Flowers in the Grass

Flowers in the Grass
Originally uploaded by bristley.

We went for a bike ride yesterday. We rode to the Zugersee and then down the side of the lake. By the time we got to Kussnacht it was dark and so we skipped the last 10 km to Luzern and caught a train home.

This picture was from a field just near Zug. It's so pretty in Switzerland at the moment. There are flowers everwhere. It's about 25 degrees but as there's no cool wind it feels much warmer. Most people were in short sleeve t-shirts or singlet tops yesterday.


I can't believe that only 3 weeks ago there was snow in Zurich.

The Zimmers

I just found The Zimmers.



Filmed for a documentary for the BBC at Abbey Road. Beautifully made and edited - and of course well performed.

Qualifications

The Sydney Morning Herald had an article on immunisation today. As usual they had a quote from the Australian Vaccination Network. Whenever they have an article about immunisation they quote this "anti vaccination lobby group". I suppose they have a PR person who is always ready for a quote. It's like talking to the "Australian Pedestrian Council" if there's a car accident but a lot more misleading. The Australian Pedestrian Council is not a lobby group against pedestrians.


I really hate it when a lobby group gets quoted without stating what they lobby for. Especially when they've chosen a name so that they sound like they're a government group.

I wrote a letter to the editor which will probably never see the light of day - not for any nefarious reason but because the editor receives a lot of letters so here it is:

The article "No immunisation, no job: public health policy" (April 11, 2007), contains yet another quote from the Australian Vaccination Network. Whenever there is an article on vaccines there seems to be a negative quote from this group never stating their background.

Hunting on the web to find descriptions of this group I found the most succinct statement in your sister paper the Age: "The president of anti-vaccine lobby group Australian Vaccination Network... " (Doubt cast on vaccine February 22, 2004) scare http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/21/1077072890932.html?from=storyrhs). I think context should be provided for statements from any group - especially official sounding lobby groups

These lobby group are favourites of the Australian Skeptics Association among others. The Australian Skeptics group is a lobby group for people not being idiots. See - I provided context.

My New Bike

My New Bike
Originally uploaded by bristley.

I finally uploaded my photos. This is my new bike. I suppose it's not really pretty - it's a bit mean looking. It is very weeeeeeeeeeeeee.

So this photo was taken at Au. At the bus stop that says In Au. Au it hurts. Au the pain. Au Au Au. Actually I hadn't gotten my cleat adjustment right on my right shoe and so my right knee was a bit sore - so Au Au Au. It was ok the next day.

Swans Nest

We went for a walk along the Zurichsee and saw a Swan building a nest. I filmed it with my digital camera and made my first youtube video.




I found a creative commons licenced mix: Stop (blue mix) by Ghost_k and used it as a soundtrack.

I found it on ccmixter which describes itself as a

a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons

. Another very cool site.

Easter Weekend Books

I've been reading a lot over the weekend. I'm up to my fourth book and its only Sunday.

My favourites have been by Meg Cabot. Size 12 is not Fat and Size 14 is not Fat Either. Those are the Fictionwise links as I just discovered that Amazon doesn't list the 2nd one as released yet :-)

They are fun light fluffy mystery books by the author of The Princess Diaries. I saw the movie of this on tv not too long ago and Dear Reader and I both ended up enjoying it - which I didn't expect.

Our murder solving heroine is a ex-Avril like popstar whose Mother has absconded to South America with her money and other similar misfortunes left over from the end of her popstar days. She is now 28 and has just recently gotten a poorly paid job as an Assistant Directory of a Dormitory - sorry - Residence College in New York. Several murders ensure and all the other expected trimmings of the genre.

It's fun writing - love the main character and her calculation of meeting recommended exercise requirements by the walking necessary to get from her favourite cheese shop to her favourite bakery etc.

I kept reading little bits to Dear Reader that really appealed to me. It was funny and entertaining.

Watching Twitter

I was checking the Twitter timeline today for a little bit. It's worryingly addictive. Someone posted something like "just sent boyfriend out to shop for more cheese". I was checking back looking for the matching "buying more cheese" post but if it turned up I missed it.

I justed twittered that I was blogging about twitter and Dear Reader just got it as an SMS :-)

Online Music Stores

As I said in my last post I read review of online music stores. On Sunday we bludged around the house and I went to visit some of the DRM free stores they mentioned. Most cleverly promote themselves as iPod compatible :-)

emusic

At the moment emusic has a great big logo on the front and most things you click just have a register screen. After clicking on various of the smaller links at the bottom of the page I finally found a way to browse the site. I don't think that's a good marketing plan - how will I know if I want to register if I can't see the site.

Once I got to it's browse tab I thought it provided a lot of different ways of categorization of their music - genre, era, regions etc. I'm not sure I liked the idea of a subscription model. Although having 25 free downloads as their hook in is fairly clever - they you can get addicted before you have to pay any money.

AmieStreet

Amie Street is the one I decided I'd probably most likely use. It's pricing model is quite cool. Tracks start as free and then go up in price based on how much they are downloaded. People can make recommendations and if the track becomes popular get credit. The recommendations becomes reviews on the songs. I think it would be a fun game.

Magnatune

Magnatune has a "pick your own price for an album" model. The bottom price is $5. So this is a more an honesty system. They had some very nice classical albums. Magnatune is a also or actually a record label. They provide good statistics on their sales.

They also do a good business in licensing of the music. They've got really great non-commercial terms for web-sites and podcasts and also have a really easy way to licence music for commercial use. My only reservation with this model is the guilt - what is a fair price. The angst.


SongSlide
It's similar to the model mentioned on the Freakonomics blog in the article on "How much is that song? It's up to you which was about SongSlide. SongSlide said they were doing a minimum price per song but at the moment had only low volume.


My Favourites So Far

I thought Amie Street had the most immediately rewarding sales gimmick - you could buy tracks for free but still help the artist - free stuff plus warm happy glow from immediate gratification - very nice :-) Plus I liked most of the sample music I clicked on.

Magnatune had a lot of different ways of promoting their music - encouraging sharing of songs, encouraging podcasts, easy licensing. That was cool - it said somewhere on their excellent write up on their statistics that 40% of their sales (ish) were classical even from people who came looking for something else.

Online Music and DRM models

There was an interesting review of online music stores posted on slashdot today.

It was a review of some of the popular online music stores and their approach to DRM.

I find it interesting that I buy books online with DRM for my palm pilot but I won't buy DRMed music. I prefer Baen's model which is DRM free. Plus they've got their free library where they put some back catalogue book. This model has sneakily gotten me to buy a lot of their online books of authors that I would probably not have read otherwise.

For other publishes, I do get mobipocket and palm reader DRMed books normally at http://www.fictionwise.com/.

I think my internal logic is if I want ensure an artist gets at least some money with my purchase and it's music, I can buy the CD, rip it and get it into my preferred format - and we're both happy. The CD isn't very big.

Books are different. I don't have enough room in my bookcases for all the books I read as it is. At the moment I'm in Switzerland. Each time (twice now) we've returned home we've had to post back books that we wanted to keep that we've bought for going on planes or trains. Plus I like reading on my palm pilot - I don't have to carry a book around, I don't have to worry about finishing one because I can always have some more. I can always download them from the site again.

So I download a lot of books. The only way to download a book and ensure that the author gets at least some money in most cases is to get a DRMed copy. Plus the DRM on mobipocket is based on my palm pilot ID and as I've had palm pilots since about 2000 now, it's not been a major problem for me.

I was talking about that with Dear Reader yesterday and hadn't manage to formalize my reason. I feel better now :-)

The Ghost Map

I read the Ghost Map on the weekend. It was quite enjoyable. I'd heard the outline of the story before. I've read and seen reports on the London sewers and they normally at least mention the London cholera outbreaks and the way in which it was first linked to water transmission instead of Miasma. This was a much more thorough coverage of the events.

It was a good read too - I knew the ending and yet I didn't want to put it down.

I was struck by a few points - one of my favorites being infant mortality dropping due to a rise in tea drinking.

I went to the site about John Snow maintained at UCLA which is mentioned in the Ghost Map's references. Lots of cool stuff there.

Cycling in Zurich

We got road bikes a couple of weekends ago. Weeee. At lunch time yesterday I came back to the flat by tram and then I rode to work. Rode home, and then rode to work again today.

It's quite different from Sydney. There are so many people riding bikes here that car drivers are much more polite. I've noticed that as a pedestrian but the Swiss drivers are even polite to cyclists.

There are a lot of cycling facilities. Most are quite low key - a sign and some paint suddenly saying bicycles can go this way. Not that you can't go elsewhere just that the sign painters think that you might like it more this way. Sometimes there will be a short cut marked on a foot path. Lots of contraflow cycle lanes. Takes some getting used to but here the road won't be too busy so it seems to work.

I keep getting lost on the way home following a cyclist onto what I think is the right cycle route and ending up on one going somewhere else. There are so many.

Quite different from Sydney's limited facilities, painting lines on roads with bicycles in them that are also supposed to be used at the same time as car parks. No one has actively tried to kill me at all. Amazing.

Music and Lyrics

Just got back from seeing Music and Lyrics. It was lots of fun. Warning that the link goes to the official site and it starts singing at you straight away :-)

I thought the 80s film clip was very clever - spot on for the era as was the creation of the current era pop star. I was surprised at how good Hugh Grant's voice and piano playing was when I saw in the credits it was him. I actually thought they'd got someone to do the singing but looked it up on the site and he actually learnt to sing and play piano for the movie. He kind of reminded me of Tim Friedman from the Whitlams.

Seeing it in Switzerland of course we could select our seat and there was an intermission.

Blog Camp

We went to blog camp today . Only briefly as we slept in and missed registration. We went to an entertaining talk from Nicholas Berg from www.xing.com. He talked mainly about how peoples timeshare of media had changed to incorporate the internet. I liked his jokes.

Crowds at Sihlcity

Crowds at Sihlcity
Originally uploaded by bristley.

This afternoon to the first Saturday of Sihlcity. I think half of Switzerland did the same thing. The trams were standing room only and there were massive crowds everywhere.


Sihlcity is a new shopping centre in Zurich with a cinema attached. It was packed.

View from the Window

View from the Window
Originally uploaded by bristley.

It's been snowing overnight for the last two days in Zurich. I was going to work looking at daffodils on the way and now I'm going in snow.
Instead of green grass and flowers this is my view out to the Uetliberg.

The other times we've been to Zurich we've always been away when it snowed. I didn't expect my Zurich snow experience to be at the end of March.

Even stranger by lunch time both days it's been sunny and the snow is all gone.

Chicks Dig

We were at the bar after work on Friday and there was a classic.

Coworker A said - When I first saw the t-shirt "Chicks dig UNIX" I thought it was one of the funniest things ever.

Female Coworker B who is Swiss asks is this funny. I explain it is a pun - Eunuchs - UNIX.

Coworker A says - Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. I didn't think of that.

Now that's one of the funniest things ever :-)

Cool Furniture

I was reading Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald and they had an article on designers crossing over to furniture design. They had a long list of links at the end of the article. A few of them were actually incorrect which must be upsetting for the companies involved.

Anyway I went to the first one which was Anibou and saw some stuff I really liked. I know I won't remember which ones they were so here are some of the links:

I really liked this Artek Stool

Love the Wishbone Clothes Ladder by Caroline Casey.

Particularly liked the Stackable Stools by Jon Goulder.

There now I'll remember to go back and look at these pieces again when we're back in Australia and finally doing up our flat.

Lake

Lake
Originally uploaded by bristley.

We went to Locarno on Sunday. Dear Reader had a saw ankle so a train trip as an outing seemed like a good idea. We saw people in shorts and people wearing ski gear. In some areas there were flowers in the grass in others snow was still lying everywhere. It was a very clear day and the mountains were lovely.

We also had a very nice gelato. We were sitting outdoors at a cafe having a cold drink and kept seeing all the adults walking passed eating gelato. This seemed a good sign and it was excellent.

Treo 680

Just before we left Australia I got a Treo 680. I've had a Treo 600 for several years now and was now getting crappy static all the time. Well I wasn't the people listening to me were. So I got myself a Treo 680 and I really like it.

Dear Reader instantly took my old Treo, looked on the net, opened it up and wrapped some aluminium foil around the bit that needed shielding and now it works like a bought one. Well almost.

I'm glad I got the new one. It's easier to do things to the insides of your toy if it's not the only one you've got :-)

Things I was particularly pleased with:

- the upgrade of the software worked fine again. I have data in my palm dating back to 2000 and my Vx and it's still there.
- I like the new screen and the keyboard and phone quality.

I'm Back

Well I've been a bit lazy about posting. What has happened since I last wrote.
We finished our holiday. We flew back to Australia. I went to work on the Monday and there was a mail that said:

"How was your incredibly long flight? Would you like another one?"

So we are now back in Switzerland after a 3 week interlude in Australia.

We are in a serviced flat again. This one is a bit older and for the first few days we were very unhappy. This was because at 6am every morning an alarm clock started. We could hear it from the bedroom and it would wake us up. It would continue for 2 hours.

I finally discovered by walking into the stairway in my pajamas that it was coming from the flat below us and the serviced apartment people got it fixed for us. Now we don't mind the flat as much :-)

The weather is strange - 10 degrees and there are flowers. So much for seeing winter in Switzerland.