Back in 2006 during our stay in Porto, Portugal, Oliver and I visited Livraria Lello, an historic bookstore in the centre of the city. I snapped a photo of the beautiful staircase in the centre of the store:
Two years later, The Guardian linked to the photo in Flickr in a story on book shops. Obviously having a photo linked to from The Guardian is a good way to get a lot of people to see it; here is the Flickr graph of views for the last 28 days:
It really is a beautiful bookstore, and if you’re in Porto you must stop there.
My friend Paul just called me on my mobile, a Rogers Wireless pre-paid, to invite me to dinner. We spoke for just over a minute. Because I’m “roaming” in the USA, the rate is $2.99/minute, and because it’s Rogers, the billing is rounded up to the minute, so the call cost me $4.98:
I don’t mind paying more to roam, and I don’t mind paying more for pre-paid, but $2.99 a minute is insane — it’s $180 an hour. Sigh.
Eastern Promises — Sunday afternoon at Hackesche Hoefe Filmtheater in Berlin, right around the corner from Plazes HQ. Ticket purchase went like this:
Me: Sprechen Sie Englisch?
Clerk: Nein. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Fortunately our language impasse was solved by the fact that there are only so many things one does in front of a ticket wicket, and I handed over my Euros and got my ticket. I thoroughly enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy garroting) and I came to realize that Vigo Mortensen is actually as good as everyone says he is. Hackesche Hoefe has a very nice setup (it’s a little hard to find, as the entrance is inside a courtyard and the cinemas are behind an unmarked door on the top floor of the building; it’s also good to understand that “So.” on the schedule is the abbreviation for Sunday).
The Darjeeling Limited — Sunday night at the CineStar at Potsdamer Platz. The first theatre I’ve been to since we saw The Avengers in České Budějovice in 1998 that I’ve been to a movie theatre with assigned seats. Very comfortable theatre with excellent sound and picture (the Big Screen is well suited to the movie, which has a lot of panoramic shots of trains in India). A great movie too, especially speaking as someone with brothers.
Atonement — On British Airways flight 239 from London to Boston on Monday night on my “personal video screen” on the back of the seat in front of me. This was old school personal video, so all the movies started and ended at the same time (more modern systems have video “on demand” and you can start and pause at will). The movie is not a stunning tour de force but neither is it without its virtues. Keira Knightley was far less annoying here than in anything I’d seen her in previously.
I Am Legend — On Tuesday night at the Peterborough Community Theatre here in New Hampshire. This is a tiny theatre that runs 6 nights a week showing first run movies in a town of 6,000 people, which is a rare thing these days. Got to sample a Twix Java chocolate bar, which was oddly alluring. By far and away the highlight of the movie was the magic of making New York City appear deserted, effects done so well as to be indistinguishable from real. Otherwise it was a pretty straightforward zombie movie.
I’ve posted a wrap-up of today’s frenzy of activity at PlazeCamp. I’m exhausted, and yet hopped up on many bottles of some odd-tasting carbonated tea beverage that Tilmann got me hooked on. Which is why I’m still blogging at 1:22 a.m. Today was lots of fun, with a great group of people and some interesting hacking; I’m glad I made it over.
Tomorrow I’ve going to take it easy, try to find a plaze to do some laundry, and then perhaps join some fellow Plazmonauts at Vom Funken zum Pixeln in the afternoon.
Of course today would be the day that the back-end of the Plazes weblog stops working for me, so no updates there until it gets fixed. But here’s a quick spin around the room:
By 11:00 a.m. there were 20 people here, and there are now about 24. We got started around 11:15 a.m. with introductions from Stefan, and then moved right into a introduction to the Plazes API documentation from Tilmann Singer.
Tilmann began with a caution that the API is still a “pre-release,” and so is subject to change (although not dramatic wholesale change) going forward. He then ran through the basic concepts involved: REST, the privacy model, authentication, and using cURL as an all-purpose testing tool. He took us on a run-through of the main API methods — how to retrieve an activity stream, how to create an activity, etc. while I stumbled along on a German MacBook keyboard, hunting for the vertical bar and confusing ‘Z’ and ‘Y’, showing examples live.
We finished up the “formal” part of the morning with a “flashlight round,” going around the room with each person introducing themselves and telling a little bit about why they are here today. Interests ranged from the technical to the academic to the artistic, and ideas put forth included building a mobile version of the Plazer, better Javascript-integration, building a KDE version of the Plazer and building an OS X Dashboard widget.
Right now there’s a lot of discussion happening in small groups all over the space, and little bits of hacking breaking out slowly.
Amazingly, given their proximity, there’s not much noise from these trains (which pass sometimes every 5 minutes) — more a “woosh” and a little rumble than any sort of clatter. Somewhat annoying at 3 a.m. when you wake up on Atlantic Time unable to sleep, but at other times only endearing.
A follow up to my missing bag story: I got it back, in Montreal, with an hour to spare before my rebooked flight to London.
When I arrived this afternoon at the airport top check in at British Airways the (very friendly) agent told me (a) that BA didn’t have my bag and (b) that Air Canada had mistakenly only checked it as far as London, so even if they did send it on, it would be waiting for me in London, where I’m only transiting through for an hour.
She advised against the Air Canada-mandated “just see what happens when you get to Berlin” approach and instead suggested that I go back down into the AC baggage dungeon where I’d spent so many happy hours last night for another try.
As with all such endeavours in life, most customer service success depends on the random chance of who happens to take on your case, and how passionately. I lucked in: curly-haired baggage agent didn’t stop until he tracked down a guy who might find my bag. After 15 minutes of waiting, the radio crackled to life with “Oui” and my man’s face lit up. Five minutes later my bag came rolling out:
As soon as I had it in my hands I removed the liquids and gels and resolved never to let it out of my sight again (British Airways staff encouraged this approach when I stopped by to thank them for their help).
Amazing that a old PC keyboard and a collection of shirts, socks and underwear can involve so much stress.
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