The mobile app presents you with a special six-digit code that is used to withdraw the cash.
RBS Group this week
rolled out a service to all of
its customers, allowing them to withdraw cash from an ATM without using their bank card. The service is based upon the same technologies that’s used to provide emergency access to
cash by people who’ve had their cards stolen, but integrates directly into the mobile banking apps of the group’s constituent banks. I decided to give it a go.
The first step is to use the mobile app to request a withdrawal. There’s an icon for this, but it’s a bit of a mystery that it’s there unless you already know what you’re looking for.
You can’t make a request from online banking without using the mobile app, which seems to be an oversight (in case you can’t think of a reason that you’d want to do this, read on:
there’s one at the end). I opted to withdraw £50.
Next, it’s off to find a cash machine. I struck out, without my wallet, to try to find the nearest Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, or Tesco cashpoint. The mobile app features a GPS
tool to help you find these, although it didn’t seem to think that my local Tesco cashpoint existed, walking me on to a branch of NatWest.
The readout of the cash machine demonstrates that the roots of the “Get Cash” system lie in the older “Emergency Cash” feature: the two are functionally the same thing.
As instructed by the app, I pressed the Enter key on the keypad of the cash machine. This bypasses the usual “Insert card” prompt and asks, “Do you wish to carry out a
Get Cash or Emergency Cash transaction?” I pressed Yes.
The number displayed upon the screen is entered into the cash machine.
The ATM asked for the PIN I’d been given by the mobile app: a 6-digit code. Each code is only valid for a window of 3 hours and can only be used once.
The cash machine asks for the PIN a second time, and then asks for the sum of money to be withdrawn.
I’m not sure why, but the ATM asks that the PIN is confirmed by being entered a second time. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – if it was mistyped, it’d surely fail anyway (unless
I happened to guess another valid code, within its window), and I’d simply be able to try again. And if I were an attacker, trying to guess numbers, then there’s no difficulty in typing
the same number twice.
It’s possible that this is an attempt at human-tarpitting,
but that wouldn’t be the best way to do it. If the aim is to stop a hacker from attempting many codes in quick succession, simply imposing a delay would be far more effective (this is
commonplace with cash machines anyway: ever notice that you can’t put a card in right after the last transaction has finished?). Strange.
Finally, the ATM asks what value of cash was agreed to be withdrawn. I haven’t tried putting in an incorrect value, but I assume that it would refuse to dispense any cash if the wrong
number was entered – this is presumably a final check that you really are who you claim to be.
It feels strange taking money and a receipt from a cashpoint without first having to retrieve my card. I spent a few minutes after the experience with a feeling that I’d forgotten
something.
It worked. I got my money. The mobile app quickly updated to reflect the change to my balance and invalidated the code: the system was a success.
The banks claim that this will be useful for times that you’ve not got your card with you. Personally, I don’t think I ever take my phone outdoors without also taking my wallet with me,
so the chance of that it pretty slim. If my card were stolen, I’d be phoning the bank to cancel the card anyway, so it wouldn’t save me a call, either, if I needed emergency cash. But
there are a couple of situations in which I’d consider using this neat little feature:
If I was suspicious of a possible card-skimming device on a cash machine, but I needed to withdraw money and there wasn’t an un-tampered ATM in the vicinity. It’d be nice to know
that you can avoid having your card scanned by some kid with a skimmer just by using your phone to do the authentication rather than a valuable piece of plastic.
To send money to somebody else. Using this tool is cheaper than a money order and faster than a bank transfer: it’s an instantaneous way to get small sums of cash
directly into the hands of a distant friend. “Sure, I’ll lend you £50: just go to a cash machine and type in this code.” I’m not sure whether or not this is a legitimate
use of the service, but I can almost guarantee that it’ll be the most-popular. It’ll probably be reassuring to parents of teenagers, for example, who know that they can help their
offspring get a taxi home when they’ve got themselves stranded somewhere.
What do you think? If you’re with RBS, NatWest or Tesco, have you tried this new mobile banking feature? Do you think there’s mileage in it as an idea, or is it a solution in need of a
problem?
This blog post is about password security. If you don’t run a website and you just want to know what you should do to protect yourself, jump to the
end.
I’d like to tell you a story about a place called Internetland. Internetland is a little bit like the town or country that you live in, but there’s one really important difference: in
Internetland, everybody is afflicted with an unusual disorder called prosopagnosia, or “face-blindness”. This means that, no matter how hard they try, the inhabitants of Internetland
can’t recognise each other by looking at one another: it’s almost as if everybody was wearing masks, all the time.
Denied the ability to recognise one another on sight, the people of Internetland have to say out loud who they are when they want to be identified. As I’m sure you can imagine, it’d be
very easy for people to pretend to be one another, if they wanted. There are a few different ways that the inhabitants get around that problem, but the most-common way is that people
agree on and remember passwords to show that they really are who they claim to be.
Alice’s Antiques
Alice runs an antiques store in Internetland. She likes to be able to give each customer a personalised service, so she invites her visitors to identify themselves, if they like, when
they come up to the checkout. Having them on file means that she can contact them about special offers that might interest them, and she can keep a record of their address so that the
customer doesn’t have to tell her every time that they want a piece of furniture delivered to their house.
Some of Alice’s Antiques’ antiques.
One day, Bob came by. He found a nice desk and went to the checkout to pay for it.
“Hi,” said Alice, “Have you shopped here before?” Remember that even if he’d visited just yesterday, she wouldn’t remember him, so crippling is her face-blindness.
“No,” replied Bob, “First time.”
“Okay then,” Alice went on, “Would you like to check out ‘as a guest’, or would you like to set up an account so that I’ll remember you next time?”
Bob opted to set up an account: it’d only take a few minutes, Alice promised, and would allow him to check out faster in future. Alice gave Bob a form to fill in:
Bob filled in the form with his name, a password, and his address. He ticked the box to agree that Alice could send him a copy of her catalogue.
Alice took the form and put it into her filing cabinet.
The following week, Bob came by Alice’s Antiques again. When he got to the checkout, Alice again asked him if he’d shopped there before.
“Yes, I’ve been here before,” said Bob, “It’s me: Bob!”
Alice turned to her filing cabinet and pulled out Bob’s file. This might sound like a lot of work, but the people of Internetland are very fast at sorting through filing cabinets, and
can usually find what they’re looking for in less than a second. Alice found Bob’s file and, looking at it, challenged Bob to prove his identity:
“If you’re really Bob – tell me your password!”
“It’s swordfish1,” came the reply.
Alice checked the form and, sure, that was the password that Bob chose when he registered, so now she knew that it really was him. When he asked for a set of
chairs he’d found to be delivered, Alice was able to simply ask, “You want that delivered to 1 Fisherman’s Wharf, right?”, and Bob just nodded. Simple!
Evil Eve
That night, a burglar called Eve broke into Alice’s shop by picking the lock on the door (Alice never left money in the till, so she didn’t think it was worthwhile buying a very good
lock). Creeping through the shadows, Eve opened up the filing cabinet and copied out all of the information on all of the files. Then, she slipped back out, locking the door behind her.
Alice’s shop has CCTV – virtually all shops in Internetland do – but because it wasn’t obvious that there had been a break-in, Alice didn’t bother to check the recording.
Alice has CCTV, but she only checks the recording if it’s obvious that something has happened.
Now Eve has lots of names and passwords, so it’s easy for her to pretend to be other Internetlanders. You see: most people living in Internetland use the same password at most or all of
the places they visit. So Eve can go to any of the other shops that Bob buys from, or the clubs he’s part of, or even to his bank… and they’ll believe that she’s really him.
One of Eve’s favourite tricks is to impersonate her victim and send letters to their friends. Eve might pretend to be Bob, for example, and send a letter to his friend Charlie. The
letter might say that Bob’s short on cash, and ask if Charlie can lend him some: and if Charlie follows the instructions (after all, Charlie trusts Bob!), he’ll end up having his money
stolen by Eve! That dirty little rotter.
So it’s not just Bob who suffers for Alice’s break-in, but Charlie, too.
Bob Thinks He’s Clever
Bob thinks he’s cleverer than most people, though. Rather than use the same password everywhere he goes, he has three different passwords. The first one is his “really secure” one: it’s
a good password, and he’s proud of it. He only uses it when he talks to his bank, the tax man, and his credit card company – the stuff he thinks is really important. Then
he’s got a second password that he uses when he goes shopping, and for the clubs he joins. A third password, which he’s been using for years, he reserves for places that demand that he
chooses a password, but where he doesn’t expect to go back to: sometimes he joins in with Internetland debates and uses this password to identify himself.
Bob’s password list. Don’t tell anybody I showed you it: Bob’ll kill me.
Bob’s approach was cleverer than most of the inhabitants of Internetland, but it wasn’t as clever as he thought. Eve had gotten his medium-security password, and this was enough to
persuade the Post Office to let her read Bob’s mail. Once she was able to do this, she went on to tell Bob’s credit card company that Bob had forgotten his password, so they sent him a
new one… which she was able to read. She was then able to use this new password to tell the credit card company that Bob had moved house, and that he’d lost his card. The credit card
company promptly sent out a new card… to Eve’s address. Now Eve was able to steal all of Bob’s money. “Muhahaha!” chortled Eve, evilly.
But even if Bob hadn’t made the mistake of using his “medium-security” password at the Post Office, Eve could have tried a different approach: Eve would have pretended to be Alice, and
asked Bob for his password. Bob would of course have responded, saying “It’s ‘swordfish1’.”
Then Eve would have done something sneaky: she’d have lied and said that was wrong. Bob would be confused, but he’d probably just think to himself, “Oh, I must have given Alice a
different password.”
“It must be ‘haddock’, then,” Bob would say.
“Nope; wrong again,” Eve would say, all the while pretending to be Alice.
“Surely it’s not ‘h@mm3rHead!’, is it?” Bob would try, one last time. And now Eve would have all of Bob’s passwords, and Bob would just be left confused.
Good Versus Eve
What went wrong in Internetland this week? Well, a few things did:
Alice didn’t look after her filing cabinet
For starters, Alice should have realised that the value of the information in her filing cabinet was worth at least as much as money would be, to the right kind of burglar. It was easy
for her to be complacent, because it wasn’t her identity that was most at risk, but that of her customers. Alice should have planned her security in line with that realisation:
there’s no 100% certain way of stopping Eve from breaking in, but Alice should have done more to make it harder for Eve (a proper lock, and perhaps a separate, second lock on the filing
cabinet), and should have made it so that Eve’s break-in was likely to be noticed (perhaps skimming through the security tapes every morning, or installing motion sensors).
But the bigger mistake that Alice made was that she kept Bob’s password in a format that Eve could read. Alice knew perfectly well that Bob would probably be using the same password in
other places, and so to protect him she ought to have kept his password encrypted in a way that would make it virtually impossible for Eve to read it. This, in combination with an
effort to insist that her customers used good, strong passwords, could have completely foiled Eve’s efforts, even if she had managed to get past the locks and CCTV un-noticed.
Here in the real world: Some of Alice’s mistakes are not too dissimilar to the recently-publicised mistakes made by LinkedIn, eHarmony, and LastFM. While
these three giants did encrypt the passwords of their users, they did so inadequately (using mechanisms not designed for passwords, by using outdated
and insecure mechanisms, and by failing to protect stolen passwords from bulk-decryption). By the way: if you have an account with any
of these providers, you ought to change your password, and also change your password anywhere else that uses the same password… and if this includes your email, change it everywhere
else, too.
Bob should have used different passwords everywhere he went
Good passwords should be long (8 characters should be an absolute minimum, now, and Bob really ought to start leaning towards 12), complex (not based on a word in any dictionary, and
made of a mixture of numbers, letters, and other characters), and not related to you (dates of birth, names of children, and the like are way out). Bob had probably heard
all of that a hundred times.
But good passwords should also be unique. You shouldn’t ever use the same password in two different places. This was Bob’s mistake, and it’s the mistake of almost everybody
else in Internetland, too. What Bob probably didn’t know was that there are tools that could have helped him to have a different password for everybody he talked to, yet still
been easier than remembering the three passwords he already remembered.
Here in the real world: There are some really useful tools to help you, too. Here are some of them:
LastPass helps you generate secure passwords, then stores encrypted versions of them on the Internet so that you can get at them
from anywhere. After a short learning curve, it’s ludicrously easy to use. It’s free for most users, or there are advanced options for paid subscribers.
KeePass does a similar thing, but it’s open source. However, it doesn’t store your encrypted passwords online (which you might
consider to be an advantage), so you have to carry a pen drive around or use a plugin to add this functionality.
SuperGenPass provides a super-lightweight approach to web browser password generation/storing. It’s easy to understand and
makes it simple to generate different passwords for every site you use, without having to remember all of those different passwords!
One approach for folks who like to “roll their own” is simply to put a spreadsheet or a text file into a TrueCrypt (or
similar) encrypted volume, which you can carry around on your pendrive. Just decrypt and read, wherever you are.
Another “manual” approach is simply to use a “master password” everywhere, prefixed or suffixed with a (say) 4-5 character modifier, that you vary from site to site. Keep your
modifiers on a Post-It note in your wallet, and back it up by taking a picture of it with your mobile phone. So maybe your Skype suffix is “8Am2%”, so when you log into Skype you type
in your master password, plus that suffix. Easy enough that you can do it even without a computer, and secure enough for most people.
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tells, ant thongs, end duke cane henge joy atoll own lion. Half pun
wit tit!
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I’d just like to say a few words of praise for Andy‘s new album, The Signal and the Noise. It’s not
the first time I’ve said nice things about him, but it’s the first time since he’s been recording
under his full name, rather than as “Pagan Wanderer Lu”.
I can say this for sure, though: The Signal and the Noise has finally dethroned my previous favourite Lu album, Build Library Here (or else!). It’s catchy, it’s
quirky, and it’s full of songs that will make you wish that you were cleverer: so far, so good. I think that one of the things that particularly appealed to me in this album were that
the lyrical themes touched on so many topics that interest me: religion and superstition, artificial intelligence, the difficulties of overcoming materialism, cold war style espionage,
and cryptography/analysis… all wrapped up in fun and relatable human stories, and with better-than average running-themes, links, and connections.
One of the joys of Andy’s (better) music comes from the fact that rather than interpretation, it lends itself far better to being issued with a reading list. To which end, here’s a
stack of Wikipedia articles that might help you appreciate this spectacular album a little better, for the benefit of those of you who weren’t lucky enough to have read all of this
stuff already:
Oh; backing vocals, you’re too kind! But this is just another chapter in the story of my life.
The Omniscient Narrator
The final track’s a little weaker than the rest (the actual final track, not the “hidden track” bit), and I’m left with a feeling that this was so-close but not quite a concept album
(which would have been even more spectacular an achievement), but these are minor niggles in the shadow of an otherwise monumental album.
Go get a copy.
By the way; I’ve got a spare – who wants it? Spare copy’s gone to Claire as an early birthday present. Somehow she failed to preorder a copy of her own.
The British Rail flying saucer, officially known simply as space vehicle, was a proposed spacecraft designed by Charles Osmond
Frederick.
Purpose
The flying saucer originally started as a proposal for a lifting platform. However, the project was revised and edited, and by the time the patent was filed had become a large
passenger craft for interplanetary travel.
Design
The craft was to be powered by nuclear fusion, using laser beams to produce pulses of nuclear energy in a generator in the centre of the craft, at a rate of over 1000 Hz to prevent resonance, which could damage the vehicle. The pulses
of energy would then have been transferred out of a nozzle into a series of radial electrodes running along the
underside of the craft, which would have converted the energy into electricity that would then pass into a ring of powerful electromagnets (the patent describes using superconductors if possible). These magnets would accelerate subatomic particles emitted by the fusion reaction, providing lift and thrust. This general design was used in several fusion rocket studies.
A layer of thick metal running above the fusion reactor would have acted as a shield to protect the passengers above from the radiation emitted from the core of the reactor. The entire vehicle would be piloted in such a way that the acceleration and deceleration of the craft would have simulated gravity in zero gravity conditions.
A patent application was filed by Jensen and Son on behalf of British Rail on 11 December 1970 and granted on 21 March 1973.
The patent lapsed in 1976 due to non-payment of renewal fees.
Media attention
The patent first came to the attention of the media when it was featured in The Guardian on 31
May 1978, in a story by Adrian
Hope of the New Scientist magazine. There was a further mention in The Daily Telegraph on 11 July 1982, during the silly season. The Railway Magazine mentioned it in its May 1996 issue, saying that the passengers would have been “fried”
anyway.
When the patent was rediscovered in 2006, it gained widespread publicity in the British press. A group of nuclear scientists examined the designs and declared them to be unworkable, expensive and very inefficient. Michel van Baal of the European Space Agency claimed “I have had a look at the plans, and they don’t look very serious
to me at all”, adding that many of the technologies used in the craft, such as nuclear fusion and
high temperature superconductors, had not yet been discovered, while Colin Pillinger, the scientist in charge of the Beagle 2 probe, was quoted as saying “If I hadn’t seen the documents I wouldn’t have believed it”.
Last year, I saw at least one other person, proudly wearing their towel. This year? Nothing. I even made sure to take a walk out in the glorious sunshine on my lunch break, and didn’t
find even a single other towel-wearer. What is the world coming to, when you can’t even rely on a student town to follow these fun and important traditions.
More importantly, what will all of these people do if they find themselves without their toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat
spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc.
I’ve got chests full of diamonds and a huge fortress of solitude in my singleplayer world. I’ve found the End Portal and I’ve got enough eyes to activate it. But why bother? Alone, I
don’t stand a chance against the Ender Dragon anyway: I’m just not that good a player. And it doesn’t matter how much time I spend enachanting all of my stuff, it’s never going to be
good enough.
So there’s no point. I’m sat here, alone, and I’m not achieving anything anymore. Sometimes I just want to delete the world and get it all over with. It’s not like anybody will miss
me.
It feels like most of the time I’ve spent in a car this year, so far, has been for travel related to somebody’s recent death. And so it was that yesterday, Ruth, JTA and I zipped up and down the motorway to attend the funeral of
Ruth’s grandmother.
It went really well, but what I wanted to share with you today was two photos that I took at service stations along the the way.
A sign I discovered at a motorway service station.
This one confuses me a lot. If I buy alcohol from this service area, I can’t drink it either inside… or outside… the premises. Are they unlicensed, perhaps, and so the only way they’re
allowed to sell us alcohol is if we promise not to drink it? Or is it perhaps the case that they expect us only to consume it when we’re in a parallel dimension?
Costa have decided to cut down on graffiti by writing all over their own walls.
It’s hard to see in the second photo without clicking (to see it in large-o-vision), but the sign on the opposite wall in this Costa Coffee implies the possibility of being an
“Americano Addict”. And there was something about that particular marketing tack that made me cringe.
Imagine that this was not a café but a bar, and substitute the names of coffees with the names of alcoholic beverages. Would it be cool to advertise your products to the “wine addicts”
or the “beer addicts” of the world? No: because alcoholism isn’t hip and funny… but caffeine addiction is? Let’s not forget that caffiene is among
the most-addictive drugs in the world. Sure, caffeine addiction won’t wreck your liver like alcohol will or give you cancer like smoking tobacco (the most-popular way to consume
nicotine) will, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that there are many people for whom a dependency upon caffeine is a very real part of their everyday life.
Is it really okay to make light of this by using such a strong word as “addict” in Costa’s marketing? Even if we’re sticking with alliteration to fit in with the rest of their
marketing, wouldn’t “admirer” or “aficionado” be better? And at least that way, Costa wouldn’t leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
For the last few years, though, the population of Aberystwyth has been dwindling, and Adam’s parties have turned from an immense hard-to-squeeze-everybody-in ordeal to a far more
civilised affair. While simultaneously, groups of ex-Aberystwyth people (like those of us down in Oxford, and those who are up in the North) have been having their own splinter
satellite parties.
And you know what? I miss doing Eurovision Night with you guys. So this year, we’re going to try to bring Eurovision Night back to its roots… with technology!
Google+ Hangouts. One of the technologies that will bring us closer this Eurovision Night.
Here’s where the parties are at, this year:
Adam’s house, in Aberystwyth – mission control
New Earth, in Oxford (hosted by Ruth, JTA, and I) – technical operations
…and… anybody else having one this year? One of you up in the North, perhaps?
If you’re one of the usual crew, or one of our newer friends, come on over and join the party! Or if you’re going to be watching from further North (Liz? Simon? Gareth? Penny? Matt? Matt? Kit? Fi?), let me know so that I can bring you in on my proposals for “sharing the experience”, drawing together our votes, and whatnot.
And regardless of whether you’ll be joining one of these parties in person, or not, I hope you’ll be joining The Party at Adam’s and The Party on New
Earth digitally. If you’re among the 17 people who are actually on Google+, come and join us in our Hangout! Dust
off that old webcam and point it at you or your little party, make sure you’re in Adam or I’s “circles”, and then log in on Eurovision Night and join us via the power of the Internet!
You’ll have to provide your own crisps and beer, and (unless you’re at Adam’s) you’ll need to bake your own cupcakes with adorable European-flag icing, too, but at least you can be part
of the moment with the rest of us.
This weekend was the worst net weekend of cinemagoing experiences that I’ve ever had. I went to the cinema twice, and both times I left dissatisfied. An earlier blog post
talked about the second of the two trips: this is about the first.
You know what – 2012 has been a pretty shit year, so far. We’ve had death (my father’s), more death
(my partner’s grandmother’s), illness (my sister’s horrific face infection), and injury (a friend of mine lost her leg to a train, a few
weeks ago, under very tragic circumstances). We’ve had breakups (a wonderful couple I know suddenly separated) and busy-ness (a cavalcade of day-job work, Three Rings work, course work, and endless
bureaucracy as executor of my dad’s will).
But it gets worse:
Of all the things that have gone horribly, tragically wrong so far this year… going to the cinema to watch this film was the worst.
On Friday night, I went out with my family to watch Piranha 3DD.
This is one of those bad films that falls into the gap of mediocrity between films that are bad but watchable and films that are so bad that they wrap right around to
being enjoyable again (you know, the “so bad they’re good” kind of movies). To summarise:
[one_half]
The Good
Lots of nudity, all presented in 3D. If there’ll ever be anything that convinces me that 3D films are a good idea, porn will probably be it. Boobs boobs boobs.
3D films remain a pointless gimmick, still spending most of their time playing up the fact that they’re 3D (lots of long objects, like broom handles, pointing towards the camera,
etc.), and still kinda blurry and headache-inducing. Plus: beams of light (e.g. from a torch) in 3D space don’t look like that. The compositor should be fired.
The cameos mostly serve to show off exactly how unpolished the acting is of the less well-known actors.
Plenty of less-enjoyable pop culture references: if you’re not going to do the “false leg is actually a gun” thing even remotely as well at Planet Terror, don’t even try – it’s like trying to show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie, but not even managing to do
that.
Unlikeable, unmemorable characters who spend most of their time engaging in unremarkable teen drama bullshit. Same old sex joke repeated as many times as they think they can get
away with. And then a couple of times more.
Lackluster special effects: mangled bodies that don’t look much like bodies, vicious fish don’t look remotely like fish (and, for some reason, growl at people), and
CGI that would look dated on a straight-to-video release.
This weekend was the worst net weekend of cinemagoing experiences that I’ve ever had. I went to the cinema twice, and both times I left dissatisfied. This blog post is about the second
of the two trips.
Man, this movie looks good. Wish I was watching it and not, say, a black screen.
The less-awful of the two trips happened on Saturday. Ruth, JTA and I turned up for the 20:10 showing of Avengers
Assemble at Oxford Vue. We were quite surprised, entering the cinema right on time, to find that they
weren’t already showing adverts and trailers – the screen was completely dark – but we found our way to our seats and sat down anyway.
A little over 20 minutes later, nothing had
happened, so I went out to where the ticket collectors were doing their thing, down the corridor, and asked if they were planning on showing a film in screen six at some point this
evening. “There’s a technical problem with the projector,” I was informed, “We’re trying to fix it now.”
“When were you planning on telling the audience who are all just sat there in the dark?” I asked. There were mumbles of concern, but they were half-hearted: these people were paid
primarily to tear tickets, not to deal with irate customers. The stub collector apologised, and I returned to the cinema to feed back to the others. Sensing the dissatisfaction of the
other audience members, I briefly considered making an announcement to them all: “Ladies and gentlemen: I regret to inform you that Vue Cinemas doesn’t care about you enough as human
beings to tell you themselves, but there’s a technical fault and they’re working on repairing it.” Instead, I grumbled to myself in a British fashion and took my seat.
“I could have downloaded a pirated copy by now,” I joked, “But then I wouldn’t be getting the real cinema experience.”
“For example, it’d start when you pressed the play button,” replied JTA.
(for those of you who know the story of his employment there, you might be unsurprised to hear that this was the very Vue cinema at which Paul worked, very briefly)
"Is the film on yet?" / "Nope; still just a black screen."
A little while later – still with no announcement from staff, we got sick of the whole thing and went and demanded a refund. The manager – when we finally got to see him (apparently
he’s also the guy who was fixing the projector: I guess the cinema must be run on a skeleton staff) – was suitably apologetic, offering us free passes for our next visit as well as
giving us a full refund. Another staff member apologised for the delay in sorting out the refund, explaining that “it always gets busy, especially on Orange Wednesdays.” I’m not sure why he told us this, given that it was now Saturday. Perhaps there were still patrons from the
previous Wednesday, also still waiting to see their film, too.
As we explained to the manager, it wasn’t the wait that bothered us so much as the lack of information about the reason (or an estimate of the duration) of the delay. All it would have
taken would have been a staff member to turn up at five or ten minutes, apologise, and explain, and we’d have understood: things break sometimes. All we wanted was a little respect.
![Cash machine: "Do you wish to carry out a Get Cash or Emergency Cash transaction? [No] [Yes]"](/_q23u/2012/06/IMG_5833-300x200.jpg "Cash machine: \"Do you wish to carry out a Get Cash or Emergency Cash transaction? [No] [Yes]\"")
