Arrived without a hitch: no delayed flights, no missing baggage at the airport (it´s happened more than once), no phantom reservations at the hotel (happened more than once too). All in all, no hiccups.

Thursday was a decent day, but I was cooped up inside taking care of businnes. I was busy again this morning, but finished before lunch. Unfortunately it has been raining all day, so I haven´t really been able to do anything ‘touristy.’ I can only hope that the weather will dry up for tomorrow, Münich is full of those little voices that say: “photograph me!”

part 1:
masssive attack - dissolved girl
mop - bloode, sweat, tears
cold - no one
planet funk - inside all the people
radiohead - talk show host
dj tiesto - blue sky
mic geronimo - vendetta
lost prophets - for sure
avril lavigne - skater boy
dido - hunter
marilyn manson - sweet dreams
moloko - the time is now
klea - tic toc
nofx - linoleum
hoobastank - running away

part 2:
rammstein - stripped
blank & jones - nightfly
deja vu - can’t stop
gangstarr - moment of truth
mobb deep - hell on earth
eminem - lost yourself
linkin park - crawling
rammstein - ich will
better than ezra - at the stars
fuel - heammorage
modjo - lady
staind - outside (live w/ fred durst)
verve pipe - freshman
BT - never gonna come back down

I’m out the door now. See ya Sunday!

I’m finally taking my Munich trip. In just under 3 hours I’ll be out the door, and headed for the Bavarian capital. A nice break from things here in Romania, a chance to shop for a few small items (clothes, books, camera equipment etc.), and an opportunity to take in some of the sights. I’m looking forward to the BMW Car Museum, and the Munich Olympic Park. With any luck, I will snap some interesting photos of the city, and anything else I can find. Back Sunday night.

As promised last week, here is the second of two top5’s. I’m no film connisseur, and the list is not meant to be definitive of the most ‘brilliantly’ produced film productions in the history of modern cinema. Instead, it’s just an easy-going selection of easily-enjoyable works.

Go on and let me know what some of your favorites are.

Even though I haven’t had a serious bout of gaming fever in the past few months — most likely due to high workload and an active social life ;) Once I find a game that I like, I will spend days on end without sleep enjoying it. The favored game will also usually overshadow any other game that happens to appear at the same time. A few my favorites:

I’m a “dog-person”, always have been, always will be. Mark Pilgrim’s wonderfully colorful 30th birthday post reminds me why. Felines are not my thing. Unless of course we’re talking about tigers, lions, pumas panthers, leopards, jaguars etc. only then will you hear me say things like “Nice kitty!”

Dogs are robust, down to earth, open, trustworthy, energetic, fun, and full of character. They’re not nearly as tempremental and solitary as cats, they’re not fussy, or difficult, and won’t scratch you. Oh, and let’s not forget: if you have the right dog, any intruder/tresspasser will think twice about setting foot on your property and getting their ass bitten off… a cat, a cat wouldn’t even bother with a meow.

I grew up with dogs, there was a neverending stream of them in our house. All our neighbors had dogs, my friends had dogs, my family had dogs. Even if my grandmother did have a cat, she had a dog too. When I left South Africa in 1996, we had five dogs at home. Since then, there have been no pets, however, our lifestyle here (coming and going all the time) doesn’t really allow for it. Similarly, College life in the United States didn’t really suit having a dog either.

I really miss having a dog around the house, so I’ve been putting some serious thought into how many & what kind to get when I move to a permanent residence next year. So far I’ve got the following down on the list:

• 2 Rottweilers - Energetic, tough, handsome, these guys will be my reply to Higgins’ dobermans in “Magnum PI”
• 2 St. Bernards - BIG and hungry, these guys are just cool!
• 4 New Foundlands - Massive, great swimmers, strong, these guys can help me haul furniture around the house.
• 1 Bulldog - Lazy, and full of character, you can’t resist these guys.

Call me crazy! The truth is I won’t afford all vet fees, and all that food, I also won’t have 10 acres for them to roam aorund on right off the bat — I’m not a zillionaire just yet. Nevertheless, the rottweilers and the bulldog are non-negotiable!

This NYT article (free reg. required) has a wonderfully interesting long exposure of the space shuttle take off last night. You can see the curved path the craft takes as it rises from the ground and streaks across the night sky. I think it’s a pretty neat shot!

Jeremy has drawn up a good list of things that a childhood really shouldn’t be without.

Ahh.. how I remember getting my head stuck between the metal steps to the top of the slide, just as the bell rang to signal the end of lunch break, and everyone ran to class, leaving me stranded out on the playground… Such a pity today’s kids will never have memories like that, it’s something that just couldn’t happen with a plastic slide.

If imploded buildings, and other demolished structures are your thing, check out ImplosionWorld. The site has some interesting info and pictures in various sections. Too bad there isn’t a “Schools” category in the photo galleries though.

I feel obliged to warn Eric Bin about the gist of this little article. I know that he’s already well aware of the baaht pohs, as am I, but what do you call a woman that beats you up??? Any experience with that one Eric?

It rained this morning, and was overcast the whole day. The rain let up just before Air Force One landed at Otopeni. At Cotroceni Palace, the Romanian President decorated Mr. Bush with Romania’s highest order of merit.

Thousand of Romanians braved the wet weather, packing into Piata Revolutei hours ahead of the President’s arrival to begin celebrating the event. Mr. Bush was greeted warmly, the crowd cheering: “Romania, USA! Romania, USA! Romania, USA! …”

Although it began to drizzle during the Illiescu’s address, a rainbow appeared as the American President began his speech. A fortuitous sign perhaps.

Later today, President G.W. Bush will visit the Romanian Capital, and in so doing become only the second American President to visit Romania since the Revolution in 1989. President Clinton was the first to do so when he gave a speech here in Bucharest in 1997. I cannot even dig up when the last visit was before that, but I would imagine that it pre-dates WWII at least.

I find it ever so slightly interesting that I was here for Clinton in ‘97 and will be here for Bush ‘02. Only 2 US Presidential visits in who knows how many years, and I was here for them both.

I remember Clinton’s visit clearly. It was the only bloody thing on just about every single TV channel on the days leading up to, during, and following the event. Thousands of Romanians packed in to the square to catch a glimpse of the proceedings, and American and Romanian flags were waved in unison as far as the eye could see. It really meant something to the people. An acknowledgement of sorts. Recognition of a new Romanian identity.

Above all, the country saw it as a sign of sure-fire admission into NATO. It didn’t happen then, but it is happening now. Sadly, admission to NATO might be the only real achievement in the past 5 years — and how much of an achievement is that really. The political and economic systems are just as corrupt, incompetent, and bureaucratic as they were then, more so in fact.

Yes, so basically the city-centre will be jammed-packed tomorrow, streets and squares cordoned off, detours, extra police, motorcades, the whole shabang. There will of course be thousands of people crowding Piata Revolutei (Revolution Square), hoping to get a glimpse of the President. Of course motorists and anyone trying to cross the city will curse the event, but it’s only for a few hours, and like I’ve said before, at least it’s not Chirac — we don’t need them renaming anymore streets or squares.

You know it’s time to get a new dictionary when you find that yours doesn’t have the word “Internet” in it.

I wonder what becomes of old dictionaries… doorstops? kindling? recycled? landfill? Perhaps an electronic dictionary device could be more useful. Saves on trees, new definitions can be added at the click of a mouse, searchable, and it doesn’t have to weigh 10kg either!

Jogin.com has a new look. Tomas, you’ve succeeded yet again at interspersing classic style with elements of modern flair. Nice job!

It’s becoming more and more difficult for me to resist completely reworking the site I tell ya. Work first, work first… (repeat 10x) *sigh*

• why there isn’t mouse-flavored cat food?
• why isn’t there cat-flavored dog food?
• if “con” is the opposite of “pro”, is Congress the opposite of progress?
• who tastes dog food when it has “new & improved” flavour?

Dean Allen is “getting it on”, with his site now serving up compressed content. Dang that’s impressive. I’d like to see how much bandwidth he will be able to save. Remind me to ask him in about a month.

While on vacation in France, Jason Kottke has stumbled across a my kind of vending machine. The giant-sized vending machine dispenses everything from candy to phone cards, to microwave dinners. Boy could I use one of those next to my computer!

As promised, I’ve set up an RSS feed using MT’s default templates for the moment. You can get the RSS 1.0 RDF version, or the RSS 0.91 XML feed. Thanks to Jeremy for letting everyone steal his buttons. If you use the RSS feed at all, please let me know if you have any comments on suggestions.

Ok, serious layout issues somewhere in here, I’m trying to find it.

fixed: strangely, the first item after every comment in the CSS was being ignored.

We tend to associate black holes with thoughts of planetary destruction, and always hope that our own solar system will never meet up with the infamous cosmic phenomenon. The idea of our planet being sucked into a black hole and then squashed to the size of a pack of gum is somewhat mind-boggling. Something that I’ve never considered: colliding black holes!

“For the first time scientists have seen two supermassive black holes existing together at the core of the same galaxy. The black holes are orbiting each other and will collide and merge to create an even larger black hole - resulting in a catastrophic event that will unleash intense radiation and gravitational waves.”

Went out this morning to take some art for framing. Framing paintings, pictures, etc. here is really inexpensive: $15 dollars to frame a 50cm x 50cm painting. In total, it will cost me $60 when I pick up the 5 pieces (differing sizes) on Monday.

On my way back, waiting for the light to change at an interesection, it struck me how everytime I outside the house these days, I evaluate the photographic potential of nearly every scene, building, and street that I came across. I am forever reminding myself that “I need to come back and take a shot of that”, or asking myself “how would that look?”, “what’s the best angle to shoot that from?”

The “convert line breaks” option will free me of the evil paragraph tags, but at what cost? Typing each and every needed line break and paragraph tag on each entry… I don’t think so. So I’ll have to find another way of dealing with this, but not right now.

I missed today’s top5, so maybe I will post 2 top5’s next week, or a top10 even! Who knows…

There are still a good many items that I need to deal with here on the site: the archives section, comments forms, index layout, and an RSS-feed. The about page and links page also need their templates and CSS taken care of. I’m working on it bit by bit. Perhaps now wasn’t the best of times to swtich publishing systems hehe!

* What seems to be an MT quirk is the space between the post-title, and the post-body, and then the space between the post-body and the comments link. If anyone knows how to eliminate that space, please let me know.
edit: I’ve found the culprit - it’s the paragraph tag. In GM you could specify your own paragraph and line break structure, I’m not sure if MT supports that.

All this CMS, template adjustment, CSS editing etc. stimulates the part of my brain that says: “re-design!” and that’s a real temptation. In fact, I’d love to, but I just don’t have the time at the moment. With all the projects that I’m juggling for work at the moment, plus those on the side, I just can’t devote the kind of time, creativity and effort required for a primo undertaking like that.

Just a reminder to those of you in Europe tonight. Don’t forget to catch the Leonid meteor shower in the early hours of this morning. It’s expected to be “the most spectacular” to be seen for the next 30 years.

The only other event of astronomical significance that I have ever witnessed (aside from solar eclipses) was Halley’s comet back in the 80s and I barely remember that. So perhaps this will be interesting.

Still plenty of things that need fixing, but the one thing my brain is not interested in at all for the moment is screens and screens of code. So I’ll get back on the job in the morning.

At long last, I have Movable Type running on the backend. Up until now there had been a series of installations issues that prevented me from using MT here. Now to pick through all the settings and get the site moved over to MT.

Please bear with me if things get a little messy here over the next few hours ;)

Angela has pulled together a few tongue-twisters sure to drive home the message that the weekend is over.

I’ll be out shooting pictures of Bucharest for the IWA project this morning. I should have been out there much earlier even, but I dead-tired from lack of sleep last night. Catch you this afternoon.

According to the BBC Health website’s life-expectancy calculator, I will live to be approximately 91.2 years old — barring any freak accidents of course. Yeesh! That’s a lot of wrinkles. Interestingly, if I keep the same answers, but select ‘female’ instead of ‘male’, I’d live to be 96.6! hmm…

I’m glad to see Oracle go through to the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup. They really have been unstoppable since Larry Elison replaced Phil Holmberg with Chris Dickson as helmsman. For some reason I’ve been backing Oracle this cup, no idea why.

Chris Walker has redesigned Monkey’s Cry. Nice and clean, I like it. Eagerly awaiting the logo that he’ll soon be adding.

Frank Kolodziej also busied himself with a redesign this week, giving Exitwound a new look.

Eastern Europe is notorious for abundant software piracy, Romania is no exception. When I first came here in April 1996, the sidewalks were crammed with vendors hawking everthing from the latest Metallica releases to ABBA’s greatest hits, selling for a dollar a CD. For 2 dollars you could lay your hands on games collections with 20 games per CD and I’m not talking about tetris, all the latest stuff from that time. Software collections were equally impressive, a single CD could hold Windows 95, MS Office, and tens of other utilities and programs. It was every teenagers dream. In October of that year, copyright infringement legislation was introduced, and vendors along with it.

Piracy was not eradicated, however, only moved undergound. You could place orders with runners, walk a few blocks, and be handed a bag with the requested merchandise. You might know a guy, or at the very least, a know guy who knows a guy. Cheaply available software certainly made learning all the different applications and systems possible — something that could not be achieved in many other regions, without at least knowing someone who had access to the necessary programs at work, especially before the popularization of the Internet.

So it seems odd that it was near impossible for me to get my hands on a Linux distribution. For more than a month I have been calling up everyone I know, but to no avail. Perhaps it’s just a fluke, perhaps my timing is off, after all it may not be Linux season at the moment. Whatever the reason, I just haven’t been able to start experimenting with Linux. Friday afternoon, however, a friend came through for me, and now I have a brand spanking new distribution of RedHat Linux 8 Professional sitting right here on my desk, all 3 CDs. Perhaps not the most “hardcore” flavor, but hey it’s got a command line doesn’t it?! Too bad things just got busy around here, and I’ll have to hold off on taking the plunge until I can scratch a few of these other items off my work list.

Todd has more beautiful work up for display. Incredible talent!

I’m rather excited about a juicy freelance project that I’m trying to land. A rather large company here in Romania has been trying to setup a website for a number of months now, but the media firm that they had outsourced to dropped the ball in a big way. I can get a shot at it, but it would be my largest project to date, and there’s a lot of learning that I’ll need to do for it. The workload and deadline is a little more than would usually be expected of just one person, but I’ve always liked a challenge. Besides, a big fat check would be very nice!

Every year, IWA (International Womens Association) hold an International Christmas Bazaar here in Bucharest. All the members (mostly expatriate women) get together, divide themselves into their national groupings: Romania, USA, UK, France, Canada etc. and make all kinds on home-crafted items - such as foodstuffs, ornaments, holiday decorations, tea-cosies, oven-mits etc. - which is all sold off to raise funds to keep the organization going (some of which goes to charity *I think*).

This year the Canadian ladies have asked me to put together a collection of photographs of Bucharest. They intend to use the photographs to make and sell greeting card sets (i.e. stick photograph to front of nice piece of folded paper, call it card). I saw the ones they had last year and they were really quite professional. It’s going to be quite a task to shoot the kinds of shots they are looking for though, especially with winter right on our doorstep and the impending weather. I hope the clear skies can hold out for another week.

Great, just what we needed, more ways for the Media Industry to turn the screws on us. Self-destructing DVDs may indeed offer some advantages e.g. not having to return rentals to BlockBuster, but it’s only a matter of time before the CDs and DVDs we buy also come with expiration dates. They’re control freaks trying to squeeze us for every penny I tell ya.

I’m thankful for having stumbled across this long-lost bookmark early yesterday morning. Although I’ve only managed to absorb the three most recent pieces of Jason’s writing, each has been thoroughly entertaining. Study no. 1 really takes your breath away; tangible like a scene from your favorite movie. Wednesday’s Study no. 3 continues with the sombre overtones.

I think there is a law somewhere that says: “Thou shalt not be allowed to sleep in on your day off!” Only on your day off of work will your so-called “friends” will call you at 8am to ask you how you’re doing. You will also receive an unusually high amount of ‘wrong numbers’ coming through on your home phone, and on your mobile. After having resigned yourself to believing there is no way you’re going to get any extra sleep, you wander downstairs for something to eat.

Halfway through a bowl of Chocos, the doorbell rings. Maintenance wanna come in an check up on a few things - all you’re wearing is a pair of boxer shorts, and a milk moustache. Hmphf! They’ll be back later… something they decided only after having rung the doorbell five or ten times. Which reminds you that the doorbell is too loud anyway and you’ll have to get that fixed. They leave… moments later you hear them ringing the nextdoor apartment. These doorbells really are ridiculously loud!

You go back to eating your cereal, which has has by now absorbed all the milk and is all mushy. After a few minutes in front of the TV, you begin to doze off. A nice peaceful relaxing sleep that can only be achieved when there is nothing on TV in the first place. Unfortunately, Mr. Neighbor, now having been inspired by the maintenance guys, decides that this is the most opportune time to test out his powertools and see just how loud that new drill of his really is… #@*%!!!

Nothing sounds better than the roar of fine tuned horsepower!

I have been a Lamborghini fan since I was 5 years old. The 580bhp Murcielago truly is the most beautiful and powerful incarnation of the ‘raging bull’ spirit to date. There have been several great Corvettes, but the ‘63 split window is my favorite. The styling of the ‘67 Shelby Mustang exudes character and sheer muscle power, truly a classic. Few contemporary roadsters can match the slick finesse of the Audi TT, and I wouldn’t mind driving one of these around town. Lastly, a modified Chrysler PT Cruiser GT with supercharged engine and custom paint job can make for a whole lotta fun!

“When impersonating a police officer, never pull over the real thing.” A couple of unwitting teenagers happened to do just that when they flashed down and pulled over Police Chief Mike Martin.

Haha! Can you imagine their shock and disbelief when the Police Chief stepped out of his car in full uniform?! {via: Obscure Store}

Unfortunately for a disgruntled BC Lions fan who charged the field in the closing minutes of the semi-final playoff in Winnipeg, he picked the wrong day to be a jackass. He tried to tackle the wrong guy when he ran into Lions cornerback Eric Carter. Carter knocked the pitch invader to the ground, started punching away, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the Lions players joined in to beat the crap out of the drunken fan. I think this is exactly the kind of thing George Carlin would like to see more of in sports.

Chuckled when I hit ‘submit’ and this popped up. Somewhat true, but I was expecting Marvin the Martian. Not sure how Beverley managed to pull that off.

Ahh yes, so what did I get up to at my friend’s Saturday evening Birthday celebrations, that saw me sleep in till 2pm on Sunday? I believe it all started with copious amounts of Alcohol (not sure exactly what it was, but it was strong), and then progressed to firing up the barbeque on the 2nd floor balcony (in 5C weather I remind you). Beer accompanied the steak, dancing (if you can call it that) accompanied the beer. Several embarrassing 80s dance hits (‘MC Hammer - Can’t touch this’ and ‘Power’ included) later, numerous bottles of wine joined the foray. Somehow, the wine invited with it a spot of Poker. Much to my delight, my own volley of good hands and exceptional bluffery proved to be the undoing of my hosts - which in turn proved to be my undoing, as it was around this time that my friends and I were sent packing.

It took a while to find a taxi cab with change for a 500,000 lei note ($15) - the ride home is a tenth of that. I arrived home at 3:26am, at which point I started up a 45-minute conversation with the security guard at the gate. On topics ranging from weather, to sports, to politics, and language, consensus was mutual… it was freezing outside! At 4am+ I was drinking coffee and checking e-mail. Turning in for the night, my last thoughts centred around one idea: there had been no Birthday cake!

Jason Kottke falls for that old “I don’t know what this item on the menu is, but I’ll give it a try” routine, and wishes he hadn’t. Frogs’ legs… yuck!

Eric wonders why we blog… do we need to get out more, or is it deeper than that? Actually I think it’s difficult to have an interesting blog unless you do actually have a life. I mean, who wants to hear about how you stayed cooped up inside in front of your monitor, talking to your invisible dog all weekend?!

Have to go out and do some grocery shopping this morning (i.e. coke, cookies, chocolate, potato chips). What? No beer on the list? Trust me, beer is never in short supply around here.

Later this evening, I’ll be at my friend’s girlfriend’s Birthday celebration, so that means I still have to find a gift, wrap it etc.

I spent last night setting up a computer for Alexandra, my friend’s sister’s daughter. She’s only about 8 years old, and cute as a button. It’s such a pleasure to be able to help out, when I know that this computer is going to help her in school, and give her something stimluating to do at home instead of just watching soaps on the TV, especially given that winter is upon us and most of her time outside of school will be spent inside a tiny apartment. That said, I need to get a few movies ready for her: Mulan, Monster’s Inc, and Shrek, to name a few.

The Comic Book Periodic Table of the Elements will let you “click on an element to see a list of comic book pages involving that element,” and “click on a thumbnail on the list to see a full comic book page.” Fun stuff for whiling away those hours in front of the screen.

Just in case the boss is on the prowl, use this fake file copier that Frank dug up. It “pretends to be copying files, when in fact no files are being copied… run this application and when your boss catches you, point to your computer and say, “See, I’m working on those backups…” “

I was scheduled to travel to the heart of Bavaria, BMW country, this weekend. Sadly the dunderheads at the German Embassy don’t know how to fill their own forms in, so their mistake erupted into an argument, and well… we won’t be going this weekend. My trip is rescheduled for the end of the month.

Andy performs a great community service, maintaining a listing of available .com .net and .org domain names. “I took a popular word list, and wrote a Perl script to do a whois lookup for each word. I plan on running this occasionally, so feel free to come back or e-mail with your suggestions.” Thanks Andy!

In case anyone needed any more evidence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s dimentia, here it is. Mugabe is now “diverting food aid to its own supporters and ignoring opposition activists.” You cannot receive food aid unless you prove that you belong to the Zanu PF (Mugabe’s party). Zimbabwe, formerly the breadbasket of Africa, has now been reduced to a nation of famine, thanks to Mugabe’s senseless land reform policies.

How many times can your site design get ripped off? Unforunately for Jeremy, the number currently sits at 5. He has posted a list of them all, and it’s actually pretty damn sad to see how lazy others can be… hell they’ve copied his layout right down to the comments, and headlines.

Pirated-Sites is a listing of site rips. It won’t stop your site from being ripped, or put an end to rips that are out there, but at least it might keep you busy for the 10 seconds in which you might otherwise put your fist through your monitor.

Starting to dig up some stock photography, Inertia is a great resource. Huge archive, packed with tasteful high res. work. I recommend it.

update: fixed the link =)

Workers at the ARO car manufacturing plant in Romania, are planning to help repay company debts, using the money earned from sperm donations to a local fertility clinic. Funny story, won’t work.

ARO is millions of dollars in debt, and its vehicles simply have no place in the market. Fugly, unreliable, terrible quality, and easily outperformed: they are not even a low-cost alternative to more expensive SUV imports. At a car show about a year ago the company representitives seemed rather proud of the car specs written in large black lettering on a banner next to all the vehicles: “Top Speed: 100 km/h (60mph); Fuel Economy: 10mpg!” I’ll let you decided if you think the company has a future.

In February, British troops invaded Spain when they were deployed in the wrong location during a training excercise, then the HMS Nottingham “ran into rocks” off the coast of Australia. Yesterday, a British nuclear submarine, the HMS Trafalgar, ran aground in Scottish waters whilst taking part in a military excercise. A sad state of affairs for what was formerly the world’s leading naval power.

Actually it’s interesting, if not worrisome, to consider the number of of military accidents that seem to take place these days. We all remember the numerous incidents American choppers had in Afghanistan, as well as when coalition forces attacked each other. I’m not sure if this kind of thing is simply occuring more frequently, or if it’s just that more of these incidents are now reported in public media.

Britain has some top notch troops, but I fear that lack of Government spending, and many poorly thought decisions are wreaking havoc on the UK’s Armed Forces. Non-kevlar helmets that are unable to stop bullets penetrating, and rifles that won’t work adequately in desert conditions are symptoms of a larger epidemic.

The first snow of the season fell last night. It was a light dusting that started in the evening and went on throughout the night. Nothing spectacular out this morning - not enough snow, and most of it is melting already.

{note: this post ended up under Wed. but should really be on Thursday… don’t know what happened}

The first time I ever saw real snow (apart from that time when I was 18 months old), was here in Romania in 1996. It was about 1 am, and like some kind of dork, I ran out into the freezing cold to play in the snow for the first time.

Todd Dominey links to 101 reasons to use Mozilla rather than IE6. Mozilla ain’t perfect, but at least it handles code the way it’s suppossed to.

Run for the hills folks, it’s Microsoft’s sharepoint blogging software!! Anil points to this riot. Redmond’s chances of muscling in on the weblog market are slim, but this might just give me sleepless nights anyways.

The New York Times considers the “State of the Slice”: an examination of the what goes into a creating the traditional New York Pizza in 2002. Metropolitan NY has some 2,750 Pizzerias to choose from and everyone has their favorite - the best Bucharest has to offer is Pizza Hut =(

I wonder what Eric will have to say about this line: “It’s clear that Chinese girls are becoming more and more cute, sexy,” from the BBC’s hit-and-run look at the cosmetic habits of China’s single child generation. Just “love” the way the try and graft political overtones onto the story.

An unsolicited call form the police can be a nerve-racking experience. My freshman year at college, a girl was accosted, and the picture profile and description that the police distributed across the campus might as well have been mine. Same height, age, weight, the picture looked exactly like me with a cap on. My friends and I joked about the police coming to arrest me or something.

It was all a big joke until one night I picked up the phone, expecting it to be the pizza delivery guy, and it was actually the police looking for me! Sitting bolt-upright, my heart in my throat, wondering how this encounter with the law was going to proceed, I said “Yes Sergeant, this is Ryan E. Carter,” waiting for the gruff voice on the line to decide my fate. As it turned out they only wanted me and my buddy to help translate for a Russian truck driver at the hospital.

Tomas’ girlfriend received a creepy police call at 8am. That’s gotta spoil your day. Oh well, at least it gave Tomas something to blog about.

Ever go into work, or show up for a class only to discover that it’s a holiday? No? Michael Clarke got lucky.

I was just at Quarlo to see if there had been any updates since Thursday. The second picture from the top (this one) is of a pole on which someone has written the phrase “STOP BUSH.” It kinda peeves me to see this crap (not the picture, the writing). Why do we never see “Stop Bin Laden”, or “Stop Saddam” graffiti?

Today is ‘Guy Fawkes Day’, or ‘Bonfire Night’ whichever you call it, throughout Britain and the Commonwealth, “bonfires are set alight, effigies are burned, and fireworks are set off. The people do this to commemorate their country’s most notorious traitor: Guy Fawkes.” Following many difficult years under the rule of Elizabeth I, and finding her successor, King James I, none to their liking, a group of English Catholics conspired to blow up the Enlglish parliament, and the King along with it. The plot was foiled, however, and November 5th commemorates the event.

The festival is rather ambiguous though, and people wonder whether it is for “celebrating Fawkes’ execution or honoring his attempt to do away with the government.”

I’m glad that the celebration hasn’t spilled over to Romania. I live right next to one of Bucharest’s largest parks, and people just love to have fireworks displays in the park, especially at around 3am on Monday mornings (Sunday nights), as if the annoying Gypsy music carrying over the lake and making your ear drums go thump isn’t bad enough. Makes you wish you had a mortar and some shells handy on your balcony. Thankfully, Romania hasn’t hijacked the 5th yet, no telling what the British Embassy has in mind though.

Nothing overley exciting, a short short-list of works that have earned a special place on my bookshelf. The list includes a novel, two short stories, an autobiography and a nonfiction work.

Frank Schaap digs up a list of blogger archetypes. Classified by various characteristics - such as age, offline habits, dress and time spent blogging - the list includes: war bloggers, teenie bloggers, goth bloggers, link bloggers, hippy bloggers, trailer bloggers, techie bloggers and blog bloggers. Good for a bit of a chuckle, it would be interesting to see some more categories though.

I have always been fascinated by so many aspects of East-Asian Civilization, not least of which is the Architecture. That’s why I thoroughly enjoy Jeremy’s postings on the subject. Thanks Jeremy!

Slashdot recently linked to the Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) site. “ETT is a new kind of transportation system that requires less than two percent of the energy of current transportation methods. It is also much safer, and can be faster.” Travel routes would be lined with vacuum tubes. With the air permanently extracted from the tubes, travel can take place without friction - dramatically reducing the amount of energy needed for travel.

“Pressurized passenger capsules (like a 2 – 8 person airplane cabin), travel in the tubes on thin steel wheels or on nearly frictionless Maglev. Airlocks allow access without admitting air to the tubes. Linear motors (as used on new rollercoasters) accelerate the capsules. During most of the trip the capsules coast; using no power. When the capsules slow down, linear generators recover most of the electrical energy used to accelerate the capsules.”

Best of all, the technology is fast. “Depending on distance traveled, ETT speed can easily be up to 300 mph for trips between neighborhoods or towns, to 4,000 mph for international travel that would take you from DC to Beijing China in 2 hours.”

Clean, efficient, achievable, makes you wonder how such a relatively simple idea has been overlooked for so long.

I never knew this, but apparently golf players take out insurance against scoring a hole in one. Whilst most amateurs may fantasize about scoring a hole in one, if they ever achieve such a feat, they may sorely regret it. Traditionally, Club members who score a hole in one, must pay for a round of drinks for the whole Club. This can be potentially bankrupting if you belong to a large club, hence the need for insurance. Who would have thought?

The weekend is over, and I’ve just about shaken off that bit of flu that I had. The fever has broken, and the headaches are gone - just waiting for my throat to clear up now.

I’ll be going to Munich this coming weekend and I’d like to finish up working on my friend’s wedding pictures, but processing, cropping and framing for 4 different dimensions, on a series of 150 pics is unbelievably time consuming.

Having been sick, it completely slipped my mind that Thursday was Halloween. So when a couple of costumed critters laid siege to my apartment on Thursday evening, I spent several minutes rummaging through the kitchen looking for some kind of candy or sweet to give them. Sadly I had none. A large bag of potato chips had to make do.

I woke up yesterday with a ridiculous fever, obscene headache, and a series of nasty dizzy spells. I’m still not feeling good at all, so I might not be up to posting for the next few days.