The scene: You, the traffic light, and the the next traffic light down the road. The result: The next light almost always wins, i.e., it turns red before you can reach it.
Change of scene: Almost every major road in Germany. Your light turns green and you start driving. Shortly before you reach the next light down the road, it turns green and you keep driving. Repeat. Continue reading
Posted in Transportation
A couple of years ago I upgraded my Handspring Platinum to a Palm Tungsten E2. Primarily, I was looking for a higher resolution screen, a color screen, and Bluetooth. I read all the reviews and found it for a good price, but when I took it out of the box I found out that Palm had changed the Graffiti to Version 2. This apparently was meant to be more intuitive by only using lower case characters. This might work well if you are not used to this input method. In fact, my wife was able to use it right away.
Being an old time Palm user (before the Platinum I had a Palm IIIx), I was less than happy. Continue reading
Posted in Review, Technology, Tips & Tricks
A mobile phone that I like every bit of is among the things I am always looking for. I have not found it yet; with every iteration I am getting a bit closer to the ideal. Each one was better than the previous in some aspects, while of course being worse in others. I was always able to convince myself that the trade-off was worth while, but every time I got some new features, I also gave up some. If I were able to morph the best features of my last two and my current cell phone into one, it would be close to optimal. Continue reading
Posted in Review, Telecommunications
Of course there is no such thing as criterias. Nor are there maximas or minimas. If you had had the opportunity to have Latin in high school you would know that the word form ending in -a designates the plural form, while the -um designates the singular. Criterion being an exception, probably because the language has changed over time from criterum to criterion.
But really, it has not much to do with whether or not you had Latin. Continue reading
Posted in Language
It is a well known fact that the personal space, or bubble, of many people in the US is rather large. If people from other countries with smaller bubbles, e.g., Europeans, step closer than 3 feet towards a local, oftentimes the local person gets uncomfortable and takes a step back to reestablish the bubble.
It is very interesting, however, that the bubble can shrink quite dramatically without the affected person appearing to be too concerned about it. Continue reading
Posted in General