Job: check. Apartment: check. Internet: check. TV…working on it. Megan: visiting Friday. Things could be worse. The sun is shining and I’m writing from my cushy seat on the Yahoo! commuter shuttle bus.

Despite the rumors, hunting for an apartment in San Francisco isn’t really that different from hunting for an apartment elsewhere, with a few twists. It’s handy to have a copy of your credit report on hand, and applications are universally non-binding so it’s often in your interests to fill one out if you have even a vague interest – particularly if your time is tight.

I spent my first two days (January 31 and Feb 1) climbing up and down the hills, visiting apartments from Craigslist and calling numbers on For Rent signs. The third day my legs hurt. There is perhaps no more efficient way to see a city than to hunt for apartments in it on a schedule…but it’s not necessarily the most enjoyable form of tourism.

By Saturday afternoon, I was nearly assured of an apartment. Due to various procedural hurdles I didn’t actually move in until late in my second week (last Thursday), but I’m more or less settled now. Here’s the inside of my apartment: (more…)

As our trip nears its end and the tourist activities and frenetic photo-taking wind down, I thought I’d move from pure travelogue to more analysis of what we see around us. When I travel, I’m usually interested in four things: architecture and design, food, drink, and people. So, part one of a four part series.
It will surprise no one that I have something to say about Danish design. After all, Scandinavian design is synonymous with contemporary and stylish in the US, from IKEA on up to the boutiques on Newbury Street. As a kid, I loved going into Contemporary Trends in Ithaca to admire the simple elegance of their Scandivanian products.

A few things have caught me pleasantly by surprise though. (more…)

For those of you aware of Megan’s hospitalization, she’s feeling much better and we’ve been able to resume exploring Copenhagen as of this past Tuesday. For those of you who were unaware, Megan went to the hospital and investigated the Danish health care system. She’s been extremely impressed overall, and disturbingly has established the hospital meatloaf as her gold standard for meals here. Perhaps I can press her into temporary service to provide some details. We now return to our regularly scheduled blog entry, delayed a week (we returned about 10 days ago).

It would be difficult to find a better fit for the word idyllic than the island of Bornholm. (more…)

Our second week here in Denmark draws to a close. I write this Sunday evening, on the train from Copenhagen to the island of Bornholm, where we’ll be spending a few days relaxing after the rough-and-tumble of relaxing of the city. Megan thinks Bornholm may be to Copenhagen as Martha’s Vineyard is to Boston.

So, what have we been up to? (more…)

Four days after arrival, I think we’re relatively settled. We have a lovely apartment on a quiet street in the Christianshavn neighborhood:

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There is a large number of excellent free or inexpensive tools for Mac OS X, and most long-time Mac users have a handful of “must-have” utilities. Indeed, it appears that the Mac platform’s community of good, small developers producing such software sets it apart; according to what I’ve read this isn’t the case in the Windows world, where “free” and “spyware” are often synonymous.

As more and more of my friends buy new Macs, I keep promising to create a list of tools I consider indispensable; at long last, here it is. Many of these apps are free; all of the others offer free trial periods.

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I’ve been evaluating CocoaTech’s Path Finder as a possible replacement for Apple’s own Finder filesystem browser. (more…)

Interesting how most of the things I have to rant about concern driving. I imagine it�s related to the unpleasantly large amount of time I spend sitting in my car every week. If you live in or drive through Massachusetts, you are familiar with FAST LANE. It�s the Bay State�s version of what everyone else in the Northeast quadrant of the United States knows as EZ Pass, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority�s electronic toll collection system. The purpose of this rant is to discuss how the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority has failed to use electronic toll collection to make traveling on the state�s highways as safe and efficient as it could be through the poor design, ineffective signage and inconsistent positioning of toll plazas on the state�s highways. (more…)