Solipsism Gradient

Posted by Rafael Fischmann:

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

I’m leaving for São Paulo to pick up my new laptop, put up the old iBook for sale, and make some business contacts. The new machine will have space and speed to handle the new Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) and I’ve been wanting a G4 for doing some AltiVec stuff, anyway.

By a coincidence, yesterday I found a new owner for my DayStar Genesis MP528, a PowerMac 9500 clone which I bought about 8 years ago. Originally it had 4 PowerPC604 processors running at 132 MHz, with a 40 MHz bus; after two processors burned out, I bought one of the first G3 boards (300MHz) for it, and upgraded it over the years. I stopped using it after Mac OS X came out.

Congratulations! I wish I had money for that!!

I’ve just heard that the BMW C1 motorcycle has been taken out of production due to disappointing sales. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in small cars, have a look at the Tango, an electric two-in-line seater…

This masterpiece of bathroom ergonomics was in a men’s room in a Budapest restaurant:



What could be simpler? Press left for a large flush, right for a small flush. Later I saw similar affordances in Berlin and Frankfurt.

Some months ago, Mad Dog McGlinchey found another such masterpiece – the famous pissoir fly – which I also saw a couple of times; unfortunately conditions were not favorable for photography…

Posted by Sci-Fi Hi-Fi:
Sci-Fi Hi-Fi linked to this post

Driving in Europe

Rainer Brockerhoff is back from vacation and he’s penned a surprisingly thorough (and very informative) series of articles about driving in Europe.

I just saw from my TechnoRati Cosmos that Keola Donaghy, an old friend from my FirstClass BBS days, now has a blog called Radio Keola (and added me to his blogroll). Welcome, and thanks!

Mac OS X users may recall that Keola was the man responsible for making Jaguar (10.2) support the Hawaiian language.

I’ve been fascinated with typewriters since the age of 8 (to the lasting damage of my handwriting). Here are two interesting specimens I saw in Europe. This one used to belong to the German writer Hermann Hesse; it’s a “Smith Premier No.1”:

In a letter to a friend, Hesse explained that this typewriter’s best feature was that it had separate key banks for lower-case (in white) and upper-case (in black). Apparently Hesse thought that pressing the shift key distracted his thought processes.

This even older model was in a shop’s window in the alpine town of Füssen:

Apparently you had to select the appropriate character on the semicircular dial and then press the single large key in front to print it.

When Mercedes launched the A-Class in 1997, one of the first journalists who did a test-drive rolled the car over while performing the “moose test” – a quick avoidance maneuver at moderate speed. Initially this was a public relations disaster, and in Germany the car is still called “the moose”:



To their credit, Mercedes quickly re-engineered all models to include the ESP (Electronic Stability Program), originally meant to be a top-level option, which solved the roll-over problem and also included other safety goodies.

Waaay back in 1972, on my first vacation in Germany with my parents, we decided to buy a used Mercedes. If I recall correctly, it was a 1964 SE220 with automatic transmission, and it cost DM666. That’s about what it looked like:

We drove it for about 45 days and then resold it to my uncle for the same DM666, an excellent deal all around.

Anyway, for these 31 years I had vague plans of eventually buying a Mercedes for myself. For most of that time, it was impossible to import cars into Brazil, except for the odd luxury sedan brought in by diplomatic personnel and then resold. Then, in the early 90s, imports were allowed and several foreign companies started to build factories in Brazil, among them Mercedes. This rekindled the idea, and just before our recent Europe trip we finally bought one:

It’s an A-Class model, also with automatic transmission. here’s another view:

Apparently it’s not sold in the USA, but it’s quite common in Europe.

More about it later…