L'America: Where Do I Get a Visa
As most people around the world know, America is split when it comes to immigration. One part of the country remembers that America is a country of immigrants. Even the oldest inhabitants came here from Asia, tens of thousands of years ago. To prevent people from entering the country, these people say, is unfair to them and to America, which has always benefited from successive waves of immigration. On the other hand, many people feel threatened in their livelihood and in the vision of a unified America by waves of immigration. Continue readingL'America: Introducing L'America
When I moved to America (from Europe), I was surprised at how different things were. I had to get used to a new life in every detail – from the banal and bureaucratic (“Where do I get a Social Security Number?”) to the social (“Why is dating so different?”). No sooner had I gotten used to everything being different that my friends and family in Europe started using me as a resource to explain to them why America did this, that, or the other thing. Continue readingThe Law of Wishing Well
Once upon a time, there were wells. Those were long, straight holes dug into the ground, usually with a retaining wall and a pulley. You dug until you hit fresh water and used that for drinking, bathing, watering the plants, etc. Some people thought that wells could be magic (they certainly could be tragic, e.g. if you fell into one and drowned). So they’d throw something (usually a coin) and make a wish. Continue readingHOWTO: Map Truecrypt USB Drives on Linux
One of the little annoyances with USB drives on Linux is that they are placed on a different device node each time, depending on the sequence with which they were mounted. The problem with that is that if you tell Truecrypt to mount, say, /dev/sde1, it might be a different drive next time you mount. My setup here is such that I have truecrypt mounting drives automagically using autofs. I have a smart script that knows how to mount all sorts of things, and truecrypt files are just one of those things. Continue reading
Habla Espanol? Chat Translation in Pidgin
I have a new surfing buddy in Mexico. He doesn’t speak much English, I am struggling with Spanish. It works fine in the water, because we just nod and congratulate when we hit a good wave – the expression of joy doesn’t need translation. Organizing a trip, though, was a nightmare until recently. I figured out that instant messaging was a good solution. I could type something in English into Google Translate, which is good enough for communication (although at times hilarious). Continue readingWhy Android Must Die - and Why Nokia Did It Right
Have you ever held an Android (or newer BlackBerry) phone in your hands and played with it? Have you ever experienced that sometimes, randomly, when you didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, the phone freezes for a variable amount of time? Nothing seems to be helping, you can punch keys and screen as much as you want, but the phone is dead. Then, miraculously, the phone springs back to life. Continue readingThe Ten Worst Habits of Advanced Surfers
YouTube has some funny videos – even about surfing! The one every novice should watch, though, is titled, How Not To Be a Kook. The YouTube player can not be loaded with disabled JavaScript. The following video is embedded here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TTvOyTtPzRg It’s a short compendium of the things you need to watch out for when you start out. The rules of the trade, the etiquette in the water, the all-important right-of-way. Continue reading
The Most Translated Pages on Wikipedia
There is a list on Meta, the wiki about Wikipedia, that contains 1,000 articles deemed important for a new language version of Wiki. So if you come up with some new language (not Klingon, please!), you should first translate these articles to kick start your project. I looked through the list and found it extremely arbitrary. It was pretty obvious it was a curated list that had someone’s opinion of the things that matter. Continue reading