Errant sunlight illuminates the National Gallery (Národní galerie v Praze) and the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn and turns the spires of the Tyn Church even more ominous.
This intricate door handle at the restored Old Town Hall in Prague was easy to miss. (Thanks Shelly!) The knight might be Gothic. But the legs make me wonder if this design stems from pre-medieval times.
Many roads in Praha 1 lead to Staromestská radnice, the Old Town Square. The Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, has dominated Prague's skyline, on the east bank of the Vltava River, since the 14th Century. At dusk, eerie glow from the spires can be seen for miles around the city.
An irreverent interpretation of paella? In Czech Republic? This southeastern Spanish delicacy was strange in appearance but flavourful to the palate. The restaurant, El Toro Negro, charges a premium--not for food but for its proximity to the stunning, 600-year-old Astronomical Clock. At 590 Kč (approximately US$34), this meal should have demonstrated perfection. The rice was mushy. Granted, the nearest ocean is far far away. Be prepared to pay view tax, tourist surcharge, and live music tax on mediocre-plus food. Service, on the other hand, was welcoming, inviting, accommodating and friendly.
We dined in the patio across from a large table of Spaniards and a small table of Brits. Neither the English grandparents nor the children paid much attention to the food. The little ones were running rampant while the grandmother was aiming her point-and-shoot. The kids didn't care much for the sexcentennial of the Astronomical Clock. But they witnessed a "shiny" clock tower.
The pickled cucumber was just as much of a sentinel food in a restaurant as any gourmet piece of meat. Between Istanbul and St. Petersburg, and Frankfurt and Seoul, pickling pre-dates all of us alive. It was good. Served with a few different types of rye bread, the Bratwurst dish (390 Kč; US$22) was homely, satisfying and affectionate. And the horse radish is something I'm still trying to understand.
For the 'Stranger in a Strange Land,' somewhat familiar, I would recommend back-alley Czech food--unless you prefer to dine in front of the Astronomical Clock.
Prague Photo Diary: Karlův Most (Charles Bridge) at night. Taken from Smetanovo nábreží, Praha 1, looking at the Prague Castle to the northwest.
I am in an Alaska Airlines 737-800, 38,000 feet above sea level and traveling at over 500 miles per hour. And I am connected to the Internet at broadband speeds.
Gogo Inflight Internet, the brand under which Aircell markets its in-flight Internet services, made sign-up and sign-in a two-click process.
Within seconds, I was responding to my work e-mail, updating my Facebook status with a message from the sky, and reading disclaimers about VoIP.
Connection to Skype was tenuous at best. Messaging through Skype worked with noticeable delays, and a Skype call was nearly impossible. It is unclear why Gogo's ground-based cell towers are unable to handle Skype or VoIP. Row 44, Gogo's overshadowed competitor, on the other hand, has no problems with VoIP.
Row 44 offers VoIP options for certain mobile handsets. Row 44 has a fundamentally different infrastructure. Instead of ground-based cell towers, Row 44 relies on satellites. That allows Row 44 to cover most of our planet, whereas Gogo is limited to the continental United States and, according to Aircell, about 100 miles beyond.
In the end, being connected to the world while in flight has been thrilling. Gone are the days when use of electronic devices could land you in a holding cell. That does make me wonder whether mobile phone use was being curtailed for no good reason.
Terrafugia is not the first "aerocar," but it sure looks way better than the first roadable aircraft. Most importantly, this F.A.A.-approved light sport aircraft will soon enter mass production.Like The Jetsons' aerocar, Terrafugia would make a great commuter car-plane that requires standard high-octane gas from your neighborhood gas station and a small space in your garage.
Based in Woburn, Mass., Terrafugia's taking pre-orders for US$10,000 with an estimated price tag of US$195,000.
I'm making room for my Terrafugia in my garage.
Image via Wikipedia
Recently a T-Mobile G1 crashed repeatedly with the message "...com.android.vending has stopped working...." Symptoms included the inability to update any existing program linked to Android Market.
The solution for me was to uninstall the updates:
- Settings > Applications > Manage applications
- Select com.android.vendig.
- Click "Uninstall updates."
- Restart the phone.
The Android Market application, apparently proprietary, was then restored to its normal working condition.
Tarcisio's restaurant in Sequim, Washington, has gone from horrible to gut-wrenching. Every once in a while, I get a wild hair up my ass and give Tarcisio's another shot.My tongue was hurting from an unbelievably salty veal parmesan that was drowning in olive oil and barf-worthy white cheese. Not to be rude, I downed most of the veal that had one flavor. Salt! The side of spaghetti on the same plate was cut or broken short, cooked to the point of gross mush, and topped with a bizarre sauce.
Cooking spaghetti al dente should be a brainless process. The reason behind mushy spaghetti became clearer when two cooks came out of the kitchen for a smoke break. Their hats and coats had black smudges. One was wearing dirty shorts and shoes and showing hairy legs. Three smoke breaks during our one-hour visit to Tarcisio's.
The prime rib didn't fare any better. We ordered medium. What came out was closer to well-done and cold. Baked potato was undercooked. Carrots had dirt on them. Much like the veal parmesan, the prime rib was salty and drenched in what was a shot at au jus. There was so much au jus that it permeated every inch of the plate.
The only highlight at the restaurant was a polite bus boy, the first person to see us waiting for someone to make eye contact at the door. It's not like the restaurant was busy. Of the 25 plus tables, only four had guests.
We learned our lesson this time. Retirees of Sequim especially should avoid this cafeteria food. Even if you care little about having a coronary, avoid this joint and drink two vials of salt instead.
Microsoft creates a mannequin and forces me to learn how to dress it. Google generally allows its systems to adapt to how we work. And too many people and businesses fell under Microsoft's spell, being forced to make communication more complex and more expensive than it has to be.
In the end, we're all in the information business. Just because the bosses don't get the picture doesn't mean information has to be pretty. E-mail, for example, seldom requires pretty fonts and colors. I don't value the information in e-mail more because it has strange fonts and arrives in color and Microsoft RTF--which is not true RTF.
Google is universal. Gmail did relent and allowed some colors and fonts. It's a streamlined version of what Geocities used to be. Personalized expressions in information transmission. Add to that, voice, documents and project collaboration. But we were brainwashed on a platform whose future is clouded by complex licensing schemes and is inflexible.
While Microsoft is constantly band-aiding its creations, Boeing's defense systems are moving forward with a fine-tuned step-child of Linux. And I moved on from Windows Mobile Smartphones, which crashed and hung so often that it was worthless.
It is amazing that dozens of teams, many of them the brightest in their field, on Microsoft campus couldn't perfect an operating system. That speaks to the corporate culture, a top-down mindset that hampers development.
Can ornate Bing ever Google? All signs point to no. Not when you want businesses to fork up hundreds of thousands of dollars for incomplete products.
[Update: and someone's upset in general--about Google, Adobe and god knows what else. It's amazing that Jobs didn't take on Microsoft. He must be in the same business camp.]
There is a skill to wrapping spring rolls with these wafer-thin rice-and-tapioca wrappers. And I don't have it. My crumbled spring rolls resembled regurgitated food, with undigested vegetables.
As instructed here, I soaked the brittle spring roll wrapper in water for a few seconds. It eventually soaked up enough water and became chewy and taut. The burrito method didn't work, and the rolls unwrapped themselves.
I'm sure there's a trick, a secret. What is it?
The median age of Sequim is 59, says Wikipedia. For comparison, Seattle's median age is 35. And many retirees are jeopardizing their lives and those of the community. Here's how.
A woman walked into an office. She had suffered an acute cerebrovascular attack, or stroke, and speaks and walks with great difficulty. She had to be helped to her car and over the threshold of the office entrance. When everyone wondered how she got to the office, there was her husband.
Her husband was a tall man--a little hunched over but definitely commanding in his seat. He walks with a severe limp of unknown origin. He could not see much of anything in front of him even with glasses. And he could not remember a phone call from 15 minutes ago.
And he drove her to the office.
Her hematoma was a sure sign she had fallen recently. This time she took him down with her.
It is sad that couples like them don't receive much help. Scarier, they are out driving.
Welcome to Sequim.
INCIDENT: Yesterday morning I found her dead in the toilet in our guest bathroom. By the time I fished her out with chopsticks, rigor mortis had set in. The apparent cause of death was drowning. And I hoped she didn't struggle too much. At least, she seemed to have enjoyed her stay with us.
In the third drawer down, there was a comfortable bed. Our handmade, clay gravy boat had tips of cotton swaps, countless pieces of my #10 envelopes and unidentifiable materials she gathered from around the house. I would rather have given her a couple of #10 envelopes. Dozens of my #10 envelopes are now missing corners.
She had ration, several pieces of dry dog food next to her bed. She had water.... I hope she slipped and fell. I'd hate to think that dire thirst made her take the plunge.
LESSON: To one living being, #10 envelopes are for mailing. To another, they make a very comfortable bed.
There is no real Orient Express today. Perhaps air travel will go the way luxury trains did.
Flying was an art and privilege when PanAm was around. There still are some airlines that carry on that tradition.Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, British Airways Club World are among the few.
Most airlines today are little more than cattle cages and sardine cans that transport commodities.
In-seat entertainment displays do make some long-haul flights tolerable though.
Recently several people have asked us if it was always like this in Sequim. By it, we took it to mean, driving rain, gale-force wind, fog, humidity, and bone-chilling temperatures in October and November. We answered, 'yes.' The last two and a half years we've been in Sequim, it even snowed on April Fool's Day.
Some even dared to ask about the famous claim to '300 days of sunshine' a year. Questioning Sequim's perennially "sunny" weather results in robotic 'boos' and scorn as if we broke a secret society's vow of silence. Half the people we ask claim the cloud, fog and rain are unusual. The other half say it's always been like this except for a few sunny weeks in summer.
So far this year, noticeable precipitation was recorded on 135 days. I used station KWASEQUI12, a non MADIS station, and eliminated precipitation less than 0.01 in. Precipitation includes snow, freezing rain, hail, rain, "rain shower," and other states and forms of water.
In November so far, it has rained every day except for five days. Today I could not see out my windshield unless I put the wiper at full speed. I was going 45 miles per hour. Today's driving rain in Sequim began late morning and lasted until shortly after dinner.
The "rain shadow" effect seemed plausible until I got soaked by walking outside for 10 minutes. Granted, it doesn't rain as much in Sequim. But it rains frequently here. 135 days and counting.
If you're used to frequent rain and mostly cloudy days, and desire less rainfall, Sequim is a great start. If you would like a desert-like feel and climate, Phoenix would be a better bet. Because in Sequim, on average, there is precipitation once every three days--or more often.
Some day soon, we will be invited to join the secret society and be sworn to perpetuate the fallacy.
Five different e-mail accounts that I know of. More than 450 RSS feeds. Over 2,000 calendar items and tasks. They now reside under a single Google account. I'm not brave enough just yet to consolidate all incoming calls to Google Voice.
Manually consolidating and uploading old e-mail to Gmail took about two days. Outlook 2007 was nice when it was a solid local-copy alternative to nebulous cloud computing. The days of a single UNIX e-mail account with several aliases are gone--especially when so much incoming data must be processed continuously and organized with a method that offers some continuity.
I am Dayhawk. And I'm free of Outlook.
But I cannot let go of FeedDemon, arguably the most versatile RSS aggregator out there. In its ad-supported version 3.0, NewsGator has switched the synchronization service to Google Reader. Another reason for this week-long consolidation process.
After about a week of relying solely on Google for data mining, aggregating and processing, I feel like a new person. No more bulky Outlook to enslave me. Just Google and me.
While rushing to Schleswig from Frankfurt, Shelly paid twice for the rest stop toilet. The first time to pee, the second time to videotape this cool technology. Why don't we have this cool technology at the local Texaco?
Some airlines are enforcing an F.A.A. rule that prohibits personal items from being stowed in the seatback pockets, The New York Times reported earlier this week. But this rule has been on the books for more than 10 years.
F.A.A. bulletin 98-28, which took effect on August 13, 1998, states:
"In addition, nothing can be stowed in the seat pockets except magazines and passenger information cards. It is not a good safety practice to stow meals, either brought onto the airplane by passengers or served by the air carrier, in seat back pockets."
And there is anecdotal evidence of Amazon's Kindle being banned from the seat pocket.
What if I stow my G1 phone deep into the abyss of the seat pocket, and no one knows it's there? What if the passenger next to me slipped a fancy metal pen into the seat pocket in front of him, and it flew out and hit my right eye during a severe turbulence? Well, so can a lot of loose items around the cabin.
The F.A.A. hasn't explained its motive behind this strange and arcane rule. The Times shows that a spokesman for the agency didn't initially know much, if at all, about the rule. The paper also notes that airline executives are guessing that check-in luggage limit might be forcing passengers to stuff more baggage into the seat pockets.
There may be another reason. The F.A.A. is acting in concert with the airlines to make the seats appear roomier than they actually are. A combination of obese passengers and bulging seat pockets would make the seats look tiny.
Tony van Renterghem was a mountain of a man.
He was a skilled operative who aided those fleeing Nazi persecution. He was among the last mounted cavalry officers known as the Huzaars. And he launched the "Underground Camera," a photo and film unit of the Dutch resistance.
After the war, H.R.H. Prince Bernhard enlisted him to represent the Dutch government. And his humorous encounter--in a bathroom--with Sukarno had me burst into laughter. He was a meticulous researcher--of a time and era when he himself was a historical figure.
Over our last couple of martinis, he gave me a glimpse into brief moments of his life. He shared his passion for facts and peace. Yet comedy of life was never lost on him. And for that, I thank you, Tony.
He was truly the Righteous Among the Nations.
Here's a tribute by the Peninsula Daily News and an obituary in the Sequim Gazette.
[UPDATE: A Celebration of Life will be held at the Olympic Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Agnew (73 Howe Rd, Port Angeles, WA) on August 29, 2009, at 13:30.]
This cocky rooster, oblivious to traffic and ignorant of the 'mother-daughter-crossing sign,' climbed a 40-degree hill to be on Medsker Road. I did not stay long enough to see if he made it home that evening.
This is Sequim, Washington, where chickens, deer, elk, coyotes, raccoons and baby quails all have to share the road.
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