It’s called “my precious”. And it is. At first, I thought it was just the coolest gadget I had ever been given. Lynn gave me a TomTom GO 910 for Christmas. I had just seen one in the car that picked me up in Scotland when I came to see her there for New Year’s …
Monthly Archive: January 2007
Jan
29
Jan
24
Perfume
Wow. What a great movie. Ian had told me the storyline of the book about a year ago and it sounded amusing, but I wasn’t sure what kind of movie it would make. But all I can say is, wow. This movie deserves a Best Picture nomination. It’s working on all cylinders. The recreation of …
Jan
24
Christmas Reading
There is something funny in the microeconomic system of the Netherlands which makes book prices (especially for English language books) extremely inflated. It’s on the order of $20 USD to buy a paperback. So whenever I am in the States for holidays I tend to make two shopping trips, one to Best Buy to pick …
Jan
12
Welcome Noa Renée Weiner
Wow. This was the closest to an actual birth that I have ever been. I called Darien to get some info about the ski trip that we will be going on in March and after he gave it to me he said, “Oh, by the way, Magreet is in labor.” Turns out that the labor …
Jan
10
iSick of the iPhone hype
My friend Ian is a Macolyte. When he forwarded me this Time article about the iPhone I figured it was just another fluff piece. At a base price of $499 and available only on Cingular, should other handset manufacturers really be worried. Well, yes, of course they should, but what I liked about this article …
Jan
08
(Another) Night at the Casino
So since I moved to the Hague I have been about fifteen minutes from the Holland Casino in Scheveningen. When I lived in Dordrecht I rarely made the journey out to the casino in Rotterdam as I simply couldn’t be bothered. So far I have been to the one in the Hague three times. Three …
Jan
03
Saddam Executed
I was walking through a WHSmith’s in Scotland on Dec 30 when I saw the front page headline of one of the tabloids there: “Saddam Hangs Today”. I was mildly annoyed that my New Years thoughts were being interrupted by this spectacle. I was all for the execution of such an abominably evil human, and …
Jan
03
Second Life Founder Interview
A video interview with Joe Miller, the founder of Second Life. For my buddy Ian, who first showed me Second Life. And for Mark Lorenc, who first got me into immersive online experiences by introducing me to City of Heroes. I love this stuff. So “sci-fi-comes-to-life”. The stuff of all those paperbacks with the colorful …
Jan
03
French and Germans Can’t Fight Google
According to InfoWorld the French/German marriage initially conceived to fight Google’s book digitization dominance has broken up. I thought this was a cute news item when it first came to prominence almost two years ago. The curator of the French National Library apparently convinced Chirac that it was imperative that a “European” answer to the …
Jan
03
Dutch Ban Segways
This news item made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I was just speaking with Lynn’s son Jamie this New Year about the fact that while technology has advanced and created new opportunities, our laws have failed to keep pace. (As a worker in an industry which relies on copyright for …