or dealt, and two rather beardy looking fellows behind the counter. I looked at them. They looked at me. We clearly shared an understanding. I headed downstairs into the basement.
What I didn’t expect to find down there was a brand new board game called Agricola, just released this week, apparently hyped up to the nines, and with a box size to match. And I’d never even heard about it. Me. A games player with an RSS feed that makes Google Reader whimper on a light day, missing hearing about what is apparently one of the biggest board game releases since Miss Scarlet did Colonel Mustard in the Library with the candlestick?!
I know. Pretty freaky stuff.
Regardless of it’s greatness, I didn’t buy it, the box size had a price tag to match, but what the heck’s going on with my RSS feeds?! Well, thinking about it, of course they’re doing what they’re supposed to do; rattling around, tirelessly gathering anything new on my mastermind specialist-subjects, cueing them up ready for tea and biscuits. A blessing of efficiency, but now it would seem, a bit of a curse to boot.
Because of course once upon a time we used to “surf” to find out about stuff. Click, browse, follow links, tread untrodden paths, and we’d find out strange new worlds, new civilisations, with people doing things with pencils that had never been done before. Much like bunging crap telly on, and sitting through adverts, we’d learn things we didn’t know we were interested in. A tv program on tomorrow night about gun toting crocodiles? Cool! An advert about the all new Nissan Micra-dot in slutty pink hues? Just so on order! And it was great, because we could spend our time learning all things weird and wonderful that we didn’t even know we wanted to know about.
But with RSS feeds this all stops. No more incidentals. No more crazy animals, pencils or cars. It’s all gone. So if I hadn’t have come across this little shop, with it’s strange rituals and dusty boxes, I’d never have found such a fantastic future holiday present. And that would have been a shame. Perhaps I could do with reassessing my information gathering processes…
The “something for nothing” syndrome July 16, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation.add a comment
If there’s one thing that annoys me it’s people expecting something for nothing. Yet here we are, with more public sector strikes in the UK, with schools closed and bins remaining uncollected, and all because people aren’t happy with their annual handed-on-a-plate pay increases.
Of course it’s the Unions that are yet again whipping things up. UK’s great bastion of the 70s, and by their measure the only reason the Labour government exists, is throwing it’s weight around again, spreading dissatisfaction and discontentment amongst as many ranks as will still listen to them. And why? Pay of course. Apparently an offer of a cross-the-board 2.54% pay increase is simply not good enough for those they represent.
Not good enough despite those people being, on average, better paid than their private sector equivalents. Not good enough despite the fact that the people in question are not being expected to do anything more than they did the year before. Put simply they want something for nothing, and to be honest we should all be tired of this kind of attitude by now.
Born of a policeman and a nurse in the 70s, I have first hand experience of what it’s like to live through tough times. But whilst their peers were striking and shouting for more money, my father was teaching himself guitar and playing in what turned out to be a well respected local covers band lasting the better part of 25 years, and my mother, unable to work full time due to having two small children, worked a rather unpleasant part-time job and made and sold hand-knitted dolls. The point is, they didn’t sit and moan and expect everything to be handed to them on a plate. They went out there and they got what they needed; it wasn’t a lot, but they got food on the table and clothes on our backs. And all without a Union in sight.
So for the rest of us that live in the real world, our message to you strikers is thus. If you want to get more money, work harder. If you want to buy a bigger house, or a third car, get yourself better qualified and work on that promotion. If you want to be worth more money, then make yourself worth more to your organisation. But please, if you do nothing more, just stop expecting something for nothing.
Boris, we love you but… July 14, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Humor, Observation.add a comment
Boris Johnson, we love you to bits. You’re like the puppy that is always your friend through thick and thin, always looking up at you with such soulful eyes and empty head. The kind of puppy that you could never kick because, well, that kind of puppy is just too daft to ever have done anything wrong.
Even with comments linking computer games with illegal activities we want to tousle your crazy hair that looks like it’s been tousled a thousand times before. Even being delighted that you’ve been able to scrap the new £25 London congestion charge for big, nasty, gas-guzzling cars just makes us want to give you a big hug and bless your cotton socks for changing something that’s clearly just a little bit beyond your comprehension.
So Boris, this is a little homage to you. Just a little posting to say that we love you to bits. You may be a bit simple, a bit out there, but we’d never condemn you for any of it. We really do think you’re a smasher. Now please, step aside there’s a good boy, you’ve had your turn. It’s time to let someone else have a go.
The sky is falling! July 11, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Humor, Science.add a comment
Chicken Little is what some might call a bit of a doom-monger, sort of a glass-is-half-empty kinda chicken. Convinced that the sky is falling in due in no small part to being hit on the head as a small child, Chicken sets out on a quest to tell the King, because, as we all know, Kings can fix those kinds of things. To be honest they’re probably the only people that can actually afford to pay for roof repairs these days.
Along the way Chicken meets some fellow talking animals, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Foxy Loxy amongst others, and whilst en-route it all gets a bit messy, scenes from Tarantino movies abound, and depending on the version you read, everyone lives happily ever after, or doesn’t.
Fables aside it feels a little bit like that here in the “real” world at the moment. Not long back we had a great big hole in our ozone layer that some wittily suggested needed covering with a toupee. Today we face global warming and animal extinctions. The polar ice caps are melting, the land masses are sinking, it’s all our fault for ruining our planet beyond repair, and we’re all going to justifiably die horribly whilst seeing how many other species we can take down with us before we go.
Except.
Except that I find myself wondering if we really know what we really think we know about all this.
Certainly I’m not aware of spraying any less deodorant, but somehow the ozone hole just kinda just got better on it’s own, sans-hairpiece, and without anyone really telling us why.
I also read earlier this week that global warming may not be down to the junk that we pump out of our cars and cows, but actually due to there being less pollution in the air, and therefore more of the sun’s rays hitting the surface of the planet. Crikey, getting clean and green is actually causing problems?
And then I read that although some glaciers in the world are melting and getting smaller, some are actually growing in size.
And that’s not all. We all know that we as a species do cause an amount of difficulty for other species sometimes, much like the dinosaurs did a few years ago. But what never gets mentioned is the sheer number of new species that are being found around the world all the time in the craziest of places.
Okay, so what I’m not advocating here is a free-for-all policy on the planet and it’s inhabitants, cos that would just be silly. What I am saying is that we need some balance in our views, what we watch, and what we read.
When Chicken Little pops up on the 24-hour news station and starts looping everything that’s bad in the world and why we’re all doomed either through extinction or divine retribution, I’d like everyone to step back from jumping off that ledge and take a moment to put things into context.
Yes we could be better than we are about looking after everything around us, and every day that goes by would appear to see us closer to living in trees and generating electricity from poo, but we must also understand that scientists do not know everything, despite what they may say to the contrary in order to get headlines and airtime, and, unless something goes drastically wrong, we are, I think, likely to be spared a falling sky.
Hold the digital presses July 8, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Humor, Observation, Technology.3 comments
I thoroughly dislike decorating. If ever there was an activity in life whose sole purpose was to suck out all that is good in a man, it’s decorating. Never will anything strike fear into us like the words “you know, I think this room could do with freshening up a bit”, and you family members who are now barely allowed to come to visit, giving handy hints on colour combinations is not appreciated, nor for that matter are discussions over the benefits of using a pad over a roller. The last such discussion caused me to walk outside and sit in the coal bunker. If there’s one room that is to decorating what a tin foil hat is to government thought control it is the black, dark, and utterly un-decorateable coal bunker.
However, for all you people who are wedged firmly and securely on my side of the fence, there is one, small, pinprick of hope on the horizon. Not a big enough pinprick to read Man Monthly by I’ll grant you, but perhaps enough of a hope to get us through a few of those Kiwi Burst and Forest Lake freshening sessions.
This hope lies with something rather special that people with thick glasses and bushy beards are liking to call electronic paper.
E-paper covering our walls promises to end the plight of those of us with decorator’s elbow and paint-fume lung and provide the ultimate dream; Himalayan Musk to Waterlilly Blush at the press of a button, just in time to match the evening meal. And of course it doesn’t stop at culinary coordination. These things are screens the size of your wall. If you felt like a real man when you hoved your 60″ plasma into your reinforced living room corner with ten of your mates, and lets face it, who didn’t, this is going to re-write the record books for airborne testosterone levels. Top Gear seven feet tall? Even your shoes will bleed at the possibilities.
But of course that is the future, and we’re not quite there yet. The problem is that the powers that be are currently funneling their precious time and resources into creating e-paper contraptions that, quite frankly, suck. Yes, okay, everything has to have a starting point, but if acorns were to have a start like this, they be growing downwards and smell really rather bad. Cool and capable they are not; if James Bond was asked to use one of these to foil criminal minds, I’d expect him to give up his job to become a plumber. Even Nick Hornby described the $400 Iliad e-paper book reader as “something hit with an ugly brick”, or words to that effect.
Okay, so looks aren’t everything as long as the objects in question serve us well. But in this age of convergence where even your kitchen sink will soon be available on your iPhone tariff, a divergent slab of fugly plastic that does one thing badly seems, well, somewhat outside of most normal people’s reality. Which is a shame considering the levels of hope and anticipation being heaped onto these technologies by hordes of men around the world that will soon be called on to “freshen” things. Perhaps if these techie types started worrying less about book replacement and more about our health and masculinity, perhaps we could have something hanging on our walls before we’re forced into an early, wheezing, Maraschino Mocha grave.
A price on entertainment? July 7, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation.2 comments
How much is a DVD worth to you? A crisp new £20 note? Maybe a tenner? How about your favourite Jayzee CD, or maybe the latest Neil Diamond single for your mum? It’s a tricky question and I’m not entirely sure I have an answer. A quick walk around the local WHSmith showed me that I wasn’t the only one having such difficulties. Excusing the quality of the photos, because, quite frankly, they’re rubbish…
So as I sip my hastily thrown together concessionary coffee, I wonder why Good Luck Chuck, a film of esteemed character and poise, is priced at £14.99, whilst Serenity with all it’s devil-may-care action languishes at a far more modest £3. Sure, one does have Jessica Alba in it, and, well, who wouldn’t pay more, but surely Serenity’s gymnastics are worth more than £3 for repeatable viewing? Of course, athleticism aside, it could be down to something as sensible and justifiable as sales figures, or maybe even how long it’s been out on the shelves, with prices lowered based on the thickness of dust coating the cases. But, well, I’m not so sure. The CDs? Well, they fair no better than their visually encumbered brethren.
Dire Strait vs Abba in a direct head-to-head pop-out certainly sounds interesting, but would the result really justify the £4 difference?
Bored with comparing seas of yellow stickers, I took my seemingly endless humming and harring for a stroll over to HMV where everyone wears black and even, occasionally, smiles. Would I find the entertainers duking it out at the same price, or perhaps even manage to save a few pounds for my daughter’s college fund? Unfortunately for me, and HMV, I found yet more use of the random number generator connected to the overzealous use of a big-yellow-sticker gun and therefore, promptly, gave up.
With so much confusion, is it any surprise why, when I read about Virgin Media sending letters out to customers warning them against downloading music, and the G8 countries wanting to hunt down old Mrs Moggins like the pirating dog that she is rather than saving the world from war and famine, that people get a bit wrankled and turn to the internet for their fix?
If we don’t know how much music and films are worth, and the shops don’t know how much they’re worth and therefore can’t tell us, how can someone stand up and justify to me, a reasonably educated man, that something is worth five of my hard-earned credit-crunch-resistant Great British Pounds, and another seemingly identical item is worth ten times that amount? How can I ever be happy with my £50 purchase of 1000 episodes of Scrubs, when I find the same package for half-price round the corner, and being given away in the Daily Mail this Sunday?
Look, before someone hunts down my ISP and starts trying to poke me with a big naughty-boy stick, I’m not advocating downloading this stuff for free, and I’m certainly not condoning piracy in the slightest. What I am saying is that if bigwigs of the world want to stop people illegally sharing films and music, then perhaps there needs to be slightly less releasing of the over-paid legal hounds, and a little more effort in fostering a perception of actual real-world, consistent, predictable value in these things. If it doesn’t happen soon, in this world where the availability of music and television is right up there alongside turning on the tap and opening dad’s wallet, we really will see the disappearance of one of the great industries of the modern world.
On dial-up no-one can hear you scream July 4, 2008
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation, Technology.2 comments
It’s funny the sorts of things we put up with until we know different.
We used to be happy with horses filling our streets with friendly messages and taking days to go shopping at the local Sainsbury’s. The smell covered up the eau-de-yak that many of us were afflicted with in those days, and the time was well spent having forty-two kids before reaching the milk counter.
We even used to be happy getting up in the middle of a rain-soaked night to pop out into the back garden to go squat in a dark and leaky hut. Sure we’d get a bit damp, and get crawled over a bit, but it was not unlike being in bed in those days, only with less snoring. A valuable opportunity for a bit of peace and quiet then.
However, when we realised how much fun could be had careening round corners on two wheels, faces distorted into something that would not be out of place on Doctor Who, we started gaining a distinct interest in shares in glue.
And when it was noted that we didn’t have to trudge around in the garden at midnight for a number one, and that such places could actually be moderately sanitary, and smell of pine, we brought the loo inside and installed speakers and an internet connection.
Now we hear that 62% of dial-up users have no interest in moving to broadband, with 35% citing cost, 20% seeing no need for the higher speeds. Now I was as surprised as the next born-again-computerist that dial-up users still shuffled among us, but no need for higher speeds? I’m sorry, but somebody must be a little confused. The last time I used a dial-up connection, it was so slow that time actually went backwards. There wouldn’t have been any need for Superman to fly round the earth to save Lois Lane, just pop the old dial-up connection on, boot up the Internet, and watch all the bad things undo themselves before everyone’s eyes.
But possibly the most troubling thing about this is the fact that I find myself in a quandary trying to come up with a convincing argument as to why they should change. It’d be a bit like trying to convince Robert Mugabe that a one-horse race isn’t really a race it’s just, well, a bit of a jog past a bunch of people. If they can’t see the big red sign saying “Welcome to the 21st Century, we thank you for driving carefully” all my waving and pointing is just me getting some exercise.
Maybe the last laugh will be on us though. With companies like the BBC serving up ever-increasing numbers of Eastenders episodes in ever-Higher Definition, and service providers refusing to improve their services until someone writes them a fat cheque and marries their daughter, we could see those old dial-up speeds taken out of tales of yore and thrust into Virgin’s next new hotness marketing campaign. Then who’s going to be sitting pretty on the only modems left in the whole of the western world?
