— Sir! Hey, sir!!! — someone’s yelling at me as I’m crossing the street.

I’m half lost in thoughts, half abstracted, walking down the nightly Prague like a robot. Off my way to buy chocolates.

— Sir?! Can you hear me? Come back please!

I’m turning my head slowly, seeing two coppers standing in front of a zebra, shouting at me. I’m slowly coming to face them, pretty sure what will happen next. Do I get what I’ve done? Have I seen the lights? I’m keeping mute; trying not to show any emotions, though it’s bubbling inside.

— Can I see your ID? — the copper with a strong Moravian accent asks.

I’m quickly opening my wallet and handing him my driver license. My NSW gold driver license. They both look at it with a kind of amazement. Their disbelief transforms into few stuttering words after a while.

— You, you speak Czech? — the Moravian one asks.

— Yo — I get myself to answer, not very convincing, trying to hide my delight seeing their astonishment. They obviously weren’t ready for such a treat.

— That’s a 2000 crowns fine, sir. You have money to pay? – Moravian tries to get things back on track.

— Nah — I say in even less convincing broken Czech. There’s no cars around at this hour and the whole episode looks quite bizarre. Yet I’m probably the only one realising the truth.

Now they’re stuck. It’s well after midnight and they don’t look they want to put down the report to fine somebody who crossed the deserted street, ignoring traffic lights. Moravian sighs. The other one just looks at me puzzled. Moravian hands me my ID back and tells me to be careful.

I’m crossing the street again. In the middle of the road, I look up to check the lights — and it’s a bloody red again! Turning back, I see those two standing in awe. I can’t help myself now, I burst out laughing and return.

They shake their heads — but hey, they’re laughing, too.

I remember playing this game ages ago; or at least it seems like ages though it’s only been some two or so years. I always had to take a seat next to Gigi the Big Daddy, my unforgettable former colleague and a great friend to these days — if I didn’t, I’d had seen his face, meaning I’d had laughed uncontrollably during the game.

We used to call it meeting bingo, though some people use more explicit bullshit bingo instead and Wikipedia calls it nicely buzzword bingo. Still the same game. Impatiently crossing square by square, waiting for the release.

Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony, as Morpheus put it. Now, when I’m compiling a presentation I’m happy to add a vogue word here and there. Market growth, cross-selling, deliverance, goal-driven, partner activation, continuous campaigning, volatile market, streamlining, ease of use, in the pipeline — these are just few that made it to my last one. One could easily throw up just reading it, not even mentioning watching my pigface presenting such blatant nonsense.

But hey — I’m only doing it to hear BINGO!!! yelled at me at some point. ‘Cos I can leverage on my audience being activated by my streamlined presentation. In the volatile market, market growth results in the pipeline are all about goal-driven partner activation, continuous campaigning and deliverance through cross-selling and ease of use.

What was I talking about?

Honestly, I hate writing these lines. Rick Wright has died earlier today, aged 65. I don’t want to write anything about how sad it is and about sorrow that fills me, knowing I won’t have a chance to hear another ingenious psychedelic tune from Master Richard.

Just want to mention two personal experiences I had with Pink Floyd.

First, it was 1994. It was early September and Pink Floyd were cruising Europe with their Division Bell tour. I hanged out in Prague on the eve of 7 September and I was hesitating if to go to Pink Floyd concert or go home and see a girlfriend of mine whom I didn’t see for some three weeks. I guess you all know what I chose. Life’s always about making decisions. I’m not sorry and I’m sorry — it’s schizophrenic, I know. That’s the way it is.

It turned out to be the very last Pink Floyd tour; they disbanded afterwards and seeing them live became an unreachable dream. Well, until…

Second, eleven years later, 2005. I just returned from Australia, coming to Prague just in time for Live 8. And for my girlfriend’s birthday. I could swiftly fly to London and back, no problem, but Gabriel told me he wasn’t going there either. So I watched the concert simultaneously online and on the TV, almost crying hearing Shine On Your Crazy Diamond and them sending their love to Syd. That time I knew that was it. There won’t be any more chances. When Rick, Nick, Dave and Roger hugged on stage, it was the end. A very vivid but inevitable end of the legend.

We’re three years later and Syd and Rick are already over there, playing the great gig in the sky.

And I am not frightened of dying
any time will do, I don’t mind.
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime.

If you can hear this whispering you are dying.

I never said I was frightened of dying.

With the second iPhone 3G launch on Friday, I wonder how the heck is Apple going to resolve the auto-correction issue. You’ve never heard of any issue with auto-correction? Let me explain then. As of now, there is no option not to use auto-correction. That’s it. That’s the issue. You have to use one of the provided keyboard language dictionaries at all times. I have only one question: how difficult is it really to add an empty keyboard language (format)? The solution is so simple it hurts.

Auto-correction is certainly helpful when using English (or any other supported language of your choice). John Gruber arguments that iPhone keyboard without auto-correction would become utterly useless. I wish it could actually. Is Apple assuming everyone is typing in one of the supported languages? I wonder how that could be possibly true even in the US, not to mention UK/Europe.     

I for one switch my typing duties between English and Slovak. I twitter in English. I write most of my SMS messages in Slovak. I write emails in both. And I switch between them frequently.

Nowadays you can turn on multiple keyboard formats and switch between them on the fly (provided you selected so in the International Keyboards settings). Well first of all, current list is far from being complete. Perhaps it’ll change with the updates, but I’ve heard Telefónica O2 Czech Republic is not going to have the Czech keyboard available on launch date and it seems they’re are too aware of the problems (that is plenty of hysterical customers) it’ll bring. And I bet not only for them. I’m also afraid that once Slovak and Czech languages are added, they’ll use words with diacritics, which are rarely used in everyday communication (SMS and emails), and therefore pretty useless anyway.

The only option I have is to type with one of the dictionaries active, hence I have to reject every suggested word. Which is very frustrating. John Gruber about typing without auto-correction in MagicPad:

“Half the words I type are misspelled, some beyond recognition.”

Now double that count and you’ll know how many misspelled words I end up with, because iPhone simply refuses to remember any of my own words. After month’s use! Simple example: we have two essential prepositions, one character each: s (with) and z (from), both dangerously close to a (which by the way means and):
  

Apple, please, just add an empty language (one that doesn’t suggest any words or only the ones that iPhone remembers – functionality I have yet to see working anyway).

Incidentally, I found out that words Obama an McCain are present in English (UK) keyboard dictionary. I wonder what these two, no matter how important they might become for the future world politics, have to do with the British dictionary? I would expect having at least Churchill in there too then.

If you saw a strange looking figure down at the river bank in Prague this afternoon, it might had been me. And if that poor bugger wore a red Apple tee and a blue shorts, it must had been me. You could also find out quite easily if that pitiful soul waved his hands uncontrollably, trying to stick to the track and move forward.

Yes, it was me inline skating. My first attempt ever.

First off, I found it extremely difficult to stand — and once I managed to put myself to an upright position, even more fun started. Something that could vaguely remind someone of skating, I’d say. However, only vaguely, as I was unable to turn, unable to brake, unable to skate uphill or downhill.

Particularly downhill skating seemed to be the biggest issue. As I was unable to break — unless you wish to call a jump to a nearby bush breaking — gaining critical speed rolling downhill made me understand the value of life.

Yet I’m glad to report that I survived; so you hopefully get a chance to see the newest attraction of Prague — the waving wretch on skates sometime next weekend again.