Today there was a strike of pubic transit workers in Budapest — unofficial holiday! And our part of downtown was quite empty of people. We went to the local park one block away from our apartment (see photo above). The flowers are just amazing there!
Then we walked around looking for a nice cafe for lunch. We found a Greek place next to the Danube. Just a quiet day in Budapest …
As I mentioned last week, there was an article in the Economist about cellphone novels in Japan. One of my translators told me that these are cheesy, ill-written works that commuters then read on their way to and from work.
Yesterday, there was an article in the WSJ about ebook readers available in the US. They are designed for smartphones with a relatively large screen (2 x 1.5 inches). My Nokia E61 has the same size screen, so I decided to try it out. I downloaded WSJ’s recommended software (MobiReader) and it really works. Text is easy to see and navigate. Not only that, but the current round of Nebula Award nominees (science fiction literature professional award) are available for free.
How does it work? The screen is large enough to show three or four dozen words at a time. When you reach the bottom of the screen, just tap the space bar and the next ‘page’ shows. Clearly, this is not great for reference works or other books that you need to thumb through to find nuggets of information. But for sequential reading, like a novel, it is certainly sufficient.
It has other advantages as well. I just finished, and loved, Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton. But it ends on the most amazing cliff-hanger. What to do? I live out here in Hungary now – the local bookstore, fine though it is, is unlikely to stock the sequel. But it’s is available online for download to my cellphone. Yeah!
Is this as good as a dedicated electronic book reader? Probably not. But it is certainly good enough to read. And, the biggest advantage of all, I always have the cellphone with me anyway.
Gerbeaud is the most famous cafe in Budapest. The opening scene of the book “Prague” is here. As a proud member of the diaspora of Americans who moved to Eastern Europe in the early 1990′s, I can personally vouch for this book’s authenticity. The characters all ring absolutely true, as does the setting. I never finished the book; I didn’t want to. As long as I have not read the last page, the characters have not finished their journey and still live and breath, and I can yet come back to them. Lying there unfinished, it is among my favorite books of all time.
Gerbeaud, the cafe in the opening of the book, sits in the middle of Budapest’s most central square, at the start of the oldest subway in continental Europe. It’s a beautiful setting on a sunny day and great for people watching.
The cafe, with stairs to the subway in front.
Years ago, I read a restaurant review which stated that the quality of a cuisine’s desserts is inversely proportional to the capital’s distance from Vienna. And Budapest is spitting distance from Vienna! Note Baby Aaron waiting quietly, wondering when he gets his dessert.
“Hi, everybody!”
Czech Budweiser on draft. One of the world’s $1000 beers!
Sunday was Andrea’s 40th birthday. The Ihasz’s invited us to lunch at a very nice place.
Dang! These cookies are big!
Afterwards, we retired to a park overlooking the castle for the kids to play in.
Though the article diss’s my Apple Martini (invented at Lola‘s, a pub located a five minute walk away from my Los Angeles apartment in 1998), I am more of a fan of the classic martini. This article not only tells you where to get the real thing in New York, it tells you how they are different.
Hand crushed ice?
Cucumbers?
Read it here.
The Economist article (cited below) has me way behind the curve. Engineers at Google now travel and work with only a Blackberry. If there is something to be done that requires a full keyboard, they can pull up to any computer anywhere in the world and access their files and programs using a browser. I can’t quite do that yet … graphic design programs are still computer-based, rather than cloud-based and a lot of my business requires them.
The office-less company is now becoming standard, such that commercial real estate is seeing a loss of market in some of the bigger cities. I’ve been office-less since 2002. I’ve occasionally fantasized about having an office again, looked at prices and said to myself, “Why throw all that money away?”
Can someone explain this to me? It was a throw-away line in the 14 page report, and they did not elaborate: “Five of the ten bestselling novels in Japan last year were written on mobile phones.” How, why, what, huh?
Baby Aaron has his first tooth. You can now go back to what you were doing.
From the Economist:
SOMETIMES the biggest changes in society are the hardest to spot precisely because they are hiding in plain sight. It could well be that way with wireless communications. Something that people think of as just another technology is beginning to show signs of changing lives, culture, politics, cities, jobs, even marriages dramatically. In particular, it will usher in a new version of a very old idea: nomadism.
…the social changes are already visible: parents on beaches waving at their children while typing furtively on their BlackBerrys; entrepreneurs discovering they don’t need offices after all (if you need to recharge something, you just go to Starbucks); teenagers text-dumping their boyfriends. Everybody is doing more on the move.
Ancient nomads went from place to place—and they had to take a lot of stuff with them (including their livelihoods and families). The emerging class of digital nomads also wander, but they take virtually nothing with them; wherever they go, they can easily reach people and information. And the barriers to entry are falling. You don’t have to be rich to be a nomad (wander round any American college campus if you doubt that).
Will it be a better life? In some ways, yes. Digital nomadism will liberate ever more knowledge workers from the cubicle prisons of Dilbert cartoons. But the old tyranny of place could become a new tyranny of time, as nomads who are “always on” all too often end up—mentally—anywhere but here (wherever here may be).
If this article does not accurately describe my family and business, I don’t know what does.
Full article is here.
I’m of many minds when it comes to television. I still have a kneejerk reaction that all television is a waste of time, something that keeps you from spending time reading, being with friends or otherwise doing something useful.
This is clearly the wrong attitude. I hold Star Trek (the original series) personally responsible for many of things I have become as an adult. I love Lost. The first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica were wonderful. And the epic of Babylon Five is without compare. Yes, I know these are all science fiction, but CSI, Giligan’s Island, Mission: Impossible, Survivor or any of the other more mainstream fare simply don’t rise to the level of greatness.
You might be surprised to hear that we’ve kept up with a few of our shows while in Hungary. Most of the networks are now streaming their shows over the Internet. It’s not as easy as just logging in for us, however. We need to first convince NBC’s/ABC’s server that we’re in the US by sending our signal through my company server in Los Angeles. Then we get an OK picture, with extremely awful, repetitive commercials on my laptop.
We’ve also used Apple’s iTunes to download shows. This is much more successful, with a full picture available, no commercials and an affordable price of $1.99 an episode. So, we’ve spent $14 keeping up with Lost and $4 (after we gave up on streaming from CBS) on Survivor. I’ll download Gabi’s Desperate Housewives when it restarts later this month. And, if I can find an option, I’ll start watching the new season of Battlestar Galactica. This is a lot cheaper than paying Time Warner at home for a million TV shows that I will never watch.
There is a long debate about the future of TV and the Internet going on. Up until three months ago, I had not even noticed it. Below is an interesting speech by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, speaking at the Finnish embassy in Washington on the subject.
March Field, CA
