Ah, I can’t believe I almost missed the Austrian release date of this beauty. I’m glad I checked its Wikipedia entry today, otherwise I’d have actually waited until Tuesday to get it.
I’m currently in my first round, and well, it’s mind-bogglingly wonderful.
And for all those people who downloaded the leaked version, well, you’re missing out on some spectacular artwork.
I saw a documentary on autistic savants yesterday (actually, it was the second of two parts, third one today on 3Sat, just in case you’re able to receive it and understand some German). The epsiode yesterday featured a man by the name of Stephen Wilthshire who’s got the ability to draw in detail just about everything he sees around him. As his sister said, he’s like a human videorecorder, able to to just go back in his memory and retrieve every single detail.
I found this resource that has the actual footage of the documentary I saw. In this segment, he’s shown drawing the whole of Rome’s inner city on a five meter strip of paper. He does this within two days, and after seeing the city from above in a helicopter for 45 minutes. It’s really quite amazing. Do check out the video.
I’ve been wanting to write a little bit about Fluxiom, Vienna based file storage and sharing app for a few days now. I was always too busy, and now Michael Arrington from TechCrunch is stealing my thunder. Read his review and you’ll have a good idea of what mine would have been like (only without the number crunching in the end…my research would have stopped after comparing prices).
The only thing I might have added was that the service I’m currently using, namely Box.net, seems to be doing it all right: They’ve got sharing, they’ve got tagging, there’s a mass upload feature (through a Java applet…Michael Arrington seemed to have missed that when he wrote in his review that no other service provides mass upload). The good thing about this approach compared to Fluxiom’s? No need to zip!
They are also a lot more generous with their space, giving away 1GB for free, and 5GB once you’ve referred five friends (which isn’t that difficult, really).
I’d have really loved to like Fluxiom (they are from Vienna after all), but as they are that outrageously priced and their basic plan doesn’t even provide the features that would actually make them different from Box.net (full-text search, version check), I’d be crazy to actually pay that much money.
On the trainride to and fro Graz I noticed, as always on trains, quite a bit about the reading patterns of some people. There was this one girl on the ride to Graz, who spent the first ten minutes on the train putting on make-up, until she looked like she wanted to audition for a remake of the classic Nosferatu movie. Unsurprisingly, her reading material consisted of a textbook on anatomy, through which pages she lazily thumbed once in a while. In between she kept staring out of the window, without a doubt contemplating the mysteries of mankind. She also had Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits on the little table in front of her. Only time she touched it was when she put it back into her golden purse (I’m not kidding).
On my ride back a guy sat next to me reading Kafka’s The Castle, and just when I thought I had missed the proclamation of Existentialist day, a guy sat down opposite my seat and pulled out a Bible. What a relief! He was skipping through the pages rather lazily as well, but he looked like he knew the content by heart, contrary to Miss Nosferatu and her anatomy book.
Speaking of the Bible, as I saw this guy leafing through the holiness, I just wondered what the literary market would look like without the Book of Books. Wouldn’t upcoming authors be a lot more motivated? I mean, without the Book of Books, wouldn’t an author actually aspire to write THE book? You know, the book everyone has (not necessarily read, but still, everybody has)?
The way it is now, every budding fantasy author knows that there’s no way they can compete with this winning combination of gore, flaming swords and cruel leadership. Especially if there are thousands of organisations out there pitching the piece to anyone who will listen (or actually just anyone).
I met my parents in Graz yesterday. Graz is Austria’s second largest city, but it’s really a lot smaller than Vienna. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I hadn’t noticed the last few times I’ve been there (which, I might add, is a few years back), but Graz is actually a really nice, cozy little town. Especially in smashing sunlight!
I took a few photos; either click the above image to see them on Flickr directly, or click here, which will lead you to the same pictures, only that you won’t be leaving this website. Ahh, choices!
![Medienschelte.at [de]](http://stormgrass.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/medienscheltebutton.png)
Recent Comments