Remember the cover of the book Identifying Wood, which I featured last week?
An anonymous commenter pointed me to a FARK challenge to remix the book cover. FARK got the idea from this entry in the Make blog, who in turn got the inspiration for the entry from my post, which I built around a photo from my friend Miss Fipi Lele.
(I’m quite honoured that the folks at Make check out my blog!)
Here are some of my favourite results:
I’ll be at RailsConf in Portland, Oregon all week, which means that the building shown below is my home for the next few days:
Since this is a pretty tech-y conference, a lot of my posts this week will be in my tech blog, Global Nerdy. The party photos will get posted here and in Global Nerdy.
“Perhaps someday in the future, people will exchange punch cards of their favourite bikini girl printouts. And maybe, if computers get advanced enough, pictures of cats with humourous captions.”
Click the photo to see it at full size.
After being cooped up in United’s “Economy Minus” class for about five hours, I’ve finally arrived in Portland, where I’ll be attending RailsConf for the rest of the week. Nice-lookin’ city you folks have here, by the way.
Not an actual photo of my seat, but a reasonable approximation I found with Google Image Search.
I pity anyone 6″ and taller who flies in United’s Economy section — at 5’11”, my knees almost touch the seat ahead, and when whoever’s in front of me decides to hit the recliner button, there’s barely enough room to read a magazine, and I can forget about using the laptop.
United adds insult to injury with the false luxury of their “Economy Plus” section, an area of economy with the legroom that they should be offering as a baseline. While you do get the extra legroom, they’re still the same narrow seats, which means that you’re going to get quite up-close-and-personal with your neighbour, and oftentimes your neighbour’s elbows. Luckily for me, I wasn’t sitting beside anyone in the 250-pounds-or-more weight class, in which case I’d have been dealing with “spillover” issues as well.
The other problem with Economy Plus seats is that you either have to have a lot of miles on their frequent flyer program or pay something close to full fare to get them. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the option to upgrade to one when you’re checking in — I got offered one for an additional $60 when checking in at Pearson this morning.
I think I’m beginning to understand where air rage comes from.
Thanks a lot, United. You’ll always be the airline of last resort to me!
I’m not the only one who loathes United. Stephen O’Grady loathes them too, and he’s posted this photo showing the legroom in one of their economy seats:
Stephen O’Grady’s photo of the legroom in a United Airlines economy class seat.
Believe it or not, the ad below comes from an issue of Tiger Beat, circa 1976. It’s creepy in a way that only a Texas children’s beauty pageant meets the Disco Era photo can be:
Click the picture to see it at full size. Magazine scan courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
If you’re going to RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon or just interested in what’s happening there, let Yours Truly be your reporter! I’ll be posting reports at my technical blog, Global Nerdy.
I’ll be covering the premier Ruby on Rails conference from all angles, technical and social, from the all-day Rails Guidebook tutorial sessions on Thursday to the main conference, which runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to whatever extracurricular hijinks 1,200 nerds, a lot of the fine local craft beer and an accordion can get into.