Travel

Hebrew Alphabet Soup – OSU Library

Tonight we had a great dinner on the 11th floor of the newly renovated Ohio State University library. As you enter you walk over a very cool metal “sculpture” of the English alphabet mounted in the floor. While waiting for the elevator I noticed that they had the paleo-Hebrew alphabet! Very cool! No, wait…

You see the problem? The letters are correct, but they are “reading” from left to right instead of right to left. No, wait…not quite.

It is fine until you get to tet and then it’s silly. I am not sure who the two letters are after the yod, samech and tsade are missing and what are the last two letters?

This one at least had most of the letters in mostly the right order, if left to right. When I got to the 11th floor and looked at the elevator door, well, see for yourself.

The Greek alphabet was also confused. I saw at least a dozen other languages, presumably all just as mangled. A nice idea, poorly executed.

Two observations, no, scratch that, two complaints about hotels

May 23rd, 2012

by Christian Brady.

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I travel a decent amount in this job so I spend a fair amount of time in hotels. When I was in college and graduate school I worked in hotels. (I was the weekend manager for a small hotel in Oxford for just over 3 years.) I have opinions about hotels.

Sometime in the last five years someone decided that cleaning staff should close the drain stopper in sinks and tubs, presumably to indicate that they had, in fact, interacted with the bathroom enough to push the drains closed. Ridiculous. All this means is that when I first brush my teeth the sink fills up before I realize I need to unplug it. I start running the shower and step into ankle deep water and have to bend over and unplug it… Yes, I am whining.

More substantially, I would like to complain on behalf of those of us vertically challenged. The middle of my back is always well within the range of the shower head, but more often than not I have to contort myself to wash my hair. Why not simply makes the shower head suitable for tall people? There is no (or marginal) cost to doing so and it would not adversely effect those below 6 feet tall. Please consider this simple gesture?

By the way, otherwise the Blackwell Hotel at Ohio State University is outstanding. A really beautiful and well maintained environment.

Intelligence

Oct 3rd, 2011

by Christian Brady.

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From our class trip to DC. We heard about the limitations of national intelligence and the fact that the IC is to present information not propose policy or action.

Location:K St NW,Washington,United States

Tweets from the road

Aug 10th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

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Read in reverse order.

One more flight today. 6 flights in 3 days. @ San Diego International Airport (SAN) http://instagr.am/p/JzYUp/

Mine! Mine! @ Edgewater Grill http://instagr.am/p/Jy9rY/

BMW: CHiPs has moved up in the world. @ Starbucks (Piazza Carmel) http://instagr.am/p/JyybW/

Bird @ Starbucks Coffee (La Costa) http://instagr.am/p/JyMW6/

Drinking coffee in CA can cause cancer. Who knew? @ Starbucks Coffee (La Costa) http://instagr.am/p/JyFuL/

Waiting in the LV airport…with Lion King music, you know that haaaaiiii lahaaiii bit, on loop. Very annoying. Very.

Location:Valley Centre Dr,San Diego,United States

Bluetooth Keyboard and iOS

May 4th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

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I have written many times about how traveling has become a much lighter affair since I acquired an iPad a year ago. Now I travel with the 1.33lb device and Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard, for a total weight of something less than 2lbs. Most of the time I simply use the on screen iOS keyboard on the iPad, but when I have time in the hotel room to do some more serious typing I break out the keyboard and it works like a dream. Well, like a dream in the sense that some things work very well and others aren’t quite like you might expect them to be.

Some of the things that work so well are the special keys: brightness, volume, iPod player control (play/pause, forward, back), and the eject button reveals/hides the onscreen keyboard. Basic key commands work, like copy and paste and the tab key takes you between input fields. But there is definitely room for improvement. There are a number of things that I think should “just work” but are AWOL.¹

• CMD-Tab – This should switch between apps, just as in the MacOS.
• Arrow keys to select menu items – Once you starting typing into, say, the Google search field or an email address field you have to touch the screen to select the option you want. I should be able to use the arrow keys to select it.
• Mail – The basic Mail key commands should be supported: Reply, Reply All, Delete, etc.

I am sure I will think of some more, especially app specific commands (the Photos app could benefit from delete, for example). Do you have any to add?

BTW these are also reasons why a touch screen iMac, for example, wouldn’t work yet. Too often you would have to go up to the screen to perform an action. [↩]