hintofsarcasm
am i still ill?
Archive for Comment
November 19, 2008 at 21:19 · Filed under Comment
To: ukinfo@starbucks.com
Date: 19/11/2008 10:32
Subject: Eggnog
To whom it may concern,
Why why why are Starbucks not selling eggnog latte this year? It is as much a part of the festive season as Santa or Jesus for many people.
I received the email telling me that ‘The red cups are here’ but when I walked into my local store there was no sign of the familiar yellow cartons labelled ‘eggnog’. With the state of the world this year I thought that Starbucks could at least be trusted to bring some cheer to this festive season.
With disappointment,
Nathan Collins.
Reply from Starbucks received 20/11/2008:
Dear Mr Collins
Thank you for taking the time to contact Starbucks Coffee Company.
I am sorry to learn of your disappointment that eggnog is not currently part of our Christmas range this year. You will be delighted to know that eggnog will be available for a limited time in December in all stores. Egg nog will be in store on the first of December.
We look forward to welcoming you into a store soon.
Yours sincerely
Lindall Kidd
Customer Care Specialist
Popularity: 11% [?]
August 2, 2008 at 17:59 · Filed under Comment
Evidently there isn’t too much going on in Cardiff and the surrounding areas at the moment judging by the choice of stories published today by the Trinity Mirror owned rag.
Pin-up Abi may be eyeing up a Welsh property
FORMER pin-up Abi Titmuss has revealed she may buy property in South Wales.
Speaking at a book signing in Cardiff last night, the 32-year-old former girlfriend of ex-This Morning presenter John Leslie, told of her love for the Welsh capital.
Her only previous visit to the capital was a celebrity appearance at a nightclub.
The ex-glamour model said: “It’s really nice to see it in the daytime and I’m going to have a look round the Bay later.
“I’ve got family in Bristol so you never know, one day maybe I would like to have a place here. It’s beautiful.â€
- Pin-up Abi may be eyeing up a Welsh property (WalesOnline)
So, not only are we supposed to be excited because it’s some woman who is only famous because she released a sex tape of her and a boring morning television presenter, but also to believe that, in her own words “you never know, one day maybe I would like to have a place here”, her move is a certainty.
Hell, you never know, one day maybe I would like to own a Ferrari. I wonder if I sent them that quote they would publish an article about me?
I particularly like the line “Speaking at a book signing … (she) told of her love for the Welsh capital”, quickly followed by “Her only previous visit to the capital was … at a nightclub” and “It’s really nice to see it in the daytime”.
Wow, what undying devotion she must have to our little town, on her second visit.
Popularity: 15% [?]
March 2, 2008 at 22:15 · Filed under Comment
“Camilla?”
Popularity: 30% [?]
February 4, 2008 at 17:08 · Filed under Comment
When robots are given the job of choosing advertisements, unfortunate placement is one of the risks.
On the right you can see one example, found on icWales.co.uk, a Trinity Mirror group website, that in the age of keyword based selection, things can sometimes go wrong and insensitive or inappropriate advertising can be displayed, something which would rarely happen in a newspaper or on television, where advertisements are placed manually by humans.
One way to counter this would be to use blacklists, as well as a keyword list. A list of words which, if found on the page, should prevent the advertisement from being served, instead, moving to the next in line. For most, this would be a very simple piece of code to implement and would do wonders for the credibility of the advertiser.
Google adwords already has this capability and would imagine that Yahoo!’s answer to the Google service, Yahoo SM (Search Marketing) would employ a similar facility.
However, it seems that Trinity Mirror control their own advertising using scripts and pulling banners from DoubleClick. Perhaps this is a feature they should look at building into their back-end?
Popularity: 36% [?]
November 22, 2007 at 07:04 · Filed under Comment
I wonder how much the South Wales Echo was paid to make this look like a legitimate news story?
It’s kind of intriguing how now not only the corners of the page can be bought, but also a headline and text that fools the reader into thinking that it is another news article.
Is this common practice now? Did I miss a meeting?
Sales Appointment [icWales]
Popularity: 25% [?]
August 11, 2007 at 18:02 · Filed under Comment
The South Wales Echo are up to their usual tricks again. Clearly the person who comissioned this article is neither a rights or technology specialist.
Todays “shocker” is that somebody has been allowed to create a group on the popular social networking website Facebook that is offensive to a particular individual.
Dubbed the ‘Gemma Trigg Cheap Tart Club’, the group was created by the wife of a man that Ms Trigg allegedly got involved with. Obviously, she thinks that this is below the belt, but, cheap tart or not, the view of Ms Trigg, and evidently of the Echo, having chosen to publish the story and tell it from her perspective, is that Facebook should not have allowed the group to be created in the first place.
“I was shocked that … Facebook would allow them to put that on their site.”
Facebook is frequented by millions of users worldwide, I have to say, even I make sure I log on at least once a day.
How does this lady suppose they police what is going on within the community and what all of their users are doing all of the time?
Being a webmaster myself, and previously one of a popular forum, I can tell you that it is a big job if your website serves even more than a hundred frequently active users.
It would involve going through all posts made and threads created, in the case of Facebook, it would involve going through all of the;
- wall posts made
- groups created
- group posts made
- events created
- even posts made
- profile updates (someone could have written something offensive there to try to trick the Facebook police)
- status updates (again, sneaky trickery)
And this would have to be done for all of its users, all 34 million of them.
Suppose each of them made just one change every day, this would involve 34 million checks having to be done. It surely couldn’t be done by a script, because there are far too many variables and the possibility of false positives would be astronomical which would degrade the usability of the site. If you set a list of words which, in order to be used on the website, had to be moderated first by a member of the Facebook team, the volume would still be absurd and completely unworkable. The site would then become completely user un-friendly as the waiting times for things to show up would fall into days, if not weeks or months, instead of instant and convenient as it is now.
A new website, which is just like Facebook, but without all the restrictions would then become the popular alternative for fed-up Facebook users and once again they are free to offend en-masse.
Do we want to be part of an internet where all of our actions are checked by a team of lawyers before they are accepted for publication? I’m not sure that is compatible with the whole ethos of social networking. The majority of uses of the site are legitimate, productive and are of great use to the subscribers of the content. If one person decides to slander another using a website or service that is open to the public, why should the creators or hosts be accountable for them? If I was to write ‘Tom is a twat’ on a cubicle wall in a toilet at the train station, should the station be held accountable because they have cubicles which can be used as an open stage for slander? If this whole ‘Gemma Trigg is a tart’ thing was being passed around by email instead of being hosted on a website, would she want the email provider (ie. Virgin Media, Hotmail, Yahoo, BT) to be reprimanded, because they allowed this email to be sent through their servers?
By means of a test, I have taken the Echo on with a challenge. If Facebook really should not have allowed a user to create such an insulting group, should the icWales forums have allowed me to create such an insulting thread?
[Edit: ICWales (South Wales Echo website) forums deleted the thread, named 'Daniel Grosvenor is a fat, pie eater', after approx 24 hours]
Cardiff has an extremely active community within Facebook, with groups existing for things as zany as our well known street people, like shakey hands man, Ninjah and Toy Mic Trev to friends of Clwb Ifor Bach and constituents of Cardiff Central, to name but a few.
Why does the South Wales Echo not run a story about amazing effect that Facebook and other websites are having on our city, by allowing us all to interact with each other in a way that we have never been able to before?
To share ideas, likes, dislikes and opinions, which I believe will make us a better city for the future.
It will shape the way we vote, as our political representatives have embraced it an are able to be interacted with at the push of a button.
It will shape our views, as city residents share thoughts about decisions made by the council and companies who are devisive in the radical changes that our city is currently going through.
Why has the local rag of Europe’s fastest growing capital city chosen to focus on the minor flaws caused by a minority when new media is doing so much to help grow it?
Regardless, to have written to a local newspaper about this attempt at slander, Ms Trigg has most definitely made the issue far worse for herself. Yesterday, 65 people were in a ‘hate club’ on a website, today, the whole of South Wales knows that there are 65 people who are of the opinion that some woman is a tart. In the article, the creator of the group is mentioned briefly, but the main text is of comments that have been copied and pasted from the group (none of which are objective), thus the contents of the group which have been completely wiped, since it had been removed before the paper went to press, can now be read, in print, by thousands of people who would not otherwise have seen it, and potentially millions online as the article is also published on the icWales website. The choice to publicise has most definitely backfired in this case.
So, through all of this, we now know that 65 people seem to think that Gemma Trigg is a cheap tart, but since the start of this fiasco, 5 now think she is a reasonably priced pastry.
I’ll leave you to work out the average.
‘I was bullied and humiliated on net‘ – icWales
Popularity: 35% [?]
April 8, 2007 at 19:11 · Filed under Comment
Why is it, in the British Isles, that when most people arrive into an arena of public transport, that all manners, rules and etiquette are thrown straight out the train window?
This is an experience that I have never had in New York city, which makes it even more frustrating.
At a train station, there is always one person who thinks anything of it to come walking up to the train doors, completely ignore the queue that has formed and to jump on, right in front of travellers who have been patiently waiting for others to get on and take their seat.
This happens all the time, at least here in Wales, and it really pisses me off.
Usually it’s the smart businessman who is too important to wait in line, but obviously not important enough to travel first class. Therefore automatically becoming the businessman who thinks he is important, but in reality is most likely a data entry clerk who dresses fancy.
Sitting double seated is another niggle of mine, especially on a tightly packed train. People will just sit there as more and more people cram onto the train, leaving standing room only, with their bags on one seat and their fat asses on the other. 27 people are now standing on this one-carriage horsebox, but your bag needs it’s own space. It probably get’s claustrophobic, doesn’t it. Yes, I thought so.
And when I get tired of standing and want to piss you off, don’t give me the evil eye or the sigh when I ask if I can sit where your rucksack is, unless of course you can show me the extra ticket that you bought for your holdall, then I will concede and be put firmly in my place.
The motivation for writing this piece stems from the thrice weekly commute that I take from Newport to Cardiff, granted, not a long journey, but I’m speaking out for all those who must do journeys far longer but have exactly the same experience day in, day out.
The daily travel to the office is mundane, frustrating and colloquial enough without the apparently entitled making it that bit more uncomfortable. So, mend your ways before one of us snaps.
Popularity: 35% [?]
February 5, 2007 at 08:01 · Filed under Comment
It has recently come to my attention that I may have given misleading information in my post “Berman in the firing line again” (24/01/07).
In light of this new information I would like to make a full retration of said article and apologise to Neil McEvoy of Plaid Cymru.
The leaflet that I assumed was being distributed by Rodney Berman and the Liberal Democrats was in fact not the same. The literature that was being delivered is pictured to the right and is clearly anonymous, as was originally stated by Mr McEvoy.
A referendum on the Controlled Parking Zone in Canton, Cardiff, was held on Friday 26th of January and residents voted overwhelming not to instate it in it’s current form.
No2CPZ.co.uk
Popularity: 30% [?]
January 21, 2007 at 20:51 · Filed under Comment
If I put up a sign in my theoretical restaurant window which said “British diners only”, would I get away with it?
With the focus of the entire country on racism this week, thanks to a certain pug-ugly degenerate, a hostel in Cardiff has hit the news for having a “Foreign passport holders only” policy.
Is this legal?
According to the Comission for Racial Equality, it isn’t.
In my imaginary restaurant with my sign, it hasn’t been up for more than 2 hours before a complaint is made and a horde of police are outside with a battering ram preparing to smash the door through.
The reasoning behind the Cardiff Backpacker having a ‘No British guests’ policy is equally as racist as the sign.
Apparently, it is to make the stay as pleasant for foreign travellers as possible. Guests from these native isles are too unruly, according to the owner, Sion Llewelyn.
The only difference here, is that the hostel is discriminating against the prodominant race of this country, which is where people tend to be less reserved.
Back to my dreamworld, I’m stood in my restaurant, the gang of Bobbies that just put four of my windows through want an explaination as to why I have that sign in my window, I give the explaination that ‘Foreigners always run after paying’. I’m in trouble. I’ve just stereotyped 6 billion people.
This is what Mr Llewlyn, the Cardiff Backpacker and the majority of racists have concluded when they made their policies or beliefs, that every single person in a particular race have similar traits, and this is what racism is based on, no matter if it is racism of blacks, whites, Chinese, Mexicans or the French. It’s textbook closed-mindedness and ignorance which should not be tolerated.
Yes, racism is the story of the week, just like out of control dogs were the week before and no doubt there will be something next week, but this one goes far deeper and back further and does not ever seem to end.
Popularity: 21% [?]
January 13, 2007 at 17:49 · Filed under Comment
If The Smiths had settled with the first recording of their breakthrough single ‘This Charming Man‘, would the world, and especially the music industry, be the same as it is now? Would the song still have launched their careers?
If you have heard the original version of the song, which is on the 1984 album Hatful of Hollow, you will agree that it is very different to the version that was released as a single, the version that everybody knows.
Here’s a sample, taken from the ‘London session’, which ended up on Hatful of Hollow.
The story goes that after recording this version in London, the band went back up to their native Manchester and decided to do it again, differently, because they weren’t happy.
And this was the end product of the ‘Manchester session’.
Although the words are the same, these are two radically different songs.
Firstly and most obviously, the guitar is much lighter and not played with much zeal in the first recording (which we shall call L).
In the second recording (known from here as M), Morrissey is much more energetic, the words are sharp and strong, compared to flowing and airy in L.
The whooping ‘Aaahhhh’ before ‘a jumped up pantry boy’ is missing in L, although it definitely would have been out of place, is one of the makers of the song for me and I’m glad it was included in M.
The bass in M is strong and loud and it guides the track, instead of Marr leading with his guitar which is a nice touch, makes it that bit more adventurous and sharp.
To summise, would the world have been a different place without the re-recording of This Charming Man?
Yes, yes it would be and music would not be the same.
Popularity: 17% [?]
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