Train stations often (or sometimes?) have meeting points where people can arrange – surprise-surprise – to meet up with others. This can be helpful if you don’t know the train station at all since you can just decide to meet at the point and then look for it once there. It’s also helpful if you do know the train station since you can avoid having to address the question of specific meeting location every time you’re meeting up with friends.
I was at the Zürich train station last week and noticed an interesting twist on all this: the ebay Xchange point. I had never seen one before. It looks like a really clever way to advertise the service. Not only is it an ad for the auction site, it is also a very helpful place for people to meet up to exchange items bought and sold on ebay. While people could just say “see you at the meeting point” it’s less helpful when you have never met the person before.
Anyone know of other such points elsewhere?
It’s that time of year when many seniors in college start having to make decisions about where to go to college. Northwestern puts out an online newsletter to inform prospective students about various opportunities on campus. They decide to write a faculty profile on me for this newsletter. The interview was fun, a bit of a walk down memory lane to figure out how I got to where I am.
I have really enjoyed both teaching and working with undergraduate students here. If you are a prospective reading this, I hope you consider Northwestern very seriously as it’s a wonderful place to go to college (or so I’m told by undergrads).
Here is another Lifehacker feature for you by yours truly: Unique photo gift ideas. Note the kid illustration. That’s me.:) I decided to live out the 15 minutes of baby fame I never got back when. Once back at my machine, I’ll post the image on Flickr in full size and will add a link here, in case you’re curious.
UPDATE: I’ve posted the images: greeting card, movie poster.
I don’t think I have ever participated in one of these blog memes before. The inability to sleep at 4:30am is as good a reason as any to get on board.
Four jobs I’ve had:
* Teaching Assistant, Computer Literacy (Computer Science
Department, Smith College)
* Reporter, Magyar Hírlap (Budapest daily)
* Translator (from French to English at small NGO in Geneva)
* Webmaster, NYU Sociology Department (their first Web site way back when)
Four movies I can watch over and over:
* You’ve Got Mail
* The American President
* Hello Dolly!
* Sex and the City (I realize it’s not a movie, but it is something I can watch over and over again:)
Four places I’ve lived:
(Tom Coates seems to have changed this to “liked”, but most others seem to be writing about “lived”)
* Budapest
* Honolulu
* Geneva
* New York City
Four TV shows I love:
* Law & Order SVU
* Law and Order Criminal Intent
* Grey’s Anatomy
* Hungarian cartoons from the ’70s (Kukori és Kotkoda, Frakk, Mézga Család, Dr. Bubó, Vizipók Csodapók)
Four places I’ve vacationed:
* London
* Amsterdam
* Zermatt (Matterhorn)
* Lake Balaton
Four of my favorite dishes:
* Madártej
* Chicken paprikash with cucumber salad
* Fish soup
* Hungarian pancakes (“palacsinta”)
Four sites I visit daily:
* Flickr
* del.icio.us
* Google
* Answers
Four places I would rather be right now:
(I’m actually quite happy right where I am, but here are some possible alternatives)
* In bed getting some sleep (did I mention it’s 4:30am??)
* the Alps (in Switzerland)
* Paris
* somewhere where it’s warm and sunny outside
Four bloggers I am tagging:
* Jeremy (of JFW)
* Barb
* Gina
* Rubberducke
Some others of you I’m not tagging, because my hope is that you’ll take this on even without being tagged. Basically, if you are reading this and have a blog, consider yourself tagged!
Less than two months after I celebrated the 10,000th view of my Flickr photostream, I have passed the 20,000 mark. I am not sure how this happened.
It is certainly, in part, thanks to some not-very-exciting images that show up on blogs and then get numerous visitors. For example, this store sign received over 1,500 views after Gina blogged about it on Lifehacker on December 5th, 2005. Or this screenshot of my Firefox settings got over 700 hits. But other recent images I have used to illustrate blog posts haven’t gotten that many hits per see (this Crooked Timber logo has been viewed less than 200 times at the time I write this post).
For reasons I have yet to comprehend, this photo of some friends and me at Millennium Park’s bean sculpture has been getting a lot of views (over 1,800 so far and the numbers keep climbing).
Overall, suffice it to say that I’m not the only one obsessed with Flickr.:-) Thanks for visiting!
If you happened to miss my descriptions of Flickr, I have written up some basics about the service and also have info about how to find great photos on it.
I’m a bit late to this meme, but it’s still January so perhaps it’s not too late to offer a summary account of 2005. Here are the cities and towns I visited in 2005, in order of the travel throughout the year:
I wasn’t sure if I should include Evanston, IL and Chicago, IL since those count as my base cities. I’m just mentioning them here, but not adding them to the list.
Washington, DC
Zürich
Budapest *
Ann Arbor, MI
Cleveland, OH
East Lansing, MI
Nashville, TN
Hanover, NH
New York, NY *
Princeton, NJ *
Columbus, OH
Swanton, OH
Tyrone, PA
Philadelphia, PA
Northampton, MA
Arlington, VA
Urbana, IL
Boston, MA
One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * I visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.
If all goes according to plan, one exciting travel component of 2006 will be that I will get to add not just one, but possibly two additional continents to the list of regions of the world to which I have travelled. We will see.
