Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
A friend recently noticed North Tea Power was closed. I said really, you just noticed this? However, I remembered I had only posted this on Mastodon and I should be better about cross posting to my blog more. Especially since I have been using Mastodon a lot more recently.
When I saw Jasmine’s reply to Claires tweet. I thought exactly the same thing. Its the ethical dilemma cafe, only 5 years out too late.
Facebook is looking to take the initiative in the social media privacy debate by opening a network of pop-up cafes around the UK. Each will offer patrons free drinks and a privacy checkup, to help assuage consumer concerns about their privacy online.
Facebook Café will run from 28 August to 5 September in a bid to encourage Britons to get on top of their digital footprint, helped along by free-flowing caffeine.
One of these will be located within The Attendant on Great Eastern Street, London, in response to surveys indicating that 27% of Londoners have no idea how to personalise their social media privacy parameters.
Free coffee (what kind) and teas in exchange for? Privacy advice from Facebook, Wifi snooping like most, a honeypot, or maybe a bit of social engineering from FB staff (Scientology style)?
Is it worth it? I very much doubt it but it would be fun to mess with the FB cafe staff and systems. Don’t you think?
Ziferblat opens on Edge Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, I guess its so new that its not even on the website it seems.
RT @coralgrainger: Anyone tried @ZiferblatEdgeSt? >
MCR's 'pay-as-you-stay' coffee hangout opens in NQ http://t.co/rIyQAoWn32 @cubicgarden— TEDxManchester (@TEDxManchester) February 3, 2015
I’ve heard of ziferblat from London. To be honest I’m not big fan of pay as you go services, especially when it comes to things I treat like leisure time.
@cubicgarden @coralgrainger @McrEscalator ha, I was going to write a blog about it too, fancy a blog off Ian? 😉
— Gabrielle Iskandar (@Gabiskandar) February 3, 2015
So why am I not so keen?
I like to relax, I find the idea of paying for time to access a space or time a little upsetting and stressful. Life is busy enough, why put a clock against the time you want to enjoy and remember?
Having a time limit induces a state (trance) which is not consistent with relaxing and pleasure. The kind of things we associate with leisure or social time. How many times have you booked a restaurant and they have given you a set time and you thought that’s fine? To be honest the only places which I know does this and gets away with it is the all you can eat buffet places! 2hrs to stuff you’re face and then walk/roll out. Do you ever feel happy once you come out of these places? I doubt it!
How very apt to compare the all you can eat buffet places to the pay as you go model. I’m not saying ziferblat is necessary a all you can eat buffet, but I would say it could encourage overindulgence and selfishness.
I mean you are paying by the minute, so better make sure you get what you need. Screw everybody else, where’s my coffee? What I have to wait for the toilet, don’t they know who I am?
Some things take time and time is there to be enjoyed… Some of you will say, ian’s gone off the deep end but I’ll leave you with a quote…
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
– Steve Jobs
Poor Si Lumb almost got it in the neck from me… Little reminder about Phoneshop’s view on Pay as you Go!
https://twitter.com/king_puddin/status/165967429850243072
I was flicking through my feedly (which I switched to when Google reader stopped) and noticed a blog from Lifehacker… Why I Went Without Coffee for a Month (and May Give It Up for Good)
Provocative title, better have a look I thought.
For my first month of The Year of Living Without, I gave up coffee. That was something I thought would be very difficult, given my love for coffee and miserable past attempts. But I loved it. That was a huge surprise to me. I had absolutely no difficulty in giving up coffee, not the first day, not the first week, not at all.
They key was having a great replacement habit that I really enjoyed. Instead of focusing on sacrificing the coffee, I focused on drinking a lovely cup of tea each morning. I was grateful to be able to drink such good tea, and so the coffee wasn’t even a concern. So my first month of Living Without wasn’t that difficult, though I did learn a few things.
Absolutely! My Tea habit is slightly out of control but its cool. I learned a lot too
The smell of coffee is amazing, it certainly gets me excited (not as excited as I use to of course). Although I didn’t give up as such (maybe for good reason), I have strict rules.
I gave up my espresso machines after my brush with death. Donated one to MadLab and gave all my coffee to my work friends.
Its worth remembering how much in-grated caffeine is in our culture. And I tried to make a espresso tea once.
Simon said something to me as I left his flat the other day…
Almost every major decision in history is made under the influence of Caffeine…
Its a interesting drug caffeine. Some can’t live without it and some have different levels of allergic reaction to it, as I found out the other day. No I’m not allergic but since my brush with death I’ve keeping an eye on my caffeine intake. Mainly no Coffee at home or work.
I remember seeing caffeine under a high powered microscope ages ago when looking at different drugs under a microscope. But recently I saw the above picture from DIYcouture. Its a pretty amazing drug and you can see the reaction in the shape of the drug.
I wrote a while ago about working most Fridays from coffee shops in the northern quarter of Manchester instead of working out of my home.
However someone at work pointed me to this blog post from a guy who is complaining about people treating coffee shops like there personal offices.
Dickheads with cups of coffee so dry they were probably ordered three hours ago. Dickheads reading the tea leaves in their empty glasses. Dickheads with just some free water.
Dickheads with absolutely no sign of having consumed anything except some three-week old canned tomato soup stains on their emo punk pop hip hop band t-shirts, the ones that proved they were at that concert nobody else gave a shit about.
One of them even had the pierced balls to get a banana out of this bag and proceeded to eat it as he scribed the novel he’s never going to publish, looking at his Samsung Galaxy III—iPhones are so passé—at the same time.
And here I was, (delicious) coffee in hand, waiting for my sandwich, with nowhere to eat it. And I wasn’t alone—there were two more people like me. While I waited, three more people came in, and, after looking around fruitlessly for five minutes, left without ever touching ass to chair. I didn’t need telepathic powers to read their minds. DICKHEADS.
To be honest I found the whole thing pretty funny but I do get what he sometimes means. I personally buy and spend too much money at coffee shops including FYG, North Tea Power and Vivid Lounge. So I would agree with all the points the writer makes…
- Buy at least a coffee. Don’t just go ahead and sit there with your computer. If you do the latter, I hope your genitals drop rotten into the toilet bowl one day.
- When you are done with your coffee—it’s ok, take your time, as long as you do it at some reasonable pace—you can stay around for five minutes. Perhaps ten. Then leave.
- If you want to stay longer, buy another coffee. A pastry would be fine too. Perhaps a sandwich. Anything. Whatever. But keep buying things. This is the rent you pay. It’s much less than getting your own office. Or a real apartment.
However I still don’t like places which go out of there way to restrict laptop users.
In Manchester when I first arrived, Teacup and Drip Coffee was a great place to enjoy a chat, read and catch up with some work. Now they both seemed to turn hostile on computer users by taping up plug sockets, messing with the wifi and general snobbery of laptop users. In Teacup you need to be shown a place which makes it too formal for my own liking. But fear not others have stepped in to fill the void.
Interestingly North Tea Power not only fills the void but takes customer service to another level, really encouraging laptop users… Love those guys!