Advent calendar
Originally uploaded by david.orban.
I have been recently contacted be a Museum of the city of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada. They were asking for permission to include my photo of a rather nice, and unusual advent calendar. Of course I complied eagerly, and asked about the nature of their exhibit: it is an interactive [...]
Remembering the heroism of our space explorers – 1
Originally uploaded by david.orban.
The space museum is closed. Not just closed, but in ruin, and abandon. Russia is a leader in the commercialization of its space infrastructure, as well as everything else it has, but in the meantime it forgot to keep an eye on what brought [...]
Pirates’ market
Originally uploaded by david.orban.
Inside this market all types of software can be found on conveniently assembled CDs or DVDs. A typical price for a CD is 100 rubles ( about 4 dollars, or 3 euro), independently of the content. You can find the latest releases of Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, alongside with [...]
New apartment buildings
Originally uploaded by david.orban.
I am told these sell for five thousand dollars per square meter. No local with a normal job can afford them of course. Even if a lot of the local salaries come from unofficial sources. The real estate market with come back to earth, but it will be a few [...]
Signs of the past
Originally uploaded by david.orban.
The lingering signs of the communist era express the physical difficulty of parting with the past: be it monuments that praise principles not shared anymore, crumbling public housing, now sold at astronomical prices which make Moscow one of the most expensive cities in the world to the foreigners, or [...]
My russian illusions
Originally uploaded by nicointhebus.
I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow and will be there for the first time, spending a week mainly for business, but as usual with the hope of having some time to look around as well. Having been raised in Hungary in the ’70s, where the Russians were looked upon as [...]
Al Shugart, founder of Seagate Technology, the leading hard disk manufacturer, died yesterday at 76. Shugart invented the technology behind the hard disks, starting from a a capacity at that time unbelievable of 5 MB, and built starting from scratch the company that brought them with a constant evolution, to become the basis of our [...]
Lost in the city!
Well, there were a lot of adventures to be had driving the Segway around. We went to the supermarket, and shopped around, to the amusement of the other shoppers. We went to the restaurant, and, yes, the kids got lost. They were very cool about it. When they realized that they didn’t [...]
Segway i2
For a few days, thanks to the friends at SCM I am testing the newly released Segway i2. I have already driven the old model, but I am glad to have the chance and test it at some length. My intention is that of bringing it everywhere, to see how people react. This morning, [...]
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