So Tony Blair is still the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, albeit with a significantly reduced majority. No surprises there, then — as pretty much everyone suspected, voters punished him for the whole Iraq debacle, but realized that there is currently no realistically better alternative.

I voted Labour in the end too (thanks to Lucy, my trusty proxy voter), although my candidate Tony Coleman lost his Putney seat to Conservative challenger Justine Greening in the end anyway.

Anyway, the BBC web coverage of the election was excellent, especially the interactive election map.

This has to be one of the craziest record attempts I’ve ever heard of — a blind driver attempting to break the 180mph speed record for blind drivers. And apparently there are 40 more of them!

Today T-Mobile sent me a leaflet with my bill giving generic advice on how to protect my oh-so-important T-Mobile passwords (passwords plural?). You’ve probably received advice like this before; it usually goes something like this:

The security of your account is important to us; follow these tips to ensure that your password is safe and secure:

• Create a separate password for each different account;
• Use a mixture of upper and lowercase letters and numbers, and use passwords that are at least 8 characters long;
• Avoid common passwords such as a spouse’s or pet’s name;
• Memorize your password; never write it down;
• Change your password regularly;
• Never tell anyone your password;

Of course these guidelines are completely and utterly impractical. No normal person could possibly manage this astounding feat of memory for even a small number of accounts.

Many of us, however, now have literally dozens of user ID’s, logins, PINs and passwords for banks, credit cards, healthcare providers, utility companies, pension plans, e-mail accounts, instant messenger clients, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It’s completely asinine to expect people to be able to follow these password rules, an exercise in group consensual denial. They are almost as moronically pointless as the button labelled “Yes, I’ve read and understood the terms and conditions” on yet another click-through EULA, or End-User License Agreement, that you haven’t even skimmed (but that’s another rant altogether).

So, like most people I imagine I have about 3 or 4 usernames and passwords that I recycle for pretty much everything, and I can usually (I’d estimate about 70% of the time) gain access to the services I need within about three attempts. And so far, no-one has stolen my identity.

I generally don’t complain about the New York subway much, because compared to London Underground (which I endured for over a decade), the MTA runs a pretty good, reliable and affordable operation that generally gets you where you want to go.

Today, however, two things happened on the subway that made me very frustrated.

The first incident occurred while I was trying to get into a subway station to catch the southbound A,C or E train at 23rd St & 8th Ave. A train arrived at the same time I did, and I swiped my Metrocard through the turnstile, but then I had to wait for a flood of people to come out through the bi-directional gate. After a bunch of people had come out I saw a small gap and pushed through, but in the process I nearly knocked a slightly dazed-looking middle-aged woman onto the floor — she literally shrieked! I mumbled some apologies and ran to the train, but it was too late — the doors were closed and I’d missed it.

But which MTA dumbass decided to allow turnstiles to be bi-directional in the first place? This is certainly not the first time I’ve tried to get in or out of a subway station, and found someone else trying to use the same gate, in the opposite direction, at the same time. It’s dumb, dumb dumb.

The second annoying thing occurred on the F train at Jay Street Borough Hall station. I watched a couple getting off the rear carriage with their young child in a Bugaboo pram/stroller (which I happen to know is a $700+ piece of baby transportation equipment), when the train guard closed the doors on them, crushing the Bugaboo between the doors. The father grabbed the doors and shouted angrily, and eventually the guard opened the doors again, but for God’s sake — surely the whole point of having a train guard to operate the doors is to AVOID crushing babies in strollers between the doors?! How hard can it be?

OK I feel better know — rant over.

I recently put a selection of my favourite Luscious Jackson tracks onto my iPod after rediscovering the CDs in my racks, and have been surprised by how much I’ve been playing them lately.

They are/were(?) an all-girl guitar-based rock band that I listened to a lot in 1999 when I first moved to the United States, and so they will always sound definitively American to me.

I don’t know very much about them, and they don’t seem to have a website — which in 2005 seems more than a little bizarre, and suggests that they are no longer active.

Anyway, here are the albums I’ve been enjoying tracks lately:

I just got back from this morning on a red-eye from California, where I spent 3 great days snowboarding in Tahoe with my friends Ricky & Jim (also former co-workers from RLG).

We stayed in a cute little cabin in South Lake Tahoe, and rode Heavenly on the first day, then Kirkwood for the second and third days (primarily because Kirkwood had a two-for-one deal). We had very variable weather for the first two days, then glorious sunny spring skiing conditions on the last day. Fantastic!

By complete coincidence, I also bumped into my ex-girlfriend Jessica at Heavenly, which was good but more than a little bizarre!

On Monday 18 April I started my new job as Director of the Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

I’m excited about this new position, as I’ll get to build a digitization shop that will serve a group of 5 distinctly unique cultural heritage organizations from the ground up.

I’m throwing a house party on Saturday 14 May to celebrate my birthday, and the fact that I’m not leaving New York — it’s a NOT leaving party!

All of my New York-based friends should have been sent an Evite, but if I’ve accidentally forgotten anybody, or if you’re an out-of-towner that’s gonna be passing through NYC that weekend, you’re invited too! Just drop me a line and I’ll add you to the Evite list.

Last night I went to see the movie Sin City, an adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel (comic) series of the same name. It was good, although not as good as my (admittedly high) expectations for it.

It was visually very interesting, a faithful frame-by-frame recreation of the graphic novels shot entirely digitally, but somehow the characters were often flat, and the dialogue didn’t always quite work.

It was also ultra-violent, although the comic-book “neo-noir” look took most of the sting out of the gory horror — which was fortunate, because I can be pretty squeamish!

But I have been thinking about the movie today, which is a sign that it might be growing on me… Perhaps I’ll rent it from Netflix when it comes out on DVD.

Sad news today about MG Rover, the last British-owned volume carmaker, going bust with the loss of 6,000 jobs. MG Rover’s Longbridge plant has been manfacturing cars for 101 years.

I still have very fond childhood memories of riding in my father’s shiny black Rover SD1, which at the time was one of the most futuristic-looking vehicles on the road (and slightly reminiscent of the KITT car in the TV show Knight Rider!).