Well I’ve done just about all that needed to be done today, so I’ll be taking a short nap now. A nap you ask? Well considering that I only slept 3 hours yesterday, I think I’ll need the rest for all the eating, drinking, dancing, and merrymaking ahead of me tonight!
I wish you and yours a fun and eventful evening whether you’re going out or staying at home. Happy New Year!
Ukranian police have confiscated Christmas trees felled in the area around Chernobyl. It would surely suck a big one to learn that your family spent their festive season huddled around a radioactive tree. I wonder if the trees were marketed as being ‘glow in the dark’!
It took me this screenshot from Zeldman to figure out that Meyerweb is style-selectable.
It also reminds me of how beautiful the Mac desktop GUI is. I’ve been a Mac-hater for years, it all started at the International School here in Bucharest. It kinda got to me when I could open only one browser window and one word document at a time (any more and you’d be greeted by an ‘insufficient memory error’ - which really got my goat up seeing as the those machines has 32mb of RAM, and my lowly P100 had only 16mb and could beat the pants off of the powermacs in question).
Since then I dwelled on those memories too long I guess, and as a PC addict obsessed with overclocking the guts of my machine, the inadequacy of the iMacs at college only incited more hatred.… violence in the case of those silly, tiny round mice..
Following the release of Mac OSX I’ve started paying more attention to ‘serious’ Mac hardware like the dual G4s and the powerbooks. Products like the iPod and those wonderful 23” HD flatscreens also helped grab my attention. Aside from being astoundingly attractive on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside (meaning OS) that brings a tear to my eye.
I’d kill to have a desktop interface like this! Everything tucked neatly out of the way, yet easily accessible: a highly efficient use of space compared to littering your desktop with icons. Mandrake 9.2 is the closest I’ve come to having those kind of toolbars available… sadly no one sane, or not, would even consider using Linux as a design platform.
So maybe I’ll think about buying a powerbook instead of a new PC notebook next year, right now I’d have to say the odds are still stacked heavily in favor of the PC notebook.
Test your recollection of some of the items making news headlines this year with this BBC Quiz. I got a decent 9 out of 12.
I wish everyone a very warm and Merry Christmas, close to friends, family and loved ones. Wherever you are at this year, may the spirit of the season keep you warm! Merry Christmas!
Something has put me in the mood for doing a little work on my typographic skills and knowledgeability, so are there any sites/articles that you would recommend for learning some of the fundamentals associated with type layout/presentation? I’ve already taken a gander at what ALA has to offer on the subject, but that’s not really much to go by. Anything more specific, authoritative, and concrete that you might suggest, or are you going to leave me to the mercy of the wolves in the google wilderness?
Configuring the settings in my e-mail client a minute ago, it struck me that incorporating an RSS aggregator into a mail client might not be such a bad idea. Wouldn’t it be convenient to be able to check your e-mail and and syndicated sites at the same time? No need to launch an extra application. Easily drag a link into a message, and recommend a post/news tidbit to a friend, or a contact. Move closer to being able to almost completely do most of your blogging my e-mail. Nothing revolutionary, just something to make life a little easier.
Always one to try new things, I’m pretty sure I must have been on crack this morning when I ran out into the snow barefooted. The thought of doing so had probably come to mind in those surreal moments between sleep and waking. I imagined that the experience would be something akin to the refreshingly earthy feel of green grass beaneath one’s barefeet.
Right then, right there, I rolled out of bed, and ran straight out the front door. Down the steps, past the car, round the corner, over the sidegate, along the walkway, plowing my way right into the centre of the snow-covered garden; prancing around in the 10” deep snow for several seconds, like a little boy running through the waves lapping the shore at the seaside… Huge mistake!!! Suffering a delayed reaction of sorts (probably because I was still half-asleep), it was good while (10-15 seconds) before I felt the sharp bursts of pain surge forth from my feet.
With about the agility and balance of a labotimized 3-legged dog suffering from a two-week-old ear infection, and dragging a inmate’s ball and chain, I swung round, stumbled out of the garden, hobbled along the walkway, through the sidegate, round the corner, past the car, up the stairs, and crawled back inside. Only after minutes of vigorous massage did the crushing pains in my poor, wet feet subside — reduced to a dull throb, — and the blood flow return.
Genius? Maybe. Common sense? None.
I woke up yesterday morning thinking it was Thursday. How did that happen you ask? Some might blame it on the consumption of copious amounts of this week’s top5 subject [beer]… I blame it on the TV guide!
Tuesday night I was visiting a friend, and while we digging through over 12gb of House mp3z for something to listen to, I noticed that “Eraser” was playing on TV… fast forward to yesterday morning when I wake up and go downstairs, flip the TV guide to the Wednesday listing to check out what might be of interest during the day: ‘hmm… Eraser on at 8pm? ahh… that was yesterday!’, page to Thursday and continue with my morning routine.
Later during the day something told me it was not Thursday, so I made a note of checking the TV guide to backtrack on where the misunderstanding had occurred. Scrutinizing the listings revealed that “Eraser” was scheduled for Wednesday, but was played on Tuesday in “Maximum Risk’s” slot. ‘Ahh, they got those two mixed up, I’ll watch “Maximum Risk” tonight’, I tell myself.
When I eventually lied down in front of the box expecting to catch “Maximum Risk”, they had some other crap on, not “Maximum Risk”… unsettling, isn’t it?
Congratulations to Kristen and Eric on their recent engagement! I wish you two loverbirds all the best ;)
Today I saw “The Fellowship of the Ring” for the first time, on VHS believe it or not! I had the chance to watch it on divX several times since it came out, but something or the other always came up. So like I said, this was the first time I saw it.
My opinion? Reasonably entertaining, the special effects were pretty decent, and didn’t seem overdone. It made me feel like playing WarCraft III again… imagine that. So yeah, I’ll probably watch “The Two Towers” when I get a chance.
Take one herd of elephants, throw in a couple of casks of rice beer, and what do you get? A really bad idea! A herd of elephants in northeast India got plastered and smashed things up a bit when they came across stocks of rice beer while searching for food.
Was the Romanian Gymastics Federation ever upset when a few of their Olympic medal winners posed for a nudie magazine in Japan! They were even further enraged when the gymansts performed their routines naked in front of a Japanese TV camera, all of which has now been put on DVD. The body claims that the gymnasts’ actions have disgraced the country’s image in the sport.
If you saw the e-mails that a few of my friends have sent me with scans from the magazine, and screencaps from the DVD you might find that difficult to argue. It’s pretty much safe to say the gymansts have done their country proud ;)
Ahh yes, this one shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out. I simply prefer the taste of Amstel over Heineken, I also have many great childhood memories of it, and it’s the only thing my one buddy and I ever order when we’re drinking together. Tuborg, nice and strong. Carlsberg, much more ‘lagery’ nose that Tuborg. Stella is lucky to be on the list at all after a rather negative experience a year or so ago.
How about your favorites? Anyone who mentions anything produced by SAB-Miller will be considered persona non grata! Sorry Miller, it’s SAB’s fault…
For the last week it’s been nothing but snow around here. It started snowing in the early morning last Saturday — nothing serious really, just a sprinkling — and didn’t let up until around 4am this morning. Funny thing how the Romanian weather forecasts were calling for it to continue snowing non-stop through Friday. In case you thought weather forecasting was unreliable wherever you are, you ain’t seen nothing till you’ve been in Romania.
Reminds me of the “major” earthquake that was suppossed to rock Bucharest in 2001… you guessed it, we’re still waiting!
An Australian court is debating whether or not ‘mooning’ “is a legitimate political protest.” Haha! I wonder if they’ll use that scene from “Braveheart” as an example.
On a sidenote, I think I’m getting too much of my news from the BBC.
One thing I really dislike about going out with friends here in Romania is that you always come back with your clothes stinking of cigarette smoke. There really is no way to avoid it though, everyone here smokes, and I mean everyone! I’m not familiar with the exact numbers, but 90% wouldn’t be a bad guess! Most bars, pubs, and clubs are very poorly ventillated, exacerbating the situation.
After a night out, you don’t really notice it until you’ve been home for a while. As your body to readjusts to the clean air, you notice a faint smell, but you’re too tired to do anything about it, it’s 4am and all you want to do is crawl into bed (one time the smell on my clothes was just too strong, and I had to get up and throw my clothes onto the balcony for the night). When you get up in the morning you head straight for the shower to get the stink out of your hair. When you’re done with that, don’t even contemplate wearing the clothes you had on yesterday/last-night again, they go straight into the laundry basket… the smell is just too overwhelming.
I’m not a smoker. Many of my friends smoke, it’s not something you can hold against them. I can barely stand the annoyances that being in the presence of smokers brings, why anyone would actually choose to put up with that shit 24/7 is beyond me.
I make no attempt to hide the fact that I’m generally biased against Frenchies… well except for that one time… what was her name again?
Can you really blame me when you see stuff like this. Really! Wouldn’t “a la” suffice, do they really have to invent a word for the @ symbol? They’re so determined to “fight against the spread English in the field of technology”, they’re having to borrow from Spanish to make headway. Paranoid wouldn’t you say?
Heather has some great shots of her trip from LA to Seattle. The commentary is even better.
I’m seriously looking forward to taking a looooong adventurous trip all over the USA & Canada when spring/summer rolls round next year. My good buddy Ryan from NJ had better be up for it… we were going to cycle from east coast to west coast, but I have to say that I think we’d need one hell of a big push in some kind of direction to actually decide to go through with it.
When I was suffering from the fever last month, I went to the doctor for some meds. Of course the doctor wanted to check a few things out, and I had to have an x-ray. The radiographer asked me for a few details, including my age… to which I responded: “18 years old!” After about a second my brain caught up with me and I had to correct myself… “err.. m.. no wait… I mean 22 years old!” I’m still trying to figure out where those 4 years went… Must have been the fever… yeah that’s it *wink*
Saturday was Alexandra’s 11th Birthday. She and her friends partied throughout the day, dancing, singing, playing games etc. Amonst other items, one of the gifts I gave her was the “Scrabble” board game (Romanian version).
After all the kids had gone home, and between bottles of wine, the “adults” — well three of them anyways — decided they would play some Scrabble, I was roped in as a fourth. Now sure I speak some Romanian, but I mean come on… Scrabble?! I didn’t have a chance. At least that’s what I thought, especially when I got saddled with the “X”, a letter which sees very little use in the Romanian language, and when hand after hand my collection of pieces remained ‘vowel-less’. Funny thing is, I actually crushed the other three… winning by a respectable 51 points! Go figure.
Reality TV takes a new twist.
“A new US reality TV show starting next month features 20 women tricked into competing to marry a penniless builder posing as a millionaire. The contestants in Joe Millionaire - filmed in secret in France - believe the American playboy has inherited $50m (£32m). He actually has an annual income of $19,000.”
I’m sure this could turn out to be hilarious, but I’m not a fan of reality TV in the slightest. I think I saw a trailer for “Survivor” once, and that’s about it.
This Gwyneth Paltrow/Ethan Hawke movie is showing on one of the Romanian TV channels tonight. “At long last” I say, not that I’m particularly eager to see the movie again, but because I’ll be glad to have an end to the 2 weeks of non-stop trailers for the damn thing!
YES! My Canadian immigration came through this morning! *dances around* Going out to celebrate!!!
Jason kindly reminds me that some people are more trouble than they’re worth: “You’re not still after the fifty cents, are you?”
A few guys who regularly produce top-notch work.
Too many others to mention, who are your favs?
I would just like to state for the record that Oasis was not staying in the same Munich hotel as me. They can be glad they weren’t: if I ever caught them stirring up one of their regular shit-storms, as they did over the weekend, I would feel it my responsibility to do the world a favor, and beat those disrespectful assholes to a bloody pulp.
They had also better hope I am never on the same aircraft as them when they go through one of their air rage spells again. I would teach them a most valuable lesson… something along the lines of “how to fly!”
Finland might have the last natural blonde, and it’s clear to the eye that they are in no short supply.
“Finland’s supreme court has ruled that the country’s cabbies have to stump up cash if they are to have music while they work - ordering them to pay royalty fees.”Absurd isn’t it? I wonder if that was a blonde judge…
I had to go and print some more pictures today (Wednesday - it’s 3:05am Thursday as I write this), for some more of those greeting cards. I was also ‘suppossed’ to print my name onto labels to stick on the back of the cards. I thought I’d just go to the local computer store, pick up some Avery or HP self-adhesive labels, take ‘em to the office, print ‘em, stick ‘em, and be done with it. No sireee…
The closest the computer store had to anything that resembled labels was iron-on shirt design transfers. No biggie I thought, as I made my back to the car. and then headed for the office. Stuck in traffic for close to an hour gave me plenty of time to review the situation. I decided I’d just order some labels out of the stationery catalog at the office.
After eventually arriving at work and finding what I wanted in the catalog, I ended up having to go to the store to pick up the stuff, because neither our firm or their firm had and couriers available to deliver/pick-up the stuff. Having called the store to that they actually have the product in stock, I headed back into the city centre… At the store, the product was ‘out of stock’, running out of time to get this item off my list of tasks, I spared the store manager’s ears of the verbal beating I was fully prepared to hand out. Scouring the shelves for alternative, it became apparent that sheets of self-adhesive printable labels just aren’t a common item over here.
Back at work, I decided that IWA would just have to try and sell the cards on their own merit, and without the ‘pull’ of my name on the cards themselves [feels head begin to swell]
At home this evening, I was digging in the office supplies closet for a notepad, when lo’ and behold: I just happen to come across a box full of Esselte labels of just the right size!
It took me 30 minutes today travel down the main boulevard in the city centre today, reminding me not only of getting stuck in Washington DC rush hour traffic (a story which I must soon relate to you), but giving me time to think: “If traffic is this bad now, when the roads are in great condition (recently resurfaced), how bad is it going to be when the real winter snow falls, and the roads are 10cm deep in compacted ice?! *cringe*
Recent roadworks in the capital have been a mixed blessing. It’s great that some of the busier roads are nice and smooth again, free of cracks, potholes, and protruding manholes. I can’t say much for the maintenance done on the tram tracks though. In many areas, the tracks have now been raised 15cm above the ground, and are separated from autovehicle traffic by a guard railing. The problem with this is that previously, the tram track area of the road was a space where traffic could bleed onto and provide an extra lane in a sense. This didn’t really interfere with the trams, because everyone knows to give way to the speeding communist era behemonths. Now, however, it’s as if you’ve cut down three lanes to two in some places, but in most cases you’re really down to one from two.
Bucharest has fairly decent public transport systems, the subways, bus routes, and trams all work reasonably well, and everyone uses them. Nevertheless, the number of cars on the roads in the city seems to grow by the hour. A huge number of people pour into the city from the surrounding counties every day, not just commuters, but countless numbers of farmers carrying their goods to markets, as well as convoys of trucks bringing in consumers goods from Germany, Hungary, the UK, and France.
The city’s civil planning is quite poor on the whole, whether it’s the central hot water distribution system that isn’t working, or the abscence of storm sewer drains and the consequent flooding of streets and boulevards when it rains, there is always something pushing the system to the breaking point. Unlike most of the other problems, however, low traffic capacity is one thing that just can’t be re-engineered.
Also a victim of life’s practical jokes today, Dean Allen lets fly with a banger. Urgency. You just have to love life’s special moments.
It’s been a ‘try-again’ day today. I didn’t have much to do really, just needed to pick up some glossy photo paper, get lunch, and print out the pictures for the cards, but Murphy was on my tail throughout.
At the computer store, they only had two packs of ‘HP Preium Glossy Photo Paper’, I needed four. Rather than take two HP, plus something else, I just took four packs of the best Epson stuff.
As far as fast-food goes in Bucharest, just know this: Burger King would be a godsend. In the interest of time, I elected to take my chances at McDrive. After screwing up my initial order, I had to wait in the parking lot for five minutes while they corrected the mistake.
I get to the office, and the computer doesn’t want to read the Photoshop 7 Install CD. After threatening to disembowel computer, a ‘miracle’ occures and the CD drive decides to cooperate. I start the print queue, and bite into my burger… I nearly choke when I realise the photo paper is in the tray upside down!
Kill print queue, turn the paper over, start print queue, start out on my chicken burger: it’s half-frozen! [appropriate response: check watch… if it isn’t April 1st, *scratch head* and make mental note to mame cook at McDonald’s]
Forty prints down, forty to go. Wonderful, the printer is out of ink. Do we have a spare cartridge around here somewhere? Well whadda ya know… we actually have a real, live (well not live) printer cartridge, can you believe it. Unbox it, remove from packaging, pull that little plastic tag off that covers the nozzles, insert cartridge, resume printing. Wait a minute, what’s this?! Cyan trees? I don’t think so! Remove print cartridge… shake… mumble: “I know it’s full, it just went it in, I know it did, I was here when it happened.” Now look closely… notice that there’s only one metal tab on the bottom, aren’t there suppossed to be three? Ahh yes, that’s right. Look! here are the other two, firmly stuck to the plastic tag you just took off… how quaint.
By some miracle, however, all is not lost. There is in fact a second color cartridge in the supply closet. Nice to see the admin & supply guy is actually phoning in the orders this month.
Ahh yes, the joys of life!
Has anyone else noticed how the weather can be doggedly miserable throughout your trip, only to serve up a day of perfection on the day you leave? Up at 6am, it was still dark and gloomy outside when I headed downstairs for breakfast. By the time I had finished devouring helping upon helping of Wurst (sausage) and croissants, it had turned into a warm and sunny Sunday morning. The weather was, in fact, so pleasant, that I confidently stuffed my jacket, and umbrella into my suitcase.
Germany is probably one of the only countries in the world where you could make the 30km trip from the city centre to airport in 15 minutes! It’s also the only country where you would feel totally calm and relaxed with the cab driver keeping one hand on the wheel, and sipping steaming-hot coffee from the uncovered platic cup in his other hand, all while travelling at 180km/h… in traffic! I kid you not. Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that not unlike many of the other taxi cabs, his car was a new Mercedes E-Class.
The indescribable joy of returning to a cold (3C), rainy Bucharest was mitigated only by the realization and regret of having packed away my jacket, and umbrella.
I was feeling slightly dejected when Friday evening’s weather report forecast snow on Saturday. Fortunately, the only sign of snow on Saturday morning was an overcast sky. Good enough for me.
After another great breakfast at the hotel (breakfast was just about the only thing the Munich Marriot’s kitchen did right), I grabbed a cab to the BMW Museum. Apart from “4-cylinder” BMW building, and one or two interesting displays, the museum really isn’t all that. At any rate, it was only €2 to get in.
Munich’s 289m high Olympic Tower is impossible to miss when standing outside the BMW building. Getting there is an easy five minute walk. Entrance is only €3 and will take you 185m up the tower to the observation decks. Inside the elevator, a display shows your altitude and rate of climb/descent depending on whether you’re going up or down. In either case, you’re travelling at 7 m/s for the greater part of the 30-second ride.
Climbing a further 4m of steps to the top outdoor observation deck, I looked kinda silly with my sunglasses on in the overcast weather, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes from being blow away by the wind. A great panorama of the city, well worth taking the time to visit. I can only imagine the magnificence of being able to see all the way to the Alps on clear days!
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