Apple Bites

Ashtrays always remind me of cemetaries, so I feel like it might be an appropriate picture to commemorate the possible death of Apple.

By death, I mean that they have started doing a bit well in the past few years, and now they are kind of turning into the "other guys". What was always cool about Apple was that it seemed like a kinder, gentler, and often easier to use approach to computing. But it seems that they are kind of ruining it.

What happened to Apple? I was wondering what their approach to the Vista release would be and I must admit that I am pretty disappointed. On their website that has daily news from Apple two of their last eight entries have been basically "vista sucks" comments (granted, from "others"):

1. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/page1/
2. http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/16555680.htm

This seems basically to be following the plans of whoever it is that controls American business and politics and has decided that the best offense is a good defense. I forget the precise statistics but the percentage of political campaign ads that are making NEGATIVE comments about the competitor, versus POSITIVE comments about what the candidate actually plans to do if elected has grown insanely in the past decade.

This is not endearing.

And now APPLE of all people is doing it. The best policy would be to not have said anything at all. Ignore Vista. Hardly anyone can run it anyway. It is a non-issue. Everyone is already set to complain about it - let them. Just don't get involved. Focus on your own products.

This is of course not entirely out of the blue, what with the insane amount of money iPod has made them and the whole DRM kafuffle. Apple just seems to be in bed, all of a sudden, with exactly the same people I once felt (perhaps naively) that they were kind of separate from. Another victim of success.

So, right. This is a bar in Kreuzberg. And, you get there and it seems pretty normal until you notice all the people coming out and going into the closet in the corner.

Then, you're like, wait a second, let me check this closet thing out. And, blam, you are in a tiny basement dance party.

First Blood

I cut myself with a knife which I was using in a foolhardy manner. Apparently you need to lose 4 out of your bodies 12 pints of blood to actually die.

I tried to give blood before but was denied due to my "congenital heart defect". I like to think of it as my hearts desire for individuality. But I got to thinking about the red cross and their blood drives and the whole idea of blood donation. I mean, when did DONATION come into the picture? And why do we just accept this as normal? Is this from the war - another one of those things like income tax that just turns into a cash cow?

I mean, the Red Cross does not GIVE the blood it collects away, it sells it.

From a 2002 article on the cost of blood:

The information hospitals want is how much of that unit price is for collection and storage and how much for marketing and overhead. The Red Cross responds this way. “The cost of collection has certainly gone up. I can’t really quantify that because we didn’t keep very good records but I know now certainly it is very expensive to collect and process and ship blood to hospitals.”

And, as far as I can tell, the medical industry in general does not really seem to be hurting for money. And yet these blood donations remain kind of a badge of honor somehow. Somewhere a business man is laughing.

Finding a Place to Live in Berlin

Finding a place to live in Berlin is a strange little beast. It is both easier and harder than one might expect. It seems generally agreed that the three places you want to live are:

1. Kreuzberg
This is the "hippest" area of town. Perhaps the best nightlife scene if you are 32 or under. And not going to work in a suit. A lot of Turkish people live here - but more and more students and artists. I saw an apartment here that was 600m2 on two floors of a building occupied by 10 artists of various type. I felt that there was the most competition for places here - perhaps because of all the places I saw none were offered to me.

2. Friedrichshain
This, from what limited information I have gathered, seems to be kind of the new Prenzlauer Berg. Still kind of crappy, but getting the cool treatment now. I can't vouch for the nightlife personally but I hear that it is pretty good, and it is pretty easy to get to Kreuzberg if you are there anyway. I was told that the houses here are generally kind of crappier than in Prenzlauer Berg, but that if you are lucky you can get a really good one.

3. Prenzlauer Berg
Here, you have less of the feeling that you are going to "steal" a wicked place - like you might be able to in Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg, but every place that I saw seemed pretty decent. Prenzlauer Berg has kind of had its gentrification process already done on it, and to tell the truth, it makes things pretty damn convenient. I have every store/shop I need within a 3 minute walk of my house, and there are plenty of cool enough bars around, like Dr. Pong for example. I am living here, and it seems like kind of a nice and convenient place to stay while you look for some totally wicked steal in Kreuzberg or elsewhere.

3b. Mitte
It seems that a lot of people are a bit down on Mitte but that is mostly bullshit. It is, as the name implies, central to everything, and like in PB, there is easy access to all amenities. Which is nice. The price is a bit higher than in the other places though.

Some good websites for looking for rooms in shared apartments (that is what I was looking for) are:

http://www.studenten-wg.de
This is quite good. Clear layout, usually photos available. You can also get apartments for yourself here. But if you are looking to share a place, make sure you click on WGs when you start searching. WG is the keyword for "shared flat", it actually means Wohngemeinschaften (shared living arrangements).

http://berlin.craigslist.org/hhh/
Not great. Nice because a lot of stuff is in English, but the prices are generally kind of high. Sometimes you can find gems, and if you are just staying for a short time it can work out - especially since they are usually furnished. But, really it is not hard to find that on the german WG websites either.

http://www.wgcompany.de/
The layout on this website is weird and I found it really inconvenient the way they listed the apartments but I did find a few things that didn't seem to be listed anywhere else.

http://www.wg-gesucht.de
This one also has a really good layout. It shows you right on the search page how many girls/guys live there and has quite a bit of information in general. This one and the first one are probably your best bets.

You can also look in newspapers and stuff, but I didn't bother.

Everyone says Berlin is cheap and it is true. It seems that you can get a "decent" room (16-30m2) generally for somewhere between 230-350€, including utilities. Of course you can get insane deals. I have a friend who lives in Kreuzberg in an incredible apartment where he has two rooms for himself and pays a total of 150€. Nice. For him.

Things to keep in mind:

Kalt/Warmmiete
This means without/with utilities. Often the price given is "kalt", so keep it in mind that you may have to add quite a bit to the price. For example, I am paying 180€, and I will probably have to pay 70€ in water/electric/internet/etc. costs each month. Heating here generally costs alot.

Deposit
I had to pay 3 months rent as deposit, and this is not that unusual.

Painting
They have weird rules about painting apartments when you arrive/leave in Germany. This article on apartment rental in Germany explains it much better and also has a great section which explains a bunch of the abbreviations used in housing ads.

Transmediale

Transmediale is happening in Berlin from Jan 31 - Feb 4.

I have never been, so I can't promise anything, but it definitely has the potential to be interesting. I plan to attend a number of events, but I must admit that if I was basing my attendance solely on how annoying their website is I would probably stay away.

First of all, I hate websites that play noise automatically.
Second, I hate it even more when there is not an immediately obvious place to turn the music/sound off.
Third, I hate it most of all when there is no place at all to turn the sound off.
Fourth, I think that it looks pretty bad when you have a background design which remains static while your page scrolls over it.

Anyway, that's it for complaints, now I can enjoy the festival.

German Power Savings

One thing I noticed upon moving to Germany is the fact that people seem slightly obsessed with saving energy. Personally, I find the automatic shut-off of the lights on my staircase slightly annoying. And I cannot imagine that it saves that much energy. In any case, the point is that I was actually kind of impressed with the subway doors in Berlin. In most cities I have been to when the subway stops, then all the doors open at once - and you just go in whichever one you feel like.

So why? (Because obviously it must be more expensive to install these doors - what with their sensors and lights etc.) My guesses are as follows:
1. It takes more energy to open all the doors, and generally, other than at rush hour, passengers will not require all the doors to open.
2. In the winter time fewer open doors means less cold air entering the UBahn/SBahn, which means that it will take less energy to keep the the train warm.
3. Germans like things like that - it "feels" efficient.

For Starters

Ok, so here it begins. The Berlin Blog. I did not expect it to take this long to get things started, but that is not the first or last time that has or will happen to me. Call it a hunch.

One thing I was waiting for was my new digital camera. Which I finally received the second week of february. So once I got that I was ready to go - almost.

Of course there is the 16MB memory card rigamarole that, insanely, still exists. I guess it allows to to take a few (literally) photos, but come off it - you can (as I did) buy 128MB of memory for 3€ (by the way, for North American keyboards that is SHIFT + ALT + 2. Also interesting is that often it seems, in Germany at least, that they either do not use the Euro symbol at all, like here for example, or they actually write out EURO or EUR after the price (74 EURO) on receipts.)

Anyway, the 128MB card lets you take about 80 photos at 6MegaPixels. Which is basically three rolls of the old fashioned 24 exposure film. So, in other words, plenty. And if I can buy 128MB as a consumer for 3€, then I am guessing camera manufacturers could probably get it for themselves for less than a third of that price. Which means that they must actually have a specific REASON for not giving you more memory.

The reason could possibly be the obvious one - they want to also sell memory. However, not all camera manufacturers also manufacture memory. So this could only be a partial explanation. Also, it doesn't really fall under the GILLETTE RULES (which also encompass printers, of course: make an initial cheap product that then requires continual payment for continued use), since once you buy your 1GB memory card you don't really need to ever by another one. So what is it? I don't know. But it does seem slightly mean that when paying a couple of hundred dollars for a camera that they can't spend an extra dollar themselves just to give you a REASONABLE amount of memory. And truth be told, I think a lot of people would find that 128MB is actually plenty.

So post number one done. The rest will actually have some sort of relation to Berlin.