I tried a new internet cafe today and was not especially impressed (the
trials I face . . . ). The connexion went down at one point, but the main
issue was that I couldn't switch the keyboard to English. I know some of
you have written me on foreign keyboards, and complained about various
discrepancies, but I have to say that the French keyboard is really quite
bad. At the least, this is a country at a severe technological
disadvantage in the interet age since you have to hold the Shift key to
make a period symbol. Symbols in the top row do not require a Shift
(numbers do instead). The left and right parentheses are also about six
keys apart, probably a handicap to any French programming in Scheme or
other Lisp derivatives. And before I leave this topic, I don't know what
would ever encourage anyone to switch the letters "q" and "a", taking "a"
from the home row and putting "q" there. There, I said it.

My other main surprise at the behaviour of what you might call an old
civilization is the unfortunate doggie doo situation, which will be the
subject of a future entry.