I love Audible ever since I signed up a few months back. (Btw this is a very special link; if you click it and sign up I will earn Audible credits. So if you don’t click and sign up there will be no audiobooks for me to eat or warm my house in the winter.)
But I would write about Audible even if I didn’t earn any goodies. I’d probably write even longer as now this may appear as shameless paid advertisement which it is not.
Audible is an awesome service, you see. If there was no Audible I wouldn’t know the age of the Earth. Not that I care too much about the age of the Earth but I’m a curious person and like to know how things have come to be and how they work. But as much as I would have loved to read a book such as Short History of Nearly Everything I know that I would not have done that in a sensible time. It’s kind of too heavy material for holidays or bed time reading. And at times when my brain is alert for facts and concepts of different sorts I’m either working, writing or reading online which would have left very little time for reading that book. So I never bought it.
Enter Audible. (Same affiliate link, again in case you didn’t click before.) Since signing up a few months ago I’ve listened through most of the Short History, started a book about pre-Enlightenment philosophy and gotten a third-way through one of Seth Godin’s books. I’ve had the latter for a year already but due to my no-time-for-serious-reading syndrome had only read the first 30 pages or so.
To my great surprise it is much easier to read that kind of stuff with my ears. Or in other words, listen to it. I hope this recommendation will not land on deaf ears, quite literally.

Moderation was ended in London OpenCoffee (that’s a group or web entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other geeks of this kind) email list this week, which resulted in a lot of spam but also a lot of wise words.
The following is my selection on what people in the discussion related to funding a startup, unedited. Too good information not the be shared. (Also I wanted to store this in a place that’s easy to find).

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Blik is such a great business idea, executed in such a great way. Everything from their about us page to packaging seems to have gotten enough love. Consider the copy on the DYI bamboo tree I bought:
Using blik is like adding a ray of sunshine to your room. You could add a skylight instead. But then you’d have to deal with some guy cutting a hole in your roof. And chances are, that guy will be showing some crack.
Available online, and there’s also a shop on Columbia road. East London, naturally.

It’s summer and I’ve been on a blog holiday, neither writing nor not reading blogs of others. Until National Health Service (UK’s biggest employer, NHS to friends and family) gave me an urge to write a little, or should I say it inspired me.
People with good manners don’t talk about their health in public. Talking about NHS should therefore be perfectly fine as this has nothing to do with health, as I have found out. Anyway, I hit my middle toe against someone’s knee a few weeks back. My sparring partner was fine, the toe unfortunately not so much. It got slightly swollen and had a nice range of pastel colors on it almost immediately. I thought I’d just bruised it and kept on doing what I was doing. Walks on Estonian islands and Scottish mountains, swimming, a rock concert and such. It did hurt a bit but hey, no-one said life was supposed to be easy. Finally this week I thought that my foot has been sore too long for a simple bruise and that was time to bring on wonders of modern medicine.
Ironically, the only place to get someone to take a look at your foot is a walk-in clinic. (In my case hobble-in clinic.) The other option was signing up with a local doctor aka GP or General Practitioner. I reckoned a domesticated doctor may come handy one of those days so I better go all the way. Having lived in the UK for some time now, I wasn’t at all surprised that you can’t just go there, flash your ID and get whatever body part examined and fixed. That would be unreasonably time efficient, wouldn’t it.
On first visit I indulged into some paperwork. Only 24 hours later was I entitled to schedule an appointment. But not to have my foot looked at – no, not so fast. This is just to complete your registration and have a nurse measure you and ask about diseases in the family, quantities of fruit I eat and units of alcohol I drink per week. Only after that would someone actually get to examination of my limb. I was lucky as well as persistent though, so I managed to schedule initial check and doctor’s appointment within 20 minutes of each other.
Your middle toe is broken alright, said the doctor finally. And added it should heal itself in about three more weeks if I gave it some rest and minimized my walking. Probably, he added, as only an x-ray would tell with 100 per cent certainty. Unfortunately x-rays could only be done in one of the big hospitals and it would usually take two weeks to get a response back from them. Or alternatively I could have gone to an x-ray unit (x-ray monger? x-ray parlor?) a few tube stops away that would have given me results immediately had I been prepared to spend four hours in a live queue. This all seemed quite unreasonable and contradicting the advice to go easy on walking, so here I am, still x-rayless, but quite immobile nevertheless.
I don’t know what I was thinking but I also showed a birth mark on my chest to the same doctor (in the same NHS system) and asked whether someone could remove it as it’s situated exactly where backpack straps rub against the body and then there’s the thing with birthmarks and sun not getting along very well. No problem, he said and proudly explained that the internet based patients handling system would make this very easy. All he’d need to do is enter my details in the system and presto! soon a letter would come from GP’s office, stating that I could go and pick up a card with a phone number that I could use to make an appointment with a dermatologist. I stared at him blank, not understanding why getting a simple medical procedure had to involve more planning than robbing a bank.
I turned around and as I walked out I saw this sign on the inside of the door. Not all customers leave happily, the doctor said while I got my camera-phone-calculator-alarm clock out and took the photo. Why was I not surprised.

The IMDB rating of Definitely, Maybe is the straw the broke the camel’s back. 7,5 for a movie that is more predictable than the chain of events at a bachelor’s party? Where are the good old days when only slightly geeky people cared to rate movies and ratings was actually useful. Now soccer moms have taken over and IMDB is a shadow of box office results. Thanks, I’d rather trust a politician than this.
I must have missed the train of the next big movie ratings thing. Please help, someone.