Solipsism Gradient

Posted by Rainer Brockerhoff (away):
Live from Paris, rather to my own surprise.

I should have arrived today instead of Friday, but circumstances conspired to make us skip Amsterdam completely. Not only were there no hotels available within 100 Kms. of the city, but my companions neglected to mention our Amsterdam stopover to the lady at the KLM counter; as their luggage was going to go to Paris directly anyway, we decided to go with it.

Fortunately our hotel had rooms available and we took the opportunity to see Paris. I’d been here previously in 1995, but two of my companions were new to the city. So yesterday we had a day-long walk from the Île de la Cité to the Tour Eiffel. Today we spent some time in the Louvre and then I walked to the Place de la Republique, where I’m posting this.

Internet Cafés are not very common in Paris, although people tell me more are opening; we also saw some signs advertising WiFi hotspots, although it wasn’t clear whether access was free or not.

I’m typing (or rather, hunting and pecking) this on a venerable Pentium II, running Windows 98, with a French AZERTY keyboard. Grrh. I had less trouble in Budapest and Prague; only the centermost keys are at the usuql plqce (oops, “usual place”). The ambience is rather unusual… the place seems to cater mostly to Asian youths intent on playing net games and/or downloading p0rn. Cables are strewn all over the place and there is no sign advertising its presence; I walked past it twice, in fact, until a helpful pedestrian set me straight.

Fortunately, on Tuesday the Apple Expo starts with the anxiously expected Stevenote (sorry, typing URLs is too exhausting with this keyboard) and I hope to able to use my Airport-equipped iBook inside the Press center. So expect more detailed updates in a couple of days. Au bientôt…

A long, involved, and rather funny post about all glitches that happened to me while packing for the trip was completely wiped out… by a glitch with my new Firewire backup drive.

Hmpfh. (Or should that be “hmphf”? Whatever).

Anyway, I’m off to the Airport. One of my fellow travelers is taking an iBook, so I should be able to post again soon. News at 11.

Only a few days after I linked (again) to the J-Walk Blog, John Walkenbach writes today that he’s shutting it down:

It’s been a fun and interesting ride. I’ve been doing this for about 11 months. I was hoping to keep it going for a full year, but it didn’t work out. Yesterday, I was mowing the lawn and decided to call it quits. No real reason. I think it’s just time to move on to something else (but I have no idea what that something else is)…

Well, hopefully he’ll decide to come back sometime in the future. Have fun, John…

Update: he’s back. Whew.

Excellent news! The marvelous J-Walk Blog is up again, due to popular demand. Thanks, John! Please don’t feel obliged to keep up a daily schedule… one or two pages a week are OK with me, I was hard-pressed to keep up with you .

Ha! I need another vacation, ASAP! The Dolphin Stress Test says so.

(link via The Presurfer)

Xeni Jardin over at the ever-cogent Boing Boing points us at the The English-to-12-Year-Old-AOLer Translator. Good for at least an hour of belly laughs. She even posts a sample of a Nigerian-to-AOL translation:

XENI!!!!! OMG!!!! I AM MARIAM ABACHA DA PRINCIPAL MANAEGR COPORAET R3SOURCES OF DA EQUITY BANK OF NIEGRIA LIMIETD LAGOS BRANCH!1!!!1 WTF??? I WISH 2 MAEK U A PROPOSAL WIT REGARDS A TRANSACTION IN WHICH I R3QUIER FOREIGN ASISTANC31!!! OMG ABOUT 4 Y3ARS AGO IN APRIL 199 A VENAZUELAN BUSIENSMAN AND A P3RSONAL FREIND OF MIEN BY NME MR11!1!! OMG LOL GIOVANI VILAET MAED A FIEXD D3POSIT IN MAH BANK OF MOUNT US$13750000111! OMG LOL (THIRTEN MILION SAV3N HUNDR3D AND FIFTY UNIETD STAETS DOLARS)!1!! LOL UNFORTUNAETLY HA DEID OF CARDIAC AREST IN D3C3MBR 200AS!!1!11 WTF HIS PERSONAL FREIND I DO KNOW FOR C3RTANE TAHT H3 HAD NO RALATIEVS HARA IN NIEGRIA NOR ANY TAHT I KNOW OF IN HIS HOME COUNTRY!1!! WTF ACORDNG 2 TEH LAW HERE TEH FUNDS WIL HAEV 2 B CLAMEED BY DA GOVERNMANT OF MAH COUNTRY IF AFTER 5 (FIEV) YEARS NOBODY APLEIS 2 CLAME DA FUNDS!11!1 WTF LOL

FROM MAH YEARS OF 3XP3REINCE AS A BANK3R SUCH FUNDS USUALY END UP IN PRIVAET POKETS OF CORUPT GOVARNMENT OFICIALS1!!!1!1 I DO NOT WISH THIS 2 B TEH CAES OF DA HARD 3ARN3D INV3STAD FUNDS OF MAH LAET FREIND1!! OMG LOL I THANK U FOR UR UNDARSTANDNG OF TEH PRIVACY OF THIS PROPOSAL 2 U111!! LOL

AWATENG UR PROPMT R3SPONS3

WARM!1!1 OMG WTF LOL REGARDS

MARIAM ABACHA!!! OMG!!! LOLOL!!!!

All I can say is LOLOL!

Some further browsing in the J-Walk Blog‘s archives produced a link to The New Sorting Hat. (Skip this entry if you don’t care for Harry Potter stuff.)

Here’s what I got:

Ravenclaw!

My, my, aren’t we a brainy know-it-all? You think being smarter than football-jock Gryffindor, inbred Slytherin, and fall-for-anything Hufflepuff makes you Merlin’s gift to the wizarding world. You probably think you’re smarter than Dumbledore. An arrogant, stuck-up jerk is what you are, and in your heart of hearts you know it. Admit it. It’s prats like you who make school suck for the rest of us.

Well… what do you know? This thing seems to work!

There’s lots of other interesting stuff at John’s Freeloading Home Page, such as The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches, The Evil Henchman’s Guide, several reviews and essays about science fiction, politics and raytracing, and last but not least, The Divine Hotline:

You have reached the Almighty Creator of the Macrocosmic Universe. Please keep the following in mind when seeking resolution for your problems:

* Applications for assistance may be made at any time. I reserve the right to take no action on problems for which no application is made.

…

* My former policy of issuing credentials to select human agents has served its intended purpose and has been permanently discontinued, and all credentialed human agents have been recalled from field service. Any and all credentials presently observable in the field are of human origin; none have been issued by Me.

…

* Rejection of proffered assistance may constitute grounds for non-resolution of the problem for which the assistance was provided.

…

* I reserve the right to do as I please.

Life’s full of surprises. Yesterday I was surfing the net in preparation for my upcoming trip to Paris for the Apple Expo. Booking the extra legs to and from São Paulo was no problem. I’ll leave next Thursday (Sept. 11), stay in Amsterdam for two days, then on Sunday (Sept. 14) it’s off to Paris. Steve Job’s keynote is on Sept. 16, then we’ll have time to see the first two days of the exhibition and conferences, and we fly back on Sept. 18.

It took some searching but I even found a relatively inexpensive hotel not terribly far away from the Expo. At first I had no such luck for Amsterdam, though… everything was either full or demanded a minimum stay of 3, 4 or even 5 days! Site after site reported back that there were practically no rooms available in Amsterdam from Sept. 12 to 14. And there were some obscure references to “during IBC”.

Hm. Sounded familiar, somehow…

Of course, IBC is the International Broadcasting Convention, and it turns out that Apple is an exhibitor there too. So I immediately took steps to register for that, too. And again I lucked into one of the last available hotels; somewhat out in the suburbs but next to a train station, and a little more expensive than planned but still bearable. So we’ll get two conferences for the price of one…

I can’t understand how one could travel in the dark ages before the Internet…