RonMertens.com

Well, it’s time to tell the world a bit about TravelFully.

The idea is to create a web page for travelers during their trip. We have several ideas on the kind of information you would need in your trip. In the last couple of weeks we have started to write a first beta, and it is now online. We have 3 pages, for Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat. All in Israel. You can view them with the following links -

http://www.travelfully.com/Tel_Aviv_Israel
http://www.travelfully.com/Jerusalem_Israel
http://www.travelfully.com/Eilat_Israel

Please note that the design is still not finished (it’s not even started, really), but the main idea of the widgets and some information is already there.

I just finished reading the Tin Drum, by Gunter-Grass. It was a ‘difficult’ book, and took me quite some time to read - but it was also brilliant. I liked it, and enjoyed most of it. It was hard to get into.

It really reminded me of Salman Rushdie’s books (and Marquez as well) - it’s a fictional auto-biography of the main character. There’s a lot of historic information (passing-by, sort of), some fantasy here and there, funny and sad at the same time. And I like it when the story goes through several generations of the family.

So. A good book, and recommended

After writing the last post, I realized I have yet to mention the Travel startup.

So I’ve joined forces with Gil Ruda, and together we are working on a new Travel startup. It will be a web page for travelers (doh, as if I can do something that is in the real world). I can’t give a lot of details yet, but hopefully soon I will be able to give a link to an early prototype. Yeah - I’m doing the programming, using PHP and MySQL and Javascript and all. Great fun.

It is taking most of my time lately…

Gil and I just returned from the IMDM 2007 - it’s a travel/tourism exhibition, in Tel-Aviv. It was pretty interesting, and most of all surprising - it was rather big, with lot’s of exhibitors, both local and from outside Israel. You can see a booth from Bat-Yam next to a booth from Sierra-Leona, and it was nice. Gil got a lot of contacts and work to do, I just enjoyed visiting the interesting booths (like the India, Ireland and Greek ones). And there was free Guiness, so everyone was happy.
Here are a couple of pictures I took with my trusted old Nokia N73 -

So we went to the conert of Will Oldham (AKA Bonnie Prince Billy) yesterday! I really really enjoyed it. I’m a long time fan, and have almost all of his music. It was a great concert. He played a few songs from his latest album (which is great), and a lot of older songs, and even my favorite (well, I guess so) song of his (Lost blues) which was exciting.

He was just as weird and wonderful and brilliant as I thought he will be, and it was one of the best concerts I’ve been to. A big thanks to the guys that convinced him to come to Israel!