May 15th, 2009, 1 Comment »
During last night’s game seven between Detroit and Anaheim, I was amused to see this sign posted on the wall behind a bored team official:
Obviously it’s no great security risk, but I just thought it was funny that they accidentally broadcast the password to several million TV viewers.
January 31st, 2009, 7 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago we were at the Tsawassen ferry terminal, on our way back to Victoria. Due to a mechanical problem with one of the ferries, we faced a two-hour delay in departure. Julie and I wandered into the Tsawassen Quay Market, which is kind of a mini-mall situated between the vehicle lanes at the terminal.
I poked around with my iPhone, and eventually discovered that the Salt Spring Island Coffee outlet in the market was offering an open wifi network. We scored a table, purchased cookies and coffee, and set to work. The availability of internet access transformed that two-hour period from wasted to reasonably productive.
So, just a quick public thank-you to Salt Spring Island Coffee for making some wifi free and openly available at the ferry terminal.
On the other hand, I’ve abandoned all hope of having internet access on the ferry. I can’t imagine why they don’t offer it. My back-of-the-envelope math suggests that it would become an excellent revenue source in the first couple of years.
April 16th, 2008, 10 Comments »
I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening working in a hotel room. I got into Vancouver yesterday in good time, and had a ton to do. I ensconced myself at the Days Inn (oddly, they don’t use an apostrophe) and went to town.
I find that I’m very productive in hotel rooms. There are no distractions, and the essentials of life–bed, bathroom, food–are close at hand. Douglas Adams, a noted procrastinator, wrote most of So Long and Thanks For All the Fish in a hotel room, under the constant supervision of his editor.
Maybe it was because we ran a corporate writing workshop last week, but I’ve recently been paying more attention to how ordinary things are described and labelled. I noticed a trend in my room. See if you can spot it:
The writing isn’t awful–you can still get the message–but it ain’t good. They have “a variety of sundry items available”? It must be a real mess behind that front desk. And the other pieces are terribly overwritten.
I was otherwise quite happy with my room at the Day’s Inn. It was nothing to write home about, but it was comfortable and they had free wifi. In fact, they may be near that tipping point of hotels where the hotel gets too nice to offer free wifi. Maybe there’s a rule of thumb here: less than three stars, free wifi. More than three stars, they screw you on wifi access.
November 5th, 2007, 3 Comments »
As we occasionally do, Julie and I spent a couple of hours today working in the lovely bar at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz. I think it’s the only five star hotel on Gozo, and despite its peculiar location (there are no views of the sea), it’s quite posh.
I wasn’t using the web, but I happened to visit the hotel’s portal page for its wifi service. Here it is:
That looks pretty weak, doesn’t it? Why does a five-star hotel, with its spa smelling of sandalwood and lavendar, it’s beautifully-tiled pools and gorgeously-appointed rooms, have such a crappy-looking login page? The Kempinski isn’t unique in this peculiar disconnect–I’ve seen worse in plenty of four and five-star hotels.
It’s a tiny thing, but swish hotels aspire to get the tiny things right. The five-star devil, after all, is in the details. On the other hand, at least I wasn’t presented with an image of some kind of fruitophile.
Incidentally, I took that screenshot with a great little OS X program that Monique tipped me off on. It’s called Paparazzi, and all it does is make a full-length screenshot of any URL you enter. It saves you the trouble of stitching screenshots together.