Personal Dork Assistant

Afternoon naps are dangerous. My

Afternoon naps are dangerous. My body still thinks that I'm trying to go to sleep for real and knocking me out like a light.

European Oddities

• Featured promnently at the checkout counter of the newstand in Schipol Airport was Penthouse, with naked boobies on the cover in full display. Well, this is the Netherlands. Alongside Penthouse, however, was featured The Economist. Reading material for both heads? Or colliding ad budgets making strange bedfellows?
• Anecdotal evidence that obesity is genetic: watching a proper French lady (it's all about the scarf) calmly split a croissant in half at the breakfast table. She then liberally buttered both sides and ate it just like she's probably done her entire life.
• Europeans certainly are more resource conscious than Americans in most ways. Except for water. One good Euro-flush would be good for two or three goes in a Californian water-saving toilet.
• Full-day, wire-to-wire coverage of the Tour de France was cool, even if it was in French. Also caught the French Grand Prix, which made me wish that F1 was back on regular cable instead of the Speedvision crap.
• Why would a guy buy clothes at a store called "Sissy Boy"? It'd be one thing if it were just a shop in the Red Light District, but I saw at least three stores in my time in Benelux, and its merchandise isn't much more exciting than The Gap anyway. So this name must be a conscious multnational branding strategy. And how in the world does this store sell stuff to women?

I would like to note

I would like to note what a pain in the ass it is to type with a Dutch keyboard. Actually, it's Flemish around here, but it's just like Dutch, from what I've been told.

Here's what the above bit would look like if I were typing it in the American QWERTY manner:

I zould like to note zhqt q pqin in the qss it is to type zith q Dutch keyboqrd: Qctuqlly; it�s Fle,ish qround here; but it�s just like Dutch; fro, zhqt I�ve been told:

The Chemical Brothers on the Bandstand

It's got a beat and you can dance to it. Except for the bit with Beth Orton but she's cool so it's okay.

Watching a pretty girl playing

Watching a pretty girl playing the recorder was... um... exciting. Especially the big alto recorder which was quite a handful. In a church, no less.

You know...

The Fox baseball announcers are idiots when they talked about Rob Nen's "filthy splitfinger." What a maroon. It's not as if the guy's some unknown rookie throwing a new pitch. The ESPN crew wouldn't make that mistake.

Putting footage of Kirk Reuter whiffing against Randy Johnson is just a little unfair, isn't it?

Behold the Power of MacOS X

This program is almost cool enough to make me install MacOS X on my main computer. The demand was obviously there, but it took the combination of an easy to use programming framework and an unemployed programmer to make this happen. Good to see software innovation make progress. No H1B contractor from some third-world country could do something this cool.

"...a joy to use and a wonderful timesaver." - P.A.B.