RSS

I'm enjoying RSS feeds. The Mac's Mail programme can subscribe to these via the little orange RSS icon on many websites. Every time the website is updated with new material a descriptive headline (or sometimes the whole article) is downloaded to my RSS reader. I check to see what might be of interest before looking at the website.

Currently I'm subcribed to Curious Read, Lifehacker, Indexed, BBC PM programme, and Zen Habits, amongst others.

You can even subscribe to this blog, and get a note downloaded when I post new stuff. Then again, why would you ?

Queens

New York, and the last city of our tour. The GPS did a major HAL coming in to New York but amidst a lot of honking horns, a man waving his fist at me and some diatribe from me towards the unit, we managed between the two of us (Carole and me) to find our hotel, then to the Avis return depot at LaGuardia Airport via the petrol station where I received the legendary New York surly service. I complained to Avis about the GPS (loud enough that she could hear me) and received a $50 refund for my inconvenience. It was the least they could do.

Driving in America's been fun though. You can do relatively little in America without a car, it seems, including getting from one end of a mall to the other. The car (a Dodge CaraVan) was spacious, comfortable, powerful and I want one.

Tomorrow, the New York subway...

Entering the Twilight Zone

Rod Serling could have created some gripping moments with the GPS, had it been invented in 1960. This thing usually conveys us safely from one set of coordinates to another, naming all the streets and points of interest and apparently having a special satellite up there just watching out for us. We trust her (yes, her), smile forgivingly at her sometimes strange pronounciations, share her sense of effortless accomplishment when we reach our destination. Then just occasionally she does a HAL; directing us to keep left, then springing a right-turn, introducing a full-reverse arrow thing on to the map screen, giving a different instruction to what's clearly marked on the display, our little blue car icon careering off the chosen pathway into a dark tangle of unknown streets. We switch to old methods, scrabbling with maps, reading road signs that are OUTSIDE the car, turning aside from The Route.

There's a silence then she says "Recalculating", but what she really means is "What are you doing Dave ?" It's touch and go. We've even switched her off a couple of times recently. The errors are getting more frequent, and more bizarre. Should I worry ?

This is a place

The biggest mall in New England has 7000 car park spaces and several miles of corridor. That was our exercise for yesterday. We had to work off the pumpkin pie somehow, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But surely even 7000 carloads of people couldn't buy all these clothes, or eat all this fast food ? There's a bit of a retail meltdown in America, apparently, and prices are keen, but there's just not many people around in these big shopping centres, except in the queue for McDonalds which was never less than 10 long. As with the desert, the mountains and forests, I'm struck by the scale of American shopping. Our latest hotel is on a 35-mile main trunk road into Boston which is lined with palatial retail parks like giant fiefdoms facing each other across the four-lane roadway. Every one seems to have McDonalds and a Dunkin Donuts. My idea of building a fast salad empire in the US is faltering.

The pumpkin pie was delicious by the way. Clam chowder in a breadbowl, similar, and there have been some good Caesar salads though I only managed to finish one of them. Coffee, on the other hand ... don't get me started.