Saturday 24 February 2007

Lost shoes


Did you know there is a lost shoe database in Germany?
Rheinschuh is a database of shoes and gloves washed ashore on the river Rhein.



Have you ever thought how difficult it is to loose just one shoe? What the heck do you do with the remaining one?


I have been thinking about that more than once but then I have seen it happen. Well not actually, but I have been there when it has happened.


It was on a roadtrip to Sicily. We were just two couples in two cars and have been hitting the road for a few days. It was a hot August day and we were rolling down one of the Italian motorways somewhere near Salerno. Like many times before, we have stopped by the road to stretch and refresh ourselves.
After a while we were back on our way. It was at our next stop when I have noticed that one of my friends from the other car was wearing a pair of heavy hiking boots. Did I mention it was hot like hell?
At first she wouldn't say what was happening, but after a while she confessed.
During our previous stop, she was sitting in the car eating a sandwich. The door opened, one leg in the car and the other outside, with sneakers half off her feet.
When it was time to go, she had already shaken her sneakers off her feet - the left one inside the car, the right one outside. She just put both her feet back into the car, closed the door and off we went.


After we have heard the story, we just couldn't stop laughing. It was an unpleasant situation, but funny nonetheless. When she noticed one shoe was missing we were already hundreds of kilometers away from that spot and had no desire to go back.
In the end everything was well - those were only old sneakers anyway. The remaining one went into the first trash can and she bought herself a new (complete) pair. The event fortunately didn't spoil the rest of our vacation.


Italians unfortunately didn't have a lost & found shoe office in southern Italy where we could claim the lost sneaker. ;)


Buy a DVD video titled: Visions of Italy - Northern and Southern Style

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Friday 23 February 2007

Skiing checklist


I have always had problems with packing for longer trips. Usually I have started packing just hours before the actual departure. It has happened quite often that I left an item or two at home. If by a strange coincidence I didn't forget anything, I was nervous for at least a couple of days afterwards. I just had an annoying feeling that there must be something I have forgotten. Can anyone relate to that?


The photo is showing the state of our apartment after me and my girlfriend unpacked our stuff (not all of it is visible) from the car after a three week camping trip to Corsica. Try to pack that much stuff without forgetting anything. Would you believe all of this stuff was driving around in a Renault 5?


It was years ago, when a friend of mine gave me a great idea. Why not make a couple of simple Excel tables with items needed to be packed in my luggage.
I have come down to just a few travel checklists: summer camping at the seaside, summer holidays in a hotel, mountain hiking, sailing, skiing and one for business travels.
Of course all of the mentioned lists change each time according to some specifics. You also need to take into account your needs (e.g. if you regularly take some kind of medicine, you shouldn’t forget to pack it). Even I check the list every time I use it and add an item or two if necessary.


Here is a skiing checklist which I used for this months one week long trip to Italian Dolomites.

Skiing Checklist
ItemQuantityPacked
Passport1Y
Cash (EUR)500Y
Bank cards2Y
GSM & charger
1
Y
Digital camera & charger
1
Y
Maps
2
Y
MP3 Player
1
N
MP3 Music CDs20
N
Sunglasses
1
Y
Swiss army knife
1
Y
Books
1
N
Board & card games3
Y
Pen & paper
1
Y
Thermo flask
1
Y
Skis & ski-sticks
1
Y
Ski goggles1Y
Ski boots1Y
Ski suit (jacket & pants)
1
Y
Ski mitts
1
Y
Leather gloves
1
Y
Scarf
1
Y
Cap
1
Y
Socks & stockings
6
Y
Underpants
6
Y
T-shirts
6
Y
Gym-pants
1
Y
Sweat shirt
2
Y
Trekking pants
1
Y
Jeans pants
1
Y
Towel1
Y
Backpack (25 l)
1
Y
Slippers
1
Y
Trekking shoes
1
Y
Umbrella
1
Y
Bag with toilet set
1
Y
Sunscreen
1
Y
Lip gloss (protective)
1
Y
Medicine (pills, plasters, etc.)
n
Y
Condoms (pack)
1
Y
Schnapps (bottle)1
Y
Food & drinks for the road
n
Y

If you think there is something missing, please do post it in a comment.

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Surfing the web


As a person working in the IT field, I just can't make it without an IT based post once in a while. This time I am going to write about most often used applications today. I think it's safe to say those are Web browsing applications.


I have been using such applications for quite a while and have tried many of them in the process. My first contact with internet was with a help of Netscape. I liked it, but over the years it has fallen behind in its ability to properly display more complicated web pages. Microsoft Internet Explorer took advantage of that and soon became the most popular web browser by far.
It took other players some years to recover from that. Opera and Mozilla Firefox were amongst the most successful ones. For a limited period of time compared to Firefox and IE, Opera has had more advanced features. Soon Firefox took off on the wings of its many plugins and almost 100% accurate display of web pages.

The advantage of Firefox is in its simplicity and consequential speed. Almost every functionality you can think of, can be included additionally in the form of an add-on.
Recently Microsoft has released a new version of IE, which has simply copied many of the Firefox's proven functionalities. As a response to that Firefox 2.0 has been released. If you ask me, currently it's the best web browsing tool out there.
It costs you absolutely nothing to try it out, but could gain a lot. It's faster then the competition, safer from spyware than IE, comes with a Google toolbar and thousands of various add-ons, which help you to make it your own.
You can try it by clicking on the Firefox link in the right frame.


Below you can see a screenshot of most used web browsers by visitors of this photo blog. The screenshot was taken in Google Analytics.


Global statistics at OneStat.com show that in July 2006 83.05% of all web surfers were still using Microsoft IE. Mozilla Firefox was used by only 12.93%, but its share is growing every day. Other followers are Apple Safari, Opera and Netscape with 2 percent and less.


You can find the link to downloading the latest version of Mozzila Firefox in the right frame. Be one of the smart ones and use Firefox 2.0 to surf the web!

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