Posts by admin
The November Project: No Facebook and Twitter for a month
I’m proud of the BBC
Don’t let anyone tell you the BBC is not worth paying for. I’d gladly pay a licence fee even while I am out of the country.
Video by Mitch Benn – more of his music at http://www.mitchbenn.com/
Amazon why dost thou forsake me?
This is ridiculous. I am an international citizen and regularly use international services in Canada, the US and the UK. But still the likes of Amazon, Audible and Apple thwart me.
I was recently given an amazon.co.uk gift voucher. There’s a book I need for my writing course, available on amazon.ca – but of course it won’t let me use the voucher. OK, fair enough. So then I think, I’ll buy something else with the voucher. But I don’t want to pay international postage.
The solution? Buy some Kindle books on my iPad. Perfect. digital transfer, no postage costs. I know it’s easy because I already bought a bunch from my same Amazon account.
I spend a few minutes picking out some books in the Kindle UK store. I click buy, and I get this unhelpful message:
But I still get the same message!Maybe it’s the credit card that’s the problem? So I change that to a UK credit card…
Makes no difference.
Maybe it’s my address? I change the address in the account to my parent’s address in the UK…
Same old message.
Maybe it’s because I’m connecting from Canada. I log in via a UK proxy (which I know works for other sites like BBC iPlayer)…
Still the same result.
So now what?
The world’s scariest job – free climbing atop a 1700m tower (via @planetf1)
Think you have a stomach for heights? This video shows what transmission tower workers have to do to service the top of a 1700m high exposed structure… This death-defying free climb makes you feel queasy just to watch.
The tragedy of electronic communication
Here’s a bittersweet little “could-have-been love story” I came across on YouTube.
It’s amusing to watch, but I think there is a serious point to make here… If this were a real conversation, the pair would have picked up on the body language that much was not being said. Electronic chat loses that, and both parties can leave with a completely false impression of the other person’s feelings.
I’ve never seen a better illustration of why electronic communication is inferior to face to face communication.
In my view there’s kind of a hierarchy of communication in terms of how complete or effective it is… Face to face at the top, then video chat, then phone, then instant messaging, then text or email.
Food for thought anyway.