Douwe Osinga's Blog: 2004

Monday, December 27, 2004

Write your own travel guide

Back when I was still running Oberon Medialab, one of the problems was that I always came up with new ideas, usually losing interest long be...

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Foreign Aid is Theft

I'm all for helping the Third World. In fact, I think that if we could solve global inequality, most of the other problems would disolve...

Saturday, December 18, 2004

No Chicken discrimination in Switzerland

It is the little things that are different from country to country. A while ago, I noticed that eggs from free range chickens in the Netherl...

Friday, December 17, 2004

The end is neigh

I read somewhere that the chances of being killed in an airplane are actually lower than than being killed by an asteroid that takes out the...

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

We Rock!

Google just anounced plans to scan in a couple of libraries, among others the Harvard University Library with 15 million books. Google is no...

Friday, December 10, 2004

PyTivo

I don't much like tv, but I do like some programs. So, bittorrent is my protocol of choise. But yeah, getting the programs you want is a...

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

The Cost of Pessimism

Germany รข€™s economy is in the doldrums. Has been for years and everybody knows why. The Germans work too few hours, the taxes are too high,...

Monday, November 29, 2004

On the dangers of drinking tea

So I'm back from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it used to be called has a certain claim to fame when it comes to tea. The grow a lot...

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Illusive reality

This is very weird . Click the link and follow the instructions. It's a simple game, you see a movie and count the number of times the p...

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Off to Sri Lanka

Tonight we're flying to Sri Lanka for a week of relaxing and looking at old temples. Yeah, I know, a week is too short to appreciate a c...

Friday, November 19, 2004

Googles not so secret sauce

People often ask me what it is I do for Google. Hmm, that's secret. Google has a lot of secrecy going on, for good reasons most of the t...

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The chair for the office

  Since today the Zurich office is a complete Google office. We have our own massage chair. From buying to actually receiving the chair, it...

Saturday, November 6, 2004

On stupid programs and stupid humans

The multimedia side of our new appartment is shaping up. What previously was our main computer will from now on just serve mp3's and mov...

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

Vote advise for American readers

All bloggers seem to do it, so it here it goes. I think Bush is a man with a plan, who loses no time over executing it. He wanted to cut tax...

Saturday, October 30, 2004

The Need for Crap

Switzerland is one of the more expensive countries, even if Ikeas Billies are relatively cheap , or at least that is what most foreigners li...

Thursday, October 28, 2004

No Floppy Drive

Today I suddenly realized that my laptop does not have a floppy drive. I needed to create a boot floppy in order to install windows 2000 on ...

Of food and drinks

Zurich is a lot more easy going and international than most people would think. Bars stay open late, thereรข€™s food from every kitchen of t...

Monday, October 25, 2004

My poor inner-Geek

After months of speculation, PalmOne finally anounced the new Treo that I had been lusting for . Unfortunately the phone that should have b...

Monday, October 18, 2004

Billynomics

The big mac index is a currency index by the economist that tries to calculate which currencies are over and undervalued by looking at the ...

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Google Lock-Up

I donรข€™t like alarm systems much. Forget to turn them off once and before you know it some pseudo-police guy with a fake (or not) gun will ...

Friday, October 8, 2004

Der Untergang

I went to see รข€œDer Untergangรข€ , a movie about the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich. The movie has been a bit controversial in Ger...

Thursday, October 7, 2004

All Look Same?

I often wonder if all white people look the same to people from other races. I know most white people think they do look more different (wit...

Monday, October 4, 2004

The unbearable lightness of Movies

I was watching a not quite so interesting movie the other day with my wife; my wife expressed her opinion on the movie by falling soundly as...

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Confessions from a Google hacker

When I started with my Google hacks a bit more than a year ago, I had of course no idea I would be working for the search engine relatively ...

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Boring Alps

When I told people we were moving to Switzerland , a common reaction was: Switzerland , isnรข€™t that very boring? The Swiss do have a reputa...

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Gadget Lust

Rumour now has it that the Treo 650 will come out in the end of November. My birthday is 24 of November. Coincident? I don't think so. ...

Sunday, September 19, 2004

Skype hype

Yeah, I know, Iรข€™m late to the party. But I finally installed Skype, the latest (probably not even anymore) in Internet Telephony. I love i...

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Living on Swiss Time

One big difference between Google Switzerland and Google Mountain View is that Google Switzerland is in the middle of everything while Goog...

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Settling in Switzerland

Finding an apartment in Zurich turned out to be easier than predicted by many an insider. The word was that in order to get an apartment yo...

Monday, September 6, 2004

Let's stop wasting money on Art

I am blogging this from Google Zurich. Got here on Tuesday with the night train from Amsterdam after a hectic day of packing which would ha...

Sunday, August 29, 2004

A penguin saved my butt

A typical scene from a household in moving. Some stuff is already in boxes, a lot of stuff is not and more and more stuff is just randomly l...

Thursday, August 26, 2004

People doing strange things with Software

I made it to the conference and the first day was a bit of challenge, with the minimum amount of sleep I had, but after that it got a lot be...

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Something rotten on the way to Denmark

So I changed the perfect weather of California for the more questioniable variant of North-Western Europe to go to the Readme festival in D...

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Going home

Every party got the end sometime. This Friday I'm flying home. Google Zurich here I come. Google Headquarters is a wonderful place to wo...