Due to the miracle of the internet, I can find my brother's ship at any moment. I am open to the possibility that few beyond my family care two shakes about GPS tracking of Oliver, but I think it is cool. From the Matson website you can click ...
It is finally clear that I have to get a laptop, I can't put it off much longer. I want to run Ubuntu (or generally speaking, Linux) which means I need an intel processor and a keyboard with a right mouse button. I need a portable thing, I'll probably invest ...
I finally got my hands on a digital camera and posted some photos of Istanbul to Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/serpentor/ Dirk took far more photos than I did (I took all mine with his camera ...) and you can see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkslater/sets/72057594093808343/ keep an eye out for flattering shots of yours ...
1) If you are not coming to my batizado, that is sort of lame of you but another thing you could do is attend the Grand Opening of the City Reliquary Museum. It will be pretty good. The batizado will be better, you understand, but the Reliquary is ...
I sat next to a very nice lady (I was going to call her chatty, but I think I started the chatting and I want to be sure I'm being fair, not painting her as some flighty bee.) on the flight to Istanbul and of course she was very curious about this "meeting" I was on my way to. "What is it about?" (good question.) "Will you be speaking?" (I don't think so, but you never know) "And what exactly do you do again?" (mmm. I would also love to know.) She was on her way to view the 4 minute total solar eclipse that is approaching. March 29, I think. I think I'd have to be in Southern Turkey to see it myself. And then I got here and people were asking roughly the same questions, in a sociable, get-to-know-you kind of way, but I still didn't have an answer. "You know, I was in Simon's Town, chilling with the penguins and it was really nice out and I didn't ask a lot of questions," didn't seem like a very professional answer. I've asked around and finally landed on someone who knows more than I about where I fit. So now it is all clear. I am an invited guest (it says so on the agenda) at the OSI Information Programs Meeting. National Coordinators of OSI Foundations in former Soviet countries and a few other places (Western Africa--the region, South Africa--the country) are here to talk about their Information Program work. Intellectual Property, access to knowledge, digital divide. Access to ICT (Information and Communications Technology) tools -- open source software, challenging telco monopolies; as well as access to information. They are here, these foundation directors and program coordinators, to talk about their work and compare notes and learn about tools that they or their grantees could be using or could be using better. Tools like eIFL--Electronic Information for Libraries-- which is actually an organization, but also a tool, in that "how could we be supporting your work" sort of a way. Tools like CiviCRM, a membership/online advocacy database project. Other tools, too, but those are on the radar. It is (secretly) sort of political to trumpet CiviCRM and not talk about what else is out there--there is a lot else out there-- but one thing about civiCRM being open source and based in open source software is that it is highly localizable (meaning you can translate it) and there is already a Polish version. Okay, okay. I knew it was the OSI Information Program National Coordinators Meeting. But I hadn't really asked any meaningful questions about what that actually means. That was what I learned when I got here, what the Information Program does, what the National Coordinators coordinate. That sort of thing. I was being cute, but I don't want to give the impression that these guys are a bunch of free wheeling flakes. They aren't at all. What am I doing here? Listening and meeting people, mostly. I am going to demo CiviCRM, but I didn't know that until last night at dinner. Trying to steer clear of Dirk's egregious inability to pronounce anyone's name.
It is official, we finished the Argus. The deal is, you have to do it in under seven hours or it doesn't count. Noah and I just slid in there at 6:43. Keep in mind, should you choose to look closely at the results, that we stopped ...
This is the thing that I have been trying to write, we'll see if it comes out right. I just got off the phone with poor Dirk who got an earful about Cape Town that he probably wasn't expecting when he asked how my trip went. Everyone I know says Cape Town is great. Great! Go to Cape Town. Beaches, amazing food, great wine, you'll have a blast. Mountains, dassies, the most succulent calamari on the planet. (Okay, so no one told me about the calamari, but if you do go to Cape Town, eat calamari. It melts in your mouth.) And these are all nice progressive-to-radical, thinking people, and so I didn't think much about it. This is the new South Africa. Apartheid was a long time ago, the ANC is running the country, the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission found out the truth and Desmond Tutu brought everyone together and so there is nothing strange about going to Cape Town to lie on the beach. I didn't go to lie on the beach. I went to go to Velo Mondial (or to follow Noah to Velo) and see the BEN shops and learn about the impact of bike planning on economic development and the environment. And to lie on the beach. The only really dissenting perspective I got was at the very last minute, skimming (at Maggie's suggestion) Angela Tucker's blog entries about her time in Cape Town. Everyone else I met just talked about the beaches, which I hadn't given much thought to until people started talking about them endlessly.
I'm home for a few days to regroup. I didn't go straight to Istanbul because I had a vision and the vision told me "go home first" and lo! Turkish Airways flies direct. Plus the 10 hour flight pales in comparison to the 18 I just endured so as long ...
I'm slowly setting up Ubuntu workstations at RAB mostly so that I won't have to support Windows or ever look at it. Because Linux is so much easier. For instance, with Windows, if you plug in a printer, you get a pop up that says something about new hardware. ...
I keep thinking I haven't written anything in a while, but it looks like I covered everything. I maybe left out the best story of the Argus (hmm. It looks like I left out the Argus! We did finish it in seven-plus hours which included one leisurely stop for ...
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