Things I miss in USA, next part / Drawing OPMs / Prices / New features / Who is…
In the elder days of art / builders wrought with greatest care / each minute and unseen part, / for the Gods are everywhere Wittgenstein quoting Longfellow
Getting a bit harder to find more, but I still try for a week or so.
A new principle: any design notation, which does not have excellent computer support, is next to useless. OPM is such a notation: great, well-thought notation, but totally useless for anything else but classroom use (due to lacking SW-support). This must be one of the reasons, why tools and methods from the academia fail so often. There should be a way of getting them out: more enterpreneur training?
Sometimes I would like to remember, what things cost in the past. Thus, a list of prices in Boston, 2005.
At the top of the page, two new features. Fist, the small picture on the left links to a graph, which shows the number of visitors and page views at my site during the last 30 days. Then, the semi-mandatory "blogs of note", a list of blogs I read regularly.
They are calling me several times a day. After a pause, they ask for Matthew Jackson. Who is this guy? Why are they looking him at my place? Should I play impostor and claim his identity? Maybe they would send me a check or something.
Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs November 2005".
Things I miss in USA, next part
Getting a bit harder to find more, but I still try for a week or so.- Total care laundry service
- Meringue - from Trader Joe's
- Barking crab restaurant
- Key lime pie
- St Mark's bookstore in New York
- Punk-rock karaoke at Continental, NY
Drawing OPMs
It is a pain to draw OPM-graphs. I do not like Powerpoint, so I got EasyDraw for 20 dollars. It seems decent. The OPM-book comes with some SW for drawing pictures, but the SW is really bad and old, runs only on Windows (I tried it on my old laptop, both suck), cannot save in any sensible format, etc etc. So, I will draw with EasyDraw and try to maintain my sanity. On MaC I can save pictures easily as .pdf, which is then directly usable with LaTeX. Not bad. Now I just have to write and draw.A new principle: any design notation, which does not have excellent computer support, is next to useless. OPM is such a notation: great, well-thought notation, but totally useless for anything else but classroom use (due to lacking SW-support). This must be one of the reasons, why tools and methods from the academia fail so often. There should be a way of getting them out: more enterpreneur training?
Prices
Sometimes I would like to remember, what things cost in the past. Thus, a list of prices in Boston, 2005. - Rent: 780
- T-token: 1.25
- Lunch in Chinese: 5
- Food in Vietnamese: 7-9
- Beer in bar: 4 or 5 per pint
- Beer to-go from bar: 11 per half a gallon
- CDs: usually 12
- Coffee: 1 (bad, in bad place), 3 (latte, in nice place)
- Newspapers: 0.5 (B GLobe), 1 (NY times), 4.5 (NY times, Sunday)
- Books: paperbacks less than $15
- Fish and chips, brewery pub: 10
- Bus to NY: 15
- Hotel in NY (2 persons, total): 76
- Rock/punk concerts: 12-20
- Truing wheel: 12
- Pinball: 1 (two games, 3 balls each)
- Soda: 1.7 (2l), 1.5 (1l), 1.3 (0.5l)
- Pistachios: 13, 2 pounds
- Bread: 2-3
- Soya milk: 3 (1.5l)
- Wine: 6 or more
- Beer: 7 per six-pack
- Flight to Finland: 600-900
- Renting sofa, 2 tables, chairs, etc: 130/month
- Cellular per month: 50, fixed: 25, electricity: 20, adsl: 30
- 256MB USB-stick: 20
- Laptop (iBook): 1000
- Tivoli Audio (radio, extrea speaker, CD): 379
- T-shirt: 5 at cheap shop, 15 at COOP
- Taxi to MIT 5, from South Station: 6
- Lobster: 12-20 depending on place
- Foreign Affairs, students: 18 per year
New features
At the top of the page, two new features. Fist, the small picture on the left links to a graph, which shows the number of visitors and page views at my site during the last 30 days. Then, the semi-mandatory "blogs of note", a list of blogs I read regularly. Who is Matthew Jackson?
They are calling me several times a day. After a pause, they ask for Matthew Jackson. Who is this guy? Why are they looking him at my place? Should I play impostor and claim his identity? Maybe they would send me a check or something. Food and drink in America
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America is a book, which I should have read/browsed before moving to Boston. It would have prevented some surprises. Maybe I can read it later - in some library, it is too expensive even for me. But did you know, that the first frozen TV dinner was created by the Swanson brothers in 1953. They had a surplus of more than 250000 kilograms of fresh turkey after their sales failed at Thanksgiving. Creative guys!USA boycott
I have seen calls for boycotting products from USA, for Bush refuses to prohibit torture. Maybe such a boycott would be appropriate. There is no justification for torture, ever. And since Bush says "we do not torture", he may as well sign a law prohibiting torture. As we know, he is not a man, whose words we can trust. (Similar reasoning also in the editorial of the Economist this week).Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs November 2005".
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