Walking along London Rd the other day, I noticed an intriguing sign on the open market.

So I went to take a look, and found a small piece of Amsterdam transplanted to Brighton. Amsterdammers sells those classic Dutch bicycles. Many (many) years ago, I worked in a bar in Amsterdam called Fat City, lived above the shop and rode around during the day on a sit-up-and-beg classic bike. Avoiding the trams, I took long languid rides around town, going nowhere in particular - as I had no-where to go. Now I want a new one.

Second hand and new Dutch bikes

Original Amsterdam City Bikes This site offers you a genuine design classic – the Dutch bicycle. The time has come to enjoy cycling in elegance and comfort that Britain has not seen for yonks. The quality built into the Dutch roadster makes it a serious alternative to other forms of urban transport. Geared up for the summer, these bicycles are here to let you swish down the streets, past people and cars in full glory.

We’re a FON member here at Providence Towers. That means we joined the FONEROS and got a cute little wireless router for free. Then we plugged it into our ordinary wifi router, turned it on and offered the world wireless access outside our windows. The FON router creates two networks, a private one that we can use and a public one that anyone in the FON network can use for free and that any member of the public can use for a small daily fee. So far, so good - though no-one in BLONEland has ever used our FON wireless. We even bought an ariel booster so that our signal would penetrate the thick walls of Costa coffee and make a formerly wirelessless place, um, wireless. Now it looks like FON have pursuaded BT that it would be a good idea for anyone using BT broadband/wifi to join the FON network. Why this might be a good idea is anyone’s guess. Well, it might well be a good idea for some FON members in some places. Personally, I’ve had a FON router going in my house for over a year and I can’t imagine that my 86 year old neighbour is that interested. My other neighbour of course already has wireless. There isn’t anyone else within range.
Now I’ve got all of that out of my system, I’d encourage you all to come to outside our offices and use our wifi via FON. You can sit in the park with the street drinkers or, if that doesn’t appeal, you can sit in Costa or on the doorstep of the church.

Introducing the BT FON Community, Wi-Fi everywhere in the U.K. | FON Blog

FON and BT have partnered to create the BT FON Community to cover the entire U.K. with hundreds of thousands of BT FON hotspots.You already know who we are, the world’s largest Wi-Fi Community, and BT is one of the leading broadband providers in the world, and the birth of our BT FON Community means something uniquely special for broadband users in the U.K. and all over the world.

We have integrated FON in BT and now more than more than 3 million Total Broadband customers are invited to join the enormous global community of people sharing their WiFi.

The fact that a market leader like BT supports FON’s revolutionary model for a massive Wi-Fi community built for and by the people marks a bold step in the communications industry.

Every person in the UK who agrees to share a small portion of their home broadband connection will be able to share the connection of any other member. Anyone joining in will be able to use those FON hotspots across the world and all the new BT FON hotspots free of charge.

This word comes from Latin providentia “foresight, precaution”, from pro- “ahead” + videre “to see”. The current meaning of the word (Divine Providence) derives from the sense “knowledge of the future” or omniscience, which is the privilege of God. The initial meaning of providere remains in ‘to provide’ = “to take precautionary measures”.

Wikipedia

(picture from http://pnwbands.com/providence.html)

Our local school (St. Barts pace ) has a new gate and some fancy new ironwork - a reference to St Bartholomew’s church next door, which legend has it is built to the dimensions of the ark. Though, as I always thought, no ark of that shape would float.

Our new coffee shop opened today - mostly. We went up for a cup (Graeme was the first ‘repeat’ customer) and met the crew. It’s early days for them. They had a lot of cakes, not enough seats and no wi-fi. But they pledge wi-fi soon and we’re going to go help them out with it. We’ve also promised to take OpenCoffee up there. It’s a lovely independent coffee shop, comfy and lush with great laptop working potential. And they gave us free cake!

We also met our first ‘native’ of the New England development, who lives up above Sainsburys and who was enjoying her first cup of joe in our new local.

and thanks to Tom Coady for more images …

We’ve been watching this shop development in the New England development up the road from A Place Called Providence. We can see it out of the window - we’ve watched the entire project go from demolition to a huge building site to a nearly finished mixed development. We long thought that a chain coffee shop would turn up in one of the units next to Sainsburys - but the first turned up on London Road - Costa.
This morning I noticed that the sign had gone up on this unit. And yes, it’s a coffee shop. The Sempre Caffe Bar. Hooray - maybe these guys will know how to make a dry cappuchino.

… but our http://aplacecalledprovidence.com/webcam/. You can now watch paint dry take a peek into the wonderful world of Providence Place at any time. And see some guys sitting round a table.

If you come along to our OpenBeer tomorrow afternoon you can participate in ProvidenceTV. Live on screen.

You’ve heard of OpenCoffee - semi-casual meetups where geeks, entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to get together to chat can turn up and, well, drink coffee and chat.
Now meet OpenBeer - OpenCoffee’s bigger brother.
It’s our attempt at an office warming after more than a year and our attempt to network and be friendly and drink beer.

This Friday
our offices
50 Providence Place
top floor, marked bell
5pm onwards
bring beer, snacks, wifi provided
office occupants: Ivan Pope, Jay Gooby, Snipperoo: Graeme Sutherland, Scouta, Presence Labs: Dom Stockdale, adymo.com: James McCarthy, rails

http://aplacecalledprovidence.com

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101729703077728722132.00000112cce40718b9565&ll=50.831082,-0.137072&spn=0.003327,0.008669&z=17&om=1

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/267720/

Pass it on!

The Costa website lauds their coffee:

Costa Coffee

Some people would call our pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee an obsession. Do we care? No, because nothing less will do. Our Italian Master Roasters (the only three in the UK) spend their lives selecting the finest beans and roasting them to perfection. To prepare our coffee with any less care and attention to detail would be sacrilege.Our baristas are trained (some might say indoctrinated)

and

Cappuccino Single Shot Frothed Milk Chocolate Espresso topped with steamed, frothed milk and a sprinkling of chocolate: breakfast coffee you can enjoy all day.

Listen to me Costa Coffee, I am sick to death of your foul buckets of milky yuk. A cappuchino is a shot of coffee with a topping of foamed milk. Not a cup full of hot milky coffee topped off with some foam. That’s the strange thing that you call a latte. When it is pointed out to you that the thing you have just made me is not what I ordered, it should be well within your capability to make me a cup of coffee and foam. But no, you hand me another heavyweight cup of milky yuk with a nice smile.

So, Mr Whitbread, train your baristas. If I spent my life selecting beans and roasting them to perfection and then came to the London Road Costa for a cup of joe, I think I’d commit suicide there and then. Follow your own guide. According to your corporate HQ (reading from a manual with no understanding of the real issues), your cappuchinos should be 1/3 coffee, 1/3 milk and 1/3 foam. Now, that sounds to me like an abomination in its own right - but you can’t even make them like that.

And tell your redshirted managers that although they think they know how to make coffee and although it looks quite simple, they really have no clue and shouldn’t be allowed near the machine … at these prices, it is an insult.

(Just to do a pre-emptive apology, there are one or two trained baristas who do make me something lovely when I ask. You know who you are)