Europe quick update
Just an update about my current goings on. I haven’t had anytime really to think of what to write.
After Paris, I took a Thalys to Brussels, then a regular train to Amsterdam. Spent 2 days there, took a really good walking tour. Then I took a train to Dusselforf, waited there for a couple of hours, then a night train to Berlin (I only had a seat, so didn’t sleep well). Was only planning on spending one night in Berlin, but I need to pace myself a bit, so decided to stay two nights. Probably will go to Prague next, but will need to figure out train times and book hostel ahead of time.
En Paris
Paris is a full on experience. Even it’s subway system seems more complicated than that of other cities at first. The first day I was there it felt like everything was running in fast-time; but it was probably a cause de la sleep deprivation: I had to take a night bus to Dublin for my flight, meaning I missed a night’s sleep. I took a flight to Charleroi, Belgium, then a bus to the train station, then a train to Bruxelles, then the Thalys high speed train to Paris.
There is definately a romantic feel to the city, from the public displays of affection to the many couple centric activies; however I wouldn’t call it cliche – it’s not at all like the movies really. Something that I don’t think many people know is that there are a lot of Japaneese people in Paris, mostly tourists I think, as that’s where I keep seeing them. If they’re not the biggest tourist ethnic group then they might be close to it. What I like about them is that they’re not afraid to take a tripod with them to take photos – other people use a flash for instance to photograph Arc de Triumph at night – no point, crap photo. Some people also don’t get the message that you can’t use flash in some places, or maybe they don’t know how to turn it off, or maybe they’re the worst photographers ever. I don’t understand the mentality of peope that still carry around video cameras to film tourist attriaction, that stuff never makes complelling viewing – no script.
Yesterday I checked out Notre Dam, Latin Quarter, Eiffel Tour, Champs Elesee other things I can’t recall. Today I spent about 4 hours in the Louvre (not enough), seen the catacombes, the Graveyard place ( which I didn’t have the map for, so the only grave I got to see was dear old Osar Wilde and Georges Pompideau building (didn’t go in).
Tomorrow it’s on the Thalys again to Amsterdam.
Off to Europe
I’m travelling to continental Europe in two days. I have a 10 day within 22 day interrail ticket, but only have about 2 weeks until I need to come back. The rough plan is something like Brussels-Paris-Amsterdam-Berlin/Munich-Prague/Budapest-Vienna-Florence-Rome but that is likely to change (map). I haven’t yet really thought about what I want to visit, other than the catacombs and that graveyard in Paris, and the scientific historical locations in Vienna.
If the cyber-cafe internet on the continent is reasonably priced, then I’ll hopefully blog and post photos – I’m not bringing my laptop as that is just not sensible.
If you want a more interesting read, I recommend this guy.
Beauty of Mathematics
While posting videos is not something I do very often at this blog. I came across this one particular documentary film that really struck me. It’s called Dangerous Knowledge and it’s about four thinkers — Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing who destroyed any hopes we would ever have for certainty in knowledge. The film is especially powerful to me right now as I have for weeks been obsessing with the limits of knowledge, undoubtedly to unhealthy levels. This film does not tell me anything new of course, but it presents it in a light that shows how very deep these problems were to these great mathematicians. The commentary for the documentary was also well chosen — Gregory Chaitin and Roger Penrose among those talking. At one point I was almost reduced to tears by the beauty that was hinted at.
IT Crowd series 2
A new season of the British sitcom, the IT Crowd, set in an IT department/basement has just started showing on TV. It’s from Graham Lineham (the same guy as Father Ted). I must admit that first time round I didn’t find the series that funny (and neither did many people), or at least not laugh-out-loud funny; but the new series I’m glad to say had me in stitches. The characters are all basically still the same, but their production values seem to have increased massively. The first episode wasn’t set in the office, so maybe that had a large part to do with the hilarity.
If you can’t get it on TV, then fear not, it’s all over the interwebs. Check out stage6 or youtube.
Where am I online?
Just like Gareth, I lead a very fragmented life online.
Del.icio.us – where I put all my bookmarks of interesting and useful stuff I find on the web.
For social messaging: Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.
Facebook – my social network of choice, I also have stagnant Bebo, Orkut and MySpace profiles.
I also have Flickr photos, youtube videos, Plazes, Last.fm, allconsuming and 43things. No doubt I’ve missed a few, and some of these I barely use, such as digg and reddit accounts.
Obviously this list will save private investigators plenty of time.
Gecko engine does not render vibrant images on the mac
I was looking at this beautiful image today in Firefox and made it my desktop background, but then I noticed that it looked even better as a background than in the Firefox window. A little more investigating revealed that (at least on mac) Gecko doesn’t render images as vibrant as Safari.
Webkit (Safari) vs. Camino (Mozilla):
Just something to keep in mind next time you’re Flickring.
Democracy
The polls will close in ten minutes for the Irish general election. Unfortunately I am outside my constituency and cannot return as it is exam time (and I also didn’t have a chance to move my vote or do a postal vote). A few people have mentioned that the government scheduled the election at this time because they knew students would be away from home doing exams now, and students are generally thought to be for change (some people also comment that Sinn Fein has a large student support these days due to their socialist policies). At least we’re better off than in the UK, where because of first-past-the-post, the Lib Dem voting students at home have almost no effect nationally.
It will be interesting to see how it goes anyway. We might be electing the people that will see this country’s economy collapse, even though none of them acknowledge that it will.
Junction
At this junction in my life, and I don’t really know where either path will take me. Both paths are one way only. The decision will soon be taken however.
