We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and [...]]]> A Thanksgiving Tale from the Wild Wild East

We careened through streets, shrouded in darkness, packed into a grubby ersatz-Fiat 128, a Soviet-era knockoff. I was compressed, folded, and spindled into the back seat, a human shock absorber, a Dell Optiplex cradled in my arms. With only me between the PC’s steel case and the car’s steel struts, I felt every bump and grind of the ancient city’s streets. I was the car’s only functioning shock absorber. Noticing that it was past midnight, I thought: “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.”

As we zoomed around yet another roundabout, my friend Tamás shouted over the engine noise: “This is ‘Hero’s Square. You can see the statues of the seven Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarians into the Carpathian basin. You remember, Saint Stephen — he’s there. See.” He gestured with his right hand, his ubiquitous cigarette smoldering in the other. He was a hell of a driver, Tamás. One hand always on the wheel, another manhandling the stick shift, ratcheting through the gears, clutch be damned; another Bogarting a constant cigarette, and another hand to spare, artfully used to point out landmarks and other points of interest along the way.

I struggled to see out of the side window, smudged and clouded with urban fallout and the night’s reflections. I could see shadows, light and dark, vague objects lit by the cold calculating stare of mercury lights. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ll have to come back here sometime during the day.” “Yes,” said Tamás. It’s a beautiful city.” With those words, he lit another cigarette and whipped the car to the right, sliding me away from the window. Like a square, steel security blanket, I cradled the PC. We dove down, down into the dark, diving driving deep into the Budapest night. I was glad he knew where he was going, or at least he seemed to know. I wasn’t going to question. If this worked, it would be he who had saved the day; saved the week, saved my ass — assuming it, and I, survived the ride.

The week had been one unmitigated disaster after another. It was one of those times where just about everything went wrong. The giant rabbit, a bunny the size of a German Shepherd, had shaken my essential belief in my on sanity. The trip had turned all too Kafkaesque, despite the fact I was in Budapest, not Prague, and Nietzsche was tumbling through my forebrain. “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” I muttered to myself, “especially giant rabbits.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

The story begins the week before. Plans were afoot, and I needed to quickly outfit what was to be our new office in Budapest. Tamás was moving from Prague to Budapest, others were moving from Prague to London, and still others were relocating back to the States. The Prague office was to be closed. Budapest needed to be up and running first and fast and furious. With the others, I had some time to spare and a moving company to help.

Taking it in stride, I laid out simple plans that involved donating all the existing equipment in Prague, and starting fresh in the various new locations. That meant shipping new equipment to Budapest, post haste, and that meant DHL. This was a few years ago, before accession into the EU. If you wanted to get stuff into the wild, wild east, DHL was your Jedi Knight. Try to do it yourself, and you’d be tied up in paperwork for a month, and end up paying double in taxes and quadruple in baksheesh and baklava. If I had gone that route, winter would be here, and I’d be wearing a balaclava.

My plan was simple. Ship a new PC via DHL to Budapest. Order a new MFC printer from a local vendor. Arrange for all the necessary connections for phone, fax, and internet. Time everything, just so. Arrive after the PC had cleared customs. Carry all the other bits and pieces. Leave a weekend as buffer, just to be safe. Take a day and purchase the other things I might need (like a fax machine). Spend a few days in Budapest assembling, training, eating cakes, and drinking coffee. When done, zip up to Prague, tie up loose ends there, and make it home by Thanksgiving — a simple plan that adhered to the KISS axiom.

It started to go wrong when the PC went MIA, supposedly somewhere between Ohio and Budapest. The timing of this news couldn’t have been worse. It broke while I was snoozing on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. “They’ve lost the shipment,” said the message in my Blackberry. Bleary-eyed and stiff from the flight, I had to read the message twice as I pounded my second espresso in Schiphol Airport. “Huh,” I muttered. “DHL lost it in mid-flight?

I could of understood it if it had been routed through Amsterdam. Then I could blame it on some chocolate-crazed Dutchman or a ring of international PC thieves, trading computers for aged Gouda. But this had been a direct flight. It got on in Ohio and never got off. I felt like Jodie Foster. How can a PC simply disappear in mid-flight from a DHL plane? Its fate remains a mystery. I figure it’s somewhere embedded in a cow pasture, as it must have fallen out of the door of the plane as it banked to the left over Ohio; probably surprised a few cows, no doubt. Watch out Ohio — falling PCs! Cowdude, you’re getting a Dell!

I was committed. It was too late to turn around; too late to do much of anything. I caught my connection to Budapest with a mind towards taking solace at the hotel’s all-you-can-eat cake bar. Upon arriving, strengthened by a Sachertorte, sugar and chocolate coursing through my veins, I hatched an alternate plan.

I was not to be outfoxed by the cows, or the Dutch. Quick as a wink, with a call back to the States, my staff had a second PC out the door and onto a DHL truck. I figured if we got all our ducks in a row, I’d only lose two days. I could hang out at Café Gerbeaud, pretending to be an intellectual, eating cake and drinking coffee. Not a problem. I am especially fond of Hungarian cakes and tortes, and other pastries. I’d just have to dig up a tattered copy of Proust to complete the image. Besides, there was Tokaji to try. (I discovered I did not like it — and also learned not to say that out loud to the waiter’s face and still expect any sort of service.)

I spent the days wisely, lining up the other ducks, setting up printers, NAT routers, and phones. I even had the immensely ironic pleasure, comrades, of buying a Hungarian fax machine at the largest shopping mall in downtown Budapest. The mall is located in plaza named for Karl Marx. The machine’s instructions were in Hungarian — a lovely language with absolutely no relation to any of the Indo-European languages. Rather it is Ugric, perhaps related to Finnish, perhaps not, and thought to have originated from Siberia, one, two, or three million years ago. I was lucky. There were pictures.

Everything was ready. Then the bureaucracy took hold, like a rat terrier, and refused to let go. The paperwork accompanying the PC was incorrect. We were sub-leasing. We weren’t registered in Hungary. We didn’t exist. It was surreal. I felt unreal. According to the Hungarian authorities, I did not exist. You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization, said DHL. “You don’t exist.”

Easily rectified, I thought, my sense of identity barely dented, I’ll just have new paperwork faxed over. But time was against me. First, it was now Friday. Second, there’s six hours difference between Michigan and Budapest. I had to wait for my office to wake up and get to work. By then it would be 3:00 PM in Budapest. Of course, the customs office closes at 3:00. They wouldn’t get the new paperwork until Monday. Assuming it was all in order, the earliest I could get the PC from DHL would be Monday morning. I headed back to the all-you-can-eat cake bar where I considered supplementing my diet of Dobos torte with a bottle of absinth.

Bright and early Monday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “It would not be delivered today.”

Working reverse banker’s hours, the customs inspector didn’t start work until 4:00 PM. I thought this fact particularly strange, since the customs office closed at 3:00 PM. Logic aside, DHL assured me that the inspector would look at the paperwork that afternoon, and IF it was all in order, the PC would be delivered the following day, Tuesday.

“There’s a certain perverse logic to it all,” I thought to myself. Customs closes at 3:00 and the inspector starts work at 4:00… This meant that, no matter what you did, who you paid off; no matter how pious and righteous your life; there was no way to get something through customs in a day. I accepted my fate and waited another day. My schedule was already shot to Shineola. I was supposed to have been to Prague by now, and be headed home by Wednesday. I was now, officially, a day late and a Forint short. I celebrated with a plate of goulash and a piece of Rigó Jancsi.

Bright and drearily Tuesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

The paperwork was not correct. The people from whom we were subleasing also didn’t exist. We couldn’t ship something to them either. “You can’t deliver a PC to a non-existent organization,” says DHL. Tamás, in his quiet wisdom, spoke up. “Why not have it shipped to me?” he said. “I exist.” Not in the mood for epistemological arguments, despite the temptation, I agreed and new paperwork was put in process.

Back to the future we went, waiting until 3:00 to have a new commercial invoice faxed to DHL from the States; back to the café for coffee and cake.

Not-so-bright and early Wednesday morning, I was on the phone to DHL. “Yes,” they said. “The PC is here.” “No,” they said, “it would not be delivered today.”

There were taxes to be paid. Since we had shipped the PC to an individual, we had to pay import duties. “Let me guess,” I said, “once we pay the taxes, we have to wait for the custom inspector to clear the shipment.” “Yes,” they said, “he starts at 4:00. We can deliver the PC in the morning.”

Time, unfortunately, was not on my side, no it wasn’t. I had shuffled trains, planes and schedules. Now I was scheduled on a train, bound for Prague, the next morning. Even then, it was going to be tight. Time was running out.

On a whim, I asked: “Is there any chance we can pick the PC up ourselves?” “Why yes,” said DHL, “not a problem. After customs clears the shipment, you can pick it up at our airport facility after 6:00.

At 6:00, we pulled into the DHL facility — a facility hidden deep in the warehouse maze that surrounds the Budapest airport. Our timing was a thing of beauty. We pulled into the lot just in time to watch a DHL worker roll two Dell boxes off the back end of a truck. They fell, with a note of fragile finality, onto a flat-bed trolley and were wheeled away into the building in front of us. “Those have got to be ours,” I muttered, “got to be.”

Bundles of paper work in hand, we stumbled into the lobby, a lobby furnished in industrial green linoleum, Formica and vinyl, even the lighting had a greenish tinge to it. I shoved the paperwork at the first clerk I could see. He smiled and said, “Yes, the PC is here.” I handed him a fistful of Forints.

As if on cue, at that moment, the double-doors in the rear of the room burst open, and two Dell boxes tumbled into the room. Like a mother who’s found her long lost child, I gathered the boxes into my arms and lovingly tucked them into the car — the monitor into the trunk and, after a little light maneuvering, the PC into the only place it would fit, the front passenger seat. We headed off, full tilt, for Tamás’ new office.

Time being of the essence, I mentally mumbled a check list of tasks that needed to be done. With luck, I figured, I could catch a late dinner. My train left early the next morning for Prague.

By 8:30, we were back at the office. I slide the hard drive into the PC. I had hand-carried it, and a spare, from the States. I checked all the cables. I smiled and plugged it in and…

I could hear the “snap.” I could physically feel the “crack” and “pop” deep in my bones. I could smell the ozone. My face must have turned ashen, as Tamás immediately said “What’s wrong.” I slumped against the wall, defeated. “I forgot,” I said. “Shit. I forgot to switch the power supply from 110 to 220. I just fried it. I give up.”

Tamás looked at me quizzically. “What does that mean,” he asked? “It means we’re screwed,” I said, screwed, screwed, screwed — even in the States, I couldn’t find a new power supply at — glancing at my watch — almost 10:00 at night. Worse than that, it’s a Dell. That means the power supply is proprietary. We’re screwed.” “Humm,” said Tamás. “It’s just a part, right? Let me call my uncle.” He pulled out his mobile phone and, after a few seconds, spoke a few words in Hungarian. He hung up and smiled.

“My uncle says that there is this special number,” he said. “It’s a number you can call and get answers to any question, 24-hours a day.” I looked at him, incredulously, thinking to myself: “Any question? – whew I can think of a few I’d like answered…” But, before I could come up with a question about life, the universe, and everything, he was already off the phone, answer in hand.

“There’s a place,” he said, jotting it down on a pad of paper. “It’s way on the other side of the city. It does all night computer repair. They have the part we need.”

Without further ado, we bundled up the PC and piled into the borrowed car — the Soviet knockoff — and headed off into the Hungarian night. It was thus I found myself, self-employed as a shock-absorber, careening through the dark streets of Budapest, at midnight, in search of a Dell power supply, the day before Thanksgiving. Rabbits were the furthest thing from my mind.

After what seemed like hours, we pulled down a dark street — more warehouse than residential — and stopped in front of what looked like a small square suburban ranch home surrounded by 8-foot tall chain link fence, festooned with video cameras, and dotted with ever popular mercury vapor lights.

The rest of the street faded away into pitch black, stomped out by lights that would shame a football stadium. We parked and stood in front of the sliding chain-link gate. “This is the place,” said Tamás, glancing at the notepad where he had scrawled the address. On cue, the chain link gate silently slide open and we walked into the graveled yard, following the concrete walkway around the side, to the back, as there was no door in the front.

A giant man, six-foot-plus, dressed all in white — white pants and a white T-shirt, with a strange belt of off-white sheep’s fleece and leather wrapped around his substantial midriff — stood at the top of a short flight of stairs. Tamás and he exchanged what I assumed were pleasantries or secret Magyar passwords, and, once complete, Tamás motioned us up the stairs and into the house.

Glancing around, readjusting the PC cradled in my arms, I began to walk up the stairs. It was then I noticed what I thought was a rather odd looking white German Shepherd off to the side of the back yard. I looked again. It wasn’t a dog — despite being at least two or three feet high. It was the ears that had made me think “German Shepherd.” It was a rabbit. It was a three-foot-tall white rabbit. It was looking at me. I glanced around wildly, looking for Alice.

Tamás called, “Gavin, are you coming in?” I stumbled quickly up the stairs, and through the rabbit hole and into the house, glancing with every step at the rabbit. The rabbit watched intently and then turned away as the door closed.

I found myself in a house furnished in gilt, white lace, bad taste, and computer parts. The furniture — where visible under the computer parts — was that particular color of white and peachy gold favored by cheap hotels and porno producers.

After a brief technical exchange in Hungarian and English that consisted mostly of grunts and technical terms like “power supply,” “220 volts,” “Dell,” “Removable hard drive,” and “200 Euros,” the dead power supply lay abandoned on one of the gilt sofas. I was 200 Euros lighter, and we were back in the car, headed through the late night streets of Budapest.

Back at the office, still feeling slightly stunned by the bunny, I slapped the power supply into the PC, check things thrice, and powered it up. All things were right with the world. Tamás had an office.

We packed up shop, and Tamás dropped us at the hotel. Up before dawn, I was on the train and bound for Prague before a bunny’s breakfast. I spent the train trip in the dining car, either dozing or thoroughly entertained by the various notifications from different GSM carriers that appeared on my Blackberry. Arriving in Prague, I once again realized it was Thanksgiving — I had not made it home. As any ex-pat will tell you, Thanksgiving in Europe always lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nevertheless, I had three days to finish up in Prague before my rescheduled flight back to Amsterdam, and then on to Detroit. I would be seeing no more bunnies.

Since it was Thanksgiving, the evening called for at least a fancy dinner; if not turkey, then it would have to be duck (an easy call in Eastern Europe). My choice was Obecni Dum (Municipal House). It was just a short walk away. It’s called the “Pearl of Czech Art Nouveau.” It’s a landmark in downtown Prague, and home to a pivnice (beer hall) in the basement as well as a kavarna (café) and the classy Francouzské (French) restaurant on the first floor. You can dine surrounded by deco glass by Alphonse Mucha. The food is good too. I had duck, in lieu of turkey. Rabbit seemed out of the question. I remember the dinner with great fondness, and was to see the exact setting again, later, in “Triple-X” with Vin Diesel; same table in fact — art, once again, imitating life — through the rabbit-hole.

Oh, the bunnies; they’re real, by the way, and not at all a vision born of too many cakes and tortes, too many long days and sleepless nights. You see, this arrived in the email one day, assuring me of my sanity. Thanks Jonathan.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when [...]]]> I’m quite fond of my Kindle. Sure, the design’s a little bonkers; and it’s a wee bit awkward. That aside, it is easy to read, easy to use, and mine happens to be loaded with books I want to read.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when I’m travelling. As a result, I tend to carry lots of lots of books along for the ride. For unfathomable reasons, one book is not enough. I must have at least two or three, sometimes more. Consequently, I end up schlepping somewhere around three-point-two million pounds of books to the far corners of the world.

It’s a proven fact that books get heavier the longer they remain in your luggage. It’s something to do with gravity, airplanes, hotel food, relativity, dirty socks, quantum mechanics, and the amount of missing dark matter in the universe. Perhaps, too, the TSA is involved. I can’t quite explain it.

Nevertheless, somehow — depending on the number of books you’re carrying and the length of your trip — they get heavier. It’s one of the true mysteries of the universe, right in my briefcase.

For me, the Kindle has solved this problem. I’ve cut my beastly book burdens down to one pound. I do still, however, manage to clutter up my briefcase with lots of other stuff, but the book weight has definitely diminished. Sadly though, the addition of my Kindle contributed to what I call “the YAB epidemic” (Yet Another Brick). The Kindle added one more power brick to my ever-expanding multiplicity of power bricks; another brick for the wall.

Obviously, the Kindle’s designers were suffering from some form of contagious group insanity when they decided on an almost proprietary charging system. I had just one thing to say to them: “What are you nuts?” (I’ve yet to get their response.)

Just to rub it in, though, those same nutty designers added a mini-USB jack right next to the power connection. I simply fail to understand their thinking. There’s a USB connection right there! USB equals voltage, five volts to be exact. I think they were smoking something and all “ooh, my hand is so huge” and spaced it. There is no other explanation.

Now, supposedly you can use the USB to “trickle charge.” So say the docs. Reality says different.

I haven’t been able to get it to do squat — and I’ve tried with great diligence, several times. And, I mean great diligence. It’s been a diligence driven by the discovery, upon arrival in some faraway place like Sterkfontein, Ashtabula, or even SoHo, that I have once again forgotten to bring the damn charger.

Trust me when I say that I get very diligent when presented with a choice of: A) staring at the walls of my hotel room for a couple of hours, or B) watching late night TV in Afrikaans.

After tiring of the Afrikaans’s late night soaps, and after pummeling a few unlucky people with one or two thousand-word email messages on esoteric subject like telegrams or time travel, I decided to figure out how to fix the Kindle; how to cure my YAB problem and avoid this sort of late night tomfoolery. A few minutes with Google and I had my answer. I’m sure the people that got my meandering missives are all the happier for it too.

It turns out to be easy. The secret is USB. The Kindle wants 5 volts (DC); a USB cable delivers 5 volts (DC). Problem solved. I just need to trick the Kindle into actually charging from a USB cable. After a little research into USB pin-outs — what wires carry what in a USB cable — I was ready to go.

The solution: a cable with a USB Series “A” plug on one end and a “Type-A” power tip on the other end. The trick is to plug the USB’s power into the Kindle’s power socket. I added the solution to my list of stuff to do when next near a soldering pen with a few hours to kill.

The tough part, it turns out, was finding a “Type-A” power tip. Radio Shack had the right stuff, a modular plug and matching cable, but I didn’t like the idea of the plug being detachable. I’d lose that, and end up in the same boat, up a creek without a cable.

We are gathered here today to join these two cables together…

Remembering my father’s advice of “when all else fails, do the obvious,” I took the easy road, bought a replacement Kindle power adaptor direct from Amazon($15.00), and just cut the brick off. (I figured if it didn’t work, I’d just glue everything back together and award myself the consolation prize of a spare power brick — YAB!)

The severed cable gave me the connection to the Kindle — a nice Type-A power tip with wire attached. It turns out the USB side of the equation was equally easy. I just cut the end off of one of the ubiquitous USB cables I have laying around my office. With wires in hand, I proceeded to get down and get funky with rosin core solder and Heat-Shrink tubing.

Might I just break in briefly here to talk about “Heat-Shrink” tubing? It’s second only to duct tape in my panoply of necessary things. Like duct tape, it can solve problems, save the world, and be great fun at parties. Heat-Shrink can save your project or — in my case — make a mediocre soldering job look nice and neat and professional. Everybody should have some around the house.

My cabling ménage à trios:

One “type-A” power tip, Heat-Shrink tubing, and the flat end of a USB cable

The assembly was easy. (The hard part here is remembering to slide the Heat-Shrink tubing onto the wires before you solder them — I got it on the second go-round.)

Knowing what wires go where is also easy. On the USB side, Pins 1 and 4 are the power and ground, respectively. Typically, once you neatly strip off the outer insulation, they’re the red and black wires. Pins 2 and 3 are data (green and white). I just cut them off. Don’t want them, don’t need them.

(Note: I said typically. Who knows what kind of fly-by-night cables you’ve got. You’re on your own. Trust but verify. I ain’t responsible for frying your Kindle, singeing your fingers, or burning down your house.)

Then, you dig out your soldering pen, some rosin core solder, and connect up the following:

• Solder the Red USB lead to the center lead of the power cable.
• Solder the Black USB lead to the braided ground of the power cable.
• Admire your work.
• Realize you forgot to slide on the Heat-Shrink tubes and start again.
• Cut all the wires and slide on all the tubing you think you’ll need.
• Strip the wires again, and solder them neatly for a second time (see above).
• Slide the Heat-Shrink tube up to cover your not-quite-perfect solder job.
• Heat the Heat-Shrink tubing, watch it shrink like magic, and then admire your work.
• Say “argh, ain’t that right purty” like a pirate.

The happy cable couple

The final proof is always in the pudding. So, watching for stray sparks, I plugged one end of my new “hybrid” cable into the Kindle, and the other into my laptop, and was greeted with the warm glow of the “charging light.” Heat Shrink — gotta love it. It even looked and felt relatively neat and sturdy.

Confident in my craftsmanship, I’ve made a special place for the cable in my briefcase, right next to my various passports and my treasured collection of unreturned Kimpton Hotel keycards. It’ll be there, ready, waiting for the next time the Kindle’s batteries are about to die. No longer will I be faced with the vexing choice of either staring at the hotel room’s ceiling for a few hours or watching Hannity and Colmes. The ceiling usually won anyway.

It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me [...]]]> I blame Santa. It was he that started me down this road.

It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me in to the dark world of digital photography. And, at first I was happy, wandering the night streets of Brussels, amazed at the versatility and just down-right fun of modern digital photography. But soon, I wanted more — more lenses, fancy carrying cases, tripods, books, and filters; batteries and bling.

The birthday fairy — an enabler working in cahoots with Santa — served only to fan my addiction. She delivered an amazing piece of glass; a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens. Oh my. With this combo, I’m almost superfluous in the process. You want a lens, this is the one. One lens to rule them all, One lens to find them, One lens to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…

Between the camera and the glass, I need only twirl a few dials and pretend like I know the difference between aperture and exposure, mutter a few incantations about depth of field, and… voila! I have pictures, pretty pictures. I was caught, before I knew it. I’m now carting Nikky the Nikon, everywhere, buying her presents and shiny bling. And, her latest bling is a marvelous thing — automatic geo-tagging.

It’s the lazy man’s way to avoid dragging photos willy-nilly around on the Flickr map. It’s perfect for me. Quite frankly, it’s a great substitution for organic memory, as my poor organic memory was not up to the task of actually remembering just exactly where this or that picture was taken. Was it Traben, Trabach, or Trier? Was it Haute-Garonne or Lot-et-Garonne or Tarn-et-Garonne? Where is the Garonne? Is that the Dordogne or the Lot? Is this France? Who am I and why am I here?

[This whole process, of course, is complicated by the fact that I can't spell half the towns in France anyway. Just when I think I have a word "right" the incessant need to swap vowel and consonant between regions trips me up.]

You see, while the camera can faithfully remember a thousand shots a day, my memory can’t. It only gets worse, as I try to sort through them one or two or three weeks later. So, the latent engineer in me takes over. I call it creative laziness — my incessant drive to figure out easier ways to do things.

Thus, with enthusiasm, I greeted my latest gadget when it arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. Ok, I admit it, I am very — almost (but not quite) pathologically — fond of gadgets, and this was one cool gadget. It was, after all somewhat near my birthday. It was after all only 150 bucks. It would after all save me hours of time! Besides, Nikky would love it. It was important. This little item would save me much embarrassment by automatically adding longitude and latitude to my amateur attempts at photography. That’s right: Automatic geo-tagging, GPS for my camera. Oh boy, would Jane be jealous.

It’s called a Geomet’r and it’s designed to fit right on to my particular Nikon. It fits the D300, D3, D200, D2Hs and D2Xs, as well as the Fujifilm S5 Pro. About the size of a small box of matches, it plugs into the camera and stealthily slips not only the latitude and longitude into the EXIF data, but the altitude as well. Now I know not only where I was, when it was, but just exactly how high above sea-level I might have been. Ain’t that just neat?

Gavin’s Nikon with Geomet’r GPS attached

For $150 it does what it says it does. There are some upsides and downsides, however. First the downsides:

• Despite what the docs say, it seems to take upwards of a minute or two to warm up and find itself. The docs say 45 seconds from a cold start. My experience is that it’s more like 120 to 200 seconds. Given that warm up time, one is tempted to just leave it on. However, there is a slight problem with leaving it on that I mention below.
• You need to be outside to use it. Like most GPS devices, it doesn’t work well without clear access to the sky. I’ve found that even a heavy tree canopy can be a problem.
• The way the connecter connects to the camera body is kind of awkward. It juts out from the side of the camera and makes it difficult to drop into my carrying case. Moreover, I think that it gets jostled around in the bag sometimes, and gets accidently turned on. This is a drag for reasons I also mention below.
• This baby hits the juice like a sailor on shore-leave. I find it cuts my battery life at least in half, if not by two-thirds. This is also why you just can’t leave it on and why having it get accidently turned on when jostled is a drag. Typically, the battery life on the D200 is extraordinary. Rarely did I run out of juice. But with the Geomet’r it can kill a battery dead in less than a few hours. I looked into getting a super-powerful multi-battery pack but decided to just invest in a few more batteries. I typically travelled with two – one in the camera and one spare. I’m upping that to four (proving once again that gadgets beget more gadgets).
• Finally, it has some strange bugs. Namely, occasionally, it seems to just lock up the camera. The LCD display seems OK, and the battery level seems OK, but it won’t take a picture until you click the camera “Off” and then “On” again. When this starts to happen, the battery indicator usually drops to one bar, and I switch batteries, so I think it’s a power problem.

On the up side, it does what it says. It’s the lazy man’s way to add latitude and longitude and altitude information to your pictures. Here’s what I like:

• You’ve got options when it comes to where you put it. I attached it to the leather reinforcement of the carrying strap using the super-Velcro that came with the unit. There is also a small-plastic piece that fits in the camera’s hot shoe, but I find it nicer and more out of the way attached to the carrying strap. The two pairs of Velcro that came with the unit are the “super” sort of Velcro that doesn’t wear out. That’s good. The curly cable is also nice, as it keeps things out of the way but flexible.
• The whole thing seems well designed. My only quibble is the location of the “On/Off” telltale. It’s a small red diode located on the underside. It flashes on and off when seeking a satellite lock, and burns a steady red when on and locked. If I had chosen to put the device in the hot-shoe, I suppose it would be more visible, but I still think it would be better located on top or something, or maybe a blue diode instead of a red one.
• It works. Pictures are tagged with the proper info, and when I uploaded them to Flickr, they all appear right on the map just where I was when I took the photo. My memory is spared the heavy burden of keeping track of where I am, or was, or might be.

As I mentioned, it does what it’s supposed to. You can see the results of a few hours I spent wandering in the Bon Air Rose gardens in Arlington, Virginia. It took a fresh battery, but it tagged all the photos. On Flickr, the mapping is not that accurate, but when using Picasa and Google Earth, it was within a few feet. Here is the Flickr set, if you’d like to see the results. As you can see, I seem to like bees and bugs. Thanks Santa.

The litany goes [...]]]> I was recently asked to dream up all the ways these new fangled information and communications technologies can save us from the carbon-based perils of flying. Flying dumps tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Not good, that. Technology, of course, that’s the answer, or so they say (who ever they are).

The litany goes something like this: “With video conferencing, broadband, and Second Life, well, we can all safely stay ensconced in our own virtual-reality-sensory-deprivation-tanks and just digitally dance the salsa at the next NTEN gathering.” In fact, I recall a posting on some blog, or some listserv, just before the last NTEN conference. It took NTEN to task for being so “20^th century” as to hold a conference people actually attended. I grumbled at the time, muttering to myself that people that think technology is a replacement for face-to-face meetings and conferences are missing the point, and forgetting that tech is never a replacement.

To put it personally — and curmudgeonly — there was no way in hell I’d be willing to attend a conference where I really wanted to be, with a virtual substitute. There are just some things you can’t do in WebEx. Those things are the reasons I actually go to conferences. If it weren’t for those things, I’d just spend my days curled up with a good book, dog at my feet, and a glass of Domaine de Berane in my hand.

It reminded me of a story about what’s important and what’s not — one of my professors in grad school was on the horns of a dilemma. He had been offered a new professorship at another university and couldn’t make up his mind of whether to stay or go. I found this ironic and said as much:

“But Doc,” I said, staring him squarely in the eyes. “Don’t you teach decision theory? Aren’t you one of the world’s experts on how to make this kind of decision? Didn’t you help develop some of the decision thingies that helped keep the Cold War from turning nuclear? Can’t you just throw this into some sort of quadratic matrix, push the magic buttons, and crank out the absolute right answer?” I queried.

“Yeah, I could do that,” he said, “but this is important.”

The important things don’t necessarily lend themselves to the virtual or the technological. Some things can’t be easily boiled down to a set of equations or business rules. I run into this all the time when I try to develop workflows around grantmaking. It’s the subtleties that count. And, it’s the subtleties in interpersonal communications that make a conference a conference, and a meeting more than talking heads on an LCD screen.

Nevertheless, I had an article to write. I had run into an editor for the Alliance Online (at a conference no less) and offered up my pen — I think I said, any topic, any time. It must have been the jet lag, but now I had to pay the piper. She wanted 400 words or so. I sat down, stared into space, and when I looked up I had 3,200 words on the screen. (Those that read this blog with any regularity will not be surprised. I do seem to wax on.)

When I looked at it, I basically said the same thing over and over again… it was a cascade of things like:

• “Well, yes you can use video conferencing…, but it’s no substitute…”
• “There’s WebEx, but… it’s no substitute
• Skype video… It’s great, but it’s nothing like being there…

With axe (actually red pen) in hand, I chopped and chopped, and got it down to less than a thousand. I invite you all to take a look. The theme is simple: technology is no answer; it’s an answer, but not the answer. The context is interesting as well. I invite you to start here with the original Alliance article that interviews a number of people in the nonprofit space. Then find my “no answer” here.

With most important decisions, there are no easy answers. And, this one is important.

Not only was it heaven, it was the last thing I expected. I was not in a terrific mood; unhappy with the world in general, little [...]]]> It was perfect, the perfect cup of coffee. I’m not even that fond of coffee, but for that moment, it was eight ounces of heaven in a cup.

Not only was it heaven, it was the last thing I expected. I was not in a terrific mood; unhappy with the world in general, little sleep, and having just come off more than 10-hours of various forms of transportation. Worse, some of my best laid plans — half the reason for the trip — had come a cropper; the last thing I wanted to hear was “your room is not yet ready, terribly sorry.”

Then and there, I was convinced that nothing could improve my disposition. I was wrong. Perhaps sensing my despair and not wanting the lobby littered with corpses, the hotel clerk quietly suggested that, just perhaps, I might want a coffee, all the while ushering me, ever so gently, into the dining room. He was smooth. I was in the dining room and seated even before I noticed.

“No, don’t worry about your bags,” he said, motioning the waiter over to the table. “We’ll take them up to your room. Just relax.”

“Café?” said the waiter, sliding up silently. Sighing, “Oui,” I said, in my best imitation of French. I pronounced it more like “weigh” than “wee” — vowels and I don’t get along — my French has a Spanish accent I just can’t shake. As defense, I try to pretend my French is Languedoc. It doesn’t work. I figure I sound like an idiot, something I’ll have to live with.

Then it hit me. The coffee was incredible, perfect — a small pewter pitcher of steamed milk, warm to the touch, and “un petite pichet” of black, strong, rich, almost-chocolate-like coffee. Placing a raw sugar cube in the coffee cup, I poured, first the milk and then, the coffee. The result was warm and rich, the color of milk chocolate, and heaven in a cup. I suddenly remembered what coffee really was.

Coffee and I are well acquainted — this will surprise my friends that have only seen me drink Genmaicha. It’s not that I don’t like coffee. I just don’t like bad coffee. More so, I can’t stand the “fratalian” combinations one is presented with today, too much choice, not enough flavor, and weird names like “fatty-latte-vente-gente-gordo-en-la-bañera.”

To me, coffee comes in six choices. Five are Spanish that I learned as a student in Spain, and I added in the cappuccino to round out the collection. I don’t think the Spanish have a cappuccino equivalent.

• Cappuccino: A shot of Espresso, cut with steamed (hot) milk, and layered with milk foam on top. There are two variations: Cappuccino chiaro (light) and cappuccino scuro (dark). Properly, they’re served for breakfast; gauche I am, I like them after dinner now and then.
• Café con leche (or Café au Lait / Milchkaffee): A mixture of coffee and steamed milk – usually in a 50/50 to 25/75 proportion – served in cup that you’d consider “small.” You drink it for breakfast, along with toast from yesterday’s baguette. You can have the milk either hot or warm.
• Café cortado (or
  Macchiato): Coffee that is “cut” with steamed milk. This is what one orders in bars, from little refreshment stands, sidewalk cafes, and the like. This is an afternoon coffee.
• Café solo (or Espresso): A shot of coffee without milk; served in a tiny cup. Depending on the roast, this is what you think of when you think Espresso.
• Café manchado: Mostly milk, steamed, with just a hint of coffee. It’s made with about ¼ coffee and the rest milk, kind of a reverse cortado. I think this might be the equivalent of a latte. I never drank one.
• Carajillo: Coffee, black, enlivened with cognac or an anis drink such as Ricard. As a student, I found one or two of these greatly improved my command of the Spanish language.

There is another thing called a “Café Americano.” Don’t even think about it. It’s dishwater.

Once I had settled into my Café au Lait, I noticed the dining room. Solarium-like, the ceiling was glass, giving way to a view of overhanging trees; quiet, shaded, green — a relaxing room of wood and glass. Tom Waits was growling on the sound system, with the gravelly sounds of “Invitation to the Blues.” “Now that’s timing,” I muttered to the universe. “She’s a moving violation, from her conk down to her shoes. Well, it’s just an invitation to the blues…” I sung along under my breath: “And you feel just like Cagney, she looks like Rita Hayworth…”

I leaned back, letting Waits fill the spaces. He sings better than I do, and he knows the words. “Tom Waits for breakfast,” I thought to myself, “a wee bit heavy, but I like this place.” I thumbed through the pages on a Herald Tribune, noting that not much had changed overnight; everything was still going to hell. Perfect coffee, perfect setting: Calming, sheltering, private without that dreary anomie that comes with the typical Hyatt-Marriott-cum-Motel-66. In what seemed like a few minutes, the waiter was back. My room was ready, but “no hurry,” he said and smiled. “It will wait. Would you like another café?” I said, “Oui, merci.”

What I had found was one of those rare things, a traveler’s oasis; a hotel to add to my list of hotels where I don’t mind staying. I had decided to switch hotels for a myriad of reasons. The reasons — important then — had ended up irrelevant. The serendipitous result was: I liked the place, and I had another entry for what is a pretty short list of hotels that are just a little special.

Look, I’m not a globetrotter, but I do travel a bit. Yeah, there were a few years where my dog forgot my name, but those days are behind me. Now it’s lots of little trips, and a few big ones a year. And, hotels usually suck. It’s a room, it’s a bed, and it’s a lousy breakfast. Sometimes you get free internet.

I’ve stayed in more than my share of cinderblock cubes — nondescript hotels that could be anywhere from Abu Dhabi to Abilene. Some, like one motel outside of Colby Kansas, are memorable for the wrong reasons. That one was downwind from the nearby feedlot. Rachel, my dog, thought it smelled like Chanel No. 5, but, for me, it was a wee too “Chez Merde.” I’m serious. It was a smell so powerful it kept you awake at night.

This one, well, it had the makings of one to remember — but for the right reasons — including the best cup of café in the world. I officially added the Manos Premier to my list of hotels that don’t totally suck.

I discovered the next morning that not only do they serve a fine cup of coffee, but the coffee accompanies a wonderful buffet breakfast (included in the room rate – gotta love it): a buffet of smoked salmon, tropical fruit, and the quintessential collection of cold meats and cheeses. My lodgings were reasonable, not too fancy; furnished in French provincial, two floors, a sitting area and a loft overhead, reached by a slim staircase along one wall. The loft held the bed, and it looked out the two large windows that opened out into the street. It was quiet and cozy, friendly.

Finally, the bar, Kolya offered comfortable seating where I could stretch out my papers in the evening and plunk on my laptop without a second glance from anyone. A glass of Rhone set me back only €4 and it came with a plate of salted olives. It was Friday night, in a strange city, and I was working into the wee hours again, but at least it was a pleasant place to work, and I was looking forward to the breakfast. I was looking forward to another cup of coffee.

For the curious, my “hotels that don’t suck totally” list includes (in no particular order) the likes of The Grace in Rosebank [Johannesburg, South Africa]. The Grace is quite probably the best hotel in the world, and it definitely has the best breakfast in the world. Others on the list include, The Orca Lodge in Tofino [Vancouver Island, Canada], The Eldridge House [Lawrence, Ks.], Shaw’s Hotel [Prince Edward Island, Canada], Hotel de L’Abbeye [Saint Germain Des Pres, Paris], the Cour des Loges [Lyon, France], the Wingate Hibernian [Dublin, Ireland], the hotel at the Village at Spier [Stellenbosh, South Africa], the Tenaya Lodge at Yosemite [hey, my brother's the Chef, it's a terrific place!], and the Henley Park [Washington, DC].

The reason any particular hotel is on the list varies by the hotel. Some were just incredible places to be and to see, others were redoubts from a wicked world, while others just hold irreplaceable memories. And, then some just serve the best coffee in the world.

In a field test (I was in a hotel), it took [...]]]> Just a couple of updates to my original Blackberry Modem Mash:

1. After a few experiments on a few different machines, it does appear that you need both the Blackberry Device Manager and the Blackberry Desktop, and they both have to be running.

   In a field test (I was in a hotel), it took both. It doesn’t seem logical, but reality and logic are not always in sync.

2. The T-Mobile invoices have come and gone, and there was no sign of any extra charges. Hence, it appears my “all you can eat” service is truly that. A word of warning: I am sure that this only applies in the US, and that there are per MB charges for “data roaming.”

   Since T-Mobile services are as confused as their customer service reps, here’s a snapshot of what’s on my bill, for your information:

1. Finally, for the brave of heart, I thought I’d share this little technological loop-de-loop.

   As I mentioned, I “field tested” this from a hotel. Here’s the story:

   I was recently in San Francisco for a few days of meetings. As bad luck would have it, the &^%$ hotel wanted $12 a day for internet access. I usually check before I check in – and tend to eschew hotels that don’t offer it for free. And, my god, this was San Francisco! But, I forgot this time.

   Admittedly, $12 is not going to break the bank, but it just rubs me the wrong way – especially considering what the room itself was costing. So I decided to field test using my Blackberry 8700g as a modem. My initial experiments had been favorable (see my original post: Blackberry Modem Mash). But, there ain’t nothing like the real world to throw cold water on a hot idea.

   I am here to say that it worked like a charm. Not only did it work, I managed to do the following using the connection:

• Exchange email using an Hamachi peer-to-peer VPN connection to my Exchange server. (See my original post: Networking with Sushi Hamachi)
• Login to Skype and call home.
• Browse various web sites at an altogether acceptable speed.

I particularly liked the Skype connection. I found a certain ironic pleasure in using an almost-3G cell phone to connect to the Internet so that I could make a VoIP call.