For tactical reasons unimportant here I just signed up for Blockbuster’s DVD delivery service. So far the service is slow, the website unimpressive, and availability limited. But I am getting a free copy of Shrek 2. Once the month is up I think I’ll go back to Netflix, which is just better. In the meantime here’s an example of where Blockbuster go wrong…

I wanted to sign up for their email newsletter, to find out about upcoming releases. Already logged in to their site, I followed the appropriate link and was asked for my postal address. Not my email address, my meatspace one. Rather than supply this again, I wrote to customer support:

Why do I have to give you my address (that you already know anyway) to sign up for the electronic newsletters? Are you expecting to deliver the electrons via USPS?

Their reply?

Thank you for contacting Blockbuster Online Customer Service. My apologies for the delay in response to your e-mail. Recently we have been experiencing an unusually high number of e-mails, which has been affecting response times. It is necessary to make sure information is being issued to the correct individual.

.I immediately retorted with:

You’re saying that you are willing to ship me valuable DVDs without checking who I am, but you can’t send me essentially worthless email without having my address twice? That doesn’t sound at all sensible.

I shall update this thread when I get a new answer, as I’m sure all both of you are waiting with keen anticipation for a resolution.

From the BBC:

Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel has died at the age of 65, while on holiday in Peru.

Peel, whose radio career spanned 40 years, was on a working holiday in the city of Cuzco with his wife Sheila when he suffered a heart attack.

For those of you who have never heard of him, he was a DJ in the UK for over 40 years, including working at BBC Radio 1 since it was created in 1967. He supported independent bands throughout his career, when it is routine for older broadcasters to switch to more ‘easy-listening’ stations as their era of music ends. At the same time he had a regular program on Radio 4 (something like NPR), showing that he had perhaps mellowed with time. He was also popular in Eastern Europe before and after the end of communism, with regular programs on the BBC World Service and Radio Eins in Berlin. He is famous for his ‘Peel Sessions’; recordings by independent artists done for his show. I doubt there are many musically significant bands in the UK over the last 30 years that haven’t done a Peel Session.

Some of his honours include an OBE from the Queen, 7 honorary degrees, Melody Maker’s DJ of the Year 11 times, The Sony Gold Award in 2002, and perhaps most fittingly in 1994 he received NME’s “Godlike Genius Award”. In the world of independent music they may have been right.

Update: Slate has an article about the impact on the US.

Under the Headline “Faucet Company Donates To Man Who Lost All But Spigot To Twister” a Florida news station reports:

“To say James Abney lost everything in his rental trailer during a tornado spawned by Hurricane Ivan doesn’t do justice to his loss: the only thing left where his home had been standing was his kitchen faucet, supported by narrow water pipes.

But the lonely faucet became a beacon of hope, towering at sink-level in a devastated trailer park.”

The photographer did a nice job too.

One man’s health, to be precise. It appears I probably don’t have a stress fracture in my lower right tibia. Now I know that if we started a list of all the things that you or I don’t have wrong with us we might be some time, but in this case there was reason to believe, briefly at least, that I did have one. After some ankle-based discomfort starting on Thursday, continuing through a session of coxing for the Head of the Mississippi (Women’s Open 4+ and 8+, third in both to the U of M A + B teams both times, which is no mean feat) I went to see the doctor on Monday. Having been warned by my DLW that the doctor in question was somewhat ineffectual, I was diagnosed with a stress fracture based on a slightly alarming line on my X-ray. One set of crutches and an appointment to a specialist later I was home, playing it up for all it was worth, only to get a phone call from the doctor telling me that it probably wasn’t, but I should take it easy anyway and come back if it still hurts. I think the doc and I both hope I get someone else if I return.

…people post quotes that they find to be really deep and meaningful, like they assume you give a monkey’s? Well stop reading.

I like the idea of every morning suddenly thinking, “You know what? I’ve suddenly decided I’m a fascist.” I don’t think that will ever happen, and I hope it doesn’t, to be perfectly honest. But I do think it’s important not to be absolutely sure, so sure that you can’t reinvent yourself in some way, or at least rediscover the truth of why you think what you think, and not just take it as an assumption.

Stephen Fry.