Travel Prep

That TNT flick (“Pirates of Silicon Valley”) was pretty good! Although I wouldn’t have tried so hard to clear my schedule if I had known they were going to re-play it again. Immediately afterward, no less. And again after that. What kind of station plays the exact same movie three times in a row? Not even the premium channels like HBO or Cinemax do that. Or perhaps I’ve just been living in a cave. Like I said yesterday, I don’t watch too much television.

Today was nuts. I kept getting calls from one client after the other wanting something done before I leave for Europe, which means I have all of 24 hours to get it finished. And I still haven’t packed. Just how do you pack for a three week backpacking vacation across Europe anyway? I did manage to get the first reservation made, and the Brit I spoke with put me in such a great mood–so damn cheery! I’m flying into London and then taking the train to Bath for two nights. It’s supposed to be one of the most relaxing places in the U.K.

The itinerary is planned out, yet still flexible enough to alter in midstream if so desired. The only thing that’s not terribly flexible is the date I move from England to France, because the Chunnel tickets had to be purchased in advance. Generally, the plan looks like this:

Jun 23 – Fly out of Los Angeles
Jun 24 – Arrive in England
Jun 25 – Bath
Jun 26 – London
Jun 27 – London
Jun 28 – Cambridge
Jun 29 – Take the Chunnel to Paris, p.m.
Jun 30 – Paris
Jul 01 – Paris
Jul 02 – Versailles, Bayeux
Jul 03 – Normandy
Jul 04 – Open
Jul 05 – Genoa
Jul 06 – Cinque Terra, Vernazza
Jul 07 – Milan
Jul 08 – Venice
Jul 09 – Florence
Jul 10 – Sienna
Jul 11 – Rome
Jul 12 – Rome
Jul 13 – Pompeii, Rome
Jul 14 – Fly home

I’m becoming addicted to the Kodak Photo CD concept. I don’t know why. It’s just a CD with some images on it, right? I just sent a several sets of negatives to a place called Working Knowledge here in Irvine that’ll scan them onto Photo CD. It can be kind of expensive, so I selected FlashPix as the format. FlashPix is great for the web, but not quite as good for printing. The highest quality Pro Photo CD or CMYK scans can cost up to $25 per frame! FlashPix is about $1.00 per frame, and the final product has a variety of image sizes.

I’ve learned a lot about digital imagery from the Kodak site and also from photo.net, which is run by a vaguely unconventional MIT professor. He gave his students back their tuition money, co-authored a book on web publishing with his dog, and lots of other wacky stuff.

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