I'm a hostage of the weather forecast. Take yesterday as an example. A friend and I had plans to go hiking, but kept delaying due to the looming predictions of rain. It ended up being a mild overcast day with occasional breaks of sun. It was another perfect day ruined by the forecast. How do meteorologists sleep at night? They get it wrong day after day!

Here is a puzzle. Say there is an 80% chance of rain but a 0% chance they are right. What is the chance of rain?

On Sunday I had plans to meet some people for day hike in Pfaeffikon. I arrived at the meeting place at the scheduled time and waited for the others to arrive. After 30 minutes of waiting I approached the ticket counter and asked how many Pfaeffikons there are in Switzerland. His answer was,"Es gibt Drei (three!)," (although one has a slightly different spelling). Argh! The one I wanted to be in was 40 minutes away and there was no chance that they'd be waiting for me. After cursing for a few minutes, I put on my iPod, turned up the volume, and hiked along the lake for the next 3hrs.

Can someone please tell me why a country has mutliple cities with the same name? It's just asking for problems!

Olympus Stylus Verve

For a few months my mother has been teetering on the idea of buying a digital camera. This made sense: A digital camera would allow her to quickly and easily share photos with me in Europe.

My first thought was to buy her a new camera, but I decided to have a little fun by giving her my old Canon A70 and replacing mine with something new. My requirement was easy: The camera must be compact for hiking and biking.

My decision was with the Olympus Stylus Verve (mu-Mini in Europe). The main selling points was the compact size and the weatherproof casing. After getting the camera and using it for a while, I concluded that I should have purchased something else. Here's why:

1. The first grief is that a proprietary USB cable is required to connect the camera to your computer. You must then carry the cable with you if, say, you wish to transfer the photos at a friend's house.
2. Not all configuration options are automatically saved when you turn off the camera. This means reconfiguring the settings each time you turn the camera on!
   
3. The movie mode (video clips) quality doesn't come close to matching the quality of the Canon A70.
4. The panoramic mode is clumsy and the stitching software sucks.
5. The proprietary battery has a poor life.
6. There is a lot of noise in low-light situations.
7. The zoom is only 2x.
   

[Update: I sold the Olympus and replaced it with a Canon A520.]

St. Gallen Open Air!

I have to hand it to the people at St. Gallen Open Air. They managed to pull in some big names for 2005 music festival, including the Foo Fighers, Fatboy Slim, REM, and Cake! This is a huge improvement over previous years! This festival will rock!

Vienna

Vienna is a beautiful city and even more beautiful when you have friends living there to show you around. I made a spontaneous weekend trip to visit an old friend from university. We last saw each other two and a half years ago while partying at St. Gallerfest.

On Saturday day we did the Hundertsassa geocache location in the heart of Vienna. Geocaching was something new for my hosts and they seemed to enjoy it. That evening we ate sushi and other foods in a Japanese restaurant before retiring at around 22:00 (I was still exhausted from the early-morning flight). The following day we had brunch and spent the afternoon at Prata with a ride on the Wiener Riesenrad followed by 18 holes of mini golf. Dinner was the mandatory Wiener Schnitzel and beer. It was wonderful seeing them and hopefully we will find time over the summer to meet again. More photos from the weekend are in the gallery.