The market works in mysterious ways
8:39 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
It is strange to me that there are many digital picture frames that cost more than some laptops.
Citizen Engineer
12:05 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
Curses! I thought I was very clever this morning for describing DIYers/Makers as "citizen engineers" (as opposed to the citizen scientist movement). The name turns out to be all over the place.
Sneaky Travel Habits
10:55 PM Edit This 3 Comments »
Here are my favorite sneaky travel habits. I forget how useful they are because they're so simple and I do them without thinking now, but they are pretty darn helpful.
-Print a 1-page street map with the place you are staying marked, and including the surrounding neighborhood. Print another page of driving directions from the airport to where you're staying. Doesn't matter if you're not actually driving or not taking that route, having both on the map helps give you a general idea of where you are. So far this has worked super well for me. When arriving at a new place I tend to just get on a bus headed the direction I'm going and see what happens. Most of the time this works and is a great adventure. I get lost sometimes (embarrassingly enough, the last time I can remember was in San Francisco ie. across a bridge from where I grew up) but it's a reasonable tradeoff in my opinion. When I went up to Seattle a couple weeks ago, taking the bus rather than a taxi led me to discover one of the best lunches I've had in my entire life. It was just a tucked-away cafe near the Bellingham transit station but the food was astounding. I think this was it.
-If staying at a youth hostel (only because I do this a lot), bring a shower mat/floor towel. You can grab a super cheap one at IKEA. Totally beats hopping around on one foot on a wet tile floor while you try to dry your feet and get socks on, or drying your feet on the same soggy towel countless other visitors have dried theirs on. Completely worth the small space it takes up in your luggage. Also: flip flops, a lock, and a laundry bag. But those are more obvious.
On another note, I just came back from CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) 2009. It's funny, these conferences and events that are all about the things I'm most excited about and full of people who are also excited about those things are awesome, but completely burn me out on the subjects for a couple days. I felt the same about Maker Faire last year: I was incredibly thrilled to go and to be there and to see everything, but after a couple days I really was done. Now that I'm back and have slept for a couple of days I am back to being stoked that I went and ready for more work.
-Print a 1-page street map with the place you are staying marked, and including the surrounding neighborhood. Print another page of driving directions from the airport to where you're staying. Doesn't matter if you're not actually driving or not taking that route, having both on the map helps give you a general idea of where you are. So far this has worked super well for me. When arriving at a new place I tend to just get on a bus headed the direction I'm going and see what happens. Most of the time this works and is a great adventure. I get lost sometimes (embarrassingly enough, the last time I can remember was in San Francisco ie. across a bridge from where I grew up) but it's a reasonable tradeoff in my opinion. When I went up to Seattle a couple weeks ago, taking the bus rather than a taxi led me to discover one of the best lunches I've had in my entire life. It was just a tucked-away cafe near the Bellingham transit station but the food was astounding. I think this was it.
-If staying at a youth hostel (only because I do this a lot), bring a shower mat/floor towel. You can grab a super cheap one at IKEA. Totally beats hopping around on one foot on a wet tile floor while you try to dry your feet and get socks on, or drying your feet on the same soggy towel countless other visitors have dried theirs on. Completely worth the small space it takes up in your luggage. Also: flip flops, a lock, and a laundry bag. But those are more obvious.
On another note, I just came back from CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) 2009. It's funny, these conferences and events that are all about the things I'm most excited about and full of people who are also excited about those things are awesome, but completely burn me out on the subjects for a couple days. I felt the same about Maker Faire last year: I was incredibly thrilled to go and to be there and to see everything, but after a couple days I really was done. Now that I'm back and have slept for a couple of days I am back to being stoked that I went and ready for more work.