Very helpful advice from Yan Wang:

To make a appointment for US visa in Canada, go to this link:
https://www.nvars.com/use/wWelcome.jsp
There is everything you need to know. You also need a TRV visa to
enter Canada. This can be applied in person or mailing it to NYC. See
this page:

Canada TRV

Before you go, you also need to make sure with the MIT’s international office get your name into the Sevis system and have them endorse your I-20, otherwise, you may have trouble.

Got the following tip from Slashdot:

How to make Acrobat Reader start very quickly (Score:4, Informative)
by Penguin (4919) on Wednesday November 03, @08:40AM (#10709600)
(http://pe.ter.dk/)
Strictly on a side note (not advocating for or against the use of PDF):

Acrobat Reader 6 under Windows can easily be changed to launch really quick, if one “disables” all the useless plugins:

1. Enter the Reader-folder.
2. Create a backup-folder, named e.g. “plug_ins_disabled”
3. Move all files from the “plug_ins”-folder, except “EWH32.api”, “printme.api” og “Search.api” to the new folder.
3b. Alternatively, just delete all files in the “plug_ins”-folder – again, with the exception of the above three files.

Open a PDF and get amazed

(some of the “useless” plugins are stuff like reading encrypted pdfs – that and other features might not exist if the related plugin is removed… I haven’t had any problems, though, through ordinary use for the last six months after removing all these plugin-files)

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html

Nice website designed to show how simplicity can bring amazing effects.

Related: a CSS+XHTML slides show that can replace Powerpoint
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigecom/ec05/call_for_papers.shtml

From: ACM eCommerce Conference 2005 Publicity Chair
[mailto:debruyn@essec.fr]
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 7:45 AM
To: debruyn@essec.fr
Subject: The Sixth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce

Dear Sir, Madam:

Given the scope of your research center, we thought you’d be interested to
learn that the call for papers for the sixth ACM Conference on Electronic
Commerce (EC’05) has been recently released.

The conference is interdisciplinary in nature, and aim at crossing the
bridge between business and computer issues. Hence, we believe numerous of
your constituents might consider this conference as an outlet for their
research. If you’d like to publicize this conference to some of your
colleagues or members, we’ve attached a one-page version of the call for
papers for your convenience.

EC’05 will take place in the stunning city of Vancouver, Canada, June 5-8,
2005. The submission deadline is December 7. To learn more, please visit:

http://www.acm.org/ec05

Thank you very much for your attention.

Yours sincerely,
Arnaud De Bruyn
ACM EC’05 Publicity Chair
ESSEC Business School

Made a National Flag collage for all the countries I visited:

(more…)

It turned out not to be hard to port the style files for wp into my general homepage look&feel.
I’ll be able to use the homepage from now on!!

I guess the homepage is done. I used a CSS style template from aura, and it looks nice. The long picture is taken about 2 years ago, processed a little bit with photoshop. :-p