The Empire Weblog

This afternoon we have visited Grand Central Station (top left), Time Square (top right) and Ground Zero (bottom row).

Grand Central Station. As you can see on the picture it has a very nice Art Deco stylish Concourse which was used for several famous movies such as 'The Untouchables' with Sean Connory, Andy Garcia and Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, the opulence does not carry through to the platforms.

Time Square. It is one of the most famous places in Manhattan know for its many light advertising boards including the ones which show you the latest news from around the world and the financial markets. You also can find Planet Hollywood or the Reuters Building. The nice thing is: We can see Time Square from our hotel room. Ok, not in full but at least some parts of it.

Ground Zero. Originally, the expression 'Ground Zero' was used for areas were an atomic bomb exploded. However, after the terrible attacks of 9/11 (in Roman numbers: IXXI) it is also used for the area were the World Trade Center (WTC) existed. To see this area in real life combined with the pictures you have seen on TV gives you really a very strange feeling. It is very hard to imagine how it must have been when the two hijacked airplanes hit both Trade Towers and these finally collapsed minutes later.
Plans how the area ought to be rebuild are still discussed. However, the very likely proposal for a new skyscraper are from the well-know architecture Daniel Liebeskind. Discussions still continue and nothing is concluded.

Ater arriving plenty on time at JFK Airport in New York yesterday noon, we got up quite early this morning to go to the Central Park seeing Christo's 'The Gates'.
It is really nice. The bright orange color is a very brilliant contrast to the wintery Central Park scene. We also had the chance to talk to one of the park keepers. She told us, that all the material will be recycled, however, without any commercial interests. She also has given us a small piece of the orange material. Quite a nice unique souvenir. :-) Tomorrow, they will start to take down the installation.

Ok, we're off now to see Grand Central Station. Later this day, we'll probably go to Greenwich Village in Down town Manhatten. A must, I think, for us as we have the original Greenwich Village in London. :-)

New York, we're coming.
Tomorrow, we're going to fly to the Big Apple for the next four days. I am really looking forward to see and live that amazing city. Of course, I have all the famous tourist attractions already on my to-visit list, such as The Empire State Building (a must visit for the owner of the 'The Empire Weblog' ;-) ), Central Park with Christo's 'The Gates', Statue of Liberty and you name it.

However, our flight is already at 9.30am taking off from messy Heathrow airport. So, we decided to stay this night in a hotel near the airport since it otherwise it will be a pain in the arse to go from East London to Heathrow in the middle of the night!

Oh, and I also have to get a new digital cam. At the moment, I am ogling with Sony's DSC-T33. If somebody of you knows a better alternative which can offer the same slim and stylish design, leave a comment.

"If the predicted ice and snow arrives, you should consider travelling only where journeys are absolutely necessary."

That's how it sounds when a city which hasn't seen a proper winter for many years starts preparations for a possible forthcoming onset of winter.

Read the full press release by Transport for London (TfL)!

Seen today on Lower Clapton Road on my way home!

I just got an old English saying into my mind: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away!". Then I thought, well with a small change it is even more up-to-date then ever. And indeed, the change is only three simple characters which results in:

An Apple a day keeps the PC doctor away!

And old wisdoms always contain a truth! I think that's enough proof for switching to Apple and start enhancing your life in a new relaxed way!

For three days now I am trying BlogExplosion. It is a service where your register your blog and then you're going to visit other's blogs. For that, you will earn credits. As much as I have understood, the more credits you have earned to more traffic is diverted to your blog. Hmmm, unfortunately that does not necessarily mean that people will really stay at your blog and read it.

Ok, you have to stay a certain time, usually 30 seconds, on the blogs before you can switch to another one.

However, so far I got 45 visits but none of those visitors have left any comment yet. I will continue to try out this service if it really works for me otherwise I just will cancel my membership again. Luckily the membership is for free!

Ok, if you come to my blog and you think you like it or you like the topics I am posting about then just drop a comment and give some feedback! :-)

I got one now. Yes, I got an 1 GB iPod Shuffle. Since a friend of mine told me yesterday, after ringing all Apple Stores in the Big Apple, none of the stores has the iPod Shuffle in stock. That's why I decided to get one now here from the Store in London. They filled their stock yesterday again, but the bloke from the check out told me, that the 1 GB version will be probably sold within hours again.

Ok, I'm going home now and will try out my new gadget. Let's see, how it will work. :-)

UPDATE

February 21, 2005 18:46 (UTC)

I spoke to my colleague today who also wanted to have a 1 GB iPod Shuffle. I sent him a text on that Saturday straight after I bought my one. He was in the store by 3 p.m. However, all 1 GB iPod Shuffles have been sold out again.

IT-Columnist Walter S. Mossberg has published an article titled "While Switching to Mac Will Improve Security, It Isn't for Everybody". He mentions some reasons why switching to a Mac and Mac OS X might not be good step for several users.

However, I think the reasons given in his article are only half true. In my personal point of view as a long, long windows user for over 14 years till December last year, I haven't regret any second yet that I have switched over to Mac.

See here a few excerpts of his listed reasons and my comments on those:

"In general, the best candidates for a switch to the Mac are those who use their computers overwhelmingly for common, mainstream consumer tasks. These include e-mail, instant messaging and Web browsing; word processing, spreadsheets and presentations; working with photos, home videos and digital music; and playing and creating CDs and DVDs."

At the first glance, that might quite a good reason. However, if you have a deeper look at all Mac user, you will very quickly find out that there are many many developers no matter of what they develop. But also other power users you can find the the Mac community which just enjoy the easy to use Mac OS X user interface but also appreciate the underlying powerful UNIX operation systems. Especially for developers, that offers very good support in getting all the nagging stuff done just by using small but mighty shell scripts. There are plenty more reasons, why the Mac is not only for the mainstream consumer task user! I certainly am not a mainstream user - people who know me can approve that for sure!

"... Apple uses a one-button mouse without a scroll wheel, which takes some getting used to. There are differences in the way menus and desktop windows behave. And the standard delete key on a Mac works like the backspace key, not the delete key, in Windows. Mac desktop keyboards have a second, Windows-type delete key, but Mac laptops lack one."

To count this as a reason not to switch to Mac from Windows is just rubbish. Sorry for that hard words. The one-button mouse might be a bit out of date. However, does Walter S. Mossberg really believe, that a switching user does not have a working (2+n)-button mouse available from his PC. And even to be more precise: Once you will have worked with Mac OS X for a while you'll quickly realize that you don't really need a (2+n)-button mouse since most of the programs have such a good user interface that they don't use right-click context menus. There's only one exception which does extensively use context menus: MS Office.
What's the problem with the different window and menu behavior? People will find that much more intuitive and user friendly that the Windows way to deal with windows.
And for the missing delete key on Apple's notebooks: Just press 'FN + Backspace' and you will get the same effect. Got it?

"And don't consider switching if your budget covers only the cost of the Mac itself. There will usually be extra costs. To maintain compatibility with the Windows world, you will probably want a copy of the Mac version of Microsoft Office, which isn't included by Apple."

Is the Office included by Microsoft? Won't there usually be extra cost with a Windows PC as well? I do think so there are additional costs. You also have to pay excessive license costs for MS Office! On the Mac, you have a low cost professional alternative: Apple's iWorks. And for professional documents it is in any case better do mind MS Office and using Latex instead. And that works fantastic on the Mac since Tex/Latex is a child of the UNIX world. Furthermore, you can get many small but fine programs for less than 30 US Dollars which are really worth to have and pay for!

"People who depend on their company's IT department to manage and support their home computers may find themselves locked into Windows. Most corporate computer staffs support only Windows and know little or nothing about Macs."

This might be true, but the problem is that most of the companies' administrators are either not skilled enough (including Windows as well) or just haven't ever worked with a Linux/Unix based operation system before.
So indeed, it's time to change that and a reason to switch to Mac! :-)

"If you love Microsoft Outlook, you should also probably stick with Windows. There is no version of Outlook for the current Mac operating system. Instead, Microsoft includes an e-mail and organizer program called Entourage in the Mac version of Office. It's similar to Outlook but just different enough to bug Outlook lovers."

Oh, that's a very hot topic to discuss. To be honest: I don't like Outlook at all and I only know a very small number of people who prefer with it. Vice versa, I indeed know many people who gave it up working with it after they tried for a while. Outlook is one of MS masterpieces for awful user interfaces and menu prompt system.
My tip to that: Avoid Outlook as good as you can. I know in many companies it is used as it is in my one as well. And I have to work with it too. And I hate every minute I have to spent with it, especially the terrible calendar! And again: Why is it so widely spread in companies? Due to a lack of a broad knowledge of alternative systems by the corporations' administrators. Sorry to say that but it's true.

Regarding Entourage: It's works fine as a Mac OS X based Outlook pendant. Consequently, being lover of Outlook isn't any reason not to switch to Mac.

"People who rely heavily on financial software may be unhappy with the Mac."

Wrong! There are several really good alternatives available for the Mac and even able to import and export the data in the common Quicken format!

"If you use a portable music player other than Apple's iPod, or love the major subscription music services, Napster and Rhapsody, which work only on Windows, you won't be happy with a Mac."

Right and wrong! Right in that respect if you already have a MP3 Player other than one from the iPod family. But to be honest: Who don't want to have at the the smallest member of the iPod family: the iPod Shuffle?
And regarding services like Napster's music flat-rate: You should read this. That article reveals the true story about the Napster's music service which is, in short terms, only an investment without any return!

Ok, that's my small contribution to the Walter S. Mossberg's column. Sorry about invalidating most of his reasons not to switch from Windows to Mac. And I certainly know what I am talking about as a former 14 years Windows user. I started with MS-DOS and Win 3.1 to 3.11 to Win95 to Win98 (just for a short moment since it was one of the worst Windows releases ever) to Win NT 4.0 to Win 2000 and finally to Win XP. You can see I know more or less the entire Windows family. And I enjoyed it more than less for a long time. However, you still can get a better operation system which combines industry leading and proven technology with elegance and lifestyle. It's simple called: Mac OS X

Hmmm, I just looked in to the fridge and didn't find anything to drink. But that's not that big problem here in the UK. Just go out in drop in one of these Off Licence stores you can find almost at every corner. Well, maybe not in Notting Hill or South Kensington and Co., but here in Clapton or Camden you will have very likely good luck finding one. You can get almost everything in there what you also can get in a super market. And the best thing: Most of them have open till late. What's late? Mostly till 11 p.m. or later. A few of them have even open 24 hours.

Ufff, it's done. Or at least the biggest part of it is done. What? I think as a regular visitor of my blog ;-) you have already realized the big change. Yes, I did it! I've changed the layout of my weblog as well as its title.

I thought it's time for a change. Since it is almost one year ago I started blogging and the move from Germany it was definately time for a change of my weblog, too. As some of you may have realized I have a special personal link with the British Empire: I just like the contrast between being open minded, multi-cultural and open for new things and changes on the one hand and on the other hand still staying with its tradition and rituals as well as the people's special but lovely quirks.

I hope you like the new layout and if you have any comments, so just let me know!

My special thanks to Kubrick who designed the basic of the layout which is used by many weblogs. However, it is that nice that I don't bother about that. Also many thanks to Josue Salazaar who ported that layout to Movable Type since the design is/was original made and customized for Wordpress.

Today, 60 years ago, over 768 Royal Air Force bombers took off in Lincolnshire, England heading towards Dresden, Germany. They were the first wave of three bombing Dresden to support the Russian Army at the nearing east front. At 9.50 p.m., the first bombers appeared in the cloudless sky. It was Mardi-Gras and everybody was in a party mood to forget the surrounding danger and war. Short after 10.00 p.m., the first bombs hit the historical Old City (Altstadt) of Dresden, the area with all the famous buildings like the Zwinger, the Castle, the Opera House (Semperoper) and the Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) of which the ruins became the symbol of the destruction of Dresden for the next 60 years.

I don't really want to add comments about the necessity or not of these bombings. I am happy, that my grand mother and her sisters and brothers and mum survived the Firestorm. My grand mother and father had their house very near to the main station which was one of the main targets. All what was left of this house was one gable end with the frame of my grand father's bike hanging on a hook at the top where they had their flat. The rest had been eaten by the fire.

Unfortunately, I cannot attend the ceremonies today in Dresden, what is, for me personal, quite sad. However, we will go for Verdi's Requiem here in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall (Southbank) tonight which probably will be my sympathy in the ceremonies. And I think it is a very good sign, that I can do this here in the country from where the first bombers started with their devastating load.

The only way to understand all reasons and the consequences is to talk to people of both sides and looking the the circumstances of those days! I hope such a situation and war at all will never ever happen again!

I am just having a short break at the Apple Store here in London to have a look at the Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle. And it's damn right: they both are really gorgeous and small. Well, I better should say: really tiny. It's unbelievable.

One iPod Shuffle (1GB) will be mine. I hope, the Apple Store in the Big Apple will have one, when we go to New York in two weeks! :-)

Oh, I just have seen that there is also a retail store on Hawaii in Honolulu in that huge Ala Moana Shopping Centre. Hmm, what a shame I didn't pay that much attention to Mac already in summer last year. Otherwise, I would have realized that shop there, when I have been on Hawaii. :-)

Today at 00.01am o'clock IKEA has opened its largest retail store in the UK. However, it didn't remain open for very long. Already after 42 mins it was closed (and is still closed; according to IKEA's website at 20:17pm today). The reason for that was, that an unpredicted number of people charged the store to secure some special bargains IKEA offered just for the big opening night. Bargains have been a leather couch or the famous but 'everybody has it' bookshelf 'Billy'. In order for customer and also staff safety, IKEA decided to close store. Excerpt from IKEA's press release titled 'An incident at the opening of IKEA Edmonton':

The incident occurred as an unforeseen number of customers joined the midnight opening event and turmoil erupted outside the IKEA store. Crowd control precautions were in place according to plans but proved insufficient as some 5.000 to 6.000 people had arrived for the event. At the official time for the opening, 00.01am, a crowd outside of the controlled queue surged forward, causing a crush at the entrance to the store. The police have confirmed a number of injuries, but no further details are available at this time. Police is also investigating a separate incident near IKEA’s premises, in which a man was stabbed. The safety of customers and co-workers is of the highest priority for IKEA, and IKEA would like to express its concern and deep regret to what has happened.

Other articles about that opening tragic and certainly one of the worst events in IKEA's history can be found at The Guardian, BBC News and REUTERS.

Within the last two days, GeoURL.info received an overwhelming feedback by new registered sites. Up-to-date, there are over 315 sites registered. That are more than 200 within less than 2 days! Wow!!

My special thanks also to all of you, who are helping to spread the news about the new GeoURL.info service! If you haven't told your blogbuddies or friends about the relaunched GeoURL service, so do it straight away - now!

I will try to bring forward some improvements within the next days, including:

• Browsing through the database, that means that different entry points for searches will be possible.
• Providing some little icons, which I have collected from various sites. :-)
• Customizable layout for the main search results page, that means, it will be possible to provide an alternative style-sheet location. This enhancement will allow you to integrate the search results page within your blog or site in a sidebar or where ever and in your page's style and design.
• Improved input information checking during the registering process, that means disallowing IP addresses as URLs, or forcing to enter 'http://' for every URL, better duplicate URL handling etc.
• RSS syndication of user-defined searches
• Major and minor bug fixes regarding functionality as well as style/layout.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, how to improve GeoURL.info or features you'd like to see in the future, so let me know and me a line!

Enjoy the new GeoURL.info!

Since the re-launch of GeoURL in late December 2004, 108 sites (mostly blogs) have been registered. For me it is a very good sign that the service is going to be accepted more and more.

However, now it's my turn: I have to improve the service in both ways layout and functionality. Especially the registering process should become more flexible supporting the two most common HTML meta tags which are ICBM as well as 'geo.position' together with 'geo.location' and 'geo.placename'.
Also there should be a small search facility on the page and the search modes via links have to be improved.

It would be also nice if there is somebody out there who knows how to create graphics dynamically with PHP, ImageMagick & Co. because that would enable GeoURL to provide a map of the earth containing the locations of registered websites.

If anybody is interested in contributing some work or ideas for the forthcoming versions of GeoURL !

Since Apple has launched their new Mac Mini early in January during the Keynote of the Macworld in San Francisco, many news have been published about it. Also many computer magazines did test with it and, not very surprising, the overall rating was: Fantastic - Brilliant - Good Job!

Actually, I haven't see one in real but that is only a matter of time to have a visit in the Apple Store at Regents Street. However, the size and the design is already amazing: It is just 16.5 cm ins square and only 5 cm in height and weights 1.4 kg only! That's less than the lightest Powerbook. I think by these imposing measures it is easy to think of ideas for what all you may use Apple's new Mac Mini!

Here are the top three ideas recently discussed on several sites:

• Using the Mac Mini as a TV/Media Center. In my opinion, that's a great idea. It's really tiny and the design, of course, is again gorgous. So why not use it for such a purpose. A first project site has been launched as well. It is dealing with that challenge to turn the Mac Mini into the world's first marvelous home TV/Media Center. For more information have a look at the Mac Media Center Project
• Another idea is to use the Mac Mini for car restorations. The New York company Classic Restorations has already begun to install the Mini in some of their cars. For more information on that, read here.
• The latest idea is using the Mac Mini as low cost web server in data centers. And that's gonna to be a very nice idea. A US hoster is already offering a Mac Mini Colocation service which gives you the opportunity to get your own Mac Mini hosted in a professional data center. You have the choice either to buy or to rent a Mini. If you want your own you can get it via them or you buy it on your own and send it to them. From then on, your Mini is housed with many others of its brothers in a nice rack. To control it, you will get remote access. In my opinion that is a really really low cost but professional opportunity to have your own server. It's up to you what you put on it, you can use it as your backup system or as a world-wide accessible database server. No limits to your ideas! Fantastic offer! I will definitely have a deeper look at this service. :-)

These ideas are only the most recently discussed ideas. The Technology Review has published an article which list some 13 different ideas how else to use the Mac Mini other than just as a "normal" computer.

There are also many statements that the Mac Mini could start a big switching area from any other platform to Mac and its sophisticated operating system Mac OS X which will become even more ingenious by the next release called Tiger. Steve Jobs said it will be released long long before Longhorn - the code nome for the next Windows release.

And again: Go in a Apple Store or to your nearest Apple retailer and have a look. Maybe you start with a Mac Mini first just to get used to the Mac and Mac OS X. You don't have to by a new display or mouse or keyboard if you already have one. Just plug them to the Mac Mini and start enjoying Mac OS X.

Apple has released two videos (a short and a extended one) in which it presents very good reasons and facts about why Mac is brilliant for science.

Even although in the videos they cover over the life sciences, I am very convinced that Mac would be a very good choice for other sciences too, such as computer science!

Since Mac OS X is also UNIX based it offers you two things in one: a wonderful graphical user interface and the reliability, security as well as the power of the proven UNIX platform. No other operation system today can offer you all this in one.

But that's not enough: also just for daily life and private use, the Mac family with all it's beautiful designed hardware (iBook, Powerbook, iMac G5 or also the very powerful Power Mac G5) and the terrific Mac OS X is the ideal partner for you!

And again: if you're in London or somewhere in the US the next time, go in one of Apple's brilliant stores and just start playing with an iMac or an iBook or what you like. I am very sure this visit will have a crucial affect on your next choice for a new gadget.

On Friday last week, I got my new handset Nokia 7610. Since my relocation the the UK, I also needed a new mobile phone contract. Well, it wasn't that easy as it could have been. Originally, I wanted to have the new SonyEricsson S700i. However, this handset is only available with Vodafone or O₂. The problem with these two provides, however, is that I don't like Vodafone's handset branding at all. All their branded phones look like christmas trees. They put their logo and also that penetrating red color everywhere they can. And also their software is rather ugly than a pleasure for your eyes. O₂ again has bad reception in several areas in London, also here in Clapton. So, I had to look for another provider and ended up with Orange. They have the best network here in the UK and also offer quite good pay-monthly packages, such as the one I have gone with: 200 x-network inclusive minutes as well as 500 texts for all together (line rental inclusive, of course) just £ 30 a month. As a handset, I have chosen the Nokia 7610 since Orange does not offer the S700i. Anyway, I am really going to start liking my new blogging gadget since it has a very good display and also a good 1.3 mega pixel camera. That's why I can use it for quick shots when I am on the move through London posting them later here at my weblog :-) The first will be posted very soon, so stay tuned. Furthermore, the operation system is Symbian. This, for example, allows one to execute some tasks in the background, such as transferring a file via bluetooth to my Powerbook or Palm. While this is ongoing, you can use the phone for other things like placing a call - the original purpose of a handset. ;-)