Peter Mayle spent a year in a farmhouse between Menerbes and Bonnieux, wrote about it, became famous, and inflated the real estate market for kilometers around.

Having just finished a week near Cavaillon, I figure I should be able to get at least a column out of the deal. Random thoughts that might have at least some remote bearing on IT:

Traveling with nothing but an iPad

In many respects, an iPad makes an excellent traveling companion. It’s compact, does triple duty as both a Kindle reader and iPod along with providing e-mail, calendar, and browser, greatly cutting down on the device count.

Not quite so much as might be imagined, though: If you do any serious writing (serious being defined as more than 200 words at one sitting) an external keyboard is the only alternative to high blood pressure. Still, the combination packs well … well enough to have made the difference between carry-on only and checked luggage.

So far as utility is concerned, though …

The question: Which are worse — sequels or remakes.

The answer: It isn’t even close.

Sequels are usually awful, except for direct-to-video sequels, which are always awful.

Remakes, on the other hand, almost always make awful look good. Execrable would describe them perfectly if it were less namby-pamby.

Just look at the remakes of two Dudley Moore movies (but from a safe distance).

Instead of remaking Bedazzled and Arthur (a local reviewer just awarded the latter a half-star out of four possible, with the half-star apparently the result of giving people on the cast and crew jobs in a period of high unemployment) … re-releasing the originals would have cost less and entertained more.

This is just one way movie-making and software development aren’t parallel,