Ask Paul: May 28 (Premium)

With five weeks of travel behind me, I can finally enjoy a quiet weekend at home. So let’s get it kicked off early with some great reader questions.
Best and worst, more
bschnatt asks:

What was your best travel experience? Worst?

Hm. Travel is a lot like live music, it’s rarely bad. And we’ve had so many positive travel experiences that I feel like that has kind of fed on itself and reinforced our love of travel. I was lucky as a kid to spend two summers in Washington D.C., and I think that’s what set this off for me in the first place.

I have specific stories, of course. But more generally, I think of my best (in-) travel experiences as those where everything went great, and the worst are those where everything went wrong. Getting to the airport, being at the airport, waiting to board, the whole experience until the plane actually leaves the ground is terrible for me because there is any number of things that could go wrong at any time. Every once in a while, everything is great, and very rarely I’ve had upgraded seats---business class or first class---that just makes the experience less stressful. I can’t afford to pay for that kind of thing, so it only happens every so often.

Favorite travel city? Worst?

Paris is my favorite city on earth, period, but I really like Barcelona as well. Lisbon, Berlin, London, and Washington D.C. are all high on my list as well.

I don’t really have a worst entry. I can’t say Rome was the worst, for example, though it was underwhelming compared to the other capitals of Europe, and I got pickpocketed (of almost nothing). But we still want to go back and perhaps give it a fairer shake. I guess travel is like laptop reviews: I tend to skip the things I think will be bad and agree to the ones that seem interesting.

Have you ever done any 3D modeling with the likes of Blender, Maya, etc? (I very briefly used Cinema3D(?) on the Amiga to animate a space shuttle model I bought, but then got sidetracked. I thought about going to Full Sail University to get formal training, but got sidetracked from that too. Hmmm...)

No, never.

The request: I was hoping you could do a whole series on Flutter (and I think you mentioned something about wanting to do that). Any update on that?

Not yet. I’m still trying to figure out what’s next for a programming series, and deciding on the language/framework is obviously a key part of that. Flutter is at the top of that list right now, however. And I’m thinking about JavaScript/React as well, maybe Project Reunion at some point as well, and MAUI if it shapes up nicely.
The futurist
erichk asks:

Paul, have you heard of Ray Kurzweil, and if so, what do you think of his predictions? Many of his have come true, but the ones he makes for the next several decades blow my mind, like the ones he makes about artificial intelligence.

I have heard of Ray Kurzweil, but I can’t say I’m a devotee or whatever. I have a friend who went t...