Posts Tagged ‘screenshots’

There’s no such thing as a free lunch delivery

May 13th, 2020

With the COVID-19 pandemic restaurants everywhere have pivoted to take out and delivery. While I personally prefer dining out, delivery’s fine with me in a pinch. Unfortunately those delivery fees start to add up after a while.

So I was a little surprised when the salad wizards at Sweetgreen announced they’d be doing free deliveries. With all this sitting around at home I could really go for something healthy — especially if I don’t have to pay for delivery.

So I went ahead and placed an order.

There you go, free delivery! But wait — what’s this “service fee” included in the price? That sounds an awful lot like a delivery fee, doesn’t it?

Fortunately you can tap on the service fee for an explanation:

As the image says above “This is a fee that allows us to provide our delivery service.” So the service fee is a delivery fee… they just don’t call it that.

In other news I AM GIVING AWAY FREE $100 BILLS! (However, you will owe me a $200 service fee for each $100 bill.)

Breaking down San Francisco landmarks in the Watch Dogs 2 trailer

June 10th, 2016

This week Ubisoft launched a trailer for their upcoming game, Watch Dogs 2. While I wasn’t particularly impressed by the first entry in the series, a 3rd person action/hacking game, the sequel immediately interested me due to the setting: San Francisco and the Bay Area at large.

You can watch the trailer below or here. For those unfamiliar with the world of video games, this is a “cinematic” trailer, which means it’s CGI concept art intended to advertise the game — in other words, this isn’t gameplay footage, but rather what producers intend the game to look like when it’s finished.

How many local landmarks did you discover in the video? Here’s what I spotted — click any image for full size.

Golden Gate Bridge, Karl the Fog, and the Transamerica Pyramid:

The Ferry Building and the Embarcadero Center:

Alcatraz:

A cable car working its way up a hill:

Not technically a landmark, but a guy wearing Google Cardboard on Muni is good enough IMO:

Again, technically a homeless guy with a shopping card isn’t a “landmark” but it had might as well be:

Lombard Street, which someone’s taking a photo of on their phone for the sake of accuracy:

Sea Lions at Pier 39, complete with tourists utilizing a selfie stick:

3D printing a gun — okay so again this isn’t a landmark at all, but I imagine there’s more 3D printers than guns in San Francisco so I’ll let it slide:

Chinatown chase scene:

AT&T Park, or whichever phone company it’s named after right now:

“Nudle” is clearly a stand in for Google’s Mountain View campus:

The Bay Bridge serves as a backdrop for a chase scene:

Hangar One at Moffett Field in Mountain View:

Well there you have it. I’m sure there’s a few I missed, feel free to e-mail me an angry rant if that’s the case. Regardless I may have to buy the game when it comes out in November to see how it portrays the Bay Area.

Wait, why did The Flash run past the Transamerica Pyramid?

November 5th, 2015


The Flash runs past the Transamerica Pyramid
 

The Flash is a fun TV show based on the comic books. It’s set in the fictional “Central City” and this week’s episode is no different.

So why then, on the way from his headquarters at Star Labs to try to capture Dr. Light at the Bank of Central City does The Flash run west along Washington Street past the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco’s Financial District?

The Transamerica Pyramid is one of those instantly recognizable structures. The unusual intersection with Columbus Avenue seen at the bottom of the screen cap (above) is a crystal clear indication that we’re looking at an image of San Francisco itself rather than merely some Transamerica-like knockoff in the fictional Central City. This is the real deal we’re looking at, no question about it.

Here’s some of my own top fan theories on how The Flash wound up here:

  • On the previous night The Flash had stopped by Vesuvio to read Howl after purchasing it at City Lights. He stumbled out of the place completely shitfaced and forgot to close his tab. No judgement man, it happens. He just had to stop by again when he had a chance to pick up his card.
  • The Flash recently took a free personality test and discovered the truth about “engrams.” He stopped at the Scientology Center across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid to find out more, but after speed-reading Dianetics he ultimately decided Scientology wasn’t for him.
  • Look, it’s kind of embarrassing but The Flash still uses Groupon. I know, I know. But he’s a poorly paid young police detective and he has to take what he can get. So one day he bought a Groupon deal for some pasta at a shitty tourist trap in North Beach. Knowing he had a significant head start on Dr. Light he decided to take advantage of the deal before it expired, running all the way to San Francisco for a quick bite at The Stinking Rose.
  • The Flash ran faster than the speed of light, causing his GPS to malfunction. He wound up in San Francisco by mistake.

Okay, that last theory is off the table because there’s no way The Flash could break the speed of light. But the others? Totally plausible.

At the end of the day my theories are just ideas from a fan. I hope one day this popular TV show finally reveals the true secret behind this curious jaunt from Central City to downtown San Francisco!

Real estate sound effect

March 2nd, 2014

 

These days it’s hard to look at real estate listings in San Francisco without having that old timey car horn sound effect play in your head. As of today, your imagination is no long required!

With my new Real Estate FX userscript, local Redfin listings get a little YouTube video embedded in the page that autoplays the car horn sound effect.

All you need to do is install Greasemonkey for Firefox and load my script from the link above, or download the script and follow these instructions if you use Chrome.

Dopefish Ex: Human Revolution

November 23rd, 2011

Dopefish screenshot from Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The image above is from the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Recognize it? Remember the Dopefish? The big, dumb fish that appeared in the water level of Keen 4? If not, you missed out on the golden age of PC gaming. (Go buy a 386 and we’ll talk.)

Images of the Dopefish have been snuck into video games for nearly two decades. It’s like the “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” poster of gaming.

Incidentally, Deus Ex: Human Revolution contains a number of other subtle Easter Eggs.

Why does the SF.gov iPhone app suck?

November 11th, 2011

SF.gov iOS app

UPDATE: As @hryx pointed out on Twitter, the app is called SF.gov but the website is actually sfgov.org. SF.gov isn’t a website. Even the name of the app is an exercise in failure!
 
 

Why does the SF.gov iPhone app suck? We live in a city filled with iOS software developers. Any of them could do a better job than this.

Look, I’m not that picky when it comes to software. But I’m not going to put up with your app if it’s slower than anything I’ve ever seen, buggy as hell, and haphazardly organized.

Let me explain.

Let’s start with those tab buttons at the bottom of the screen. Check the screenshot above.

When you press one of those, you probably think it will switch to the corresponding screen. That’s because you’re not the alcoholic middle school drop out who wrote this app.

No, instead one of the following happens when you press a tab button:

  • It will switch to the screen you pressed.
  • It will switch to the screen you pressed, but there will be a “loading” screen that has a few extra buttons at the top of the screen for a fraction of a second (I couldn’t read fast enough to see what they said.)
  • It won’t switch and will stay at the same screen.
  • Several screens will flash by rapidly, and eventually the screen will turn white and lock up. You’ll have to force quit the app.

You have to hand it to this application, it’s original — no other app has those bugs.

SF.gov iOS app: Services

The most useless tab is “services.” There’s only two options: calling 311, or a search box. The first option is self-explanatory. Strangely they don’t let you fill out a 311 report in the app; that requires a separate app that has completely different bugs.

The little search box gives no indication as to what it does. As you start typing into the box, titles appear below in a list. But you can only see two of them when the keyboard is open. You have to click the Done button to make the keyboard go away. If you skip that step and try to scroll the page, it will take you to the first page in the list. It’s not like you’re kind of busy when you’re using your phone to look up information. No, you have all the time in the world to tinker with UI glitches.

Whatever you click, it takes you to a mobile version of the SF.gov website. The browser is Safari, but for some reason it’s agonizingly slow. Fortunately there’s an unlabelled button which — as I discovered through trial and error — sends the page to Safari.

SF.gov iOS app: Connect

On the connect tab you can find Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links for SF.gov and other city services. Each of these opens in the agonizingly slow version of Safari included in this app. None of this will help you get your car back after it got towed for too many street sweeping tickets, so don’t bother with this section. It’s largely links to irrelevant city press releases.

What’s more interesting is the photo at the top of this section. It seems to depict the last thing someone saw as their eyes closed and they died while waiting in line at City Hall. (Click the image above to see for yourself.)

In case you were wondering, the Updates, Media, and More sections are also just lists of links to websites. Why most/all of these links didn’t belong in “Services” or “Connect” is anyone’s guess. Like all the lists of things in this app, they don’t scroll smoothly but instead jerk around slowly.

Everything in this app suffers from the same basic problem: you shouldn’t get pregnant with your pet ape, give birth to the ape-man-baby out of your ass, buy it a Mac and then teach it programming so it can make an SF.gov app. That’s just not humane.