Back home ...

for now anyway! Lately, you may have noticed a distint lack of activity blogwise. That's because I was on a busy trip to London those last few days. As always, it was very nice & productive. Not only was I overjoyed to find out that my Club has free highspeed internet access in the rooms now, but I also discovered the Underground's Journey Planner. That's certainly old news for you Londoners out there, but it helped me!

Also, I got an update on J's impending travel plans - watch that space! Furthermore, I've been told that this is actually a fake blog - so no wonder that it's not being continued. Expect lots more prodding soon, P ...

Thanks to JJ for an excellent introduction to the LSE! Don't forget to check out Blackadder!

A trip to London is incomplete henceforth without paying tribute to the humongous Regent Street Apple Store! Which I did. Repeatedly. iLife 05, iWork 05, a 1G Shuffle, some socks and a chaffy St. George's iPod holder.

To the shuffle's shuffling through the soundtrack of my life, I discovered that I love strolling through drizzly St. James's at dusk, when I came across this little gem of an ivory bicycle carved in the 1940ies in India ...
That's it for now. Expect more travel stories next week when I will be reporting from Prague.

Churchill's roar

Interesting, yet overly compact analysis of Winston Churchill's oratorical techniques in this BBC Radio 4 program commemorating the 40th anniversary of Churchill's death on January 24th. This program doesn't go so much into his use of rhetorical figures, but rather assesses his accent, intonation, rythm and speed. Absolutely worth listening to. I cannot quite make out however why the title reminds me of Blackadder's Prince George ... but I am definitely looking forward to flying to London tomorrow, if only for three days.

Pull over ...

... you're being sentenced! According to this, that recently happened to a London man who was stuck in a traffic jam on the way to Court.

And it's a good thing he pulled over - otherwise he might have gotten fined for using a mobile phone while driving! Hmm, from now on I dread calls from judges and other legal people ...

Not a Bushism

It's actually a sketch about Bush and his new Secretary (of State) ... enjoy! (Thanks, Maik!)

"Interesting" Mac mini review

This is an absolutely spectacular specimen of the reality distortion field that is MS. The report is so riddled with errors and misperceptions arising from the author's MS only competence that I almost sound like a DoD press statement! The perfect computer for autistic children, lacking antivirus software? Have a look, it's fun!

Le Salon bleu

Grand! I discovered today that Le Salon bleu has finally come up with its own website!

Le Salon bleu is a private cultural initiative by Madame Bleu, a.k.a. pianist Claudia Sutter. About once a quarter, she is entertaining guests in her salon with a very unusual program, mostly from the romantic period or fin de siècle (the one before last, that is).

Help climate prediction

Global warming is a serious issue. You can support the research done in that field by donating some of your underused computing horsepower to climate prediction. That's an Oxford University research project using remote computing on distributed machines all over the world to compute climate models, much like SETI@home, which seems to be moving to the same platform now.

A word of warning though: If you are uncomfortable using the command line (Terminal application), then this is nothing for you yet because the installation unfortunately requires some manual unpacking and changing of permissions, using UNIX commands. I'll make a note when they come up with a Mac user friendly package.

Corporate Revolution

Eine hervorragende, freche und ausgreifende Würdigung der orangen Revolution in der Ukraine. Völker, hört die Signale ...

VIPness

The sign of a true VIP is that he is featured on an official stamp, right? Now you have the chance to become that sort of a VIP yourself! The Swiss Post is running a competition for the best picture from a camera phone to put on a stamp. Have a go!

Ray

Just back from watching a great movie - Ray. Since I know next to nothing about Ray Charles, whose biography is the object of the picture, there's no point in me commenting on the "story". Suffice it to say that the movie aims at giving us the full picture of his personality, not sparing his, let's call them pragmatic traits. Nor his drug habit, his philandering or his general shrewdness.

I need not hold off on more general aspects, though: On phantastic acting (not only by Foxx, but also by Ray's wild women or his young incarnation - what a moving scene when he learns to "see" with his ears!) and an excellent camera. Note the discreet, yet fancy transitions in the style of contemporary design elements. Or the trip when he is going cold turkey. There's no need to talk about the soundtrack, I guess. Its energy reminded me some of a performance of ButtaFat I saw at The Bitter End almost two years ago (thanks, Jay!). I need to get my hands on some of his stuff - urgently!