Monday, June 13, 2011

Never Upgrade

This has been my mantra for technology: once you've gotten it working, don't upgrade it.

I break from this strategy from time to time, and I always regret it. Case in point: a month ago, upgrading Android. For some amount of time (days? weeks? months?!), my Android had been politely informing me that there was a system upgrade available for my downloading, and I always politely informed it, no thanks, maybe some other time (thought what I really meant was never).

At some point, the system upgrades got a little pushy and decided it was high time for me to download OS version Gingerbread, so they started to pop up little message boxes every time I turned the screen back on. I could tolerate the boxes for the first few days, but it really started to get to me when I had to close the pop-up message every time I wanted to take a photo.

So I gave in. I downloaded the upgrade. And I regret it every time I use the phone.

First off, the battery life is now non-existent. No new programs appear to be running in the background, but possibly the new crappy icons and "whoosh" effect when the screen turns on and off has a hand in it, especially since the whooshing happens a lot when I have the wi-fi turned on but with the phone itself idle.


Secondly, I had a major problem with my free calling setup, the cause of which is unclear to me. I wanted to initially blame the problem on the upgrade, but I think the problem may actually have been with PBXes. So for any of you still sporting a SipDroid + Google Voice setup on your Android, if you start getting any SipDroid timeouts or 401 authorization errors, two things to try that will hopefully fix your problem:
1) Make sure your SipDroid password matches the password of your PBXes extension. (Not sure how mine became different, but at one point they did.. perhaps by magic!)
2) In PBXes, go to Personal Data, then restart it.

Sigh... shoulda just tried to get rid of the annoying pop-up boxes with the old OS version.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Graffiti Walk

Something I've noticed about Europe is that graffiti enjoys a very different status within the culture than it does in the US. Whereas in the US, graffiti is generally something frowned upon, to be cleaned off an afflicted building immediately, and generally located in less-than-savory areas of town or signaling the presence of crime, European graffiti seems to be a point of pride. It doesn't get painted over quickly (if ever), and it can be found in abundance in any location. There are even some spots specially reserved for artists to come practice their spraying art.

As expected, many sprayers are angsty teenage boys searching for an outlet, some advertising anarchy or other political messages, but sometimes the art is cute, sweet, or even poetic. Here's a collection of some of my favorite, most noteworthy small graffiti works I've seen over the past few months. (My favorite one, due to its striking contrast, was mentioned in an earlier post.)

Oerlikon Nord train station
Choose Your Leader

Not graffiti, but nonetheless interesting building; I like to think it's home to anarchist squatters
"She's My Baby" in Verona. See if you can spot it!

Zurich tram
Stuttgart artist, photographing his work
"The rock of truth and the water of righteousness form life for eternity." outside Zurich
Though I don't have a picture of it, one of the most inspirational graffiti works that I often think back on is painted on a sidewalk on Euclid Avenue in Berkeley. It's a simple, blue, stenciled-looking work with a picture of a small tree branch with leaves on it and the message "breathe, you are alive."

Mild Anarchy

I paid a quick visit to Strasbourg, France, and I have to admit, I was more pleased with France than I was expecting to be. The Petite France area was quaint, the Notre Dame impressive, the Rhine calm, and the trams comfortable, but it was the food and atmosphere that impressed me the most. We all hear about French cuisine being so great, but I figured it was just European snobbery; after all, food in Italy was good, but not all of it was fabulous, and same goes for most other places in Europe I've eaten. But every meal I had in Strasbourg was really good and well-prepared.


On top of that, there's a feeling of light anarchy, layered on top of shallowly-hidden hot tempers attitudes. I feel this disregard for organized rules is best exhibited at crosswalks. Pedestrians pretty much walk when they feel like it, though they generally do it when there's only a little traffic coming; with this attitude, I almost got myself run over back in Switzerland. I suspect the anarchy would be dialed up a notch in other parts of France that aren't tempered by Germans as the Alsace region is.

The Strasbourgeois seem to stay up very late, with streets not emptying until well past midnight, and in the dark of night, there were large numbers of people hanging out in the Orangerie park, chatting, making guitar and bongo music, and generally loving life. (Despite the reputations of France and Italy, however, I still think Switzerland seems to sport the most PDA of anywhere I've been in Europe.)

Lord help me, but I kind of want to move to France now.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

"The Other Place" and "The Other Other Place"

My UK tour finished up with visits to Cambridge and Oxford, back-to-back. In Cambridge, I got to go punting for the first time, and the weather was lovely the whole trip, if a bit too windy.

Oxford was also quite nice, and a lot of the students had examinations that day, which meant they were running around in their navy uniforms with little pink carnations pinned to their blazers.

Neither is a school of slouches, with both places having lots of famous names associated with them: for starters, Cambridge has Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin; Oxford, Lewis Carroll and JRR Tolkien. Both have lots of character created by the lovely old stone architecture, spared from the bombings the rest of England experienced during WWII. The main differences I perceive in the two towns is that the colleges in Cambridge play a greater role in shaping the image of the town (or is it city? I get confused about the European standards); Oxford's colleges tend to be a bit more hidden, and Oxford itself has wider streets that seem a little more car-friendly.

I always figured myself for an Oxford type, based on the fact that I have friends associated with Oxford, but I have to admit, I think that when it comes down to it, I'm more of a Cambridge fan.