Category: Life

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Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

The Toronto Transit Civility Commission’s Etiquette Poster Campaign

The folks at Posted Toronto, the National Post’s Toronto-centric blog, have come up with a clever idea: The TTCC – the Toronto Transit Civility Commission. Their mission is to remind people who use the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, Accordion City’s public transit system, comprising the subway, light rail, buses and streetcars) that etiquette isn’t just for fancy dinner parties, but for everyday living, which includes riding public transit.

They’ve created a series of posters that provide riders with gentle reminders that good manners make for a good experience for their fellow transit riders. Better still, these posters are beautifully done, with far more design sensibility than anything the TTC has produced in this transit user’s vast memory.

Here are the posters – you can click on any of them to download a full-resolution, printable version:

TTCC Poster: Hand using nail clippers with caption "Seriously?"

TTCC Poster: "Whoa whoa whoa stop the presses - breaking news! Backpacks aren't actually people! It's true! Science has proven it! So, the next time you're on transit and people need a seat, move your inhuman bag. Seriously."

TTCC Poster: "We're crammed in like sardines, but there's no reason you have to smell like them too. Please, please think of our noses before getting on. Please."

TTCC Poster: Ticket - "Admit one - today: neverending drum and bass track blaring through headphones, with opening acts 'Woman talking loudly on a cellphone about her friend's abortion' and 'Guy on a handsfree yelling at his assistant'. Remember, your phone does not create a magical bubble around you where no one else can hear your conversation. And those headphones of yours playing Insane Clown Posse are also not magical bubbles."

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Life

Bob Evans’ Sausage Gravy and Biscuit Dispensers

Bob Evans biscuit and gravy dispensers at a convenience store

I know I should be recoiling in horror at this sight, but as a fan of biscuits and gravy, I’m curious to see how close (or far) the convenience store version is from the real, down-home thing. And is there a sweeter phrase than “sausage gravy dispenser”?

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Life

The Recipe for “Happy”

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while know that hedonics – the study of what makes us happy or unhappy – is a pet topic of mine. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I like the graphic below:

The "Are You Happy?" flowchart poster

Yes, the “Change something” part of the flowchart covers a ridiculously large amount of ground – the “something” could be “your world”, “yourself”, “how you see things” or a mix of the three — and up to several years of work, personal journeying and possibly therapy, but the procedure outlined in the poster is the basic recipe for “happy”.

Here are links to the people and/or entities that appear in the credits at the bottom of the poster:

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Life

Why You Shouldn’t be Celebrating “Confederate History Month”

virginia confederate history month

Because the Confederates were committing treason in defense of slavery.

Be sure to read the article Lest We Forget Why They Fought, an excerpt of which appears below:

So if you are from the South, you have no need to apologize for the Confederacy. Even if your ancestors include men who fought and died for the Confederacy, this is not a matter which ought to cause anyone today to evaluate you as any different than anyone else. You are not your ancestors. You have to make your own choices, and one of those choices includes deciding whether or not to be proud of a Confederate ancestry. If I had Confederate soldiers among my ancestors (I don’t think I do, but you never know) I’d say I respected their bravery, and that I understood why they might have thought they were fighting for their country. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

But at the end of the day, they were fighting for a morally indefensible cause and while I might prefer to remain silent about that, if forced I would have to admit that yes, I thought they were on the wrong side of the war. Treason in defense of slavery is not a subject matter appropriate for any freedom loving people to celebrate. The Civil War had good guys and it had bad guys. The good guys were the ones who won.

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Life Work

Salaryman Survival Kit

salaryman survival kit

This combo kit, available at am/pm stores in Japan and featuring two packs of Marlboro Ice Mint cigarettes and a can of Georgia Emblem Black coffee, captures the life of a mid-level Japanese officer worker – a salaryman – almost perfectly. To be perfect, they’d have to add a couple of single-serving bottles of whiskey.

Categories
Life

Happy Easter!

the easter story

Have a good one, everybody!

Categories
Geek Life Work

The “500 Worst Passwords”

Hand-drawn list of the "500 Worst Passwords"

You’ve heard the stories about people choosing terribly obvious passwords for their various computer accounts, such as “password” and “12345”, but what are the other ones? In his book, Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication, Mark Burnett compiled the most common easy-to-crack passwords, most of which are ordinary words or key sequences that are easy to type on a QWERTY keyboard. I’m amused by some of the pop culture-based passwords, such as “Rush2112”, “8675309” and the X-Files inspired “TrustNo1”.

Someone else — I don’t who who did it — decided to turn that list into the hand-lettered poster shown above. You can click it to see it at a larger size.

In addition to being a good list showing the sort of password you shouldn’t use, it’s also a great name generator. You could take two random items from the list to create new character names for a Metal Gear game (“Tomcat Eagle1” makes just about as much sense as “Solid Snake” or “Sniper Wolf”) or any three to come up with the name of your band or prison softball team (“Bigdick Magnum Juice”).

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.