Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Last Art Nouveau Walking Tour for Us

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We went on our last Art Nouveau walk offered by Budapest underGuides. I have now done all of their tours and I did the Classic tour twice to do it with Ron. Each tour is excellent, so if you know you will be here some Saturday in the next 6 weeks, you should book one. The English ones generally have room, but the Hungarian ones they have had to turn people away in droves.  Pre-registration is required and they are only funded for 30 people in each of two groups. So many register, but don't show up, which is shameful for those who want to be part of this. 

Here are the photos from today's tour, but they are also in the photo blog.

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Thursday, July 28, 2011

You Snooze. You Lose

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Well when some snooze others just may be the winners. This photos was taken from Pestiside.hu as it captured a BKV inspector on a night bus sleeping away instead of checking people's tickets. It is doubtful anyone would  wake me to play show and tell. I wonder if the driver let him sleep when they hit the end of the route or not. 


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Summer, What Summer?

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The weather this season has fluctuation between summer and late autumn. One friend said he felt cheated out of having a summer. Our friend Anna sent this this. It sums up the weather nicely.


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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Is it Mercury Retrograde Time?

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There used to be an American guy here from New York City who was teaching journalism and broadcasting at a vocational college here. We became acquaintances and each time I had a computer disaster, he would blame it on  a Mercury Retrograde. Here is a short lesson in astrology and astronomy.


Mercury rotates around the sun every 88 days, approximately four times in the time it takes Earth to do one rotation. This makes sense since Mercury was the messenger of the gods, so he had to be fast. However, it appears and appears only, but is not reality that Mercury slows down to get his breath and then stops (stationary retrograde), moves backwards for a few weeks revisiting where he had been (retrograde) and spurts forward at times. The planet Mercury is said to be associated with or to rule all activities that relate to communications, travel, learning.


Well, two days ago, there was a glitch in our BudaBaB website. When my Joomla Guru went to fix it, it went from bad to non-existent. With all of the tweaks he had done, it is still not back. I have been back and forth between my helper here and my host provider in Texas. Without either of them, I would have had a stroke by now, but I am hoping all will be over soon and we will be back to normal.


After consulting the astrological charts, it looks like Mercury cannot be held responsible for this one. Darn it! If anyone wants me, I will be buried in a book ignoring the rest of the world until this is fixed.

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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Sunshine for a Dreary Sunday Afternoon

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This must be my lucky weekend. I received this e-mail today from another former student.



Dear Dr. James,
I just wanted to thank you for all of the things you taught us. I am teaching at a high school now and the example you gave me of what a good teacher is like, inspires me every day. I consider myself very lucky that I could learn from you
So thank you again and I wish you all the best.
Anna Rázsi

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Identity Found

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Ah, the mystery student has identified herself. If I had a tidy list of e-mail addresses, I could have sought her out, but alas she had to step forward. 


As a result, I realized I could have traced back her moniker, which I did today and found that she has been blogging also. I read some of it when I was taking a break from my writing and was struck by the depth and emotion in one particular post called "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" on July 20th.


It is most likely the fact that I could relate so well to the sentiment, but I found it very powerful. With that, I sent it to Ron to read, who also was impressed without the ability to identify with the emotions. I want to recommend it here to others. I hope Andrea doesn't mind, but a public blog is meant to read and shared. http://virezma.blogspot.com/

One of the interesting and often joyful things about teaching university is that you get to know your students as students in the classroom, but you get to understand them as humans after they graduate.

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Virezma Comments

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Apparently, one of my former students sent this comment in to the Harry Potter post. However, based on their e-mail moniker, I don't know which student it was. 


Virezma has left a new comment on your post "07 - 11 Connection"

Dear Dr. James,
I'm so glad to find out at last how much you like the Harry Potter series. When we were freshmen at university some of my friends and I used to identify you as the Dumbledore of our institution. And you will always remain that for us. 

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Saturday, July 23, 2011

I Want to Set Hounds Loose on FireFox

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I am ready for an old fashioned fox hunt, but of the virtual kind. Just yesterday, I noticed that on our website 
Red fox. Picture from Skandinavisk Dyrepark, D...Image via Wikipediapage "More Useful Links", most of the pictures were not displaying. Why was this happening? I checked the kitchen computer, but they showed fine. On my school laptop, nothing. They were not there. Then the same thing was happening with Chrome, but not with Internet Explorer, which I never use at all. 


Time to contact my Joomla Guru, Nigel. Knowing ahead of time what his first suggestions would be, I cleared the cache of both programs, rebooted the computer after a full shutdown and tried again. No luck at all. 


Nigel was not able to recreate the problem; he could see all. He suggested I uninstall and re-install the programs. Viola, it worked with Chrome, but not FireFox. Damn! I cleared the cookies, I cleaned the cache again, I checked all security options, deleted add-ons, read all of FireFox's troubleshooting with images and followed each precisely. Still nothing. 


I looked at the CPanel of my site to see if there was something there, but since I had not changed anything there, why this would suddenly happen was beyond my comprehension. It was just a matter of ruling out everything possible. After Goggling the issue, the only things that were apparent were from 2009 the latest. I guess they cleared up their problems since then. I looked to the Joomla Forums for help, but had to register first. To register, they have one of those captcha codes that you have to figure out in order to move to the next level. Some of those damn things are harder than a tough level of Angry Birds. After 4 attempts of getting it wrong, I was an angry bird. It locked me out for too many tries. Now when I try again, I have to enter all of the contact information all over again and hope I can read the grayed out lettering that looks like Halloween script that had been written in pencil and left in the rain.  

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07 - 11 Connection

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At this point in time, Harry Potter must be everywhere now that the last and final movie has been released making magic at the box office. I have yet to see the next to last movie, the first part based on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because I had not read the book yet.


Boo and hiss at me for waiting for so long to complete the series. Each of the first six books, I was in line with everyone else getting my copy on the day their arrived. In fact, I have the date I bought the last one, July 24, 2007. It doesn't seem that long ago, but I guess it was. The English bookstore here did not stay open at midnight to sell the advanced copies, but I had pre-ordered, so I was able to walk in at any time during business hours to collect my copy. Of course I went early lest they should sell it to someone seemingly more eager than I appeared to be if I arrived later in the day.


The question in your mind may be why then has the book sat on my shelf for almost four years to the day without being devoured as the first six were?  The reason is simple really. At the time, I was writing my first book. The research for that was beyond time consuming; therefore, no distractions were possible. I could have gotten through the book in about four days of reading, but this was the last. It was meant to be slaved over, reading each and every world J.K.R. chose to use. Then the book sat there mostly forgotten, but when it did jump to my attention, it was so thick in hardcover. I need to have a book with me everywhere I go, so that means on the trams, metros, standing in lines, in between classes, waiting at the dentist's office and the list is endless. Minutes without reading are bound to be a few books that I had not read by the time I die that I had really wanted to savor. This book was to heavy to cart around. It was a gloomy, rainy, depressing, stay at home and don't leave kind of book.


Yet, the weather did not provide me with the perfect storm until I was thumbing my way through the last one hundred pages of the 605. I finished it on July 21, 2011, almost 4 years to day that I had bought it. I am still licking my lips; it was so very tasty. Nothing planned, it just happened that way. Now that the second and last movie is now out, I had to get the book read before seeing either part one or part two. The other part is that it was devilish avoiding people who were discussing the book or the movies, so avoiding spoilers was getting increasingly difficult. 


I have read all 7 books and have watched 6 of the 8 movies. I am an over-aged adult with a child inside who still appreciates sorcery, witches, wizards, and magic. The magic I especially like is the magic where a single mother can write the plot to a book in a coffee shop in Edinburgh and become one of the richest women on earth. I want her wand.

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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Budapest, Hungary Ethnographic Museum

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I went to the Hungarian Parliament today to see if they were offering tours again. Being in the area, I decided to visit the Ethnographic Museum across the street. The interior is so magnificent. I took these with my phone, not my camera. For some reason, there is a problem with embedding the album of 12 pictures. 

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God and Hungary Forsake Some Religions

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Not too long ago, the only thing needed to create a new 'religion' in Hungary was to get 120 members to sign your form saying they were card carrying members of your faith. You did not even need to issue said membership cards, as long as they were willing to swear to it. If you are going to swear under these circumstances it kind of insinuates you are swearing  to some higher power, unlike the type of swearing you do when you hit your finger with a hammer, thus it made it official with the local powers here as well as whatever God(s) may be listening. Therefore, the Hungarian Parliament put a stamp of approval on it too. 

Well by Jove or Zeus choose your preference, that is no longer true. The new government has tightened the reins, pulled on the lease, and reeled in the those metaphorical reborn fish masquerading as a religions sect. The new testament set forth by the Hungarian Parliament now states who is and who is not a religion by setting forth fourteen denominations as officially recognized. The reasoning is a sound way to filter out businesses who were hiding under the veil of religion. This is one habit that needed changing, Sister.

Who the other thirteen happen to be is any English speakers' guess, since no official list has come out in English, but what has come out is is the list that should be referred to as "Oh My God, How Did We Forget That Group?" 

The Catholics made the list, because the Budapest Mayor just renamed Liberty Square into Pope John Paul II Square, putting this group of papal servants on the list. Others who are asking "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? are..."

The Methodists who have been around here for the last 100 years and are still in business, have been omitted.

Buddhist have been forgotten. For the love of Dali Lama, how could they forget him. He was even here last year. 

Last of all, the Islamics. For the major increase in the number of women wearing head coverings and floor length skirts, they a really are hard to miss.

However, I will be interested in seeing what becomes of the Scientology group. Stay tuned.



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The Farmers Are Out to Slaughter Me

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Them there Mid-westerners took umbrage to my Iowa Tea Party comments, but more certainly my disparaging the middle of the USA in general. They have threatened to form a tractor pull with me in the center. Some of the Iowans have tried to intimidate me with suggestions of body snatching and then being hog-tied while breathing deeply on a tour of their pig farms. To top it all off, they then want me to spend a season watching the corn grown. 

As daunting as all of this sounds, they had the  gall to send a picture of the Committee for Harassment of Iowans. Doesn't this look rather intimidating?  I have included it here to see if others concur. 
This is a sure fire way to keep me only on the coastlines of the USA if I should ever return. The last time I was there was 2003, so what is the rush to get back?
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Contest From budapestUnderguide

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I will not get on a step ladder without a harness and safety net, so this is not for me. budapestUNDERGUIDE launched a double game where two lucky winners will enjoy a free tandem skydiving jump and a further five players will have the opportunity to jump half-price!

1 Tandem Quiz:
Answer the three questions correctly in the quiz and win a free tandem skydiving or one of the 5 half-price dives!


2 "My face in free fall" - Photo Contest
This is an extra game, where the winner will be jumping for free as well! What would your face be like while you are tandem skydiving? Take a photo of it, upload it to budapestUNDERGUIDE’s facebook wall and send it in an email to social@underguide.com until midnight 3rd August. The most impressive photo will be chosen by the jury of budapestUNDERGUIDE and the Millennium Tandem Team.


Announcement of winners: 5th August, Friday afternoon at 5 pm.
All winners are welcome to tandem skydive on 12th August 2011 at Dunaújváros airport for an afternoon program with a good atmosphere, a lot of fun, and a local ‘bogrács’ barbecue accompanied by Péter Gálos and budapestUNDERGUIDE.


More info:
http://www.facebook.com/bp.underguide?sk=app_119270478163141

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Monday, July 18, 2011

Iowa Tea Party

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I make lots of Iowa jokes around the house and this is for two reasons. 
1. Ron is from Iowa, so I like getting under his skin about being a Midwestern
2. I lived in Michigan, so I am not too fond of the Midwest.

Now, I am not too fond of the American movement, the Tea Party either. However, when Ron brought this card home, I had to laugh. He said they were on all of the tables in a restaurant he went into while back home in Iowa. There was no need to scan the reverse side of the card because it was blank, total white space. This is exactly as the card was, nothing has been cut off or deleted in the scanning process. With that in mind, what do you notice what is missing?

Did you guess? If you didn't guess what is missing, note that there is no address for where you are supposed to send the donations you committed yourself to on this card. Do we really want these people running the government? 
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Saturday, July 16, 2011

Reader Comments:

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A reader sent this in relating to my post about Wikipedia. I am only reprinting the comment here, because that is what I do. I make no judgements or validations regarding this comment. Is this our very own WikiLeaks?

"One of my friends is an admin in Wikipedia. He has told me that some of the wikipedia admins take money in order to make biased edits and ban users who oppose them. See this also - wikicash9.blogspot.com"

Justin Meschede has left a new comment on your post "Reader Comments:":
I have actually seen one Wikipedia admin advertising his "service" in a freelancer board. He was charging $500 for editing the Wikipedia articles. So if you want to promote your company, you can pay him cash and he will edit the article for you.

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Ron and I went on the Art Nouveau tour today. It was my second time, but his first. Later, we decided to explore the EU Art work that is floating in the lake in Városliget (City Park) where the Vajdahunyad Castle is located. This is such a fabulous building, but there are now 26 pieces of art floating in the lake, created by 26 artists from 15 EU countries. Here are my photos from our walk.I will share them there and not make you go to the photo blog to view them.



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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Google Plus Invitations

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I had thought this was going to be a no-brainer, but apparently I am not running in the most techie group of people. I have been using Dropbox for some time now. For years, I would do something on my school computer and then have to save it to a USB stick to transfer it to my home computer or the process in reversed. The problem was with too many things to do, it often took extra time to remember or investigate which version of a document was the latest, so I would not overwrite any changes.

With Dropbox, I can upload it into my account and it is there regardless of which computer I happen to be working on, plus it is also accessible on my smartphone. It has saved me tons of time, but honestly, I was resistant at first. Yet now, I have so much for school and other things, documents, photos, music that I want to have access to for various reasons, I am running out of room. 

Dropbox has a solution. You can get up to 8 GB for the free account by doing various things. The first and easiest is to sign up for a free account. The if you take their tutorial tour, you get a bonus amount of storage. Finally, you can get others to sign up and they will give you 225 MB for each person who joins. I thought that with my connections on Facebook, students, friends, former guests, this would be easy-peasy, but no. It has not been easy at all.
I have moved into bribery!

If anyone is interested, I have 200 invites to Google + left to give away. What I am willing to do is trade an invite for people who will join Dropbox with my referral code so I can get my account to the maximum 8 GB. 

Here is the referral link: http://db.tt/yamoiIX 

What you need to do is this:

1. You need to download Dropbox.
2. Run the program
3. Create your own FREE dropbox account.

After you have created your account using my referral, I will get a notice of new space added with your e-mail as the source. Then I will send you a Google + invite.

When I reach 8 GB, I may take back this offer. Act now, but if you do, send me a note to drryanjames@gmail.com so I know I should be looking for your referral status and I can prepare to send you a Google + referral.
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Try it, Test it, Write About it, Keep it

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Years ago, at least 986 years to narrow it down, I worked part-time between university classes as a market researcher. I was one of those annoying people that came up to you in the mall asking if you would answer some questions about a particular product. If you met the specific criteria we were looking for, which differed depending on the product, you were invited back to the office for more market research. Depending on the product you would receive $1-$5.00 to apply deodorant to your arm, to try a new yogurt, or smell perfume samples. I loved this job because I received a bonus for everyone I was able to get into the office. I made good money.


Now there is a twist to this concept. I think I am going to love this. You are not going to shop until you drop, but you may have some fun that is really off the beaten track. There is a company that is promoting what they are calling tryvertising . Is it any wonder people have problems learning English when we bastardize it to create new ideas? Well tryvertising is different than what I did in college. A new store of the Sample Central franchise will open in Budapest in August. This is reportedly the first store in Europe, though this chain has been in South American since 2007. Here is how it will work.


You pay a registration fee of 1,490 Ft and an annual membership fee of 5,000 Ft. This gives you entry to the store, which looks similar to many stores, but with one significant difference. You will not have to pay for anything.  You will be allowed to choose 5 items from the store, take them home and keep them until they fall apart or you sell them on E-Bay. Now there is a catch, but it is rather a minor one. You are not allowed back into the store until you have filled out an online questionnaire about the product(s) you chose. No big whoop! That is my kind of deal. But, what the products are in reality will be the real test. After looking at the franchise website for the company, I am still guessing that you may choose 5 items each time you enter, if you were a compliant consumer who filled in their forms online. 


Companies involved are FMCG=Fast Moving Consumer Goods. These are consumable products such as toiletries, snack foods, beverages, soap, detergents, etc., that are produced in large quantities and distributed through retail stores. According to the website there are the FmCG in addition to electronics companies present, such as Procter & Gamble, Avon, Nestlé, Nivea, Sara Lee, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft and Reckitt Benckiser


The store opens next month, so you will definitely be reading more about his in future blogs.

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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Don't Ask Because We Won't Tell

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If you think this going to be some gay rights in the US military, hit the back button now, because it isn't. This is about the Budapest Tourism office and their ability to be timely with information. 


The Hungarian House of Wines on Castle Hill provided a wonderful treat for those who like wine and have a capacity to drink fast. You paid something like $15.00 at the time and you were set free in the cellar to taste taste 60 Hungarian wines without supervision. This was so high on everyone's "Must Do" list, when it closed years ago, I am surprised there was no funeral march with a memorial service. Hope was everlasting with the signs that stated they were eventually relocating to the Pest side of the river, though the time frame was indefinite. With that information and making it my business to keep up-to-date on businesses, I periodically, but with utmost frequency would stop in at TourInform hoping for a good news of a rebirth. Nothing new, same old, same old, no the Hungarian House of Wines has not reopened.  


Interestingly, when I went to the museum this Sunday, I just happened to walk by the old House of Hungarian Wine only to be aghast that the door was open. I barreled through the door like a drunk in prohibition finding the last drop of alcohol in a Baptist Church. When I started to question the receptionist, she had to call reinforcements; she did not speak English. Strange for a place that heavily depends on tourists to have their front person be a non-English speaker


The entire staff came to greet me. I think I was the first non-employee they have seen on the premises in months. Months, you ask? Yes, months. This new House of Hungarian Wines had re-opened supposedly in August of 2010. I am dubious about this information, because I know for a fact that I have passed by this location multiple times in the last eleven months with the explicit purpose of paying homage to a treasured tourism site, though I did not ever partake personally. Certainly most or at least some of my parting glances had to have been during normal operation hours, yet there had never been any sign of life to spark my attention for further investigation. 


That be what it may, the new rendition of the wine house will certainly cause whines from those who have been privy to its former carnation. This House of Wine is much more expensive, you are kept on a short lease for tasting, and you have to choose from different prescribed plans of offerings. For what they are charging, there are many other less expensive as well as less restrictive opportunities around the city. Too bad! I wonder if they will be open by next July.

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Monday, July 11, 2011

George Lang RIP

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Anyone into food problably knew something about Gundel's restaurant here in Budapest. It was and is probably the most expensive restaurant in the city. If you have not heard yet, the renovator of Gundel's and the more charming less expensive Owls Nest, George Lang has died in New York. Sorry to break it to you so abruptly, but yet, we all have an expiration date somewhere. There is a lovely tribute to the man in Restaurant Insider if you care to read it, click here


According to the reprint in Chew.hu, "While best known as the proprietor of the Café des Artistes in Manhattan, he later made headlines for bringing back to life (with the backing of cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder) Budapest's venerable Gundel, which had fallen on very hard times during the communist era. I wasn't initially going to write any tribute-like post in honor of Lang, because, at least in his later years, he didn't seem to be a force for culinary good. He not only let Café des Artistes go bust (it has since reopened as "Leopard at des Artistes"), but he also presided over/agree to the sale of Gundel to the Danubius hotel group, which from day one seemed intent on returning the place to its pre-1990 squalor. One could even say that both places, as well as his career as a whole, were always slightly more about PR than food. And those Gundel-branded wines... well, let's not even go there."


I could not have said it better, so I had to quote it. When I was writing my books, when I had opportunities to speak with chefs, a common theme of Budapest restaurant life was the demise of Gundels. It only survives on reputation from glorious days of the past and current day patrons who effusively pour on accolades to hide their shameful waste of money.

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