The Adventures of Curious George

Berlin!

2011-07-25T12:11:00.004+02:00

I get the best messages from my friends.

"Heya, I'm assuming you missed your flight but got put on another and just have no way to communicate until you're here.

Hope you arrive today, I should be in all day and if I'm not I'll leave instructions for you at the front door. Monday I have to leave around 10am but will again leave instructions and some of my roommates might be around to open.

Hope you make it and are not in fact in jail or China.

Best!

- LD"

Really I just had a 17-and-a-half hour layover in Newark. I arrived "on time," just a day or so later than he expected. The concern was nice, though! Thanks, Luis!

During said layover, I took the PATH and public bus ($3.25, rather than $15 for the express bus) over to New York City, relaxed (napped) in cafe chairs and parks, walked around the city, caught the most recent Harry Potter flick (the 3d made it marginally better, but wasn't anything amazing), found a bag (very small) of marijuana under a park bench (I thought that only happened at festivals?), and generally had a good time. I'd have met up with friends, maybe even stayed with someone, except I didn't realize I'd have a 17 hour layover until I arrived in Newark around midnight on Saturday (and I wasn't able to get in to New York until 2am or so...)... and BenD was out of town... and Tim was all the way over in Brooklyn and gearing up for Frisbee by the time I got ahold of him... and Luis was in Berlin...

Speaking of Luis, he's the one that wrote that quoted message above, so it actually turns out *great* that he's in Berlin, rather than New York, as now *I'm* in Berlin, staying with him and stealing his intarwubs.

I don't have a phone these days, but I should be on e-mail every few days.

Hugs!
~Tinker (George)

2011-07-14T20:01:00.002+02:00

Things I am doing these days:
Helping kate and jack build some stairs
Setting up for the Fire Circus at the Crucible
Signing and sending patent application forms for a company in San Diego where I sometimes work
Packing for my hitchhiking gathering trip to Portland
Preparing for my Eastern European wedding/festival/hitch-gathering trip in 9 days
Installing, to varying degrees of success, Neverwinter Nights and its expansions on my laptop natively in Linux (and in the process learning much more about linux)
Fixing up the motorcycle (spokes repaired!)
And welding up a rack (almost done... hopefully i can finish it next time I'm in the bay area... next week?)
Posting location details on the hitchgathering website in a sensible manner so that last-minute people can get there?
Posting same on CouchSurfing and maybe digihitch...

2011-07-13T17:15:00.002+02:00

While I was reading about the Black Panthers, someone from Freakonomics Radio called to schedule an interview with Stephen Dubner to talk about hitchhiking and why it's not around any more. Life is very strange these days.
-----
No real time for context except that I was wondering about whether wunderground.com (the Weather Underground website) had anything to do with the Weather Underground leftist group responsible for bombings, among other things, in an effort to stop the Vietnam War, among other US Government violence. Cue Wikipedia. That page got me curious about the Weather Underground and their actions in the 60s and 70s, since my history classes either didn't mention them or glossed over them in the face of more important stuff like said Vietnam War.

Anyway, buried in the Weather Underground wikipedia page was a link to the Black Panthers, which, considering I'm now staying in a neighborhood where original members lived, I figured I might want to know more about. Also Marxist-Leninist thinking (on which wikipedia is surprisingly thin - go figure a crowd-sourced, free, for-the-people resource doesn't thoroughly treat Communist thinking). And The Chicago Seven. And Timothy Leary. And back to the Black Panthers. Oop, phone call!

I received an e-mail yesterday from Suzie at Freakonomics Radio, asking if she could call me for a few questions. We ended up chatting (well, I ended up blathering, mostly) for almost 40 minutes. Also, apparently I have an interview scheduled for 8:30 friday morning with Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics. W00t!

Oh, and it turns out wunderground.com and the Weather Underground started at the same University. I didn't dig any deeper to see if there were any other connections. Yes, they do have something to do with each other. And now I know a bit more about the Black Panthers.

Like I say, life is strange these days.

Wigs For Kids! (or at least one ponytail...)

2011-06-17T11:38:00.006+02:00

If I get people to donate $100 (total) to wigsforkids.org, I'll cut off my pony tail this August, before Burning Man. Help me not have tangled, natty hair out on the Playa, and help kids with chemotherapy, alopecia, and other baldness-causing badnesses. Even $1 gets us closer.

Oh, and if I get you wonderful people to donate $1000, I'll come back from Burning Man with a mohawk...

Except my head is a bit lumpy. And birthmarked. So maybe let's get to $950 and stop there?

Donate directly, in your own name or in honor of someone, anonymously or in some silly name, right here: http://www.crowdrise.com/aponytailforkids. If you want to donate smaller than $10, or if you don't do the credit/debit card thing, you can donate to me; cash, check, paypal (gjemmott at gmail . com), goods, services, whatever, and I'll pass it along.

Hugs,
~Tinker/George

news

2011-05-20T20:48:00.003+02:00

When I'm super busy and not procrastinating stuff, I tend to forget to eat until I'm really hungry. The combination of constant activity and not munching all the time makes me lose weight. Moral of the story? That plan of "never stop doing stuff" sounds like a good one. Also, keep a Clif bar in your pocket in case you miss a meal and there's no food around :).

What news, you ask? Well, since 10pm last night, I've slept for 12 hours, woke up thinking about a pretty girl I met at a festival last weekend, folded up my friends' guest-bed and put away the bedding, updated my facebook page (which I rarely do) and my CouchSurfing profile, which needs some more attention soon. I added a card to my PayPal account so I could buy Skype credit so I could call my mom so she could get Molly and Ransom's numbers from my phone, which I forgot at home (D'oh!) on this trip up to the Bay area, and contacted friends who'll be going to Maker Faire about where I'll be and who I'll be with (so they can call phoneless me). And it's not even noon yet!!! Time to go install a car stereo, so we can have an auxiliary input on the drive from Santa Barbara up to the Bay area.

Oh, and I'm now listening to my new favorite band, Rubble Bucket. Some of their music is freely listenable here: http://www.rubblebucket.com .

I hope I do a full post on Joshua Tree music festival and last weekend. In case I never get around to it - AMAZING. Met tons of really, really wonderful people, heard some pretty great music, camped in the desert, rode my dirt-bike with ammo cans ghetto-rigged to the sides around on 4x4 roads in Joshua Tree national park, stayed with some desert-dwelling local friends in Morongo Valley, and, after dumping the bike over 6 or 8 times, learned some about riding a motorcycle offroad.

Hugs for all,

~Tinker/George

Google maps blurred near Israel/Palestine/Egypt border

2011-04-29T20:09:00.005+02:00

Does anyone know why Google Maps blurs the area near the Egyptian border with Palestine and Israel? Image from google maps, red line added for emphasis.

Is it a political requirement by some government? Is it blurred that way on whatever satellite/fly-over imagery Google gets?

Whatever the case, it's the same on terraserver, down to the exact location of the blurring-line.

Not only did I not find an explanation for this during a quick google search, the websites I found about "What's blurred out on Google Maps," like this one, don't to include it.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I wouldn't have noticed this without looking at the nearby water. It's interesting; I find it easier to see larger ocean waves in the blurred area, sort of like low-pass filtering in lots of applications.

who is IOZ?

2011-04-06T00:09:00.004+02:00

This guy reminds me of many of the thoughts I had before recently getting more and more jaded to the idea of military action. He writes about "cruise-missile liberalism," into which I suppose I've been slipping recently, and insists that people should be nice to each other, among other things.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/

That said, he doesn't give me a satisfactory answer to "What do you do when peaceful Libyan protesters, walking down the street with signs, get mowed down, day after day, by automatic weapons, under the orders of the 'leader' of the country, and then some other Libyans ask for help in dealing with this horrific criminal." :/

Edit: this article mentions a few likely reasons America keeps involving itself in wars. Excerpted:

"It is as if the president has big red button on his desk, and then his aides come in and say, "There's something really nasty happening to some unfortunate people, Mr. President, but if you push that button, you can stop it. It might cost a few hundred million dollars, maybe even a few billion by the time we are done, but we can always float a bit more debt. As long as you don't send in ground troops, the public will probably go along, at least for awhile and there's no danger that anybody will retaliate against us -- at least not anytime soon -- because the bad guys (who are really nasty, by the way) are also very weak. Our vital interests aren't at stake, sir, so you don't have to do anything. But if you don't push the button lots of innocent people will die. The choice is yours, Mr. President."

It would take a very tough and resolute president -- or one with a clear set of national priorities and a deep understanding of the uncertainties of warfare -- to resist that siren song."

Sounds plausible. Unfortunate, but plausible.

Gay Parents

2011-01-20T17:06:00.003+01:00

An interesting article about Gay Parents in the New York Times

Some excerpts:
"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — ... These days, there are eight churches that openly welcome gay worshipers."

While 8 isn't great, it's more than I would have expected.

"“We’re starting to see that the gay community is very diverse,” said Bob Witeck, chief executive of Witeck-Combs Communications..."

They seem to know as little about the rest of the world as I know about Jacksonville.

"Black or Latino gay couples are twice as likely as whites to be raising children... They are also more likely than their white counterparts to be struggling economically."

How do those figures compare to straight couples? It's possible these things have little or nothing to do with being gay...

"“What did we do? We wandered around lost. We married men, and then couldn’t understand why every night we had a headache.”"

When I taught English in Egypt, people would come in with some funny questions. Setting aside the difficulty of determining Darlene to be a female's name, they would ask something like, "what does being gay and marrying a man have to do with having a headache every night?" Then we would have a conversation about phrasal verbs. To "have a headache"...

"Moreover, gay men who have children do so an average of three years earlier than heterosexual men, census data shows, Mr. Gates said."

Speaking of phrasal verbs with the verb "to have," I like how "to have children" is slowly shifting from the physical connotation of "birthing" to a more general "acquiring children in one way or another," so that gay men can "have a baby." Or maybe there have been advances in medical science of which I'm not aware...

Vanilla Sky, Life

2011-01-07T12:47:00.002+01:00

Vanilla Sky hit me hard at about T minus fifteen minutes. Then ten of the last fifteen minutes pulled that punch disappointingly short of powerful; ten minutes of self-analysis, thinly disguised as a dialog in an elevator? Come on, Vanilla Sky. At least the last few minutes served up warm fuzzies.

[Here ends my concentrated and careful writing. I will start using the verb "to be" again. Profusely.]

In other news, I haven't really been as intensely happy or as happily intense as I was leading up to, at, and shortly after Burning Man. What a playground. What a chaotic fixers' paradise. And what a place to playfully flirt with an intelligent, adventurous lady. Such interiority I haven't known since, or any other time recently; maybe half that I've found in Molly and Ransom together.

Then I had to go and formalize what shouldn't be formalized, and hide from reality over and over again. Indeed, instead of embracing reality these last few months, I've been hiding. Cozy and comfortable, I've gone so far as to research adventures (for example, did you know there is no continuous road from North America down into the main part of South America? The pesky Darien Gap is in the way.) Even this week, I've forsaken the adventure offered by the Bay Area for a sure paycheck at my old workplace. Speaking of which, I'll now get back to Fallout 2 and The Phoenix Requiem... to finish both soon and start work in earnest, focusing on work and projects and little else these 4 months, except for a week trip to the Bay Area... he says... trying to believe himself...

Anyway, after these 4 months of employment and work on my projects, I'll get back into adventure mode. Time to make these 4 months count (and try not to spend much in the meantime... budget time!)

I just drove a motorcycle from one house to another with a truck...

2010-10-21T10:51:00.005+02:00

I just drove a motorcycle from one house to another with a truck... [edit: because I don't know how to ride a motorcycle yet, but like I told Alex, I know how to drive a stickshift vehicle and how to ride a bike, so isn't a motorcycle just a stickshift bike?]

And none of the truck, the motorcycle, or either house is mine.

Welcome, I'm George and I do strange things. So do you, but they're probably not strange in the context within which you live... maybe they'd be strange to an Egyptian microbus driver? Or to an East Bay programmer? Or to a conservative Texan rancher? I like all of these people, so I've come to terms with the fact that I do strange things.

Anyway, Alex and Connor just gave me a motorcycle (to borrow and learn on and look after), a book (Long Way Down, which looks awesome), a bunch of tips about where Alex used to live in Oakland including Rico's Diner which is within walking distance and serves everything necessary to make your own tater-tot burger, a map of the locations where people *legitimately* hitchhike the bay bridge (otherwise it costs a minimum of $7.50 to get to the city and back), and a pocket wi-fi internet tablet computer dealy. Thanks, dudes.

Alex had some great stories, too - he recently got paid to help make a keg robot for yelp.com's main office in the Bay Area. How cool is his job?

Also, he suggested I write my story of how I got addicted to travel and wander around and have crazy adventures and found Burning Man as a how-to for adventure, and that Step 1 should be find gold. I mentioned that a year or two after I spent the $12,000 in gold I found at the Wellesley dump, I made another $12,000 by getting an engineering job for 8 months and living relatively cheaply... but he said that didn't make for nearly as good of a story.

Feel free to stop reading now, unless you're really bored...

To do list for tonight or tomorrow (or soon):
- Drop the motorcycle off at the house (hopefully the contractor and his helpers will be there to help me unload it? Or someone else in the neighborhood...)
- 3:40pm - take the motorcycle permit test
- before that - study for the permit test and figure out how to get there
- finish a long e-mail to Meg
- get some work done on the house, or at least figure out what I'm working on next
- plan saturday - ikea? home depot? uban ore? the Habitat for Humanity Re-store? The Used food store? More work on the house?
- Ask Ronnie about my sleeping bag... maybe add REI to Saturday's list to get a sleeping bag and a headlamp (and wrist-lamp if they have them)
- find the bike part I just bought and put in a super-safe location I don't remember.
- Add Casual Carpool info to HitchWiki and digihitch, if it's not there yet
- Install that bike part on my bicycle so I can bicycle.

Bicycle?

Oakland - nicer than Cairo!

2010-10-04T15:21:00.005+02:00

Which is not to imply that Cairo is not nice. I liked Cairo quite a lot. It was a lot comfier home for me than New York or Boston ever could be... but at least so far, Oakland is nicer than Cairo :) For one thing, it's bikable! Yay bikes! And public transit takes me into (and back out of) San Francisco for under $2, with my bike!

I'm living with Molly and Ransom these days, which is marvelous. A couple days ago, I dug up the bathroom floor at their new house in West Oakland. Hypothetically tomorrow I will replace some pipes? Maybe the plumber will do it. We'll see how confident I feel in the morning.

Right now I'm listening to Call of Ktulu by Metallica. How and why, you ask? Let's trace this tangent...

- I started by looking for a Mad Max-esque aviator cap with a gas mask thingy (for Burning Man)
- Found Steam Punk Tribune who mentions some weird Seattle band called Abney Park has one
- Abney Park rocks steampunk-style and have silly lyrics about dirigibles ("We're a crew of Drunken Pilots, we're the only airship pirates!")
- Abney Park also has awesomely fantastic instruments of steampunk-ness (click "Tools" on their main page)
- Their next gig is Friday in San Francisco! In the name of immediacy, of course, I'm going.
- Hmm, the gig seems cool, too. It's a "Swing Goth" event called "Ball of C'thulhu"
- I've heard of Cthulhu... Wikipedia... (side-track to look up pronunciation and International Phonetic Alphabet symbols I've forgotten since college)
- Looking for a copy of the 1920s short story, "Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, I found instead Metallica's "Call of Ktulu" which I rather like and realize I didn't used to listen to metal music because it was so counter-cultural and I was so square-world, but Dragonforce fixed that for me...

So now I'm listening to metal music and thinking about a steampunk/goth swing-dance I'm hoping to go to on Friday.

And now you see why I say Oakland is nicer than Cairo :)

on the road again!

2010-08-21T09:06:00.002+02:00

I'm on the road again!

Today has been incredible. I arrived by train late last night, picked up from the train station by a random last-minute Denver CouchSurfer whose profile I had not yet seen. She turned out to be a *phenomenal* host. A social worker who teaches developmentally disabled children, she also knows how to have fun and has wonderfully open-minded and yet seriously down-to-earth friends.

I spent the morning hanging out with Beau, a fellow hitchhiker. He made it from Dallas to Denver in 15 hours, a feat I don't think I could manage. He has learned tips and tricks from a guy named Aaron Bell, who organized a hitchhiking *race* recently, from Dallas to... somewhere. Carolinas, maybe? Anyway, the teams were of 3 people, and Bell and friends tied for first at 16 hours. Beau was only a couple *days* behind. Bell says two lanes maximum, as the risk-takers (presumably who pick up hitchhikers) will be in the fast lane and won't want to merge more than a lane or two to pull over.

Beau also did Dallas to Montreal in 5 days, two of which spent in New York City with a friend, in order to connect with another friend who had a swanky hotel paid for in Montreal. Needless to say, he had a fantastic time.

Another character I met today in the park, aside from the mentally challenged, bums, and grifters: Nate(r) had heard about the hitchhiking gathering in the Denver CouchSurfing group. Nate informed me of all sorts of details of Colorado Burning Man attendees, warehouses they own, projects they do, and even particular styles of fire-poi spinning that they practice. Funny, laid-back, intense about what he cares about, Nate is one of my new favorite people. I hope I stay in touch with him and eventually move to Denver/Boulder, at least for a while. Or maybe work on similar things in the Bay Area, which he says is similarly densely Burnered up.

Nate had to take off around 17.25 to go get things done, and apologized for not being able to make it to the Boulder gathering, on account of attending a "junk yard party" at which people smash stuff up in a junk yard. Remind anyone of 2004/05 down in Mu Omicron Delta? Apparently they get dressed up in costumes first!

I then got a call back from my dad, whom I'd missed-called the day before about something I read in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Apparently one reason engines (especially primarily air-cooled engines) overheat when running lean (not enough fuel, too much oxygen in the combustion chamber(s) ) is that some significant part of the cooling of the engine is due to the energy absorbed by the fuel evaporating before combustion (just like the energy used in evaporating the saliva off of a dog's tongue during panting yields a cooling effect on the dog in general... before the saliva explodes in the combustion chamber?). Not as much fuel => not as much evaporative cooling. Dad says there maybe an additional cause, and if so, it's probably in Colin Campbell's "The Sports Car Engine," which is in my room back home.

Next was dinner at the SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe, a pay-as-you-can cafe that accepts work instead of donations if one needs. There we met up with some pillars of the Denver CouchSurfing community, as well as two more hitchhikers who will be in Boulder tomorrow (later today... ugh, it's 2:30 and I need to go to bed soon).

Dropped Beau off at his friend's place, dropped by a bar to say bye to a friend of Alexis's, Lisa (Oaxaca-lover and general travel enthusiast - hassled by Khan El Khalili in Cairo, headed overseas to Canada, Morocco (where she'll be "married" to her travel buddy and have pictures of her "children" nieces and nephews)). Maggie was also present and friendly, but I didn't talk to her much. They both ended up joining us at Alexis's apartment for cider in the back yard and two more characters joined us, Christian and April.

April was my favorite for the evening. Seemed super-into the Burner mentality, without ever having been to Burning Man. Might be going this year? Also mentioned a guy named Nater who was going to the "Smash party" on Saturday. You mean Nate with the long blonde hair who goes to burning man? Yeah, how the * do you know Nater? Met him in the park - he came out for the hitch gathering. Couchsurfing/Burners/Hitchhikers are a small community, even in the big city, I guess. Anyway, I had a great talk with April about not being afraid to exile someone from a community who really just doesn't fit in with that community - doesn't bring anything to a potluck, for example, even a volunteer attitude, and then is arrogant and/or entitled about it. If they bring McDonald's fries to the next potluck, they're trying - no need to kick them out :) If they bring nothing and bitch about everyone ragging on them for not participating, they need to go.

Finally I've been trying to meet up with Rob... who texted me late at night saying his CS host isn't answering. Best solution ever, it turns out, as we can all head to Boulder together tomorrow. Also, I've had a great opportunity to talk to Kenny, who seems like an American Kasper. Into web development, he has talked with Kasper about various projects. Kenny has been on the road, to one extent or another, for the last 3 years. A hitchhiker, CouchSurfer, and general smart guy, he's another of my new favorite people. He seems to confirm a lot of what Beau/Allen Bell said about hitchhiking, including the "if you're hitchhiking with 3, try making just 2 visible" theory. He had what I think is an improvement, too - have the third person walk on ahead, so that if the driver decides to pick up the first two, they can ask him to pick up the third as well, if possible. If a driver sees the first two, hesitates, and then sees a single hitchhiker walking along the road, he might be more likely to stop for the lone hiker. Everyone gets their own rides and meets up later. I like this idea, rather than just "concealing" the 3rd member, both for the practical reasons I just mentioned and because it seems more honest and up-front. Though maybe Beau couldn't do that during the hitchhiking race, when he was traveling with 2 others, due to the rules of the race?

Final thought for the evening - the deterrent of the heat and cold and dust and wind of burning man probably keeps some of the non-participatory partiers at bay, perhaps leading to a higher concentration of people who are there to share, to be radically self-reliant and self-expressive, and to be radically i... (in the spirit of the moment).

Yesterday...

2010-06-15T18:26:00.002+02:00

Yesterday exuded wonderfulness.

I hung out under a library overhang with some bums who told me all about local spots, biked all around Boulder, CO to a couple different parks and through downtown, ate some amazing spicy green chili (leftover) mexican food, biked around with old friends (Hafford, Maslowski, and Tsai) and hiked a quick mountain trail with same, ate Nepalese for dinner (mmm... dal bhat...), hung out at Lauren's talking and eating pumpkin muffins with brown sugar and butter on top, and came back to Janet's for a personal yoga lesson! Now I have an appreciation for Yoga (as Janet is an amazing teacher), but I don't know if I'd learn much in a large class setting. Maybe, but if not, I'll have to find a way to get some more of that.

Now I head back to Denver, checking out the SAME cafe, going to a CouchSurfing meeting, and then crashing before hitting the road nice and early tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have time to stop and visit Cagle, if only for an evening, in Vegas... but we'll see what happens out there on the road.

recent happenings

2010-04-24T14:45:00.002+02:00

I met some of the heads and national coordinators of the ECF while in Bruxelles and learned all sorts of stuff from them in the 15 minutes between their lunch and a meeting, including how the EuroVelo routes were planned and what the current status of the EV5 project is. Really exciting for me.

I have been fixing bicycles, doing some dishes, eating really tasty dumpster-dived food, attending art exhibits (a couple dancing strangely, inspired by projections on one wall of their enclosed space, while the viewing windows are opened and closed remotely by ropes... by members of the audience. Also, a projection of an open door onto a closed door, with a beach scene projected around it. After staring at the open door on the beach for a while, it's strange to see someone walk through the real door, or to step out into the ocean yourself.), talking with friends, checking out squats that offer various types of free/cheap services, learning linuxy things, biking around Amsterdam on 20-50 year old bikes (bicycles *own* this city, it's wonderful), and getting open-source maps onto my Garmin gps (thanks Mark! All the world's maps for free! No more expensive, proprietary, out-of-date, slow-to-load Garmin map nonsense!). Thus I am no longer dependent on Windows for my personal life. In fact my Windows installation broke a week or so ago and I don't even care to fix it any time soon. Woo! Feels good. I also wrote this post about working with old bike locks.

My current plans are to keep working on a whole bunch of projects:
keep fixing bikes and the bike system; try to introduce some personal responsibility to the system.
install Arch Linux with Mark's help. It is my way forward. learn more about linux
put all my bicycle-trip info up on eurovelo5.georgejemmott.com
plan a hitchhiking gathering in the US
meet up with old friends and contacts
rescue bikes from the city council, who "stole" them
organize my stay in Boston coming up
learn some Drupal by working on casarobino.org, sustainablepost.org, and nomadbase.org
build a relationship between the Casa and OCCII's bike repair workshop, ideally such that Casa residents can use it for free (if that's not already possible)
fix my laptop to the extent possible
more things I need to unbury from my to-do list...

I was also going to fix my bike (the middle sprocket in the front is stripped after riding 5,000 muddy kilometers and not knowing that I should take better care of my chain and replace it when it starts to stretch, so it needs new sprockets - a new chain ring and cassette), but have heard that bike shops in Amsterdam will rip you off if you're a tourist. That, combined with wanting to know just how much lower I want the front sprockets geared for the hill by my parents house and similar (I like hill-climbing with a loaded trailer, not accelerating when I'm already going 40 km/h), I'm going to put it off until I'm in California. Hopefully low gear lasts until then.

Thanks to Robin for providing a space where I can work on all these things and connect with all of these people who help to realize these goals. Hooray hospitality!

Hitch Gathering

2010-03-27T17:51:00.002+01:00

For the last two years there have been European Hitchhiking Gatherings (Paris and then Odessa, Ukraine). The next one is coming up in August, but we're hoping to organize one in the States, too. Maybe Colorado. I don't think anything has been officially announced yet, but check out this video from last year's European Hitch Gathering.

http://casarobino.org/2010/03/789-hitchhiking-festival-video

Curious...

2010-03-10T11:35:00.005+01:00

[Update 2010-03-11 10:03 - Conspiracy theorists will love to believe Groupon got caught with their hand in the cookie jar (by accidentally purchasing too many votes? because I my tweets about the purchased origins of their votes showed up on their twitter-feed?). Others might think they decided that the purchased tweet-votes (purchased by someone else?) were a no-no. In any case, Groupon has removed Robert's video from their site after just a day or so of the 15,000+ votes in question being up (video link below changed to original posting on youtube)]

I'm curious about this "Live Off Groupon" challenge. $100,000 to give up money for a year and live off of pre-paid vouchers. To skip to the intrigue part, scroll down to highly curious below.

I spent quite a bit of time on my video submissions for the competition:
Introducing myself to Groupon
A conversation with a local business

Judging by the winning finalists, I didn't show off my zany side enough. Oh well, at least my life is my own for the next year! Now that the finalists are out, I'd just like to meet the GrouPawn in San Diego for a drink, maybe chauffeur them around America's Finest (nearly public-transportationless) City.

A few of my other favorite submissions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFNVkawrFzY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A6nhBOTc8I
http://crazymotion.net/video/wM9SYGhhJda0jAy.html

And I saw some better ones, but don't feel like sifting through all the links at the moment to find them.

That said, something highly curious thing has happened.

Given the high quality of other submissions, how did the "WildCard" video (liveoffgroupon page, removed) make it? A search for "robert andrew lang" on google a few days before the end of the contest yielded almost nothing. A few days later, it yields 42,000 pages of twitter, facebook, and related content. Another of the winners, @groupawned on twitter, said "Andrew Mason (founder of groupon) loved the term "Groupins" and posted a link to the "Wildcard" video days ago. Not Random..just funny to the boss." Maybe his essays were great, too. Though it's curious that, in Robert's profile, there's no second video (which was a required field in the application).

OK, let's assume he's a real applicant and got the favor of the boss and that's all that was necessary. But how did that video get 15,000+ tweet-votes? http://identi.ca/notice/24255944 and http://bit.ly/b8RPEj make it seem that someone has paid for those tweets, many of which (I'm looking at the second link) being placed by empty accounts having only tweeted that one thing ever, and several of which having been "canceled due to strange activity." Curious! Who's web-savvy enough to hire social networking advertisers to promote a wildcard candidate with, in my opinion, the worst video of all that I saw? Is it just a matter of taste, or are the folks at Groupon looking to generate some buzz from this?

Also, if the finalists have already been sent invitations to interview in Chicago, what does it mean that our votes will "go straight to the super-finals!"? Perhaps making a game out of having us all twitter a link to a video with a description of thier contest is all part of ther publicity stunt.

Is Groupon that clever/sneaky/resourceful/whatever-you-want-to-call-it? Is someone else pulling the voting strings? Whatever the case, I'm curious to see how the whole thing turns out!

~George J.

My hippie tendencies

2010-03-10T03:01:00.007+01:00

I read a rough draft of an essay on freeloading. I'm frankly wondering if the essay is dead-pan satire or devil's advocacy, or if, perhaps, someone connected to one of my circles of friends really does see the world that differently than I do.

The rough-draft essay.

My response:

To play devil's advocate [edit: upon further reflection, though my opinions don't line up with his beliefs, I'm not really playing devil's advocate here, as my arguments line up with my beliefs], and perhaps provide some constructive criticism about holes some may perceive in your argument...

- A few points Regarding Couchsurfing.

1. Your costs lists is not generally applicable, nor is it specific. You mention food, but not all couchsurfing hosts provide food. You also say "utilities" and what is "whatnot?" Specifically, I have had CouchSurfing hosts (and once, out of necessity to both me and the surfer, been a host) who *provided* nothing but a safe place on the ground to sleep, without utilities. Moreover, the incremental cost of utilities of one additional guest is extremely low, on the order of the cost of one hot shower per guest-night (not all guests take a shower, but most also incrementally increase light-bulb usage, stove gas, and electronic device recharging).

2. I continue to host, as I have off and on for years, because there are benefits that outweigh, for me, the few of the costs you mention that do apply. Cultural exchanges with others, fresh outlooks on life, new ideas from people who have lived elsewhere and in other ways than I, and social interaction are all worth the cost of my rent (which I would be paying (or not) anyway) and some pancake supplies.

In addition, I continue to host people and give rides when I can because it's a way of paying forward those who have hosted, and continue to host me, given me rides, helped me move apartments, etc., especially those who have hosted me when I just needed a free place to stay.

3. Re: "This loss of time, privacy, and financial burden to support people becomes significant, especially in highly traveled areas." I do not consider my time hosting as a time 'lost,' but rather time spent, just like you or I might spend time playing a game, reading a book, going to the park, or working a day-job. Also, loss of Privacy? So when you hang out with your friends at home, are you thinking, "oh, man, what a loss of privacy"? (Note also that surfers often stay in a separate room (or as in 2007/08 in my case, on the roof).

In my opinion, several of the statements in this paragraph are too general and should be more carefully worded.

4. You write, "when the[y] see surfer after surfer pass through, eat their food, stay for a night or two, smile, and leave. This type of behavior, in addition to be an exploitation of a host's hospitality..." Many cultures of hospitality would not consider this an exploitation. Specifically in my experience, some Egyptians, Irish, and American Mid-Westerners and Californians I know would see supporting such travelers as *part of* the culture of hospitality.

5. I don't understand your comment that freeloading couchsurfers "can be damaging to the reputation of others" (reputation of whom, among what public? Couchsurfing.com among the World? Couchsurfers in general among potential hosts?) Perhaps, also, it's not so much *reputation* (social evaluation) of other people that is sometimes damaged by a freeloading CouchSurfer, as others' openness and hospitality toward others? I'm not sure.

- Regarding your comments on Dumpsterdiving, it took me a couple reads through (perhaps I'm slow to pick up on it, or perhaps your wording could be more explicit), but I see a point here that I didn't realize before. The cooperative cycle of commerce to which you refer is beneficial to the merchant in ways other financially, so despite the lack of literal "loss" of the garbage, he or she is losing out on feedback from customers. Interesting. [side-note, I wonder how a grocer would feel upon seeing a sticky note saying "the tomatoes you threw away last week were great!"]

- In the same paragraph, you say "By the way, where is the majority of oil coming from nowadays?" It seems you intend "our oil" (I assume you mean America's Oil? The Western World's Oil? Humanity's Oil?), just like rice in Alaska and cell phones in Sudan, as a statement advocating global commerce. Note that many people strongly believe that our use of oil is a leading cause of ocean acidification (killing off sea life), global warming (melting Everest), and other environmental disasters (Exxon V is all I have to type in to google before it suggests oil spill). Whether the oft-called "eco-nuts" have it all right or not, suffice it to say that "our oil" is a controversial justication, to say the least. If I were to write this essay, I would widen the focus of the sentence to a global one (which maybe you already intended with "our"?), and generalize the statement to more universally accepted imports, like "energy, tools, and gadgets?"

- The final generalization that will ring false to many readers is in your conclusion. "The up-front costs of freeloading, to the individual doing it, are obvious- something for nothing. The background costs, and the cascading effect which is has on society, are catastrophic when viewed in the long term" The first sentence might be more powerful if you stuck with the subject - the *cost* is not *something for nothing.* The *cost* is *nothing* And "are catastrophic"? I don't believe you have mentioned any actual catastrophes. You imply that the removal of incentive to work is bad, and mention that commerce is good (implying that something that avoids commerce is bad), but where is the catastrophe?

Good luck with the essay.

Cheers,
~George J.

New activity...

2010-03-07T12:14:00.000+01:00

Some new activity over at http://georgejemmott.com .

today's missions

2010-03-03T12:22:00.002+01:00

Today's missions:

Install aero-bars (those elbow-rest thingies) on my bike.
Get map transfer to my GPS working in Linux.
Transfer the location of a few sporting goods stores.
Ride to said stores, using said aero bars, returning said aero bars if I don't like them, and purchasing waterproof over-pants (not of the XXL or XXXL varieties, which are the only ones left at the downtown stores).

transparent windows in Linux

2010-03-01T12:49:00.002+01:00

I got transparent windows in Linux working (so I could do mapping work, laying one map over another)... only to realize when I restarted that I made 20% opacity the default, and I don't remember where that setting is! All my windows start out so hard to see... :)

EuroVelo 5

2010-02-23T18:55:00.004+01:00

I'm finally starting, in earnest, getting my EuroVelo 5 mapping plans in order, and posting stuff on the internet. Good thing, too, as I hope to leave in a week. :)

For those who follow this blog and don't know yet, if my knees don't give out and I don't freeze to death in the Alps, I'll ride my bike from Milano to Calais. Details are here: http://eurovelo5.georgejemmott.com

I just wrote a post there of which I'm pretty proud. It's a bit dry, but for those that care about this cycle route, perhaps it'll be helpful.

If I ever settle down...

2010-02-23T15:21:00.003+01:00

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Tim Hanna wrote:

Subject: Barmonkey on steroids
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/gallery-robot-bartenders/

seriously, that's what real engineers with real experience, real time, and real funding do, rather than 3 students do, sophomore year, in the second half of one course with $100. I'll get there one day... :)

[now that I have some web-space, I hope I remember to re-post the website Sylvie and/or DJ made for that project]

While I'm thinking about ideas for the future, to have in my space... if I ever have money and a space...

0. Barmonkey on steroids

1. public computer terminal. Useful for searching, controlling music, and perhaps self-made home-automation.

2. Big, huge, self-cleaning blender. I'm not sure if the self-cleaning part exists, but if it doesn't, it will. Add a water tap and a servo valve, and have the output over a drain. it'll flush itself pretty well, anyway. This is for all-fruit smoothies (which are healthier than fruit juice according to stuff I've read recently about the necessity of consuming fiber along with fructose), milkshakes, cream-of-____, and other blended foods and beverages.

3. general-public (outside the living area) bike workshop, following the model of some I've found here. $5 or so annual admission, all the tools are public, and it's open whenever a volunteer is there to watch over things (initially me, but the ones here have developed a following of open-space fans who help run the places)

4. A shower with multiple movable, extendable, adjustable shower heads. Seriously.

5. Comfy-chair laptop docking station. Most of all this would have an ergonomic keyboard, or better, a keyboard split in two pieces with each piece re-positionable (or if I'm lazy, just on the armrests), with built-in wrist-rests. Maybe the computer would be not so much a docking station as a separate desktop that does wi-fi remote-desktopping, so it's easier to set it up on more computers? Maybe also give it hardware video in and USB-host mouse/keyboard out, in case anyone wanted to plug in their laptop to the home network or big screen, but didn't want to or couldn't install remote desktop software... but it'd be a lot easier to do the remote desktop thing. Ah! Or maybe make it a web-client! That'd be awesome. I need to research this more, as I'm sure there are a *ton* of people who have already made such things, if and when I ever get the money and space to set it up. Anyway, there'd be a direct video-streaming-speed connection to the TV and other network outlets in the house.
6. (this one is going a little far, maybe... perhaps if I build my own house?) Stone floors with sub-floor heating. It's what this milano apartment has, and it's soooo nice. You can slide around fast in your socks, and the floor is always warm! I'd want to do it with something green, like a roof-mounted solar-heated water system... but man, that'd be nice. The design requires a bit of finesse, especially if you want to combine the floor hot-water heater with the shower/dishes/etc. hot water heater. Or maybe there's no reason to do that. Maybe a separate solar-water-heater for each area of the house, so each one's setup variables can be tweaked for the particular application (for example, floor heating - high throughput, bath - maximum temperature).

On the note of number 6, I also really liked my parents' solar water heater, which had no electricity involved (except maybe a small pump? or did it work on convection), just a big sun-absorbing panel over which the water ran.

Now I'm just rambling, so I'll leave it there and put this on my blog.
~George

Why Milano is not for me (or Why I am not for Milano)

2010-02-20T16:45:00.005+01:00

In much of Milano, the self-proclaimed Fashion Capital of the World, image is everything. If you can afford the Prada bag (or whatever Corso Como 10 is selling), then you're in the club. If you're not in the club, well... you're not in the club.

That's an over-generalization, but in my experience, there are no thrift stores (used clothing? Who would buy used clothing?), few public spaces, few cheap cafes with sitting space, money is class and class is important, etc. The weather is cold and dark in the winter and there are tons of closed-minded people.

The lumbering, crumbling bureaucracy was annoying to deal with in the beginning. Both Anca's and my boss's have complained about it even more than we have. The owner of a business having to show up in person at 7:30am to get a spot in line at the government office to start the application process for a food and beverage license? If you show up after 9, you might not get in by the time they close. Anyway, eventually I decided to just stop dealing with it. I guess that's an advantage of a lumbering bureaucracy... it doesn't really notice the little people, and if there is an irregularity, well, insisting that some other government official told me to do it that way seems to have worked so far.

Note that my complaints are about a culture and systems that I don't understand, so the "fault" for this mis-match lies as much or more with me than with Milano itself; While I could afford to look fashionable if I changed my priorities, anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty much always near the lower end of "acceptable"-looking. And indeed, the city seems to make many people happy. To that end, even I have found some sub-cultures I really like, and I imagine there are some more.

1. The Critical Mass cyclists are a fantastic bunch - supportive, helpful, and outgoing; bicycle-focused, not image-focused. I wish they met more often than Thursday evenings or that I had more excuses to go to the Ciclofficine.

2. The Cicloficine (other link)- cycle offices - are also full of friendly, accepting, helpful people. With a 5 euros per year membership, you can go there to fix your bike, or build your own bike out of the pieces they have sitting around. The one that I have gone to, Cicloficina Stecca , has enough pieces at the moment to build maybe 100 bikes, most of which found on the streets or, as in the case on one of my visits, tossed over the wall sometime before closing-time and the next re-opening of the cicloficina, such that the gate was difficult to force open. I guess people know it's where old bikes go! I'd like to start something like this in San Diego, if it doesn't already exist. I wonder how/if they make rent...

3. Leon Cavallo provides an interesting counter-point, as a 20-something year old Communist squat that has been served as many eviction notices. They promote local artists, feature really nice, artistic graffiti all over the walls, and there were barbecues there in the summer and shows year round (which I haven't attended). They also have wine-tasting nights and organic ("bio") farmers conventions and food nights. A strange space, but welcoming and refreshing after the streets of downtown.

4. Cantiere is another open space, this one a bit cleaner, nicer, more homey. They hosted an awesome 3-day event called "AHAcktitude" combining political, technological, and artistic activism. I loved another of the mash-up words that came out of this thing: "subvertising." Most days in the summer, seemingly only on Sundays at the moment, they serve dinner in a cool format: relatively cheap, three courses, no choices. You get what they're making, which, when we went, was really good. The people are friendly, though if you're bothered by pot smoke, you might want to avoid the outdoor courtyard.

Even with these sub-cultures that I rather like, I still feel like I'm "dealing with" the city on a daily basis to get to the spaces I like. I'd rather feel like I'm supported or at least encouraged by my city, rather than fighting it every step of the way.

Oh, and on that note, there are basically no bike lanes, let alone bike paths, in the city. When I finally found one that went for more than 100 meters... it ended in a brick wall within another 100. The green lines are cycle paths, the pink lines are streets with bike lanes.

The image above comes from a grassroots user-submitted-content based website, http://www.piste-ciclabili.com/regione-lombardia. Amusing (and typical, in my limited experience) is that the grassroots site *way* outperforms the government site in both content and usability - an embedded Google Map, rather than a jpg image. See the Lombardia page here if you're curious.

hidden files in Vista

2010-01-24T19:43:00.002+01:00

I just helped someone toggle the "view hidden files" setting in Vista, in a user folder. Here are some steps...

First try going to your user folder, right-clicking, and click "Customize This Folder"
Nope, you're not allowed to.
OK, remember from prior Windowses that your user folder is actually in a different location. Documents and Settings... no, they've moved it to "Users"
Now "Customize This Folder" works, but the old View tab isn't there, so there is no "View Hidden Files" option isn't available.
Click on the "Tools" Menu. WTF? Where is the tools menu? What did they do with the tools menu? Does Alt+T even work any more? Oh, sweet lord it does. I bet they don't take that out until Windows 7. Upon tapping alt, the "Tools" menu appears, where you can click "Folder Options," and get to the good old "View" tab where you can choose to see your damn hidden files.

It's like they're *trying* to make it hard to use.

On that note, has anyone noticed how the file path to your user file has been getting progressively more and more obscure as Windows develops?
Windows 95/98 - C:\My Documents\, simple shortcut on the desktop, C:\Windows\Desktop\
Windows XP/ME/2000 - C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Documents\, shortcut on the desktop, which was located *in* the My Documents folder, but also appears as the top level of the file hierarchy, so you can start exploring the desktop, click My Computer, C:\, Documents and Settings\, Your User Name\, Desktop\... and be back where you started. Sort of. Without access to "My Computer" and "Recycle Bin," which, clearly, are not actually stored on your desktop.

I feel like Windows is *trying* to keep people ignorant as to the actual location of their files within the file structure. Perhaps a twisted method of encouraging brand loyalty?

Open everything

2009-12-28T11:10:00.003+01:00

Intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjQSki0uyg

Another intro:
http://p2pfoundation.net/A_Revolution_in_the_Making

Open hardware:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking

And one I haven't investigated yet:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Open

Cool stuff.

2009-12-26T11:08:00.002+01:00

I'm overly proud (yes, overly so) of my most recent Wi-fi network diagnosis. The router simply didn't show up on my computer's list of available networks.

Interference from the laptop on the same desk? switch that laptop's wireless card off... no.

The affected computer is set to "ad-hoc only" ? Check the settings... no.

The affected laptop is american, and the network is operating on a European channel? Checked 192.168.1.1 to find the router settings page, default admin username and password found on the net, channel changed from 13 to 11, and voila. Internet fixed :)

Milano, Milano, Milano...

2009-12-18T21:26:00.002+01:00

VERB CONJUGATIONS:
A couple weeks ago, while I was designing a custom planner for myself, I thought of a book I need to make. Supposing one already knows the basics of grammar of a language and has a serviceable pocket dictionary, what's the biggest obstacle to communication? Verb conjugations. How do you say, "Yeah, I would have done that, but I had to..." if you don't know the past tense, let alone the conditional past perfect. So in addition to the pocket dictionary, I want a verb conjugation book. It would have all the basic verbs in the language of interest in alphabetical order with translation into english and conjugations into all the major tenses, as well as contextual translations for each of the tenses. There would also be a table of english verbs, in alphabetical order, with the Italian translation and the page number for its conjugations. As such, in any situation (like the one today when I wanted to ask "can I return this next week if (subjunctively) I don't like it?"), I can look up the necessary verb and the proper conjugation. Instant practice, instant learning, and all I need to do is copy the verb conjugation charts from some site like wordreference.com into a book, alphabetize them, and make an alphabetical list in English.

SHOPPING IN MILANO (or VERB CONJUGATIONS continued...)
Today I went shopping for educational (English) materials for my boss. I actually really enjoyed the experience, despite all but one of the purchases being for someone else. There is just something about spending 2 hours and 150 dollars (100 euros) in a really big store, finding and purchasing exactly the right books, regardless of the intended recipient or purpose. Anyway, back to that one purchase, it was for me. I found that book I had designed. Despite costing 13.30 euros (19 dollars) and being somewhat larger than pocket sized, it is even better than the one I designed. Specifically, it has a half-page description of each verb tense (in English!) and the proper ways to use them (since not all Italian verb tenses translate directly into English). It also has all verbs conjugated the same way (the standard ones, mostly) referenced back to the same page. For example, if you need to conjugate "to smoke" into the past tense, 3rd person ("he/she/it smoked"), you would look up "smoke," which would point you to "fumare, pg. 9". On page 9, you would find "amare" (to love). Since the conjugation is the same for all tenses, they don't waste pages repeating the same information, but just show you "amava," so you know the conjugation you need is "fumava." So perfect! And finally, at the bottom of each page, it has an Italian example for each verb tense and an English translation (worded verbosely in the case of non-direct tense conversions). Language purchased.

SNOW (or SHOPPING IN MILANO continued...)
In other news, it was snowing just before and after this shopping expedition. Milano seems so magical in the snow... Is it the Christmas decorations? That I was in a particularly commercial, well-groomed district? No, these things usually don't comfort or inspire a feeling of beauty or magic in me. AH! The snow distracted me from my usual habit of looking-at-the-ground-to-avoid-stepping-in-shit, so I was looking *up* at the shiny lights and snow! And if I did step in any shit, it was frozen, so there's no reason to care! Oh, snow, you might just make Milano liveable this winter (as opposed to Boston, which you made into a miserable city, as far as I'm concerned).

(Insert closing paragraph here.) ... or not, really.

2009-12-16T00:51:00.001+01:00

Volubility...

It just rolls off the tongue.

Volubility.

Cell Phones

2009-12-06T10:47:00.002+01:00

This post is for people who've not heard of "unlocked" phones.

Tired of your service provider? Tired of paying for a contract in general? Going travelling and want to use your phone? Want a phone your provider doesn't sell? Want ring-tones without paying for each one, or unavailable ones from your provider? Just curious what else your phone might

This video mentions quite a few of such advantages of "unlocked" phones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lz-XGjynN8&feature=related

Note that most phones you purchase directly from the manufacturer (Nokia, Samsung, LG, etc.) rather than the provider (Vodafone, TMobile, Verizon, etc.) come un-locked. They're not subsidized by that "2-year contract gets you a better deal" deal.

Freezing my own french fries?

2009-12-03T03:45:00.002+01:00

I think I might start freezing my own (un-fried) french fries. Sort of like canning vegetables. Except in this case the motive is not mass-producing for sale or saving food for when there is none. This time the motive is to have pre-cut french fries, ready to fry when we're hungry, but much cheaper, better-tasting, and locally sourced than the bags of processed potatoe wedges we can buy at the supermarket. Moreover, this way I only have to use and wash the potato-cutter once per 5 of 10 batches of fries! What a weird person I'm going to be when I get old...

cast-cover

2009-11-30T11:20:00.002+01:00

A conversation with Anca earlier this month led to an idea for making a line of removable covers for casts (arm casts, leg casts, etc. for broken bones). They might be:
- softer
- washable (casts get dirty over time)
- better looking
- add your feature here

Some disadvantages of a "store-bought" cast-cover:
- likely a one-time-use item (not sustainable-minded)
- costs money
- not personalized - maybe I think it looks cool, but you don't

As a result of this nomad conference, and being infected with the culture of sharing and doing things ourselves, I thought about a cast cover that solves those problems while maintaining the benefits listed above. My solution (I will post a picture if I ever find my camera) involves a handkerchief (or any other piece of cloth you have around that you like the color of) and two safety pins. It looks pretty sweet.

Bike Friday

2009-11-30T11:05:00.002+01:00

To the folks at Bike Friday:

I bought a Bike Friday folding bicycle, not knowing anything about the wealth of cultural experience that comes along with multi-modal cycle/train/plane touring, because a Pocket Sport seemed *useful* and *practical*. Since then, my life has been given more meaning, new direction, and a ton of new friends all over Europe because I had the means to continue to travel in an inexpensive, personal way. I had no idea just how *useful* my Bike Friday would be. Thanks, guys.

NOMADISM!

2009-11-28T13:30:00.004+01:00

This conference is off the hook.

I showed up 2 hours late and no one else was here yet. Chairs still upside down, two guys in the kitchen cooking, most attendees still asleep, some upstairs at the conference location (an open-space / tea house that organizes skill sharing workshops, free language classes, open dinners with a 2-euro suggested donation, etc.), and a few attendees on-line but not yet in attendance.

The open format and the four rules and one law all serve to contribute to a perception of disorganization (if you've had a generally American, traditional university- and industry-conference experience). The four rules:

- Whenever it starts is the right time

- It is over when it is over

- Whoever comes is the right people

- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened

The law (heavily paraphrased) if you aren't currently learning/contributing, move to a different space or group.

However, things are getting done and content is getting generated, perhaps even more efficiently than larger, "more organized" conferences, and regardless of the number of attendees. Open your mind...

http://sharewiki.org/en/SHE_goes_MAD is almost entirely a result of the conference.

http://nomadbase.org/ (the project for which this conference has been convened) has meeting notes, ideas, and other posts on the front page at the moment, and the functionality has been improved by Mark B. and others during the conference.

On a more personal note...

I learned a ton about cooking with limited ingredients this morning, collaborating with those two guys in the kitchen (A Polish guy named Pavlik? and another guy named Igor?)

I heard about an amphibious human-powered-transport-only nomad who packs his stuff into his canoe and tows it behind his bicycle, until he gets to a body of water, at which point he puts the bike into the canoe and rows around. No planes/trains/cars/gas of any sort and he has gone tens of thousands of miles.

As a side-note, it's funny to try to type this in a way that makes sense to people back home, people in Europe, and people in Egypt. The context in which I frame it would normally be entirely different, so instead I'm trying to keep it as "objective" as possible, whatever that means...

Finally (for this post) there is currently a meta-discussion going on about the best way to hold a discussion. Scheduled? Announcements of talks? Non-mandatory announcements?

And now we're getting derailed by a discussion about dumpster-diving...

PS - the re-organization of the conference went incredibly well. I am happy to have contributed a small piece - the "NOW, SOON, LATER" categories on the schedule instead of a set schedule.

Patriotism = Nationalism?

2009-11-25T11:45:00.005+01:00

Did you know that children in many communist countries have been made to sing songs, often daily, about how great communism is? Indoctrinated from birth, like mafia children to violence and drug-lords' children to the drug trade, these children grow up truly believing that communism and whatever country they come from are the best system and country in the world. Irrational, culturally-ingrained nationalism is pretty scary, eh?

That reminds me of another country, where children, from the age of 5 or so, are made every day to stare at the national symbol, promise to always be loyal to the country, invoke the superiority of god, and state belief that their country will never disband and never allow injustice to be visited upon its citizens. The United States of America, I think it's called... It's all just irrational, culturally-ingrained nationalism...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism

So my suggestion? Let's make a world-wide pledge of allegiance instead! I pledge allegiance to the Earth and all the people in it, one world, under the sky, with dreams for all.

Tried to do a bunch of planning-type stuff, cycled a fair amount, camped in a field.

2009-07-16T08:00:00.000+02:00

These pictures and many more are found here: 20090720_Budapest Zurich Basel Strasbourg Freiburg and perhaps someday will be correlated with the GPS data Frances took.

We stayed in the YMCA hostel the night before, Frances in the all-women's dorm, which usually afords her few neighbors and a nice, clean environment away from stinky boys. Sounds like I got the better deal this time.

We got a rather late start out of Basel (3:00 pm?), after trying to find EuroVelo route 5 or make some other route or plan, trying to buy a train ticket for Frances to Paris on-line but Frances's card wouldn't work, trying to deal with France's bank but no communication method revealed itself, and trying (and succeeding at this one!) to buy Frances a train ticket to Paris with my card *at the train station*.

We cycled pretty far, but not as far as we wanted...

At one point, I had a grasshopper friend on my leg. He stayed for about 5 minutes before hopping away. Hope he was OK! This was right about the time we cycled 12 miles and I didn't touch the ground that whole time. Whoa. I guess that doesn't mean much to hardcore cyclists... but it's pretty cool for me!

Mmmm, cheap (But good!) brie and bread. Fuel for transport... I again drank a liter of juice much faster than any person should. After a quick rest, we got back on the road!

But not before noticing the ridiculous pile of recycling, much of which wine bottles, outside this French grocery store.

Crossing the Rhein (Rhin, Rhine, however you want to spell it), we entered Germany. We'd cross back into France not long after, though, to make time on the larger highway.

Caravaners abound on these little river-side paths. What a nice day for a picnic...

Also: Bike lanes = awesome. So nice to not be in traffic!

Today was a nice steady downhill, mostly following the river.

A huge hydroelectric plant built on the river between France and Germany, right after World War II. ...With American dollars, Frances points out.

We decided to camp (first time this trip! woo!), so I recommended stopping about a half hour before sun-down (because I had never set up this tent before). It turns out this is the easiest tent to set up that I've ever seen. No sleeves to push poles through, and all the poles are permanently attached to each other. Snap the three poles in at the corners and top of the tent, attach the tent's hooks to the poles, put the rain-fly over the whole thing, do four velcro straps, four more corner-attachments to poles, two stakes, and it's done, no need for two people, even. Go REI tents! Too bad we didn't have a bottle of wine or some liquor... and too bad there were mosquitos, or I'd have slept outside, making Frances cooler and happier. Oh well. Woke up with a slug and a spider in my bag. Yay nature! :-/

2009-07-06T23:29:00.004+02:00

I am sitting on a dryer (it's warmer than the washing machine) in the mini-laundromat behind the cafe that has free wi-fi (which just closed), all within this "camping village." Ha! Camping. When I was a kid... ;-)

Speaking of "I am" and "when I was a kid..." when I was a kid, there was this book called "The Little Engine that Could." I have decided that that little engine had a unique interpretation of Descartes' message, resulting in, rather than the typical "I am," with a differently profound, "I think, therefore I can."

Czech Music

2009-07-06T23:18:00.001+02:00

I'm pretty sure "Pump Up the Jams" is not Czech music. Nor is "Move your body," Bob Marley, or that techno song that reminds Frances of Darude's Sandstorm. But here we are in the Czech republic, and it's what theyr'e playing! Addendum: "Hit Me Baby, One More Time." Also, boten ana by basshunter. And perhaps the cake-taker: "Shut up and Sleep With Me" by Sin with Sebastian. Don't ask why I know who did that song... And Satisfaction by Benny Benassi? Wha??? (that one I had to look up). Now the icing on the already-taken cake... [this was lost to the g-mail character limit. oh well.]

Amsterdam

2009-06-29T12:38:00.002+02:00

I am getting really (Amster)damn excited about Amsterdam. The more I talk to Anca, the more committed to it I'm getting, and the more it sounds like it will be one hell of an adventure. I have some concerns, which I outlined to her just recently (lightly edited for content):

...There are some things I should make really clear, though. I inherited a fair amount of paranoia from my dad (for example, he keeps backup copies of everything on CD in cabinets, just in case). However, I am starting to see this as a good thing, as it has saved my ass (and some of my friends, too, several times. Frances really needed toilet paper, for example... who was paranoid and had some packed? Me. :) ). Anyway, why am I mentioning all of this? Because I want to promise you everything; I want to commit to you right now, and promise you to be there forever... but there are lots of things I'm worrying about, in the near future, that are keeping me from doing that:
- What if we can't find work? We talked about this a bit, but the unemployment situation is really making things difficult for people without work permits. I'll try really hard for a few months at least, and it sounds like you will, too. By the way, I love you for working as a waitress. That you are that committed to moving out from Mr. Credit Card's house is awesome. *hugs and kisses!*
- What if I hate winter in a city? I hated winter in the countryside, but I think mainly for two reasons that might not be a problem in the city. 1)The only way to get anywhere was to drive, and driving/having a car is really annoying in the winter. Scraping ice, shoveling snow, giving friends rides because their cars are stuck, etc. 2) There was nowhere other than the dining hall at college for large numbers of people to get together and hang out when it was snowing. So I think these will both be better in Ams, because I won't have a car (public transit is easy in the winter, right? hopefully we're close enough to a bus or tram that I won't have to bike in the snow...) and it seems like cities have lots more inside places for people to get together. I don't really know. I have never lived in a city in the winter.
- What if we stop liking each other after a month or two? This doesn't seem super-likely; it seems like we both really like each other and will probably figure it out. But if either of us stopped liking the other one, or if we had a fight that we couldn't fix, I would not want to be fully enrolled in a city that I might not like without you there.

So here is what I need. Give me a month or two with you to make sure we don't have any huge fights or fundamental lifestyle conflicts. (for example, maybe you don't like that I'm a mass murderer ;-) ). In that month or two, I want very much to live with you, but would totally understand if you'd prefer to live apart. How close we are is totaly up to you, just like in Rimini, but I need that month or two to be sure.

Then, before I enroll in school or take out a 2-year lease or do anything else that ties me to Amsterdam for more than a year, I need to experience winter in the city. Hell, I need to experience the city at all. I have been there for 2 or 3 days total, and have only really seen the touristy parts. From everything you and Adina say, I think I will love it, and I think I will be totally fine with winter, but I am not sure, so I don't want to make any super-long-term commitments until I have seen the place.

I hope all of that is ok with you...

And a segment of our subsequent conversation is rather relavent, too, explaining my hesitation:

George: hmm, here is a different example that might help explain my thinking, would you move to cairo with me next month?

11:44 AM you don't speak the primary language, but most people in downtown speak english. I'll bet you could find work. I did... maybe I still could? though funding has been cut, so I'm not sure. The weather is nice... unless you hate ridiculously hot summers.
anyway, you don't need to answer, because i don't actually want to move back there. but yeah, as an example, maybe you'd want to try it out for a while? see how bad a summer is before signing up for a degree program, etc.

Anca: hahahaha

good one

11:45 AM well at least you ve been to amsterdam for a few days

11:46 AM me:heheh, i saw the van gogh museum, the red light district, some canals, and ... I don't know, I probably saw some other stuff.

11:47 AM though i have to say, even in the touristy places, the local people were super nice :)

11:48 AM Anca: yeah they are

So yeah. Life is exciting. :)

Italia!

2009-06-19T14:18:00.002+02:00

I have been relaxing, for the past couple days, in Milano, Italy. Captioned pictures are here. Today I plan to hitchhike with my friend Anca to the Western Seaside, to the small town of Rimini. We'll be back on Monday, I think, and then Tuesday I leave for Germany. Later!

~George

Boston rocks my socks

2009-05-21T21:31:00.002+02:00

I hope to justify the Title of this post with all sorts of crazy stories from the past week, but for now I will briefly mention the dude presently singing kid's songs in a coffee shop with free fast internet that makes really good coffee and other drinks (When I asked, "what do you have that's like an iced mocha, but that I haven't had berfore," they made me a cappuccino slushy... so good). His voice is so dynamic and his facial expressions so bizarre that, with good old stand-bys of "5-little mokeys jumpin' on the bed," "old MacDonald," and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," he currently has 6 or 7 little monkies jumping around the coffee shop. Well done, sir; I can't help but whistle along.

On that note, if you are in the Cambridge/Somerville area of Greater Boston, I highly recommend the True Grounds coffee shop. (review)

2009-03-01T22:14:00.003+01:00

Going traveling again soon! Woo! Getting plans together.

- May: graduations and weddings on the East Coast.
- June: Ireland? Northern Italy? Barcelona? We'll see... depends on Anca's whereabouts.
- July: Cycling trip with Frances! Map
- August and Everything After: Moving to Amsterdam? Cycling the Mediterranean?

Let me know if you have contacts/opinions/thoughts about those places...

DeepSeaeekTech

2008-08-16T21:39:00.004+02:00

The sweet HR lady just came around and noticed that my office was rather warm on the weekends. I've been ignoring it by listening to music, and forgetting to mention it to anyone. So Loretta, the sweet HR lady, and Cuc, the head drafting lady whose office is next to mine, took it upon themselves to get me a fan. I love this office.

California...

2008-07-19T03:12:00.000+02:00

California here I am! (and have been since July 3rd...) It's nice to be "home," whatever that means. Alexa will be here until mid-August. She's been laying paving stones for my mom, cutting back brush, which has been deemed a fire-hazard by the fire department, for my dad, and generally being helpful around the house. We've been relaxing, mostly, with occasional day-trips out to San Diego and one trip up to Joshua Tree. I may post some of that, or I may not... we'll see.

Yesterday was a pretty idyllically fantastic day, though.
- First we went sailing with Moana (who works, among other places, at a boat rental place), who was gracious enough to take us out sailing for 2 hours and then thank us for the experience :). I'm relatively confident at sailing, now, too, which is a bonus.
- Then we ran some errands. Then we went to Alexa's bank and then to Sports Chalet to pick up a pump for my inflatable rubber raft. I spent an extra $2 or $3 to get the electric one - powered off of the car - and it was totally worth it. I re-enabled an old phone my parents had sitting around, so my new number is (760) 666-0252. My driver's license has a 666 in the middle, too. Does that mean I'm the devil?
- Next, we went back to Ocean Beach, hang-out of the stoners of San Diego. The cops seem to have a bit more of a presence than they used to, rent is a bit higher, and there's a starbucks there now, but the beach bums are still there and it's still a nice place to be. It's sad, though, the direction it's headed. I was wearing one of the shirts my brother made, this one to look like the "D.A.R.E. to resist drugs and alcohol." program shirts, but it says "D.A.R.E. to keep college students off hard drugs on weekdays." On the way to my favorite secluded beach, a girl complimented the shirt and mentioned she almost wore hers that day. Oh yeah, I remembered, I've seen lots of DARE shirts worn with a sense of irony... We enjoyed the cliffs and waves for a while, and when it was time to move on, another beach bum/punk said, "Nice shirt, dude. You lookin' for any?" I told him I didn't have any cash.
- Finally, the perfect cap to the day: a show called "Hippiefest" at a really cool venue called Humphrey's By the Bay. We stopped by a grocery store on the way and picked up a fifth of Jagermeister and Alexa got a 20-ounce bottle of coke. We went to the San Diego bay and put my rubber raft into the water at some place on Shelter Island Drive called a Fuel Dock, the same place Ransom and I used a few years ago. Paddling straight out, making an immediate left, and going until the waterway, lined on both sides with enormous yachts and other boats, we got to the spot where you can see the stage of Humphrey's from the water for free. No $75 tickets for us, no sir! The show was amazing, and I really feel like I got a feel of the 60s. The opener was alright, the next lady was less good, but we spent most of her time on stage drinking and talking to the folks in the boat next to us. They were super friendly and willing to trade what they had, which was ridiculously nice, for some of our Jager. One guy told us how he got a medical marijuana card for $150 that is completely "legitimate," whatever that means. I wonder how long it'll be before California up and legalizes marijuana entirely. Anyway, according to the member of the turtles who volunteered to MC the show at the last minute, the guy who was supposed to be MCing's "acid just kicked in." Heheh, and the guys from The Turtles were pretty drugged-up, too, and weren't afraid to talk about it. At one point, he talked about how they "were once a drug band, and you know what? We're STILL a drug band! Only now we do all the old stuff plus zoloft and lipitor and flonase and ..." and he just kept naming prescription and non-prescription medications. What a dude. So when The Turtles went on, I was surprised to note that they were really, fantastic. The dude from Cream, one of the guitarists (no, not Clapton), was also pretty sweet. He basically played a Cream cover show, but you could hear, if you closed your eyes, that pretty much all the instruments were 2-dimensional except for his guitar. He went nuts. So we were really disappointed in the Animals, who have not aged nearly as well as the previous two. That was just fine, though, because by the time we got out of the water, we both had to go to the bathroom and were looking for snacks. As we neared the dock, they played House of the Rising Sun, so the experience was complete, in any case.

What a good day, eh? Today was way more boring. Bought some groceries, cleaned up the car from yesterday, put stuff away, ate dinner, watched a dumb TV show, and wrote this down. Hmm. Oh, and yesterday, I got a 54 ounce bag of skittles. That's over 3 pounds!

Tomorrow, Moana is taking us wake boarding, as long as no one rents out the boat(s). We might have to wait for a weekday to do that; we'll see.

I was hoping to also make a post about June 26th, called "Hitchhiking Adventure: Colorado, part 2," but I have stalled out on it at the moment for two reasons. 1. It would be WAY better with pictures, for which I need a card reader. 2. It's 3:15am now, and I'm sleepy. Oh, and I should wake up in 6 1/2 hours if I want to make it to this wake boarding thing tomorrow. In good news, though, I've gotten to talk to Anca, my Romanian photographer friend, and Noha, one of my students from Egypt, this evening. Woo!

Hopefully I'll get this camera business sorted out tomorrow,
Hugs,
~George

update...

2008-06-28T17:33:00.002+02:00

so much to post, but I'm writing it all down in my notebook for now. The update for now is that I'm here in Santa Fe, NM with Laura Stupin's parents, who have been fantastic hosts. Santa Fe is SO full of art! Whoa! There seem to be 15-20 gallery openings every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, each with some combination of art, food, music, wine, and other entertainment. Most of them are packed on to one street, too, so you can just wander up and down the street, looking for cool stuff. My favorite artist thus far is Christopher Ries, who carves HUGE blocks of leaded Crystal down to smooth objects that, due to internal reflections, show crazy patterns "in" them from some angles. Anyway, there's tons of other stuff going on here, too, in the art and music world, from popular to ... unpopular :). Everything from a New England folky Contra dance to a hip-hop-themed graffiti- and break-dancing-competition.

Our next stop is Phoenix (unless someone gives me a contact between here and there), probably taking off tomorrow or the next day.

Hugs and love

2008-06-23T17:52:00.003+02:00

Leaving Missouri for Denver, CO. It sure has been a nice stay here, but it's time to move on.

Next stop after that is Phoenix, where we'll meet up with a friend of Alexa's who'll drive us to the grand canyon area.

Two things for your amusement:
Me, jumping into a flooded quarry: click here or copy this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_wJmnVo2tk
A map including the first bit of our journey: click here or copy and past this long URL: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=108180766761547730875.00044fbb2b48c7a8ab631&z=6

I'll keep updating the map.

Hugs to all!
~George

safe and sound in Columbia, Missouri

2008-06-13T07:20:00.001+02:00

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know that Alexa and I made it safely and rather elegantly to Columbia, Missouri, where we'll be spending a week, plus or minus, with a friend of hers.

Updates to come...
~George

2008-06-09T18:53:00.001+02:00

At Colin's place.

Sharspburg, Maryland

2008-06-09T18:48:00.004+02:00

sharpsburg is really, really pleasant, as are Darcy's (Laurel's, as she's called here, south of the Mason-Dixon line) folks and brother, as always. Colin hung out with the family for a few hourslast night. Alexa and I are thinking about caving and swimming and hiking today.

It's already sad thinking about leaving this place. Between pleasant associations and the potential of the outdoors, the indoors, and everyone around, I'm so at home here.

Corey and Alexa are jamming, calmly, on two accoustic guitars. I am in serious danger of overusing the word "pleasant" here.

New Car?

2008-06-06T06:46:00.005+02:00

Well, certainly not a "new" car. But I'm thinking about selling my Subaru station wagon, largely because of the mediocre gas mileage (20 city/27 highway reported, just below 20 measured on long-distance trips with lots of stuff), and because, now that I'm not in college any more, I won't need to haul stuff around the country/city nearly as much in the near future as I did then.

Why am I posting this here? Well, two reasons. 1. I harbor some small hope that somebody reads this, and 2. You might be able to help me choose something. Here is what I want: fuel efficient (which probably means small), cute (which probably also means small), not fast (to keep insurance lower and keep me safer), inexpensive (not much, if any, more than a '97 legacy wagon), and reliable. Think for a minute on your own, and send your suggestions to gjemmott@gmail.com or post them here. You can look up the fuel efficiency here.

My thinking was that most of those criteria make me lean towards something small and Asian and stickshift. I initially thought an old Mazda Miata would be cool, but Brett informed me that they don't get fantastic gas milage (20/26 city/highway for a '97, 22/27 for a 2000). His suggestion was a Honda Del Sol (closer to 30). I also noticed that VW Jettas have been getting good fuel ratings for a while, but they lose serious points on the Cute and Reliable scales. A 2000 Honda Insight looks really intriguing - perfect mileage, slow, the cost is a bit high, but not too bad (and the gas savings would be fantastic), but I wonder about two things: are hybrids from that early on still running well (Do you know of someone with one)? Also, is it cute? I kind of like it, but I'm curious what the public thinks. Let me know if you have opinions!

~George

Back in the USSA!

2008-06-05T14:38:00.003+02:00

Hey everyone! I'm back in the US, finally, for at least a year or so. Flew in to JFK airport last night, which went very smoothly... after London's Heathrow aiport was finished screwing me around. :) Insh'allah I will post a bunch of stuff about how my travels have been going, rather than just posting plans... but we'll see!

As for now, here are the plans:

June 5th: NYC to State College, PA, where I'll visit a bunch of friends. You are welcome to stay at my brother's house there all weekend. I'll arrive today, so you can arrive tomorrow. Just send me an e-mail a few hours before you go there. The address is 1621 Hawthorne Dr. State College, PA 16801.

June 8th: Ride with my brother down towards the greater DC area. Stop off at Darcy's parents' house, if they're around.

After that, my friend Alexa and I will be hitchhiking to San Diego. Our only real destination is Missouri, which I know cuts out a lot of my friends who are possible hosts, who are in the South or North. But I'll look you up if we're passing through.

You can find me at gjemmott@gmail.com,
June 5th (evening)-June 8th, Jamie's phone: (909) 896-2550
After June 5th, Alexa's phone: (336) 689-3955.

~George

Status Update

2008-05-23T11:26:00.000+02:00

Hey Folks,

After a successful trip from Cairo to the US to see graduation at Olin and party with friends in Boston and New York, I have (again succesfully! Yes!) hopped back across the pond for 2 weeks. Well, almost entirely succesfully. The airport lost my bags, along with the other 3 or 4 groups that came from JFK to Heathrow to Köln on my flights. Ah, well. I hope I get my bag back, as it has a tent and a sleeping bag strapped to it that are not mine... Anyway, I am currently in Münster, Germany, staying with a crazy Romanian friend, Adina. She found some 10-Euro flights to Milan, so we'll go there for 4 or 5 days and watch a Romanian singer, among other hangings out. I'll be back in Amreeka (as Egyptians call it) on June 4th, heading to State College, PA on the 5th or 6th. Next might be Sharpsburg, MD to visit Darcy's parents, especially if my brother is making the drive from PA to DC around then. Then, around June 10th or so, I'll be starting my hitchhiking adventure with a friend from New York. I'll be safe and try to keep you updated as much as I can (especially you, mom and dad :) ). I'll land in San Diego in July, one way or another, and would love to sit around with those San Diegans of you and a cup of coffee or some pancakes. Or both.

See you all around,
~George