OK, those Macs are not all mine… for someone who only switched to the Mac side recently that would be too much. The 17” MacBook Pro is mine (and the 2 PCs). The two white MacBooks belong to my cleaning lady and her sister and they just left them for me to install Leopard during the weekend.

(Click image to see full size)

And this will be my forward-to post next time someone asks me “how are things working in Switzerland?”. Well, also as an analogy to Apple stuff… it just works. And that’s why I like to live and work here. And effectively, it works extremely well. If my cleaning lady can have a Mac, as well as her sister (also working in cleaning) that might be a good sign. So you can imagine in other industry sectors apart from cleaning and construction. For some number crunching, here it goes: per month, and working only 2 hours per week at my place, she gets half of the Portuguese average salary. Taking in consideration she’s working in a few more places at about the same rate, you can do the maths.

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Just a picture of my desk with the latest addition: my brand new slim Mac keyboard (click to enlarge):

They also have the wireless bluetooth one but it has the exact same layout as the MacBook Pro laptop and what I really needed was a full-sized keyboard since my main task is programming (as in the picture on Flex Beta 3, my latest addiction).

Ok, after all the waterfall hiking (kind of), barbecue, walking, jumping, kid’s playground, we stopped in Lavey-les-bains thermal baths & SPA. If you ever go to Switzerland, don’t even thing about not visiting this place (warning: you might get addicted and return every weekend, specially when snowing)!

It was supposed to be relaxing but as always we ended up getting even more tired after swimming and goofing around in hot water for three hours. All of this after everything we’ve done during the day. Well, most of the insane mood was due to me deciding to test my ATC2000 mini sports camera underwater. It says in the booklet and in its site that it should not be used underwater, but after taking a look in the way it is build, I took the risk (anyway I keep ruining cameras, palmtops and other gadgets by letting them fall in water, cliffs and sitting on them). I used it a lot in the snow while airboarding, clipped to my helmet. Should post those videos one of these days. But was really curious to see how it would work underwater. Anyway here’s the video, with some “intense” moments and a lot of silly ones. My hair without gel also looks really scary.

And here are some photos from Lavey-les-bains. The only bad thing about this place is that you feel like a zombie after soaking in hot water for hours (ususally 3 or 4), then jacuzzis, sauna, the ice room (as in the post photo), Turkish bath and so on. They even have a swimming pool with classical music underwater and occasionally dolphin and whale sounds. Ok, and when we are there we try to sing Ninfa Artemis gatôoooooo underwater to annoy everyone.

Overall it was fun and relaxing at the same time, turning my return to Geneva (driving around 100 Km) a nightmare (thanks Red Bull). The camera worked well underwater and did a good job. Unfortunately Youtube also does a good job ruining video quality. But you get an idea. The original 640×480 running at full screen, which the camera records directly to the SD card looks great, specially for a cheap sports camera. You can find this gadget on the link below, in case you are interested.

Where to get a Sports/Underwater camera?

One of these days I decided to recycle one of the pre-historic laptops waiting to be trashed in my company. I saw those digital frames that are appearing everywhere and thought how nice they would be as a gift for my parents in Portugal (I am in Switzerland). I always have a lot of new photos that I would like to share with them. But shortly the idea of the digital frame was dead since they all lack some features that would make them a perfect gift and even the smallest ones have outrageous price tags. So a few things had to be taken into consideration.

My parents are not tech geeks or even computer users and they are older than 72, so I had to avoid something like:
“Here’s a digital frame and a computer so you can connect to the internet and receive emails with new pictures and transfer them to this thing called SDcard and put it in the frame, after you read that book that tells how to use a computer and the internet…” and I can go on forever.

I decided to do something completely or near zero-maintenance. Basically it had to be simple to use, or rather not to use at all: instead you just plug it and connect it to a phone line. And that should be all. Here’s what I ended doing on the frame software side: The computer runs Windows ME. First step was to setup the Bios so it resumes to Power-ON if the power fails, and to turn on by itself at 7:00am. The software (and I should say version 1) is Flash based and just cycles trough photos in a folder in the hard drive, with a soft fade effect between each one. So far no big difference on how it works (visually) comparing with a normal digital frame. (click for bigger image)

Now the twists from a normal digital frame: At 7:00am, when it turns on windows (I changed the boot screens to complete black with a “please wait” message), it runs an application that dials up a free internet connection and connects to my FTP server to check if there are new pictures. If that’s the case, it downloads them and adds them to the local folder. There’s no card reader. Before closing, the program also checks for a new version of both the slideshow application and itself (transfer apllication).

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Here is a small toilet humor video I’ve done last year at work with my invaluable “Fart Machine” gadget.

This is a simple “evil box” that hides near the victim or somewhere people pass by. Then you just have to press the button in the wireless fart remote, which can be used up to 100ft and trough walls (across rooms/offices) and makes the box produce 15 different cheerful (and loud) farts. You will not be able to help yourself in pressing the button just once, but try to keep some delay between each fart, for realism of course and to avoid that you die rolling on the floor, laughing.

Apart from the office, it does wonders in trains, somewhere in the sidewalk, thanksgiving, and tea-rooms (where it generates violent old ladies tea-time-fights about “who was it?”).

I know what you have in your dirty mind now!
“Where can I buy such wonder of technology? “

OK, since I’m a nice guy (sometimes) here it is:
If you are in Europe, you can buy it here.
Otherwise, you can order it from the US.

Have fun (you will) and send me any video and suggestions.

Finally I had an opportunity to try the A-Bike in a longer ride than the usual daily home-office-home and occasionally around the lake in Geneva. Also the Swiss countryside is a little bit more interesting than buildings. This was in Bottens, near Lausanne, where I spent the weekend at my friends Teresa “Roxa” and Abdellah.

After a trip to IKEA, which is more than good for extreme leg warm up already (not to say we were really tired), we just picked their two “normal” bikes and the A-Bike I had on the trunk of my car. Now I am really sure this thing is more than fine handling uphill, rougher terrain and some obstacles, and specially longer rides. My friends gave it a try too and helped doing a series of videos which I compiled in this clip:

It was a really nice sunny afternoon and my hay fever was giving me a little break. There’s one thing I am really sure now: it is also FUN to ride the A-Bike and it does not feel uncomfortable at all, even after a few hours (I use the default saddle). I am looking forward for next weekend. Here’s also some photos of the afternoon (click them to see the bigger version):

You can buy your A-Bike here
while they are in stock:

(fast delivery)

Obviously, I had to put my master gadget here.
I know there’s the environmental thing all around it but definitely what made me choose this thing was the amount of gadgets in it. Even the annoying ones.
By the way, if you tell the GPS girl “go fuck yourself” in the voice recognition mode, the car replies and does “Searching for nearby french restaurants”.

I have it since August 2006 and have done more than 15000 Km.
Still very happy. Despite all the rage against hybrids (it really exists) specially from SUV owners, I would buy it again.
I never had a single problem on snow/ice (with winter tires) and I really enjoy driving this thing.

Here’s a cheesy (specially the soundtrack) video of the auto-parking feature.

Just wanted to post a few more pictures of my last toy/gadget:
As of today I found that I no longer have to stop and fold/unfold. It’s easy enough to do it while walking in a few seconds before starting to ride. Same for folding after jumping out of the bike.

You can buy your A-Bike here
while they are in stock:

(fast delivery)

I had my colleague Sabrine testing my A-Bike for her first time in our office at lunch break.
I am now using it (the bike) for my everyday home-office-home for around 9 days and still very happy with it.

It cuts my usual 15 minutes walking into 3 to 4 minutes. Also great to go to and ride by the lake. After a few tries it just doesn’t feel that much different from a normal bike.
It was a little bit wobbly until I got used but now it’s completely fine and it’s fun to ride actually. Despite the tiny wheels, the gears were engineered so you don’t have to paddle like crazy.

Well, done Sir Clive Sinclair (also responsible for the ZX Spectrum which is responsible for my dive into computer programming which is what I mostly do today).

You can buy your A-Bike here
while they are in stock:

(fast delivery)

My A-Bike just arrived last week. As I opened the box (my colleagues are used to new gadgets and weird stuff being delivered to me once in a while), I noticed it was smaller than what I was expecting and lighter too. I was a little bit afraid that it would be to fragile but that’s not the case. After a few tries to fold/unfold this is what I was able to do at home in the end of the day. It was more than tested at the office, but I’ll post the results after some road tests later.

You can buy your A-Bike here
while they are in stock:

(fast delivery)

Here it is: the very first post in this blog. And by the way, what is this all about? Well, this will be the place where I’ll post a lot of nonsense pictures, weird videos, useless articles I might come up with and whatever I decide to post, whenever I decide to post, after all, this is my blog.