...more recent posts
Long flight. Thank god it was direct. That really makes all the difference. We left JFK at 6:50 and arrived 8:00 hours later which was 9:00 am in Austria. Took a cab to the hotel and went right to breakfast. Wasn't feeling so hot at that point.
But we forced ourselves to stay up. MB and I took a walk around the neighborhood waiting for Mike and Linda and Alex to arrive. A few hours later we ran into them in the street and we all did some more looking around. The architecture is amazing.
Vienna is beautiful. We're staying right in the heart of the city near St. Stephen's church. I have lots of pictures, but it doesn't seem like I will be able to get my machine on line (I'm at a cafe right now.)
Around 2:00 we went back to the hotel and I slept until 4:00. Surprisingly, having not slept at all the night before, this was enough to feel pretty good. At 6:00 we took a cab a half hour out of town to a winery where we took a short tour and then had dinner with the owner. Great guy. Great meal. Great wine. More details on all that should be coming from Mike.
Today was more touring around the city. Tonight is a bigger meal in Vienna, and then tomorrow we head out for the country and more wineries. Very fun so far.
Last night I had the strongest, clearest, and most numerous dreams of my life. Quite strange toward morning. Luckily I can report that the plot to take over the world using ingestible tablet microcomputers was foiled when the giant Amanita mushroom spaceship broke free and escaped.
Two days until Knoll, the expected highlight of the trip. More reports to follow.
Yes, I'm in my usual pre travel panic state. This is a low grade panic - you might even mistake it for indifference - but it's panic nonetheless. 28 hours until take off.
The Brown Daily Herald has the first interview with geek babe Ellen Feiss. Unsurprisingly the site is completely slashdotted.
Our friend Alex Hay is in town for a show of his work from the 1960's at the Peter Freeman gallery (B'way and Prince.) Alex is the best guy ever. You should really go check it out. The giant brown paper bag is amazing.
How do I get internet access for one week in Austria?
Dean Kamen introduces a (not completely done) Stirling engine.
T-Mobile has introduced a much more reasonable rate plan for the sidekick:
$59.99/MonthStill not enough voice minutes for the super user, but plenty for me. I'll have to watch my bills, but I think I'm already over enough that this would save me money. I'll look into it when I get back from vacation.
500 Anytime Minutes*
Unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes*
Unlimited Data
1000 T-Mobile 2-Way Text Messages
Included features: voicemail, paging, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, conference calling, and Instant Messaging.
*Updated Feature. All else is same as original plan.
On the geo-political scene I'm getting very strong here we go vibes. Like the rollercoaster just got to the top of the first hill. (The first hill?!?!)
I'm watching Israel. Things could go quick from here. Or hopefully I'm wrong.
If you have an apple laptop running OS X check out uControl. This will install a new pane in your system preference window (apple menu -> system preferences...) In that pane click on 'scrolling' and then check 'scroll wheel emulation'. Now when you hold down the function key you can use the trackpad like a scroll wheel.
No obvious problems in a few minutes of use. Excellent. This was bugging me. Surfing on the laptop will be much better now.
I haven't experimented, but this will also let you remap lots of different keys. Could be useful for desktop users as well.
I'll be saying more about [upload] over the next few days, but for now you might want to know there is a new verb, "getthumb" that operates exactly like "getpic" but displays a tumbnail instead of the picture itself. Picture x (/getpic/x) now automatically has a thumbnail with the same id (/getthumb/x).