Just to mention the pain I’m going through trying to cancel my old Demon broadband service. Outsourced call centres, clueless stubborn staff, pointless bureaucracy AND a complaints email address that bounces back with ‘user unknown’. I’m betting their customer complaints are WAY down this quarter.
A profile of MySpace
A profile of MySpace in the NYT.
Pubs: Wenlock Arms, London N1
Off last night to the Wenlock Arms, an excellent beer pub in a fairly undistinguished side-street in North London. Winner of best real ale pub in North London for several years (though pipped at the post this year), it’s a proper local. Well worth a visit if you’re near the City Road.
Social signal failure
A strange mix of social signals on my train today. A rather well-
dressed young woman sat down opposite me, plonked a copy of Crime and
Punishment on the table, and then started devouring Best magazine,
featuring a lose 5 lb in 5 days superdiet, and more Jordan baby news
than you could shake a stick at. Perhaps I’m being an old snob about
Best magazine, but I would have thought the crossover audience for
real life stories and Dostoevsky was quite small.
The failure of Wikipedia
Transcript of a speech by Jason Scott.
Why blogs don’t help democracy
Because they reward people who rush to the extreme and ignore compromise, like Maryscott O’Connor.
No net for Hemel
According to the Register the town of my birth has run out of broadband connectivity. Whether this is due to rampant net use among the denizens of Hertfordshire’s premier alliterative new town, or just BT being a bit crap, we don’t yet know.
Citicorp building, NYC
The excellent Damn Interesting tells the story of the Citicorp building on Lexington Avenue, an imposing New York skyscraper, which due to a minor change of plan during construction, was almost blown down by the wind.
Settle-Carlisle Partnership
The Settle to Carlisle railway has an excellent website, with links to good places to stay along the line, plus history and a little online shop.
Oxford, Iowa
The New York Times, which has a few good pieces today, links to the story of Oxford, IA, whose 700-some population has been photographed by Peter Feldstein, first in 1984, and again this year. The story is interesting, but this quote gives an illustration:
One of the town’s oldest residents is Iowa Honn, who turned 96 on April 1. Mrs. Honn was born in Oxford, and she said her father named her Iowa because “he said I was the prettiest girl in the prettiest state.” She has only lived outside of Oxford for three years, when she moved to Iowa City, about 15 miles east, with a current population of about 60,000. “I hated every minute of it,” Mrs. Honn said. “I hated city life. I traveled some with my husband, but I liked best when I got home and I could kiss the ground here.”