The Daily Lifeweb design and personal blog by Evan Skuthorpe

It’s almost been a year since I went to Berlin and I’m getting the urge to go back again. There are a few things I missed the first time around such as the rubble mounds and a bit of the Nazi architecture. Plus there’s the night life…

Germany is a fantastic country, it reminds me of Australia in a way. Everything just works and runs and operates like it should and Berlin is just great. I can’t describe why, it just is.

Achtung and schnell is about all the german I know. Thank God for video games!

In January this year I went to Berlin for a few days. I stayed in east Mitte near the Ostbahnhoff and had a great time. Berlin is amazing, so much history and so much to see and do. I saw Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp to the north of the city as well as a Third Reich tour with a fantastic and knowledgable guide by the name of Edo. He was from Holland if my memory is correct. A great guy!

I managed to get some great photos of Berlin in and around the city including some super night shots.

It’s 7:29am and I’m sitting in the pub at Heathrow eating baked beans on toast and drinking an orange juice. I’m tired, a little sick from my developing cold and just want to get on the plane to catch some sleep.

Berlin will be awesome, just need sleep.

God damn I hate Apple. I’ve never been a fan of them. The computers that we used to use in school were so awkward and ugly and backward when compared to Windows PCs. Sure the OS in them these days is a fluid and lovely app. Sure the company innovated the portable music market with the 3rd and 4th Gen iPods and later, to a lesser extent, the phone market with their iPone.

So with such hardware, why do they insist on proprietary limited, protectionist and down-right backward software support? PC’s play anything. Good third party non-Apple brand hardware will play anything. My iPhone won’t.

I can’t import mpeg4 files to it. I can’t import them to iTunes. Why? Who fucking knows? What error message do I get? None. All I see is a circle with a diagonal line through it! What does this mean? Where’s the user feedback? Is it a case of the files being supported but that I’m not importing them the right way or does the circle with line indicate no support at all? Who knows? God damn Apple and there un-usable iTunes.

A search in the iTunes help for ‘movies’ returns a result about watching home movies on an Apple TV. What the hell is an Apple TV? A search for ‘movies’ in the iPhone help returns no results! Apple are an exercise in frustration.

A Windows PC will allow you to drag and drop what ever you want into what ever logical app or piece of hardware and it will work. Or at the very least, it will tell you what you need to download for it to work or what format you will need.

Apple and their iTunes and iPhone are testing my patience. I can’t be arsed with any more Google searches on the subject. I’m going to pack for Berlin.

Finally I’m getting around to seeing Berlin.

In 2004 I was going to go to Berlin with a mate. I had my plane ticket and the first nights accommodation all booked. I was running a little late leaving my house but still had enough time if everything else went to plan. The tube was running a slow service making me slightly later. I got the train to Stansted Airport arriving with just minutes to spare. I was at the back of the crowd of a train load of people walking slowly and leisurely and unable to push past as there were just so many. I got to the gate and up to the desk at 44 minutes before departure. The gate closes 45 minutes before departure. They wouldn’t let me on. I said it was only a minute and asked could they make an exception. They wouldn’t let me on. I hate Ryan Air.

Anyway, this Friday I’m off to Berlin and am determined not to miss my flight. I’ve always wanted to get to Berlin and see the sites, historical and new. I want to find Hitler’s bunker, the wall, Brandenburg Gate and all the rest of it. Awesome!