Winter has arrived. The hillsides and mountain tops are now covered in
snow. Grey has turned into black and white. It is actually quite pretty.

I’m just not yet ready for winter to arrive. Not that there’s a lot of
stuff that I wanted to do outside, but winter means it gets dark earlier
and stays dark longer. I like sunlight and winter means less of it! Winter
also means wearing more clothes and heavy coats. I’m bulky enough already
and the extra layers seem to magnify that bulk. Finally winter also means
the likelihood of falling down on slick surfaces, e.g. I have to get rid of
snow and ice on the sidewalk, driveway, and porch. That means bulking up so
as not to be too cold and getting out on the slick stuff. I bought a snow
blower to assist in this work. It will be delivered on Tuesday — in
pieces, of course, requiring assembly. Then after it is assembled, it needs
to be put somewhere. Therein lies another problem.

This litany could go on at length. Perhaps because I have a cold, the
advent of winter is more ominous.

My little iPod is becoming quite the tool. I’ve found a website
www.itconversations.com, that has some excellent recordings on it. Highly
recommended. It is so useful to be able to quickly put a recording on the
iPod, listen to it, and then either keep it to listen to again, put it on a
CD to share with someone else, or simply delete it. It is so easy and
convenient. I wonder if Apple knows the power of this device beyond playing
music? I think not, because their next step was to make it able to store
digital pictures and show them on a TV. What they really needed was a voice
recorder!

We are pretty much staying home on this Sunday. I’m (hopefully) on the back
end of a cold, Nina is just coming down with one, and mom has a cold as
well. We’ll get together later this week. I’ve got a couple of Home
Teaching visits to make. Today is Halloween, but most kids came last night.
I’m not expecting any kids tonight. I was surprised by how many
Trick-or-Treaters came by last night. We almost got none in Colorado
Springs. We are at the end of a street with few houses around us. It was
cold with occasional showers. That didn’t deter the kids with some 30 or so
showing up on our doorstep.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The past day or so I’ve been quite consumed with a very new technology that is the "New Hot Thing" on the Internet: podcasting. This is very cool technology and will, at least for a while, be quite the rage and then will settle down to being a "Good Thing".

So, just what is podcasting? It’s kind of like amateur radio broadcasting made initially possible by the Apple iPod. The capability is very new — perhaps about a month old. It works kind of like this:

1. Download software from ipodder.sourceforge.net and install it on your PC.

2. Subscribe to the audio feeds that you are interested in. One such list of audio feeds is found at radio.weblogs.com. Another list can be found at www.ipodder.org/directory/4/podcasts. These audio feeds come from a variety of sources, all amateur and all at no cost. It is quite possible that pay-for audio feeds will be available in the near future.

3. Set the ipodder software to regularly look for new audio feeds.

4. Sync your iPod with iTunes — and the subscribed audio feeds will be downloaded to the iPod.

5. Listen to the audio feeds at your leisure!

I’ve found several feeds that I’m interested in. A couple are related to computer technology. One is from Tokyo, Japan and another is from Helsinki, Finland. The American living and working in Tokyo puts out a new audio feed every few days and talks about life and things in Japan. A recent installment provided much more detail about the recent devastating earthquakes in northwest Japan. The feed from Helsinki is from a native Fin who speaks pretty good English and talks about life and things in Finland. Both have been interesting so far.

So what makes this all possible? Downloadable audio files on various web sites is not new. I’ve fussed with it a bit but haven’t been very happy with the results (it turns out I didn’t have the right software or technology). The real problem was finding these bits of audio and then getting them to some device where I can listen to the audio. A few weeks ago Adam Curry (some may recall him from the early days of MTv. Adam has been around radio and rock and roll music for many, many years) came up with a whiz-bang idea: put together a directory of pointers to the audio files along with a piece of software that would periodically check requested locations for new content, download that content to iTunes which would then make the content available on an iPod. The ipodder program is an aggregator — a facilitator to get the requested content to the player device. It works very well and it’s been quite fun listening to this stuff rather than the drivel that passes for music on FM radio on my way to and from work. There isn’t a classical music station here in Pocatello. The closest we come is a public radio station in Idaho Falls, which is broadcasting Morning Edition on my way to work and All Things Considered on the way home, neither of which have any interest for me. During the times when I’m not really able to listen to the radio, it broadcasts classical music. Not very useful at all!

But, now with podcasting, I can choose much more interesting things to listen to. When I left my previous job in Colorado Springs, I was gifted with an Apple mini-iPod. It’s a nice device and stores quite a lot of music. I’ve generally used it on airplane trips in the past. It has now become much more useful. However, if you don’t have an iPod, don’t dispair! There are also aggregator programs that will download content that can be played on Windows Media Player, either on a PC or on a WindowsPC device, such as a Compaq iPaq. The ipodder.org webside has some information on how to do that under the documentation links. However, because this is such a new phenomena, there isn’t a lot of good documentation available, yet.

I think this has some real business potential as well. I can easily see companies (like the one I work for), putting podcasts about products, or earnings releases, or other product and financial information on their corporate website and making that content available through an aggregator like ipodder.org. This would be a true publish and subscribe business. I like it a lot!

So, what does it take to become a podcaster? I’m not totally sure, but I’m going to figure it out. There are a couple of choices on how to get the audio content. Several MP3 players, such as the devices from iRiver, have the ability to record from a microphone and store the resulting audio as an MP3 file on the device. When the device is connected to the computer through a USB cable, the recorded sound file can be moved to the PC for mixing and editing. There is a great mixing and editing program called Audacity (free!), which can be found at audacity.sourceforge.net. This program can also take a microphone feed as well. The program is then used to edit and mix the desired output which is saved as an MP3 file. Then through a web form, the link to the new content is inserted into ipodder.org. Now this is how it is supposed to work. Over the next week or so I’ll get it figured out and working.

Then comes the big question: What to do with the capability? I don’t really know, yet. It may well be a solution looking for a problem! On the other hand, I can see it being a great way to store and distribute oral family history interviews and stories. I’m interested in suggestions.

We’ve now been home for two days. The flights were on time and completely without incident. We drove home from the Salt Lake airport and were in bed by about 9:30 p.m. And, of course, we were up and wide awake by 3:30 a.m. Making the transition is difficult this time, complicated by the fact that I’ve come down with a cold. The last day in Amsterdam I was feeling kind of lousy. By the time we were on the airplane, the cold has set in and isn’t yet showing any signs of going away. We had a great time on the cruise and, in addition to being a good vacation, it was very educational. We’ll definitely do another river cruise in the next few years. I’d like to do one in China and one in France. Neither will happen next year, however, as we’re already committed to a Mediterranean cruise next October.

In a two week cruise it is possible to get to know a few of the crew onboard the ship a little bit. Our cruise director Carin was just delightful. She hails from the Netherlands and kept us right up to date on everything that was happening. She is definitely one of the better cruise directors that we’ve known. The dining room staff was also very competent. The dining room was open seating, but we generally sat at table 16 so we would have the same waiter. He was a great young man with good work ethic. We really enjoyed getting to know him a little bit. Our good friends from Colorado Springs, Duane and Bobby, were great fun. Traveling with good friends on a trip like this is a special treat. Bobby was having trouble with her foot which she solved by cutting a hole out of the side of a pair of tennis shoes so the little toe could stick out. She had no more problems the rest of the trip — just a kind of a funny looking shoe.

All was well at home — all the computers were running but the firewall was blocked for some reason. Turning it off and back on cleared the problem. I’ll need to figure out some way of being able to do that remotely. It was quite frustrating having the weblog unavailable for the entire trip. Bradica (the dog) fared well in the kennel and seems to be quite happy to be back home. There was plenty of work waiting for me at the office. The vacation is now over and it almost seems like a distant dream. Retirement sometimes begins to look very enticing. All I need to do is save enough money to afford to retire!

The cruise came to an end today. We’re now in a hotel at the Schipol Airport just outside of Amsterdam and are preparing to re-enter the normal world tomorrow. Our flight leaves Amsterdam at 10:25 a.m. CET (Central European Time) which corresponds to 2:25 a.m. MDT. We’ll arrive in Salt Lake City (if all goes well) about 6 p.m. MDT and then drive to Pocatello. Reality is already beginning to invade our lives once again. At least the weather correlated — it is dark, cloudy, and rainy today, which, according to our ship’s Cruise Director, is normal weather in Amsterdam.

We arrived in Amsterdam yesterday about noon. We set sail from Koeln about 9:30 last night just as we were finishing the “last supper” in the dining room. The food on the ship has been very nice and the only reason I haven’t gained about ten pounds is that we’ve been out walking just about every day for a couple of hours. However, I’m sure I’ve put on five pounds or more on this trip. The soups for lunch and dinner have been very nice with one of the highlights being a carrot soup with grapefruit! That’s not a combination I would have ever in my wildest dreams concocted, but it tasted very good. Our waiter, a delightful Hungarian fellow called Greg, took excellent care of us during the cruise making sure that we stayed “alcohol free” during the meals. He has a great sense of humor, and on the evening featuring the crew show, he played an inebriated waiter in a third-class dive of a restaurant — a performance definitely deserving of an award. By the end of the 14-day cruise we had gotten to know Greg a little bit along with some others on the crew. That certainly added to our experience, bringing another dimension to the cruise. Greg and his fiance Helga both work on the ship and have worked together for several years. It sounds like a very good arrangement for them. We found his recommendations for food and places to visit to be worthy of our attention.

The cruise from Koeln to Amsterdam is completely devoid of interesting stuff, particularly the part we sailed past during daylight hours on Saturday morning. The Rhine River divides just as it crosses the border into The Netherlands and a part goes somewhat northwest. The main part of the river flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam. The Rhine-Amsterdam Canal connects the waterways and canals in Amsterdam with the north branch of the Rhine River. That was the area we cruised through this morning. Quite uninteresting. However, it gave plenty of time to start packing and get other items out of the way in preparation for ending the cruise.

One of the absolute highlights of the trip happened on Saturday afternoon. After a bus tour and a canal tour we stopped at the Rijkes Museum for a brief tour. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and the visit through the Dutch Grand Masters was stunning. His commentary and explanation really brought the paintings to life — and all of them were of the kind that I could have sat and looked at for hours. The tour guide stopped at about five paintings and referred to a couple others in the tour. He compared and contrasted the styles and content and showed the progression of painting through a couple hundred years. A knowledgeable guide like that really adds to the experience.

The Rijkes Museum is being renovated. The main galleries are completely gutted and being rebuilt. Originally the museum renovation was to have been completed in 2005. However, asbestos was discovered and all of that will be removed. Now the projected completion date is in 2008. Meanwhile, a small two-floor gallery has been set up with a couple hundred of the most important works on display. The Night Watch by Rembrandt is, of course, a signature piece of the museum and rightfully so. We saw several other pieces that were also mind-boggling. The museum was definitely a highlight of the entire cruise. As far as art is concerned, the St. Stephens Cathedral in Passau and the Rijkes Museum in Amsterdam top the list. The most interesting city stop was definitely Duernstein, Austria. The most amazing Cathedral was in Koeln. The most interesting museum was the mechanical musical instruments in Ruedesheim followed closely by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. The most amazing residences were the Prince-Bishop Palace in Wuerzberg and the Schoenbrunn Summer Palace in Vienna. The place I’d most like to return and visit would be Budapest closely followed by Vienna.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be on the airplane headed back to Pocatello, Idaho. I’m going back with a new vision of European history and culture and now need to read up on the Holy Roman Empire and it’s decline. Napolean certainly had a huge impact on Western Europe and probably did more to dismantle Rome’s dominance than anyone else. I’d like to know more about that. Finally, the role of the Bishops and their conflict with the merchants and patricians is very interesting and I’m sure it has a lot to do with the Holy Roman Empire. In addition to this being a vacation, I’ve learned a lot and have had my curiosity piqued. It’s been a great cruise!

Today was one of the best weather days we’ve had on the river. We stated with chilly temperatures and sunny skies then are ending with clear, sunny skies and warm temperatures. Nina got up early and was out on the front of the ship camera, at the ready. By about 10 she was bundled in her sweater, coat, and blanket. By 10:30 she had come into the lounge almost frozen, but with several (hopefully) great castle pictures.

We spent the night docked in Ruedesheim and set sail at about 7:30 along the most beautiful part of the Rhine river, past all of the castles built to extract illegal tolls and taxes on the river traffic. The trip was very pleasant and we arrived in Koeln (Cologne) at 3:00 pm.

I really enjoy the days cruising on the river. It’s kind of like a sea day on the big ships, except there is always something to see. We spent a lot of time on this trip sailing at night, meaning we couldn’t see very much through sleepy, closed eyes. We’ll go past Duesseldorf late tonight. I’d like to get up and see the town from the river!

Koeln is still a fascinating city. The Cathedral is massive, one of the three largest cathedrals in the world. After all the others we have seen on this trip, the Koelner Dom just takes your breath away with it’s massive size and spectacular stained glass windows.

The infamous McDonalds is still there. That was the first McDonalds opened outside of Bravaria in Germany. When it opened, we took all the kids there on the train for Family Home Evening. The Germans in the Krefeld Branch thought we were crazy. I’ll bet we still have the tray mats from that visit!

We did a little shopping. I had to dial into a telephone conference at 4:00 pm about the 3rd quarter results. We sat in front of the cathedral watching the hoards of people walking past. The fine weather and a Friday afternoon seem to have brought the entire city! After we left the Cathedral, we walked down the pedestrian shopping street along with several thousand other souls. The size of the crowds certainly complemented the size of the cathedral!

Today was another day visiting two different cities. We stopped first in Mainz for a short walk around the city and then a brief visit to the Gutenberg Museum. The museum is run with stereotypical Prussian German efficiency — everything seemingly timed by a stopwatch. Our city guide tended to be fairly wordy and got several reprimands from the staff because he was taking too long at the various stops on the tour thus making him late for the next appointed time. The museum was very crowded and that may have contributed to the urgency of moving people along with some speed.

Johann Gutenberg is known as the inventor of movable type. Prior to him, large wood blocks were carved and hollowed out and then inked and pressed onto paper. The task took a long time to prepare a wood block for printing and then the block would wear out or become ink soaked and thus unusable after several hundred impressions. Gutenberg was trained in metalworking, particularly in gold and silver. He took his knowledge of metalworking to invent a way to prepare uniformly sized metal characters that could be put into a frame and thousands of impressions made. Further, new or replacement characters could be quickly prepared and set into the form, hence the name “movable type.”

On display at the museum are one and a half Gutenberg Bibles, the first items to be printed with the movable type system. Gutenberg spent years working to perfect his invention and needed considerable financing. He took on several loans, the biggest of which came due while he was secretively printing this first run of bibles. The investor took him to court and won the lawsuit, including taking Gutenberg’s invention away from him. The investor Johann Fust completed the printing of the bibles and went on to make a fortune from this process. Gutenberg literally became anonymous and almost dropped completely out of sight. While he didn’t die bankrupt, he was only spared this circumstance because of the generosity of the Archbishop of Mainz who granted him a small pension and food ration.

This first run of 200 bibles resulted in 400 books — 200 Old Testaments and 200 New Testaments. According to our guide, about 40 or so of these bibles are known to be in existence. The museum in Mainz has two New Testaments and one Old Testament. The books were prepared in several stages. All of the pages were printed for a book. These pages were then sold to someone who took them to a bookbinder to be bound. After that, the owner would give the bound book to an illustrator who would decorate the pages and chapter headings in the book. About a year or so after buying the pages for the book a bound, beautifully illustrated volume was completed and ready for display. I think I need to look through our books one more time just to make sure we don’t have one of these million-dollar books hidden away somewhere….

Gutenberg’s invention changed the world, yet he had to sit on the sidelines and watch that happen. I think that television was also one of the world-altering inventions and Philo Farnsworth’s experience somewhat mirrors Gutenberg’s. In Farnsworth’s case, he invented TV, demonstrated the invention, and had it stolen by David Sarnoff, president of RCA. While Farnsworth also didn’t die in bankruptcy, he was certainly royally shafted by Sarnoff. The same has happened with other watershed inventions. James Watt, often credited as being the inventor of the steam engine certainly didn’t invent it — he figured out an important improvement and essentially took the feet out from under the original inventor, Thomas Neucomen. And then we have the saga of the personal computer and Bill Gates. Using a stolen piece of computer code, Bill Gates sold IBM an operating system for their new personal computer. Once the operating system contract was reached, Gates began the task of somehow acquiring the rights to the stolen code, which he finally obtained by bankrupting the owner and forcing the sale of the company. I’ve kind of decided that I’ll know when a world-altering invention occurs when nefarious characters peddling wares obtained by highly dubious and likely nefarious means accompany the invention. Oops, wait! Almost everything dealing with computers and high technology today is accompanied by the same hype and double-dealing (witness Oracle’s in-process rape of PeopleSoft).

The picture is from the Cathedral in Mainz. The carving shows one of the Bishops in Mainz depicted as the tall person in the middle of the picture. The three other folks aren’t children, they are kings. This particular Bishop had the opportunity to crown three kings and he is depicted almost as crushing the crowns down on the heads of the kings. In this part of the world, kings were elected by seven electors — three bishops and four patricians. Then one of the bishops would crown the king in that bishop’s cathedral.

After that whirlwind tour, we boarded the boat and sailed through lunchtime to Ruedesheim, a very quaint little city a bit further down the Rhine River from Mainz. The boat remained docked at Ruedesheim overnight since we would be sailing down the castle-rich, beautiful stretch of the Rhine River from Ruedesheim to Koblenz the next morning. The agenda in Ruedesheim included a visit to a self-powered musical instrument museum and then wine tasting in the Drosselgasse, a supposedly world-renown alley of wine bars featuring the wines of the Mosel and Rhine valleys.

The mechanical musical instrument museum was quite delightful. Music boxes of all types from small wind-up devices to huge merry-go-round machines were on display. A number of them were in working order and were demonstrated. The variety of music boxes and the ingenuity of the builders were amazing. Also on display were several Edison phonographs and recording devices. During the demonstration we learned the etymology of the idiom “Put a sock in it.” It seems as though the Edison phonographs were all LOUD and there was no volume control available. Rolling up one or more socks and tossing them into the horn controlled the loudness. Hence, telling someone to “put a sock in it” is to tell them to quite down. I haven’t heard that phrase for years, probably because very few people have to use socks as volume controls anymore. I bought a small device where I can “program” my own music strips to be played. I’m quite interested in seeing if I can make something happen.

We bypassed the Drosselgasse and instead had an apple strudel in a sidewalk cafe. The weather hopefully portended sunny, clear skies for the sail down the romantic Rhine River on the morrow.

We were only in this charming little city for a couple of hours before lunch. The day was cloudy with occasional sprinkles and fairly chilly. Wertheim sits on the confluence of the Tauber River as it flows into the Rhine River. One impressive sight was the high water marks from floods over the past couple of centuries marked on a wall near the Tauber River. Once again, it was interesting to me that the city hadn’t done much to prevent the floods which happen on the average every three years. They did raise the level of some streets, but beyond that, people just have to live with the high water.

Wertheim is also known for something else: Glass. The city didn’t become a center for glassmaking until the late 1970’s when Corning Glass put in a facility to make fiber optics. A number of glass blowers from Eastern Europe made their way out of the Communist Block countries to go to Wertheim where their skills could be well compensated. There are also several glass companies making decorative glass and we visited their retail store. We didn’t buy anything there because one of the glass blowers from that company would be on the boat in the afternoon demonstrating the art of glass blowing as well as bringing plenty of wares for sale.

Another important find in Wertheim was another big suitcase. By this time we had spent a LOT of money and had acquired a LOT of stuff that needed to go home with us. There was a small store selling somewhat poorly made, but sufficiently large and sturdy suitcases for 20 Euros. We bought one as did a number of other people on the cruise. It was kind of interesting watching the tourists making their way back to the boat towing a black suitcase behind them!

It turns out that all of the Galileo Thermometers are made in Wertheim! All of them. I bought one. It’s quite a unique instrument and will look good in our house in Pocatello. The glassblower who spent the afternoon showing us how some of the decorative glass in blown and prepared was very interesting. He spoke excellent English and was pretty full of himself as well. He certainly had a knack for handling glass, however. He sold a bunch of stuff after his demonstration. When we pulled into a lock, he and his fiancé hopped off the boat and were picked up by his father.

Lock-hopping, as it is called, was the means that we would catch up with the ship if we weren’t on board when it sailed. At the appointed sailing time, the ship left whether everyone was on board or not. We were given the phone number of the ship and if we missed it, we were to call the boat They would tell us what lock to meet the boat at and we would have to take a taxi there to meet the ship. As far as I know, we didn’t have anyone on the cruise have to do any lock-hopping.

The bus leaves in about 5 minutes for the 90-minute drive back to Wuerzberg. We’ve had another delightful day in Rothenberg. The first time I was here was in the early 1970’s with Gordon Plummer, who was my boss back then. He had heard about this walled city and we drove over here from Munich one Saturday afternoon. I don’t remember much from that visit other than the walls and a new St. Martins Church. I haven’t found the church since then (but I haven’t looked too hard) but the walls are still here.

The last time we were here we stopped at McDonalds for the restroom (there is always a clean, western toilet in a McDonalds). That place is now gone! I don’t know whether or not the restriction on buildings and allowable modifications (McDonalds was not able to display any “Golden Arches” on the outside of the restaurant) or just poor business conditions, but the restaurant is closed. There is no more McDonalds in Rothenberg!

The shopping was just as good, if not better, than it was in 1999. Nina shipped a whole bunch of stuff home and we’ll need to figure out how to send more as we don’t have room (or weight). I took a couple hundred pictures. Maybe I can make something from all the pictures?? I brought both my 35mm camera as well as the digital camera. I used the film camera in Budapest and found it too cumbersome, particularly when I can’t see what I’ve taken to decide if I need to take another one.

in the early 1950’s a group of 16 German towns along the Mainz and Tauber rivers banded together and formed the “Romantisces Strasse” organization. They pooled money for marketing with the intent of bringing tourism to the area. They built bicycle paths along the rivers, put signs up along the way, put together advertising for hotels and restaurants, and a very effective marketing program. The Japanese just love the idea and come by the hundreds if not thousands. They copied the idea and have established a “Romantisches Strasse” near Mt. Fuji in Japan. That association paid for putting Japanese language signs along the route in Germany and I think that every Japanese tour bus goes along this road. I think it represents one of the most effective marketing programs in Europe, as tourism is the number one money producer for the region with wine ranking number two. I’m sure that the tourism helps enormously with the sale of wine.

Rothenburg is also known as "Christmas Town" as one of the major businesses in town is a year-round Christmas Store, Kaethe Wolfart. When we were in town in 1999 we spent a significant amount of money on Christmas tree ornaments. We did the same this time. Kaethe Wolfart has been able to extract a lot of money from our wallet — but all for a good cause. Another reason we like this town is that good quality souvenir products are available from all over southern German. There are enough tourists that quality merchandise has a good market in the city. I suspect that during the summer, the population doubles every day with all the tourists that arrive, spend money, and then leave.