Laughing Meme

I’m speaking next Friday at the SF Web2Expo on Casual Privacy. I’m speaking in Dublin Speaking Thursday May 8th (2 weeks later) in Dublin on Advanced OAuth Wrangling. Hope to see you at one or both of those talks.

I’m also excited about a dozen other talks next week, as you can see from my Web2/iCalico schedule.

I’m heading out for a whirlwind tour of points ever so slightly south. I’ll be in San Diego for ETech, arriving Monday March 3rd (gulp, thats tomorrow) and leaving Thursday for Austin for SxSW, where I’ll be through next Tuesday night. (despite promises to myself, this is not the year I do the interactive+music marathon, I’m realistic, I’ve watched co-workers train all year, not an undertaking for amateurs)

ETech

I’m super excited by ETech this year for the first time in recent memory, all the things I want to talk about are on the schedule: large datasets, cheap customizable hardware, social networks, and the environmental, political, and social implications there of.

SxSW

I haven’t even looked at the schedule for Austin yet, but I’m pumped to see both Heather and Simon talk about lessons learned from trying to internationalize a site like Flickr, (Mon 10am, and Tue 5pm respectively) and Paul and George (along with MattB, and SimonW) talk about working on interdisciplinary teams (Tue 3pm). And Andy’s ensemble “Worst Website Ever” stand up routine looks not to be missed.

You

What are you going to see?

Me

I’m also looking forward to:

• having some quiet time this week to work with Rabble and finally release the iCalico source, though it looks like I’m going to first learn git to do it
• making a little progress catching up on a serious backlog of writing.
• seeing friends, especially those who’ve recently been opting out of the grind of Silicon Valley jobs/San Francisco geek party scene.
• continue conversations I’ve been having with folks about privacy and social expectation, large datasets and inference, , open data, and of course OAuth.

Got ambushed by the calendar again. At some point “way far away in the future” became “like tomorrow”.

Which is how I find myself caught a bit by surprise by the fact that I’m getting on a plane this weekend with Jazz to go meet some friends in Sayulita, MX having done nothing remotely resembling research or planning.

This will be my first real visit to Mexico, so any tips you have for me on Mexico, or Sayulita would be great!

update: everybody is telling me to take lots of books to Sayulita, and my brain is going blank this week. Suggestions on books to take to the beach?

Jasmine and I headed to Los Angeles for the new year. And we had an amazing time. This is hard for me. As a native of Northern California I was raised to despise Los Angeles. (and really I’m more a Central/Southern California, but culturally we identified as NorCal.) Studies on environmentalism and conservation just reinforced the point.

Part of the deal for us going to LA was that I’d do a chunk of the driving as Jasmine’s wrist is sprained. This was problematic as I don’t drive, and didn’t have a license. So on Dec. 24th we spent some time driving, and on Dec. 26th I proved that CA will give a driver’s license to just about anyone. And Dec. 28th we drove the 350 miles to LA. And so ends a 15 year boycott of car culture.

The weather was great, we saw amazing art, we ate great food, we caught a good show, and saw good friends. We took a bunch of photos, I’ve got a small sampling of them, and Jasmine has a more complete set.

We drove down to Watts Tower.

The Smart House, Venice, CA

Shepard Fairey might be over saturated, but he is also at the top of his game. The execution on his new work, Imperfect Union, is flawless, and gorgeous. Also sold out. Literally. Every piece was sold. We tried to beg/borrow/steal anything with War by the Numbers on it. Without success.

The Murakami show was overwhelming. On paper doesn’t it look that large, but the live experience is different. Interesting to see his work all together, you realize how weak the painting is, and how amazing his sculpture is. The security presence was so intense, I almost felt like I was in a performance piece, the © in the show’s name being acted out as authoritarian dystopic future. Which is to say, we were only able to sneak a handful of photos. Or a plot to make you buy the catalog. (which we did)

We met up with Jasmine’s people from NYC at the Varla NYE party. The Dickies were the headliners, but the Airliner is a great funky dive bar, with 3 stages, which they kept busy that night, including our favorite act of the night, Vegas based “Objex”, the only one we got photos of.

More then any other year I can remember “Happy New Year!” congratulations seemed to roll in every hour on the hour all day long. This diversified geography thing is starting to look unscalable.

Upon cleaning out a filing cabinet prior to moving

• Receipt for that “cute place we stayed with the view of Duomo”, Albergo, S. GIOVANNI, di Umberto Zanobetti, via Cerretani, 2 - 50123 FIRENZE, 18/07/01, numero 451

• Receipt for medical care rendered for one Yasmina Trabelsi, Centro Medico Pardo, E.I.R.Ltda. Av. De La Cultura 710, CUSCO. 26 de 07 del 2005. 1,104.09 PEN.

• Receipt for consulta medic en Hotel, Fernando Minauro Zecenarro, Medico Cirujano, Av. Huayruropata, CUSCO. 22 de 07 del 2005.

T-minus 5 until jumping on BART to SFO to CGD. I’ll be around and online this week from XTech (assuming Edd has the wifi figured out). The following week I’ll be totally offline enjoying a week in/around Paris with Jasmine. Having spent so much time doing “exotic” travel I’m intrigued to see what hanging-out-in-major-Western-city-as-form-of-travel will be like.

p.s. If I haven’t gotten your Paris suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments!

See y’all in a couple of weeks.

I’ll be in Seattle this weekend for c@ts, held at the lovely Emma Goldman Finishing School.

Then in Portland all next week at OSCON.

See you there?

p.s. haven’t had a chance to look closely at the OSCON schedule yet, anyone got a list of not to be missed sessions?

Anyone know a Boston travel agent? I find myself needing to plan a vacation on short order, and feeling disinclined towards my normal DIY approach. Thanks.

Someone (Stacey) went to the heroic effort of transcoding 1,000 Places To See Before You Die into a list on the Robot’s new LoB site.

Interestingly, Rabble, Case, and I all are the same percent complete, 9%.

Well I thought it was interesting.

So this year I’m finally going to make it to SxSW (Interactive). I’ve been meaning to go for years, but I’ve always been busy, out of the country, or going to ETech.

So does anyone have advice on where to say, where to go, who to meet up with? Anyone looking for a roomie?

I suppose it is typically perverse to watch The Constant Gardener and be reminded of how much you want to go back to Africa?

Doesn’t seem quite real (perhaps because I haven’t had any time to think about it), but we’ll be leaving on vacation for Peru a week from Thursday (the 14th) and returning Aug. 1st. We’ve got something like a rough schedule, but any suggestions, tips, stories, contacts, are always appreciated.

I can’t decide if I saw security procedure work this morning, or was once again brought face to face with TSA’s incompetence. I was yet again flagged for extra security screening, a rather familiar procedure by now, yet I was able to walk through 2 security checkpoints without being being so much as patted down, and was quietly sitting at the gate before anyone noticed. At some point someone seems to have called my gate, who paged me, and I was sent back to the original security check point, which this being SeaTac meant I had to traverse a half dozen escalators, and a train trip back to the main terminal.

Back at security I was able to observe what appeared to by a list of people who had checked in and were flagged for the extra screening, including what time they had checked in. I guess I had been in the terminal long enough that they were wondering why I hadn’t passed through the extra screening. I wonder if I had been running late if I could have made it on to the plane before anyone thought to check? Logically my approaching boarding time should have triggered a search event, however the log was just a piece of paper with a list of names on it, and something tells me I would have slipped through.

Related posts

• Special treatment 2004/07/10
• A few thoughts on life in the 21st century 2003/07/08
• Made it home 2003/05/30

Seattle

One of the interesting things about flying out of Seattle is there are always Microsoft people on the plane; flying out to MIT to a recruiting fair, or to Chicago for a product demo, or down to their Silicon Valley campus. It’s the only time I actually meet anyone who still works over there. I traipsing back and forth and back again to the checkpoint while people around me chattered about their latest MS Office product meeting I couldn’t help but wondering if there is something about Seattle that makes people inherently bad at security.

Captive Audience

Unrelated to security (except perhaps when I almost breached the pressure seal on the cabin trying to walk out), I was shocked by Alaska Airlines abuse of its power this morning. 3 hours into flight, the captain came over intercom.

“If I could have everyones attention,” the authoritative voice boomed out. “How would you like if next time you flew, you could get a companion ticket for just $50? Well with the Alaska Airline’s VISA, voted number one in the industry 5 years runnning….”. And the sales pitch went on and on, familiar from late night TV I’m sure.

We squirmed unable to get away from this ads, sucked in by our training to assume that the captain coming over the intercom is to impart important information. I scrambled for my head phones. But the voice penetrated my music with the ominous final rejoinder, “We’ll be passing through the cabin handing out applications.” I won’t be flying Alaska again if I can help it, even though they have one of the few direct flights from Seattle to Boston, this was the last straw. (that and the word “digiplayer” is just so lame sounding, you feel sympathetic embarrassment every time they mention them)