I recently invented a great new hangover cure… The banana and Berocca smoothie!

It’s very simple to make, provided you have a blender; First, dissolve one effervescent Berocca tablet in half a glass of water. Berocca is an effervescent dietary supplement containing B & C vitamins that is a little tricky to get in the U.S. — you have to get it mail-order — but is easy to find in other countries such as the U.K.

Add the Berocca solution to a sliced banana, a cup of skimmed milk and some ice in a blender, give it a whirl and you’re done! It tastes pretty good (much better than it sounds anyway), and both of the primary ingredients have proven hangover fighting properties.

ARTstor, the digital library of art that I am helping to build, took it’s first tentative steps into the world as a “real” service yesterday, as we ran our first “train the trainer” session for staff of test institutions.

There were a few initial hiccups with the obligatory server reboots etc., but overall it sounds as though it went very well and people were excited by the possibilities. Of course there’s still a long way to go before it’s being widely used on campuses, but its definitely an encouraging start.

So AOL bought TimeWarner back in 2001, and yet now the AOL online operation has been subsumed (assimilated?) as a mere division of the newly-merged company, which is reverting back to it’s old Time Warner name and stock ticker symbol… Now that sounds like $112 billion well spent!

I can’t believe that the Israeli government is openly suggesting political assassination as a possible solution to the middle east peace crisis. Are they all on crack!? Do they really think that mimicing Bush’s heavy-handed and oh-so-successful “regime change” tactics will have any more success in the middle east than it’s having in Afghanistan or Iraq? What will it take for these people to learn what’s so obvious to almost everyone else?

Well I’m finally back in the U.S. after what felt like a very long, but also highly fascinating and very enjoyable trip to St Petersburg, Russia. The seasons changed while I was gone! It was summer when left, but now it’s definitely Fall here in NYC.

Burning Man way back at the end of August seems but a dim memory, but that’s why I take so many photographs — some of my Burning Man pictures (the ones from my digital camera) are now up on Ofoto.

I also found out that my good friend Amy got married at Burning Man the day after I left — which is crazy but excellent news, congratulations Amy!

What a bizarre week or so I’m having! I’m writing this from the Marble palace of the Russian Museums, in St. petersburg, Russia, where I’m attending the CIDOC/ADIT 2003 conference on museum documentation. I gave a short presentation about ARTstor this morning, which was translated in real-time into Russian! St Petersburg is great — very beautiful.

Before coming to Russia, I had to fly on two red-eyes on two consecutive days, because I came almost directly from the Burning Man festival in Nevada — I was only back home in Brooklyn for about 8 hours!