Canada 2006 - 2nd leg

To everybody left behind,
today is launch of the journey's second leg - from Vancouver to the Rockies, after Vancouver, Victoria, and Whistler are sucked dry. More or less. If everything goes well, tonight should be Lake Louise after a long drive across BC, and tomorrow a leisurely day looking for lakes, glaciers, and mooooses. No Problemmooses, thank you.

Vancouver Downtown:



Waaah - Indigeneous Art:


A Walk on The Beach at Sunset:


... with sea foot:


Seagull:


How to go to Victoria in style:


View of Victoria Harbour:



Problem-Sealions? No, thanks.


How to get around on a 450hp 44 knots Zodiac boat, looking for whales (but no whales there, instead sea lions and sea elephants (saying sth like "grrrrrgrrrrrgrrrrbrrrrgrrr") and sea seals) - not to be covered with shame:

Canada 2006 - July 24th, 25th Vancouver

My view for some 10hrs:



But I had the Max Legroom I had paid for:


Luckily, the jetlag you can see here is down to just 1.5hrs after two nights:






Probably the order in which the BC people place their loyalties:


I am aware this is not extremely impressive, but still - this is the first wild animal I've seen here which hasn't crossed my way before:



15cm away from BZZZZT:


And finally, some (modern, and not very representative) indigeneous art - The Shape Of Frogs To Come: BLAH!

Nokia E61 Phone Gets PJS Approval

Breaking News... "Nokia E61 Phone Gets FCC Approval" (breaking news from March 2nd 2006).

In any case, behold my new phone.
Frankly, it is less a phone than everything else. Actually, it is even somewhat difficult to place a call with that. But it seems to work, and the 1-EUR bid on Ebay was not a scam.



However, as yet it has not proven the be-all-and-end-all of my communication woes. Instead of providing me with a turn-key solution, rendering all other means of communication unnecessary, the UMTS/3G feature is still missing. Not from the phone, but from the provider. Or the network itself. Or something.
But I am still positive it may become available.
However, this leaves me with two devices (this new toy, and my Clie TH55 to which I have a subtly erotic affection) competing for pocket space, and so far I was pretty comfortable with the Clie's Graffiti text input, its Bluetooth, IrDA, and WLAN capabilities. So this new gadgets just sports the UMTS option, which, I have to admit, would be a definite knock-out argument - in case it should finally work.

(Um. I forgot the main reason for writing this post... the new phone numbers! It's +49-176-45045638 (mobile) and +49-921-1676644 (fixnet). Seems somebody - not me - screwed up the phone number porting.)

Intermezzo

Quoting from "Nach dem Verkauf ist vor dem Garantiefall: Warum die Qualitätskontrolle auch bei namhaften Firmen der Elektronikindustrie ins Hintertreffen gerät" from Telepolis:

Askese ist deswegen keine Lösung, weil in unserer Gesellschaft die Teilnahme am gesellschaftlichen Leben über die Waren vermittelt wird, die sie anbietet. Und weil es ein Webfehler der kapitalistischen Warenwirtschaft ist, zusammen mit der Entdeckung der Möglichkeiten, den Schrottkonsum zu demokratisieren, werden die meisten von uns auch weiterhin Geräte benutzen, die tendenziell immer weniger kosten, immer mehr können und immer häufiger kaputt gehen - ob wir das wollen oder nicht.

Vienna (II)

... more to follow later.
Uploading anything from at home with an antique 56kbps analogue modem is a royal pain in the ass.
I just hope the O2-Genion-surfing-over-UMTS won't fizzle.

Vienna (I)

One of the past weekends, I indulged myself in a short trip to Vienna. As I was in too much of a work mood (actually not in a mood, but a hurry) recently, I wasn't able to plan it well, so I chose the only short weekend around for that trip.

Anyway, I visited my friend F"Y"K from BT times who moved there for studies. I arrived there late, since I messed it up with the train schedule, so the only thing we could do was dance the night away in a Gothic establishment.



Later, we found a) something my colleague TG might appreciate (I've no idea what this is) and b) what makes Vienna Vienna, i.e. the Secession (which looked much more trashy than could be anticipated from it being shown on one Austrian Euro coin), and c) the Prater leisure park...