Chicago: Why I just grin like a dork... It's my kind of Bork Welcome to another entry in the digital signage corridor of despair, where cock-ups that would normally only trouble a user's screen are on public display for all to marvel at. Today's entry comes from Reg reader Anthony Remmers and concerns the displays atop Chicago's bus shelters. Things, it appears, do not seem to be going …
When I was going to College in Chicago, I had a job next to the CTA bus garage at Foster and Kedzie, on the North Side, in the River North neighborhood . After the Morning Rush Hour, many buses would go back to the garage to wait for the Afternoon Rush Hour, and would put up (it was a paper roll, not an electronic sign) Foster and Kedzie on the destination sign on the front of the bus. But they would not stop and pickup passengers on the trip in. I would wave and shout "I want to goto Foster and Kedzie". No luck.
"The display itself seems more or less OK; the CTA has opted to stick with the reassuring soft glow of an amber matrix rather than a migraine-inducing flatscreen."
AMEN!
I prefer an amber LED "egg-crate" or medium-res matrix over non-high-enough-density full-color any day. Heck, any single color "eggcrate" matrix is better than those too-bright or usually-broken color panels. (Personal preferences: amber, tricolor*, red -- usually too dim, green -- usually too bright.)
* Tricolor had red, yellow, and green in the same pixel that could be mixed into an orange (red/yellow) or chartreuse (yellow/green). Lots of fun transitions/hold animations with those, but I never got to play with one myself.
I'm always on warpath about display tech because I used to run (design/program if you will) a giant roadside two-sided monochrome incandescent display, 80 x 16, for my high school during my senior year; the software ran on DOS. After that, I ran a small single-face red LED matrix, single line, dedicated plug-in keypad controller, for the college student government freshman year until the president graduated and took it with him (rightly so; it was his own).
What I learned was that it's not so much about the tech as it is the design/programming. Most businesses/schools/churches don't pay attention to if the content is actually READABLE -- not just "viewable" -- and understandable while going at full traffic speeds when you only have a few seconds of a good view. You have to think like a newspaper headline writer: KISS, five W's, and leave them wanting more so they'll look into it / call later. And never let flashy transitions/animation get in the way of the real message.
Sadly, when my own church wanted to go digital and retire the old moveable-plastic-letters sign, they didn't listen to me and went full color/full video anyway. The designs are okay, but there was a period of time when it had its own BORK -- not a good/helpful message to the community, sadly.
I think the low res dot matrix displays on public transport are actually better during busy periods (such as the morning and evening rush hour). They tend to be easier to read, whether the commuter is full or partially sighted (depends on the cause of the partial sight obviously). Case in point. The newly refurbished London Bridge station has large amber dot matrix displays on all the platforms apart from the Thameslink platforms, where they have full colour high resolution displays that are the same size. They are very well done displays, that have a lot of good information, but tend not to be so easy to read if you can't get near the display (which is very much a probability in the rush hour at London Bridge).
Chicago is an American rock band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, calling themselves the Chicago Transit Authority in 1968 before shortening the name in 1969. After the release of their eponymous (debut) album, the band's name was shortened to Chicago to avoid legal action being threatened by the actual mass-transit company of the same name.
A proper Chicago Style deep dish is ~0.0023+ Brontosaurus" thick with way more filling than crust. The top and bottom crusts are not that thick. (the two crusts is why it is sometimes referred to as a Pizza Pie)
Oh and BTW, there are no eggs or custard inside so quiche is completely wrong.
I know, I know, everyone hates Empirical Evidence. That's why I brought some to the discussion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tgYYEYz4O4
Now, as you all can see @MGyrFalcon has some very valid points. I hope you have learned a thing or two because like Robert Heinlein said: "You live and learn or you don't live long."
Real Chicago men don't eat quiche.
With respect to deep dish...
You have a couple of options.
I've always preferred Lou's over the others although Uno and Duo are ok.
Then there's a place up in Lincoln Park (On Clarke I think) that had a good Calazone,
Not sure what you mean by top crust. Its the sides and the bottom and the bottom is roughly 1/4-1/2" thick.
That's the one thing I miss not being in Chicago. Decent Pizza. (And yes if you like NY Style there's a place near Hubbard and State, across from the Hertz Rent-a-Car center. )
Ok, there isn’t really a top ‘crust’, however there is a second layer of pizza dough placed on top with a hole in the middle so the fillings can vent while cooking. That piece of dough is also topped with sauce and possibly a bit of cheese or fresh tomato slices depending on where you get your pie. The explanation is for clarification and as an explanation for those who haven’t been to Chicago and are wondering what we are going on so much about.
I left Chicago many years ago, I miss the variety and quality of food, which is my opinion one of the best anywhere in the US. I also miss the architecture which just IS better than anywhere else state side.
No idea what you're talking about.
Get a Lou's Deep Dish or a Sausage w some garlic/onions/black olives on top.
You have the pie, the large sausage patty that covers the whole pizza, then the cheese, sauce and then more toppings.
Don't know what you were eating cause that sir, is a Chicago Deep Dish.
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Careful, you might get some pushback from the sort who take fuel (and by implication cooking temperature profile) very seriously. There is one restaurant in San Francisco that segments their menu that way. No, the choices do not include propane or styrene (side effect of a clueless roommate's reheating strategy), but do include coal-fired. I don't _think_ they included more specific choices, but I'd tend to go with the anthracite, not bituminous.
My credentials? 1/2 Italian, but that half was from the north, so we tended toward Focaccia.
More "crust" than "topping", but bread is a main food group, right?
I once observed an Italian (from Naples, too) who was confronted with the Chicago style deep pan pizza. An explosion resulted, not quite Trinity Test level, but getting there (hence icon).
Granted, several Neapolitans I have met tended to explode at any pizza NOT from what they consider the only authentic pizzeria in Naples (and they tend not to agree on what the ONLY authentic place is), but this person really got incandescent.
I tend not to be too bothered with what is authentic, food wise, just what tastes good. My preference is definitely with the Italian thinner base, but I refuse to get all religious about it.
...Perhaps I can shed some light on what is happening here. I see these messages once a week or so and I am almost positive I know the cause. The very high tech people at CTA use the very low tech TC&S networking protocol. For those too young to remember TC&S stands for "Tin Cans And String." In order to create a DoS attack in such a network environment all a bad actor has to do is tie an extra bit a string into the system and attach that to a tin can, et viola! Too Many Connections!
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