Can I Cancel Today?

It’s Friday and it’s raining really hard. Maybe I should just call in sick .

Bucharest Pics

It snowed on Friday and then was it overcast the whole weekend. Perfect weather to stay indoors and… process photos. So, a few months later, here are my pics from Bucharest:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106218092472065050772/Bucharest2011Public#

I think this is my favorite, with the old reflected in the new:

Dear Blog, I Have Betrayed You with Instagram

And, the horror, Facebook! What a double whammy. What, you didn’t know it’s much easier to share links to interesting articles others wrote than labor on creating some meaningful content yourself? Sorry I have to break this news to you.

Then, ever since I got an iPhone for my birthday and Christmas, courtesy of Steve, I’ve been mesmerized by Instagram, a really cool photo-sharing app. I’m not sharing as many photos as I’d like, but I do enjoy following the work of some amazing photographers. And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing lately, in case you’re wondering. I don’t want to abandon my blog, though, and I feel bad about my tiny but loyal audience I haven’t been feeding regularly. I’ll try to post more from now on, though; both text and pics.

And no, I haven’t forgotten that I once left Facebook for what I thought would be forever and I got back somewhat reluctantly. But I have to say that the iPhone and Facebook are a match made in heaven and it’s due to the phone and its myriad photo apps that I started posting more on Facebook.

Thankfully, I still have things to say, so you’ll be hearing from me soon.

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!

Overall, a Great Year!

Osama bin Laden, check.

Moammar Gaddafi, check.

Kim Jong Il, check.

Speaking of, here’s some inspiring “mandatory public crying,” as The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch aptly describes it.

Then, enjoy the cheerfulness of this great photo essay with images from North Korea:
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-korea/100119/. Those dreary apartment buildings are only a tad more depressing than what you could see in Romanian cities, especially in Bucharest. Which you can see at
http://www.vice.com/read/everyday-life-in-communist-romania-0000001-v18n9.

Oh, and this other report from VICE, via CNN:
http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/12/20/natpkg-vice-inside-north-korea.cnn.html

Hopefully, these long-overdue deaths will mark the end of the respective eras created by their distorted heroes. Or at least the beginning of the end, although, considering that in Romania things are still far from normal 20 years after communism fell and, in some respects, have got worse, I can’t be too optimistic.

My Wish for 2012

To win a million dollars (or more) and have my friend, Diana, be my personal shopper. I’ve never had patience shopping for clothes and I’ve always had a utilitarian approach to it: get things that generally match, in some basic, solid colors and wear them to shreds.

When I went to Romania, Diana, a dear friend from college, was purging her wardrobe and asked me if maybe I wanted something. I looked at the myriad shirts, dresses, skirts, and pants. Um, yes, all of them. And, while we’re at it, can I just have your whole wardrobe, actually? Diana has fantastic taste and a great sense of play. Everything she picks is cool. As for me, give me something brown and comfortable and I’ll wear it for 15 years.

And yes, I could easily turn this into a conversation about money and how I’m squeezed by large but necessary expenses, etc., but it’s really about me not being able to play with clothes and get maybe once fanciful item a year. It inevitably has to be something practical.

So there, Santa. I don’t need you to bring me a gift. Just arrange with the lottery. Diana is already on board and ready to assume her new role.

Steve Jobs and Craftsmanship

[Note: totally self-congratulatory post.]

Did I say that Steve Jobs was a craftsman or did I not? He uses the word at least two times in excerpts from The Lost Interview, as reviewed by Time.

- “there’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product.”

- “The product genius that led to that monopolistic position is rotted out by people who have no conception of good products vs. bad products – the craftsmanship required.”

Of course, I didn’t know anything about this until today. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. Then I started to suspect that maybe I did hear about this somewhere and then it seemed like it was my original thought. Although I usually remember if someone else said something, even if I don’t remember who exactly.

So I searched for “Steve Jobs craftsmanship” on Google to see what else is there and if it rings any bell. The only other thing along these lines that came up at the top of the search results was a blog post from August this year, titled Steve Jobs’ reverence for craftsmanship. So, OK, someone else stumbled upon this before me, but prompted by another Jobs quote:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it.”

This other quote offers me even more validation of how smart I am (ha ha!): Jobs uses carpentry as an example of craftsmanship, which is what I did. Sure, that’s a very obvious example to pick, but I thought of Jobs as a craftsman after I had actually visited the shop of a guy who was both a carpenter and an electrician, who makes custom electric guitars.

Iz smart.

TeamViewer Rocks!

First, watch this hilarious short film that captures perfectly how (at least) Romanian parents react when having to turn a computer on and use it to communicate with their overseas kids. Almost everything in it applies to my mom, particularly the fear that she’ll break the computer if she clicks on some button.

If your parents are in a similar situation, TeamViewer is there to help. I never had enough time to show them everything I wanted. With TeamViewer I get access to their computer and show them whatever they need to know. Hundreds of pages of notes would do nothing in that regard because the first thing you need to do is allay their fears that they’ll break something. Showing them how to do stuff is the perfect learning experience!