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Sunday, Jun 3 2007

Vista

Been playing with Vista on my laptop this weekend. Went through the upgrade process from XP. I did run into a few problems. First, the version of Symantec I was running wasn't compatible. Then, the Intel Wireless drivers were crashing. Then the Sonic DAL drivers caused trouble - and it wasn't trivial to uninstall them (unistalling all the Roxio apps did not get rid of them.) Apparently Dell and Roxio have been blaming each other for months (and since it's an OEM product, Roxio didn't care too much to offer a patch.) Anyway, they finally released one recently. Vista also had trouble working with my wireless access point, which is quite old, I'll admit, and according to Netgear not Vista-compatible. After tinkering with NetBios settings and giving it a fixed IP and DNS I got it to work.

So, once it all works, Vista looks very impressive visually. I will take a screen cap when I get the chance. With the widgets and all, it really looks stunning. Makes XP look unpolished and cartoonish (which it always has.) The other thing I noticed is memory usage, Vista caches a lot more stuff and sucks up much more memory (without anything loaded, it uses up about 800 Mb on my laptop, and with a few developer apps, it easily takes up 1.5 Gb.) So, I would recommend 2 Gb minimum for any development machine. The interface feels pretty snappy, everything happens fast. The "cancel or allow" is really annoying, one of the first things you turn off.

Sunday

Cool, adictive (geeky) online multiplayer game, weewar. Went out shopping for a bit, stopped by H&M and Abercrombie, got a few summer linen trousers, below. The city is packed with tourists already. Very pleasant weather, not too hot.

H&M summer 2007 linen trousers

H&M summer 2007 linen trousers

Sun

Want to watch a few of the Roland Garros games today. Need to go to bed soon, been goofing around and it's gotten kinda late. Bill has the test in a few hours, he is still studying at the hotel.

Barcelona Restaurants

Great article in the NYTimes about 5 Catalan restaurants with awesome food: Inopia, La Clara, Quimet y Quimet, Ca L'Isidre and Rias de Galicia.

"There is nothing at Inopia — which opened last April — that is not at least intriguing.
...
The crowd is drawn not only by the food but by the fame: Inopia is run by Alberto Adrià, the younger brother and partner of Ferran Adrià, at this point perhaps the best-known chef in the world. In the summer, Alberto is the pastry chef at El Bulli, about 100 miles northeast of Barcelona, where Ferran is head chef, and his work there remains brilliant.
...
Spain produces what is probably the highest quality and most expensive canned food in the world, and many tapas bars rely on it. Though much of it is good and interesting, for the most part I don't get it, since Spain also produces among the highest quality fresh food in the world. This is as true in Barcelona — which has farms within its city limits — as it is elsewhere in the country.
...
There's more in Barcelona, literally dozens of restaurants old and new that are of a quality associated with the best-eating cities in the world. But these five should keep you happy for a short trip, anyway.
"

Five Catalan Stars, With Small Plates and Long Menus

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