Edward Vielmetti is inviting you to A2B3 lunch on Thursday at Eastern Accents in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Great Wall of Panera: what do corporate cafe wifi networks block?

Quite a few cafe networks have filters set up to block various kinds of use.  My usual failure modes with these are that they mark perfectly reasonable internet services as inappropriate.

Here's a litany of Panera complaints, to give you a feel for it.

Tinotopia was blocked for a while, which got the author riled up enough to document some of the failures.  No entries since April 2005:

In this case, Tino of all people is the loser: for he has once again been suckered into coming into Panera only to find that the network is kaput. The network here is now well and truly down more than it’s up, at least when I’m here. It’s even more kaput than usual today, too.

TinyURL.com is blocked by Panera Bread, notes Technology Evangelist :

I can understand Panera choosing to block porn sites, since it could be disturbing for customers to glance over to see a neighboring table watching porn while they're trying to enjoy some bread bowl chowder.

But why is TinyURL.com banned? Why not just block inappropriate sites that people may be trying to access after being redirected from TinyURL.com?

BookOfJoe documents the Panera Blocked Site Hack:

I remarked Saturday on the fact that I couldn't access bookofjoe on my local Panera's WiFi because it was blocked.

Reader Benjamin Tung of the great state of Michigan confirmed shortly thereafter that the Italian–American corporate version of the Chinese firewall is up and functioning in a similar fashion at his local branch of the sandwich/bakery chain.

Benjamin wrote, "Don't make me choose between the cinnamon raisin bread and reading your blog."

The solution is as simple as it is perfect, and should work nearly anywhere.

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=http://www.bookofjoe.com/

translates bookofjoe.com from english to english via $GOOG.  hey presto.  Replace the URL as needed, and bonus points for the next step of turning this into Greasemonkey or your favorite bookmark tool.

supermemo and morning coffee ritual memory

An important piece of having coffee in the morning is making it part of a routine. If you're predictable in your habits, you start to see the same people in the same space at the same time, and you get to be something of a regular.

If you're careful, and switch your morning allegiances from time to time but still visit the old haunts often enough, you can be what passes for a regular long after you stopped coming every day.

How often, then, do you need to show up for people to remember you? For that I turn to structured repetition, and the power of priming memory periodically to strengthen it. Supermemo, a software package for memory improvement, has a nice paper on using Supermemo without a computer, which specifies a pattern of repetitions and intervals to get details into memory. The table of intervals specified says that you review materials at this pace:

4 days, 7 days, 12 days, 20 days, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 5 months, 9 months, 16 months, 2 years, 4 years, 6 years, 11 years, 18 years

Which suggests that a well-timed practice of showing up at a cafe, introducing yourself to everyone, learning their names, and them coming back at precisely timed intervals to repeat the process would be enough to make you a regular in no time at all.

Coworking in the 80s at Zingerman's Next Door

Friday mornings is coworking time at Zingerman's Next Door. Today Catherine Juon, Laura Fisher, Dan Cooney and I sat down and caught up with each other, talked Wordpress, looked at the fonts on Safari for Windows, deleted email, discussed where to go for local vacations that still gave you a sense of wonder at the world around you, contemplated short Amtrak trips, compared notes on time tracking systems and had the appropriate mix of getting things done and figuring out what needs to get done later.

The upstairs area is great coworking space in the morning - there were lots of tables free, the wifi is good and there's plenty of power. Noticable however was the music: an 80s mix that had all of us flashing back to high school.

For your listening pleasure, here's KLOL's "I can has 80s music" morning coworking mix:

Deniece Williams, "Let's hear it for the boy"
Jefferson Starship, "We built this city on rock and roll"
J Geils Band "Freeze Frame"
Michael Jackson "Thriller"
Pointer Sisters "Automatic"

Heidi Hansen notes the 80s Hits channel on Rhapsody as a good approximation.

For more of your Ann Arbor coworking needs, see the microcoworking site with a local calendar of events, times, and places.

Technorati Tags: 80s, annarbor, coworking, zingermans

Breakfast w/Kate DCamp at Zingerman's Next Door

I had breakfast with Kate DCamp at Zingerman's Next Door near my office. It was her first time there. I got there early and enjoyed a coffee and a blueberry muffin while listening to tunes. They were playing War's "Summer"

Ridin round town with all the windows down
Eight track playin all your favorite sounds
The rhythm of the bongos fill the park
The street musicians tryin to get a start

Cause it's summer
Summer time is here
Yes it's summer
My time of year
Yes it's summer
My time of year

which was just right on a day that will be 90 degrees today.

Kate has a new house, a new driveway under construction, a new bocce court, and a new puppy, and seems to be settling down in Ann Arbor well. We talked about some differences between here and San Jose. She noted just how many MBAs she had recruited from Michigan and how handy it was for them to find her back here, and how she's preparing for the commute to Lansing for law school.

Neither of us got a parking ticket (that was quite a feat).

Technorati Tags: csco, puppy

Ann Arbor Coworking Calendar

Enough parallel coworking efforts have started up in Ann Arbor to give the movement a need for a calendar. Here's what I know of so far:

Wednesday morning: Primo Coffee, Fifth and Liberty
Friday morning: Zingerman's Next Door, Kerrytown

There's a mailing list running (very small traffic - actually a little bit too small, since this morning's meeting didn't get auto-reminded), and a public Google calendar you can subscribe to as well. I'll reuse the a2b3 twitter feed for details too.

I'm waiting for a pointer to the official announcement, but I understand that Ann Arbor SPARK's downtown space is going to be available for coworking as well.

Catherine Juon, John Corey and I were here at Zingerman's Next Door this morning. Good coffee, and one of the most interesting bulletin boards in town. The highlight was a little card announcing Liz Elling's planned swim down the mighty Huron River July 7-21 2007 - her blog Liz Swims the Huron details her plans and progress.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, coworking

Primo Coffee, Fifth and Liberty, Ann Arbor MI

There's a new cafe in downtown Ann Arbor - Primo Coffee at the corner of Fifth and Liberty kitty corner from the Post Office.

UPDATE: in Unicode, that would be ①♨.

They serve Zingerman's baked goods and the usual set of coffee drinks. The view is pretty good, and at least when I went there it wasn't that busy.

I picked up a good Wireless Washtenaw signal from there, and they have signs up saying that they have their own wifi, though I couldn't tell which of the many signals was supposed to be theirs. There's also a sign up promising a private conference room seating 12 for rent, but that wasn't ready yet.

They have another location in Ypsilanti on Whittaker Road, and indeed their web site only refers to that location.

Spencer Thomas took a photo of the place just before it opened - and I met him there the first day I happened into the place.

Ning blocked at Caribou Coffee by Sonicwall

Those pesky firewalls, they're everywhere.

This site has been blocked. If you think this is an error, please send an email to support@wanderingwifi.com with the subject “Blocked Site”. Include at which Caribou you are located and the blocked website. Thank you.

http://library20.ning.com/?xgp=friend

Falling Rock Cafe, Munising MI

We drive through Munising on our way to Marquette to visit my folks every summer. This summer we'll stop at the Falling Rock Cafe. Some information on it -

from Hunt's Guide to the UP on Central Munising:

FALLING ROCK CAFÉ and BOOKSTORE. Jeff and Nancy Dwyer moved to town, having quit their academic positions at the University of Florida. (Nancy was a nursing professor, Jeff a gerontologist.) They didn't know many people, but Jeff loved the U.P. from family vacations spent here. (His great-grandfather was Marquette County sheriff.) First the Dwyers fixed up their new home on a lake. Then they bought a beat-up former tavern and its neighbor (on M-28 downtown, next to the former home of the Charing Cross bookstore) and created a multi-use space, hauling out 55 tons of trash and building material in the process. Jeff, a sociologist by training, had read and reread Ray Oldenburg's widely influential study of "third places" --- not home, not work --- The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

Falling Rock Café (906-387-3008) on M-28 in downtown Munising serves as an informal information and networking hub with evening hours.

Saturdays at 8, year-round, there's a concert at Falling Rock Cafe in downtown Munising.

Detroit Free Press, "A Hangout with a Heart":

The Falling Rock is a fledgling coffeehouse, lunch spot and bookstore started by a couple who dumped academic careers in Florida to move to Munising for a simpler life and what they call community.

They opened their place in May 2003 with a business plan long on determination and short on common sense. Soon they realized that they couldn't survive without help.

An astonishing 140 people have joined Friends of the Falling Rock, giving the couple a windfall $14,000 and reassurance that they're wanted.

Two Friends who drove 5 1/2 hours from Lansing say they didn't hesitate to kick in $200. "We're here four times a year," says Louanne Beaudry, "and the minute we pull into town, this is where we come."

Says Autumn Jauck, 37, who moved from Missouri to work at Pictured Rocks: "The Falling Rock helps people to become family, so it's easy for an outsider like me to feel like I've lived here forever."

Ukelele artist Victoria Vox is playing the Falling Rock Cafe on August 4, 2007:

If there is something else you'd like to know about me or the music I play, just email me. I promise, I won't bite. I'm a fully independent artist, and not only wear all the hats... but I wear my guitar when I'm cooking. It makes waiting for the pot to boil not so bad. I also play the ukulele. I'm sponsored by KoAloha Ukuleles (Honolulu, HI). They say I have the aloha spirit. I think that's better than anything. One should have spirit in whatever they do. I was a cheerleader in gradeschool. Maybe that's where I got it.

I have a website, too. It's www.victoriavox.com.

The Playback magazine of St. Louis refers to the latest Victoria Vox album as a glorious mélange!. Ms. Vox is just that. All around. Switching it up on guitar and ukulele, Vox has been influenced by her CD collection: Miles Davis, Do Ho, Jewel, Cyndi Lauper, Noir Désir, etc And its not about making it big, but making it good.

and Don Snitgen is playing tomorrow night:

7 p.m. — Live entertainment with Don Snitgen at the Falling Rock Cafe and Bookstore, Munising.

Technorati Tags: munising, michigan, yooper, coffee, picturedrocks, fallingrock, ukelele

Trenary Toast for nibbling and dunking (Detroit Free Press)

Trenary, Michigan's Trenary Toast is featured in the November 12 2006 Detroit Free Press "You haven't lived here until..." column by Steve Spalding:

What is it? Trenary Toast is cinnamon-and-sugar-covered toast made in the Upper Peninsula town of Trenary, about 25 miles southeast of Marquette. Like the better-known pasties, it's a product of the UP's early European residents. Trenary Toast derives from the Finnish variety of cinnamon toast called korpu.

What makes it unique? With a shelf life of about six months, Trenary Toast lasts longer than many marriages. No preservatives are added -- the secret to its longevity is adding the toppings before toasting. The result is a hard, sweet and long-lasting bread. And it's all packed in a plain brown-paper bag.

"If it's kept dry and cool, it will last indefinitely," said Bruce Hallinen, owner of Trenary Home Bakery. But don't refrigerate it -- that causes mold.

See also my earlier story about Trenary Toast when my mom sent down a bag. Thanks Mom! (send another!)

Technorati Tags: toast, korppu, michigan, yooper, trenary

Wandering Wi-Fi: Myspace not welcome

I was going to see the new Myspace site for The Ark music club in Ann Arbor here at Caribou, and got this for my troubles instead:

This site is blocked by WanderingWiFi content filtering service.

It looks like they're using SonicWALL. Haven't probed the rest of the net yet to see what other brokenness there is, but I do note that Facebook does seem to work.

It's hard to put a value on social networking sites, but I'm certain that they're less valuable when you are cut off from them arbitrarily based on where you happen to be.

Technorati Tags: caribou, coffee, myspace, facebook, theark