I often feel like I’m in the wrong job. I love the real world, being outside, being with my family. Staying indoors all the time in front of a computer is a bind, thought it obviously conveys benefits to my family so one can’t complain. I am also incredibly privileged to spend most of my time applying my sometimes hard to constrain creative urges, rather than plodding along doing dull grey work.

Working outside of the corporate office is something that all companies should strive to support. It is challenging, buy we should be driving forward developments to make it less so for more people. There was a recent article about this and increased productivity I read, and it holds true.

I digress.

Yesterday I worked out a change to my routine, a life hack if you will. Every other Tuesday afternoon I get to emerge from the grails shack early to charge up my rock batteries at a drum lesson. I the past this has meant I lose 3 hours of work time due to driving to and from the lesson and lesson time.

I decided to change this by cycling to the train station in future, about 15 min each way, get the train to drum lesson (station is opposite) and work on the train and in any waiting time. Exercise + outdoors + more work done = win. I tried it out yesterday minus the cycling part (bike needs fixing) and it worked great.

Sort of. I got another 2 hours work in, but not connected work.

Opposite the station is a café and a large pub. Neither have wifi free or paid. In a city opposite the major rail station. In 2011. Commercially this is madness for those businesses. Want to be full of commuters buying stuff? GET FREE WIFI. It is like water in a desert.

Today I have to return to another part of the same city to have my car serviced at the official dealer. I don’t have a fancy car (Toyota) but since they paired up with Lexus is means we get a swanky dealership, free coffee brought to you etc. I my shorts and t-shirt I feel like a kid in a grown-up’s world.

So I have to work here for a few hours. You guessed it, no wifi. Plenty of chairs, comfort, free drinks but no wifi. Wtf. There’s nowhere nearby with wifi either… Ok there’s McDonalds and KFC and I will have no choice but to go there shortly. It should come as no surprise that these efficient businesses have grasped what smaller businesses appear to have missed. (notable exception Star Anise café in home town of Stroud has free wifi for patrons yay!).

There is however good 3G and yesterday morning I paid O2 for tethering on my iPhone to remedy this in future, but 24hr later it’s still not up and running, despite “within 24hr” commitment. Here’s another real world fail – telcos like o2 send you automated text messages, but they have no way for you to reply and interact with someone. This is a one way customer mis-service:

The fact you even have to “order” tethering and it can’t be enabled immediately is pretty bizarre in this connected world.

But going back to the wifi… basically I’m complaining about the ineptness of UK businesses to adopt what is actually nearly 10 year old technology now, for their own benefit. This is basic stuff. Make money by going the extra mile.

UPDATE: McDonalds stank, had The Cloud wifi but neither iPhone nor MBP nor MBP with Skype Access could connect. KFC had nothing. Found Starbucks in a Sainsburys supermarket. No wifi at all. And they wonder why the UK is not very competitive or innovative any more.

And while I’m here, I happened to notice something really depressing about our society, probably a global phenomenon. Driving here I passed a junction where, on the corner, sat a beautiful and ornate remnant of our society’s past.

On this corner sits the base of what must have been a cast iron lamp-post. It is ornate like you wouldn’t believe, with swirls and botanical motifs over it.

Next to it, like some kind of poor excuse for a replacement, is a long grey pipe with a traffic light strapped to it.

Where did it all go wrong? Where did pride in our streets and urban environment go? Was it the war and the make-do era? Why has this not returned now that it can be argued there is a biggest passion for design than ever before? It does not have to cost, the material is not as important as the aesthetic detail.

When you look around, our streets (certainly in the UK) are full of ugly “street furniture”. This stuff is the difference between walking through your shitty, dirty, soulless urban environment and a classic European city’s old quarter back streets full of charm and attention to detail. Architecture is part of this (but who said cheap architecture has to be free of beauty?), but the “street furniture” of railings, lamp posts, traffic lights, litter bins, pavements, telco wiring boxes etc are everywhere and detract from our environment in such a pernicious way we cannot have pride in these places.

And that affects how people feel, and how their lives turn out.

Click for large version

Not only does the event file’s thumbnail show the month and day, it also shows a summary of the text and the start and end time, all beautifully rendered. A lot of effort will have gone into make this rendering look great, even though you may only see it a few times a year, if that.

That’s attention to detail, based on the understanding that the little things make a difference.