Berlin: Day 1 (or maybe 2)

Anna arrived in the morning. Had a cup of coffee while waiting for her at the hotel. After grabbing the gear we might need, we went into town.

Due to an operation on her knee, Anna was still terribly incapable of walking at length and stairs were cumbersome to overtake. Needless to say we took breaks and hoped for the best.

Another surprising development was the imposing piece of hardware that she brought along for the trip -a Nikon D80 with the kind of lens that would put penis envy to shame. Nothing screams ladylike like a dashing young woman arching sideways in order to get a clean shot of a cathedral while being arched in a certain angle. It's a really neat toy and I can't wait for the photos (she erroneously expected Macbooks to come with card readers and she forgot the micro usb cable to connect the monster).

From the average tourist point of view, Berlin can be a seriously sterile place. Loads of semi-interesting feats of architecture and the occasional grim reminder that the (great)grandparents of today's generation screwed up with the whole Hitler thing. Pretty odd to walk out of a subway building and get confronted with a checklist of concentration camps on what be best described as a lost traffic sign. It's like putting up memo stickies on the office buildings reminding the workforce to be embarrassed about Hitler. I think everybody got the point already -if not, will they ever?

The weather sucked. Cold. Rainy. Windy. Next time the two of us go off for the weekend, we'll head for the mediterranian area. We ambled about the Zoo and the adjoining Tiergarten, then headed over to Potzdammer platz, which too had been paved over by an architect blitzkrieg from the 1990s. The Liebknecht monument looked uncomfortably out of place.

We went back to the hotel around 16:00, making a pit stop for some baby clothes on the way (that felt new and uncomfortable for me). Anna's slacking off with a book for a while before dinner. I had to discover the gruesome fact that the WLAN in the hotel isn't installed yet. No telling if I sent that e-mail to Joel, let alone being able to do something about it. Fingers crossed.

Oh well. Stocked up on some drinks, found to my joy that the store sold Kölsch, so I'm going to have to insult the local beer market by just drinking what I like :) We're off to Charlottenburg in the evening for dinner and a club. Ought to be fun.

On the way to Berlin

Mental note: trams in Amsterdam are best avoided when you need to be somewhere. At a reasonable time. After waiting something close to infinity for a ride to Central Station, I just buckled under the stress and jumped into the first taxi I could find. This turned out to be a fortunate choice for a change -I made it into the train to Berlin with hardly a moment to spare.

No reservations were made, but they appeared not to be necessary -the train is almost half deserted at any time. I tried making up for the rough night by sleeping in the seats, but they're not exceptionally comfortable.

I'm still a bit divided by my decision to head over to Berlin, as I am pretty good at doing things for the wrong kinds of reasons. However, it will be great to see Anna again and so far people have been absolutely positive that we'll make do in the city. Hotel booked, close by Tiergarten, which is nice enough. She's arriving tomorrow morning, so I'll probably go pick her up, dump the bags at the hotel and we’ll see where we’ll end up. No doubt somewhere crazy.

I'm probably going in for an early one tonight. Bloody seats here leave me worse for wear than the drinking binge with the people from Us Media left me.

Webcomics - Bear and Kitten

It's hard finding Web comics that are actually quirky and disturbing at the same time -especially with 95% of the offerings coming from some kid with a longing for attention and MSPAINT.EXE at his fingertips. I happened to stumble across Bear and Kitten, a pretty neat comic about (you guessed it) a bear and a kitten.

While this is just absolutely darling, it bends into the utterly twisted areas of humour as well. I love this.

Mission accomplished!

I managed to misplace the oh-so-unobtrusive-looking Motofone F3 on the first day, so the irony of the idea behind having a backup phone is not wasted. It's at Guy's place were I went to fetch ...a power adapter I left there by accident.

ba-dum-tsh.

My urge to kill is like a cake in the oven...

Rising, to be precise. I'm reading up on some seriously dumb suggestions regarding rendering compatibility introduced in IE8, which fortunately is met with furious disdain. However, some people seem to advocate using this approach to "fix" bad web development for no reason other than that it makes sense in Bizarro World.

Once I've calmed down I'll try to express my feelings about this crazy idea in words.

Well, at least it has a display!

I have received a new phone today -by accident mostly, because my colleague couldn't tell I was only half serious about wanting one. However, it turns out to be a happy mistake.

Meet the best phone in ages -the Motorola F3!


The Motorola F3 is, in short, a phone for people who do not like "smart" phones. Since I prefer to have a device that does it's intended mission to the letter rather than do a lot of unrelated things the half-assed way, it is a pretty good match.

The back story to getting my paws on it is simple and clumsy. A colleague was looking for a simple phone that would be a cheap, near-disposable phone for travel and festival use. No sense in losing your ludicrously priced super phone in the business end of a portable toilet. When he found the F3 to be a stupendously simple and cheap phone (€26), I quipped that for the money, I might as well get one too. That was taken literally, so a double order was made. However, I figured the mistake might as well be a happy one, since I could imagine a disposable phone being handy. Plus, the feature set appealed to me.

Rather than tell people what features you don't get, it's far easier to just sum up what you get. Which is to say, incredibly little. You run out of specs to sum up pretty much after "You can make phone calls with it", though I suppose SMS is considered a feat of its own. It has a furiously simple 6x2 character display and talks either Hindi or something remotely connected to the English language. I think the most advanced thing on it is the polyphonic ringtone feature which (rightfully so) is getting less love than a run-down tractor rusting in a field.

I've swapped my SIM from the Sony Ericsson W880 I carried around to see if this simple (yet surprisingly elegant) phone will do for me. To be continued…

Bag troubles (or: Mabcook Pros don't bounce very well)

Last December I replaced my worn-down messenger bag (every zipper was broken, holes started to appear, etc) with one from Buddista. Pretty neat vinyl bags with a removable flap which can be interchanged with a design of your choice. Pretty good bag altogether -up to the point where it began to behave a bit iffy.

Iffy being that the buckle of the strap just decided to unhinge at random. That's pretty annoying when you tote your laptop around pretty much all the time. Initially I blamed myself for the annoying habit to clasp the buckle, but last monday that pretty much was proven to be not the case when the thing popped open while I was paying for my groceries. With all my gear in it.

Once home, I was able to inspect the damage, which was a depressing experience. It wasn't that bad -there a pretty serious dent in the lower left front and a nick on the side. I guess the sleeve did some protective duties after all -I've seen far worse damage. I wouldn't want to trust my stuff to that bag in any hurry though.

I returned the bag to the store yesterday evening, where they immediately swapped the bag for a new one, no questions asked. Pretty much all I really wanted was the buckle to be replaced, but the guy was thorough in making sure I wouldn't run in trouble again. Extremely nice, though it was a bit difficult to leave the store without having a quick tour of the mandala paintings and the possiblity of attending a workshop.

Anyway, new bag, everything looks in order and I'm trying to avoid the urge to have the dented case replaced. Pricing is …oppressive :)

Demoscene activities + 2008 = Oh god, not again

It's a good thing I don't really take well to New Years' resolutions, since I would have definitely decided to keep my activity in the demoscene to the maximum of minimums. It would appear this is not going to be easy. Who am I kidding, it would have been broken by now.

First a reunion that'll be most likely due for Breakpoint, the obvious Outline chores (and Limp Ninja releases) and yesterday I got the least sympathetic offer (the "everone we wanted to work with is retired or dead, so you'll do" kind) to join in a rather interesting prospect.

I hate myself :)

The world has gone nuts (foodwise)

Case in point: Guy described some new bread snack he had the misfortune to experience: bread molded in a plastic tray to look like a candy bar, laced with tomato and onion. I can't wait to hear how the board meeting for that nightmare product went.

Somewhat in queue with that, semi-prepared ingredients are getting really, really dumb. A single potato, pre-peeled and pre-sliced? No problem, unless you wish to avoid the fact that you're nuts for willingly purchasing said plastic bag of no effort whatsoever. Pre-sliced mushrooms are another sign of the apocalypse for me. Half the fun (well, for me, at least) of cooking is preparing the ingredients. If you cannot even be bothered to slice a mushroom, order a bloody pizza.

But the thing that really, really made my hairs stand up in the back of my neck was the conversation I overheard at the produce stand of the local supermarket:

Girl #1: "Wow, this is so convenient! (picking up sliced mushrooms)
Girl #2: "You mean the sliced stuff? Yeah, it is!"
Girl #1: "You know what would be awesome? If they did that with cucumbers too!"

Cucumbers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Horsemen are a-comin'...

New Years' at 4D

In short: Champagne, great music, dancing like a loon on said music and a nice little ego-boost and a phone number transaction.

Went back to Amsterdam in the afternoon, dropped Niko off at the station and went into the easiest comatose ever early in the evening.