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  • 2 min read

Spain Security Situation

Several people asked me about what the security situation in Spain felt like. I have to admit it did give me pause to be going to Spain little more than a month after the terrorist attack on the trains in Madrid. In fact our travel plans included several long train rides. I checked with friends who live in Spain, and also looked at the various State Department notices, and all in all decided that the risk wouldn't be major. I did expect to see a major security presence -- you know, soldiers with machine guns in the airports, etc. But otherwise I wasn't especially worried, but curious what we'd find. I remember how shell shocked we were in the U.S. two months after 9/11.

Well, here's the surprising thing. There was almost no noticable security presence or sense of mourning, danger, worry. At the airports there was no more than the usual security presence. At the railstations there was nothing noticable. Nothing at all.

In the high velocity train, you had to check in and go through a metal detector like at an airport, but again very casual. At the main Madrid rail station there was again nothing noticable.

In each city we stayed in hotels located right on some central plaza. The Spanish love to hang out! In Madrid, in the Puerto Del Sol area, at 10 and 11 at night, on a week days, there were throngs of people, walking around, or sitting in cafes drinking beers or coffee, and having a good time. Like Time Square in New York.

I was pleasantly surprised. Friends here that hear that story are amazed.

  • 1 min read

Windows, Windows, Windows Everywhere

In the accompanying photo you can see one of the ubiquitous TV screens sprinkled all around the Spanish subway system. They display up-to-the-minute information about arrivals and departures, in real-time, also ads and other commercial announcements. Very useful!

But wait, look closely : This is a Windows based application, if you can believe it! There's a big fat Windows error message displayed in the middle of the screen! If you look really closely, you can tell it's in Spanish!

  • 1 min read

Back from spain

So as not to leave you hanging, I just want to report that we are back and had a great time in Spain. We went from Granada to Sevilla to Madrid, by plane and rail in 8 days. Spain is a very interesting and fun country.

  • 1 min read

Great Read: Angels and Demons – Dan Brown

By sheer coincidence, the day before leaving for Spain, two people independently mentioned to me that Angels and Demons by Dan Brown was good, even better than Da Vinci Code by the same author. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble as my light reading for the trip.

This is a great, quick read. A page turner. I recommend it. And indeed I agree that it was better and more interesting than Da Vinci Code. Interesting as Angels and Demons is an earlier book, and still Da Vinci Code is the one that is selling through the roof.

In today's New York Times, there is an interesting article about 'Defenders of Christinanity' jumping in to 'rebut' the Da Vinci Code. Maybe I'm dense but when I read it, it didn't strike me as attacking Christianity.

  • 1 min read

Hello from Spain

Geeking out from an Internet Cafe in Granada, Spain. We´re here for a short vacation, and we have a little time to kill this afternoon so I thought I´d quickly post an update for those of you who know (or care) that we are away. Granada is a nice little town in Southern Spain, with a Moorish or Middle Eastern influence. We spent hours yesterday wandering around the Alhambra, which was great, although we are paying with our feet today… Tomorrow we leave for a few days in Sevilla. See you there.

  • 1 min read

Area codes become meaningless

A good little insight from Rafe Needleman in his new column over at ZDNet.

" The reason it won't last: If you can get a telephone with any area or country code, the whole idea of a vanity area code will eventually evaporate. It won't be like a real-world address, which for the most part still represents a physical location. While roaming cellular phones have already begun to make area codes irrelevant, VoIP will finish the job. Soon, area code will be one of those anachronistic telecom terms, like dialing, that doesn't mean anything close to what it once did. "

  • 1 min read

Follow-up to Subservient Chicken

The true story comes out about the most excellent subservient chicken gimick. I mentioned it a few days ago when I first saw it; it was amazing how quickly it spread. Here is an article giving some background on how it was done, where it came from and what the thinking was: "In fact, CP+B came up with about 400 different actions that the chicken could do, and then filmed them in the course of a day in Los Angeles."