Another use for the lovely 2.5" screen on the Casio EX-Z750.  I took several pictures of the maps in my guidebook, and left the guidebook at home.  Using the zoom feature I could navigate details of the map pretty well!

I also used the audio recording feature to record the expert pronunciation of a couple of Turkish menu items that were worth remembering but too foriegn to memorize for long-term use.

[Update 6/7/05: It's especially useful to take a picture of a map you couldn't take with you if you wanted - the most detailed maps are the huge ones in each subway station in Berlin.  Several times on Sunday I snapped a photo of the detailed map between the subway station and my destination, in much greater detail than my guidebook provided.  Enclosed is a small section of such a map shown at the actual size and zoom level of the screen.  Perfectly readable, and as easy to scroll around to a larger area (about 15 screenfuls) as Google maps are.]

As I wake from another good night’s sleep in the Arcotel Velvet hotel in Berlin (I stitched the accompanying picture to approximate a wide-angle lens), I’m ready to rave about the German bedding system.  Instead of top and bottom sheets, covered with blankets and bedspreads and tucked in, the German bed is dressed in a bottom sheet and a duvet cover that is entirely enclosed in a sheet.  This is a superior design in my mind for many reasons:

1. Easier to make.  I never got the hang of making a bed.  But I can fold a duvet.  Which is not to say that I get around to it every day, but a messy duvet also isn’t as bad as a messy traditional bedcovering.
2. Easier to clean.  To thoroughly clean every exposed part of the bedding, one need only wash the duvet cover and the fitted sheet, instead of including the bedspread and maybe even the blanket.
3. Cleaner styling.  The lines of a bed with duvets are clean and inviting.
4. No squished toes.  Climb into a normal bed (esp. one professionally made up such as in a hotel), and your feet feel like their in shoes two sizes too small.  Too tight a bed is simply uncomfortable.
5. Better temperature control.  You have more options for cooling off when you can vent any side instead of just at the top.  For me, the best is cooling a leg while remaining snuggly at the neck.
6. Encourages color variety.  It’s easier to change the color of the sheets (and therefore of the whole bed) than to change a bedspread, which typically only changes with a major redecoration.
7. No sharing violations. Best of all, you don’t have to share the covers - you each get your own ;-).

I don’t know why more of the world hasn’t adopted this system.  I loved it the first time I visited Germany about seven years ago.  We converted at home four or five years ago and I remain satisfied.

I’ve been in Berlin all week participating in the W3C Web Services Description Working Group and the W3C Web Services Addressing Working Group.  What a full week!  For WSDL we’re down to ONE active non-editorial issue!  WS-Addressing made some progress as well (but not as much as I’d like).

Berlin has confounded my expectations in several ways.  First, I expected a shining sea of glass skyscrapers in a river of immaculately groomed landscaping in West Berlin, and a crumbling mass of soviet relics in the East.  Instead, a lot of the most important stuff is in the East!  The museums, theaters, old churches - the real city center - belonged to the East.  If anything, the East is undergoing a renewal that seems to have detracted somewhat from the maintenance of the West.

I’ve also been very impressed at the design sensitivity being demonstrated.  The Reichstag exemplifies this - the roof of this glorious Romanesque building was bombed away and has been replaced by a complete contrast - an ultramodern glass gallery and dome with a helix of pathways leading to the top of a tornado of glass panels which direct light down into the Parliamentary chamber.  Rather than being stuck in the past, or doing away with it all together, Berliners have married the two in a way that enhances both.  I’ll edit my photos soon and see if I can put together a series, till then here’s one quickie to try to illustrate my point.

[Update: Flickr set here.]