Moose and Blueberries

Anything is Possible When You’re in the Library (Or Where the Fuck Am I Supposed to Study?)

Finding a place to study in Prague might be a bit of an annoying quest. When it’s 3:30 in the morning, you really need to finish the paper (and get a grade like the man your grades could be like) and your roommate wants to sleep, there’s not so many places to go. Actually, it wouldn’t be much better at 10pm either. Or 8pm. Are there any places to go study in Prague at all? And is there a way out of the status quo?

Libraries? Nah.

• My university library (VŠE) closes at 7pm Monday through Thursday, at 6pm on Friday. #WTF On top of that, some of the rules regarding things you can bring in are just ridiculous. An alternative could be hanging out at school itself - it’s open 6am - 9:45pm on the weekdays, 7am - 5:45 on Saturday.
• Městská knihovna (Central/Ústřední) closes at 8pm (Mon - Fri), 5pm on Saturday and is closed the whole day Sunday and Monday.
• The opening hours of the National Library are somewhat less lame for the reading room is open until 10pm Mon-Fri (7pm on Saturday, closed on Sunday).
• My favorite - the library of the Czech National Bank - is a sweet place with close to no people and a vending machine with a 6Kč coffee. Closing at 5pm on weekdays, though (3pm on Friday).
• The National Technical Library is good! Unfortunately, it’s crazy far and its 24/7 study room is usually packed with med students from abroad and their books full of pictures of hearts, bones, and latin. The café doesn’t close until 11pm on weekdays, though (12am on Saturday, closed on Sunday) and despite its being noisy could be a place to hang out with your favorite microeconomics assignment.
• The study room/library at Jarov is…well frankly I don’t have an idea because I didn’t even know it existed. Open 7am-8pm Monday through Friday and could be a good choice if you have time during the weekdays.

Study rooms at the dorms? Meh.

Definitely make friendsies with the front desk lady. Smile a lot. Complain about “the other trouble-making students”. Otherwise you can learn that the study rooms are not accessible after midnight or reserved for a semester-long language courses. Also, sync your food/drink/bathroom needs, leaving every 20 minutes gets annoying even when you just really want to procrastinate. And it’s lonely there too (leads to unexpected outbursts of creativity).

Coffee Houses and Cafés? Muaa.

Starbucks, McCafé, Friends Coffee House, Mama Coffee, Globe…there’s quite a few of them. If you have the money, find the closest one and just get shit done. Most of them close by midnight at best, though.

Like…Bars? Hmm…

When I found myself in an urgent neet of a place to finish a paper last week, a solid 24h bar with wifi was the first idea that came to my mind. I mean, my writing skills usually improve with a pint of beer or a glass of wine close at hand. Or I just dont care so much. Unfortunately, the nearest one was more than 2 miles away and at 4:30am you don’t really want to smell like an ashtray for the rest of the day anyways.

Co-Studying? Yes! Isn’t it weird? Duh.

Another possible solution for people who (like me) generally dislike studying at home (I sleep there, ok? And the bed is too close to my desk…looking all tempting and stuff.). If you have an extra chair and few square feet of a table at your home, invite a study-buddy and max out your productivity by at least 200%. A cool idea for a social network for people who don’t want to study alone, I’d say. Might lead to some murders and people disappearing but…you know, happens anyways.

So…what’s this all about?

Looking at the list of places, it’s obvious that the library situation (especially for the students of VŠE ) sucks balls, especially as far as the opening hours go. I understand that the librarians want to get home at a reasonable hour but should the university offer the job to the students (who they could pay less), the problem would be solved. Exactly the way it works anywhere else. Why isn’t it happening already? Would students appreciate it at all? Fill out this questionnaire (in English but feel free to respond to the open question in Czech or Slovak too), please and things might change. Also, if you have a favorite place of your own, where you like studying, share it with the others at this facebook page.

I Miss College

I miss college.

I miss the students buzzing around the campus, trying to get to class on time, a can of Monster in hand. I miss the student organizations, so many everyone can choose. Meetings of the American Marketing Association and the Science Fiction Club - 25 feet from each other but a whole galaxy apart. I miss the energy of the students, studying, working, going to clubs’ meetings, (il)legally partying, hanging out in the hallways of the dorms, going to play soccer together or to see a rugby game of their Resident Assistant. I miss the lunches together. I miss the campus and bumping to people you know all the time. I miss the libraries open until midnight, people sleeping on the couches during the midterm. I miss the coffee shops full of people studying. I miss the question “want to do homework together?”. I miss the focus when not being ready for class is just wrong. I miss the clearly structured courses. I miss the GPA. I miss the frats and the sorority girls, jerks (some of them) but having something in common. I even miss the bible study groups. I miss the “going to college” concept. I miss the undeclared. I miss the midnight breakfasts. I miss the pride in watching your sports team win. I miss the all-nighters and the complete exhaustion after the dead week. I miss the fall and spring breaks. I miss the rec and the dining halls. I miss the events for the students.

I miss the teachers.

Who do I remember from VŠE? Ms Žárová and her enthusiasm about studying abroad. Mr Chytil, his distinguished humor and moustache. Ms Marková and her being either confused or grumpy. Mr Vítek and his love for Yes, Prime Minister. Mr Tajovský, his incredible travel stories, chauvinism and stubborn libertarianism. Mr Půlpánová and her sexy lisp voice. Ms Ducháčková and her course that was the first really good one for me. Mr Pavel and his extreme knowledgeability and likeableness.  Mr Revenda and Ms Koderová…I’m afraid. Ms Veselá and the moment halfway through the semester when she smiled for the first time. Mr Fiala and Mr Pádivý = ) Mr Vaněk and making fire somewhere near Beroun, grilling sausages and drinking beer. Mr Mandel and his stoicism. Ms Janáčková and her ability to get respect. Mr Campbell being from another world. Mr Jablonský being absolutely cool about my thesis.

Now, who do I remember from UNL?

Everyone.

John Hibbing, his photo as a child, his openness to any idea, his benevolence.

Maura Giles Watson, her Harvard e-mail, her absolute open-mindedness, her love for languages.

Jim Rose, though briefly, his cockiness and sports enthusiasm.

Dwayne Ball, his course design, attention to detail, and critical thinking.

Colleen Colaner, her being ours, her adopted baby, her journal assignments.

Patricia Kennedy, her not entirely exciting course, her novelties in the syllabus, her sister…

Aaron Duncan, a guy difficult to understand, his vision, and his jokes.

Chuck Piper, his love for advertising, his wife, margaritas, and mexican cuisine.

Gerry Shapiro, 1950 - 2011.

Roadtrip Finance Manager 1.0

You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that. When you’re on a roadtrip, the whole money question just gets complicated. People get lost in all the counting and if your roadtrip lasts for more than a week, you just can’t use the good ol’ Bernard Black’s filing system.

To ease the problem a bit, I created a simple excel sheet template to keep track of all the expenditures. If you fill it in with information about who paid what and who takes part in the costs, in the end it automatically calculates the cleared totals for everyone. My version is optimized for 2-4 people and you can download it here. It’s fairly easy and doesn’t require much to alter it to a version suitable for any number of people. There are some explanatory notes included in the file (shoot me a message if you get lost, though).

Happy roadtripping!

Low Demand For Mobile Internet in the CZRP?

Like in any good detective story, investigating the mobile internet data plans of the Czech providers brought up the most likely suspect, more usual than others. To get his name, I asked the spokespeople of Telefónica O2, T-Mobile, and Vodafone: “why?”.

According to Blanka Vokounová (Telefónica O2), the purchasing power and the demand of the customers is the reason for the difference in prices of the mobile plans. The overall prices has fallen by 36% in the past two years (2008 - 1Q 2011) and are expected to continue in the trend.

The fair user policy should in the case of O2 defend the interests of all the customers: “Every mobile data network has its limitation and is not principally designed for downloading extreme amounts of data. Downloading big files causes the overloads in the network and drops in the speed of connection of all regular users.” FUP is then a protection measure against fierce downloaders who threaten the quality of service of everybody else. On the other hand Ms Vokounová paradoxically claims that “O2 network is to the quality of the 3G network comparable to any other outside of the Czech Republic”.

Mirek Čepický (Vodafone) has a similar view on the matter of prices: “Vodafone (former Oscar) keeps the prices of most services on the lowest level in the market,” and supports his claim with the examples of unlimited texting plan and mobile data plan for the use abroad.

The reason for the fair use policy to exist is that most of the customers never reaches them anyways. And those who do can buy additional data: 150MB for 100Kč (“Internet v mobilu” plan) or 600MB for 200Kč (“Internet v mobilu naplno”).

Martina Kemrová (T-Mobile) provides her insight on the matter of prices and the plans’ characteristics. According to her, the number of people using the mobile internet connection in the Western Europe is by far higher that in the Czech Republic. People also change their cell phones for a new one more often, are ready to pay more for modern services and their consumption is higher. Therefore they spend more money in total and the providers can then offer lower base rates.

Unlike in the Western Europe where network overloads are the problem that needs solving, in the Czech Republic the prices are set to accomodate customers’ needs and behavior. “Customers often don’t use the plan that is the best fit. In spite of buying, say, an iPhone for 18,000Kč, they’re not willing to pay more than 139Kč per month for the data plan.” The statistics of the actual usage of the mobile internet yields surprising data: “The average data use of the “Internet v mobilu Standard” plan (FUP 100MB) is 35MB per month, for the plan “Klasik” (FUP 300MB) it’s 60MB.” Similar to Vodafone, T-Mobile also offers the option of buying additional 100MB of data for 99Kč.

It seems, then, that the reason behind very limited data plans for smart phones is the lack of demand for them. So far, then, the prospects od the Czech mobile internet are bleak. The customers don’t want quality data plans with high FUPs (or none) badly enough and the occasional ramble of a solitary blogger will make no difference either. Personally, I find this explanation more likely that the one of Blanka Vokounová about users bringing the network down by their excessive activity online. This is for two reasons:

1. The network is pretty much the same and despite problems Mentioned by Ms Kemrová (T-Mobile) unlimited plans do work in other European countries and overseas.
2. Telefónica has O2 TV up and running mobile for the past 5 years (surprisingly not even all the operators on the 800 line know about it) and streaming video surely is a data intensive service. On a side note, the data used to stream doesn’t matter to the mobile data plans, you don’t even have to have mobile internet plan.

With no actual market data on hand, though, one can hardly suggest a solution for us, rabid downloaders, who would use unlimited internet to watch the new talk on TED, to work on a laptop from the board of a train (honestly, RegioJet’s wifi sucks even more than that of Student Agency’s buses), Skype, and listen to Spotify. iCloud is coming. “Regular users” - the majority of the network providers’ customers - don’t seem to care about any of these services. The people just don’t know what they’re missing and don’t know how crazily overcharged they are. Yet.

Sadly, there’s no real alternative for now, only a little relief for the O2 and Vodafone customers. The shtick (mentioned to me by Ms Vokounová, O2) is that you can actually use data plans on designed for laptops on your mobile as well. Instead of 600MB FUP for 315Kč/month Vodafone data plan, you can get 3GB for 525Kč (after the first three months of 277Kč/month). Likewise instead of 500MB for 300Kč with O2’s “Internet v mobilu”, you can take advantage of 2GB FUP for 500Kč (“Mobilní internet Standard”) or 10GB for 750Kč (“Mobilní internet Pro”). T-Mobile, sadly, strictly differentiates the two plans’ groups (“Internet v mobilu” and “Internet na cesty”) and should you use its “Internet na cesty Premium” with 30GB FUP (999Kč), a 1 minute call to any network would cost you 7.20Kč and you’d pay 3Kč for a text or 10Kč for an MMS.

Is there any hope for reasonably priced unlimited data plans, then? Both Mirek Čepický and Martina Kemrová admit that some new services are on the way but can’t be spoken of before the actual launch. Duh! New products and services introduced by the network providers themselves might be the thing to finally bring about modern data plans. Music streaming service evolved from T-Mobile’s T-Music, movie and tv shows streaming by O2,… If we can’t rely on the customers to generate the demand, the providers themselves might stimulate it by creating services that would require unlimited plans. Until then, though,..it seems like it’s seriously cloudy in the Czech Republic.

A National Sport

I’ve been back home for some 5 weeks now (the time flies like Jonathan Livingston seagull, breaking the sound barrier!) and actually it’s rather nice in here, yes. One thing that keeps pissing me off, though, is that the Czech mobile network providers suck balls when it comes to mobile internet. Firstly it’s crazy expensive! Secondly, there are data limits imposed on the plans (FUP - dont even ask me what it stands for in my perspective)! Well, this was the third exclamation mark in this post so lets see to what number I get. Each and every other adds +1 to my annoyance.

To assess the plans and find out how extraterrestrial they are, I used an app called DataMan to get the idea of how much data I download. I don’t consider myself a heavy cell phone user but since one paid an unholy amount of money for a smartphone (iP4), one might as well use it. Here’s an overview of the data I downloaded in one day:

Lidové noviny app (downloaded Thursday issue): 23.1MB

Checked messages on facebook: 2MB (I don’t really use fcb these days)

Read new tweets, 1 picture opened, 1 retweet: 0.6MB

E-mail: 0.7MB

The feed on tumblr (3 new pictures): 1.2MB

Shazam 1 song, SoundHound 2 songs: 0.14MB + 0.54MB

Youtube search and play a 3’57” song: 3.3MB

Weather forecast (native app): 0.03MB

Dictionary.com app - looked up 2 words, played 1 pronunciation: 0.19MB

Looked up recipes with tomatoes and pork on Epicurious: 0.9MB

Checked news on NPR, listened to a 3’42” podcast: 1MB + 1.9MB

Uploaded a picture to Evernote: 2.2MB (I abstract from this one, though, upload is not an object of the FUP, I believe)

Looked up a movie using the CSFD app: 0.95MB

Checked news, read 2 articles using the E15 app: 0.74MB

Looked up directions using Google maps app: 2MB

Looked up the movie theater program using Safari: 0.64MB

Listened to RedBull Music Academy Radio (23 minutes): 23MB

Checked in with foursquare: 0.2MB

Found a cache using the Geocaching app: 2MB

Now, it seems like I did a lot of things in only one day and some of them I might not be doing every day. After adjustment, I came to the conclusion that I’m likely to download 772.35MB of data this month. Excluding downloading the newspaper (the app has its flaws anyways), I can even get to 448.95MB per month. Not too bad. But there’s another thing: tethering. Using this function of my smart phone to share the connection with my laptop while on the train, I’d easily get over the 1GB limit T-mobile gives me for next to nothing 499Kč (some $28!). And if I do, my connection speed drops to 16kB/s so that I don’t oppress other users by my horrible downloading. And I haven’t even started using my phone and the scarce 3G connection for skyping, downloading app updates, Dropbox sync (rarely) or anything else. And thank god we don’t have Netflix! (+1) = / (+5 bonus for a sad face bc I can’t watch Castle) Or Pandora!!! (+3) Funk! (+1 +9 for not actually swearing)

To get the idea of how much similar services cost abroad, I looked over the plans that our brothers over in Slovakia can get:

T-Mobile SK: EUR 10.99 for 2GB data limit + 64kB/s after the FUP is reached.

O2 SK: EUR 8 for 1GB data limit + 16kB/s.

Orange: EUR 15.99 for 5GB data limit + 64kB/sec.

Well, from what I gathered, the network in the Czech Republic is way worse and couldn’t handle my using it or the Czech mobile network providers really do suck! (+1)

What is there to do about this situation? Nothing as far as I see it, especially when this whole blog post is build about complaining and not giving any advice for possible solutions. And there are still other problems like the pension reform, starving children, etc. Or…get a job with some epic company who has a deal on plans with unlimited data. Yes, they do exist.

P.S. Yo! You guys with T-Mobile, O2, and Vodafone - get me an unlimited plan for data for 300Kč and we shake on it.

Shower Singing

This one is obvious.

Everyone sings in the shower, at least sometimes. Today, I plugged my iPhone to a docking/speakers device in the basement shower of my new home and felt so cool listening to Pretty Lights while brushing my teeth and taking a shower. I would hum, do some stupid shower moves (this is not an euphemism for masturbation btw I’m talking about dancing) and have the whole bathroom filled with music.

But guess what, I didn’t tink of anything except of the music. Nothing, my brain activity synchronized with the beat and that was it. It felt like being a bumblebee (I don’t know why), being oblivious  to the world around.

And yet my best ideas always came to me in the shower. My brain relaxes even without the music and for it isn’t tied down by the rhythm, it randomly wanders all over the place and sometimes spits out a creative idea. It tickles.

So I’ll put the docking thing where I found it and will take the shower the “conventional” way from now on. And I’m going to by a decent intra aural replacement for my d-Jays (finally) and listen to music again.

Taking a shower while taking a shower. Listening to music while listening to music. Good old singletasking.

The Dublin Experience

With only one final exam left, I will soon be free from all the studying and homework. It’s not going to be 4.0 this time (sad) but it will mean more sleep and picknicks and more working and making movies and applying and biking&swimming&running and travelling and couchsurfing and beer drinking while reading and doing all the other fun stuff I haven’t had time for during the semester.

It’s kind of a scary thought, not to be bound by the class schedule anymore. New and bright ways how to fuck up my time management and GTD open. And there’s so much stuff to do! It reminds me of my second year in Dublin when I was just superbored and ate too much hagelslag on a toast (better then Nutella…? Probably.). Although, I don’t think I’ve had time for anything like this since…2009 when I spent a part of the summer worrying about a girl, digging out a well and recreating my garden (I did it = my garden, full stop). So I guess I’ll be fine.

I’m not sure what the point of this post is except being overly weird in the best tradition of me and not having a point. I could start talking about how much I like Jews and how there’s no real later but that would sort of ruin this quaint pointlessness. So if nothing else let me know if you need anything so that I don’t get bored.