Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Greg Hewgill's LiveJournal:

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thursday, june 25, 2009
9:42 pm	a proposal for twitter Twitter seems to have taken on the role of global news delivery and meme transmission vector. At least that's what I understand; although I have a twitter account I post only rarely, and I don't seem to follow the kinds of people who are hooked into the global news delivery machine. Or perhaps I'm not very good at keeping up with the people I do follow. Anyway, that's not quite what this post is about. A common pattern for twitter posts seems to be something like the following: [@otheruserid] [short description] [url] [#hashtags] The different components can of course appear in any order. I would like to draw your attention to the [url] part. Since Twitter only permits posting 140 characters of text, one must be conservative or even stingy in the allocation of character count. With another user addressed (the @ syntax), and one or maybe two hashtags (the # syntax), a typical post might be left with 120 characters for the description and the URL. In order to leave room for more than a handful of words, the URL pretty much has to be shortened. There are a plethora of link shortening services available; one of them (bit.ly) recently raised $2 million dollars in funding. Twitter even automatically shortens URLs that you paste into the little 140 character box (letting you go over the limit via paste but not typing). If you paste an URL that is too long, you automatically get a bit.ly shortened link in your post (assuming that fits, I don't know what happens if it doesn't). Lots has been written about the negative effects of shortening URLs. They're bad for the user experience (one must become proficient with copying and pasting URLs), they're bad for the network infrastructure (they route every associated click through a small number of redirectors), they're bad for usability (you never know just what is behind that innocent-looking bit.ly link), and so on. There must be a better way. What if twitter were to offer a separate entry field for a URL? This would move the URL out of the 140 character space for typing actual text, and obviate the need for link shortening entirely. Twitter's web interface could show something like: bit.ly receives $2 million in funding readwriteweb.com Other non-web twitter clients could show something similar. This presentation has several benefits: Writers have more room for words instead of having to leave room for an URL Readers no longer have to see the collection of random characters that is a shortened link Readers can immediately see what site the link points to (readwriteweb.com in the above example) Twitter receives more information about what people are linking to, because links don't need to be shortened Twitter probably won't consider this due to their determination to hang on to the simplicity of the single size-limited text entry box. Having two entry boxes on the main page would at least double the (perceived) complexity of using twitter. But wouldn't this be much nicer to use? (8 Comments |Comment on this)
wednesday, june 17, 2009
9:05 pm	earthrace Photo by kiwinz I started listening to omega tau, a relatively new podcast from one of the guys at Software Engineering Radio. One of the earlier episodes is an interview with Pete Bethune of Earthrace, who recently broke the world time record for circumnavigation of the world in a powerboat. It's a fascinating interview and worth a listen. After breaking the world record, the crew took Earthrace around the world to visit lots of places where they obviously couldn't stop during the record run, to let people visit and have a look around the boat. Pete Bethune is from New Zealand, so the final tour was a trip around New Zealand, with stops at dozens of coastal towns around the country, large and small. Two months ago, Earthrace stopped in Lyttelton and Akaroa, both short drives from Christchurch. Somehow, I had totally missed this news but would really have liked to see the boat. So, I'm a bit disappointed about that. If only I had listened to that podcast earlier! Pete is now selling the boat (for US$1.5 million) so it appears the opportunity has been missed. (Comment on this)
8:01 am	the tragedy of the commons Most people have heard the familiar phrase "the tragedy of the commons", referring to the destruction of a common resource (eg. a grazing pasture) by multiple independent, rational actors each acting in their own self-interest (eg. cattle herders). The general idea is that each cattle herder will see all the benefits of adding one more cow to his herd, but the resulting drawback (depletion of the grazing pasture) is a cost shared by all. Although I was familiar with the phrase and the idea, I had never read the original essay that it came from. In 1968 Science magazine published Garrett Hardin's essay titled The Tragedy of the Commons, which in a rare example of electronic availability of pre-Internet content, is available online in its full form. What I did not realise is that the article is not actually about cows. The article is about people, specifically humans, and the commons is the world in which we live. The article is about the population explosion. In 1968, the population of the world was somewhere between 3.3 and 3.7 billion. Today it is estimated to be 6.7 billion, nearly double the number of people from the time the article was written. From the conclusion of the essay: The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. The essay suggests that the freedom to breed must be curtailed if we, as the occupiers of this finite planet, are to survive and prosper. "[I]t is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed." If you have not yet read this essay from start to finish, go do so now. It's not a quick read, but it's not something we can ignore. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
wednesday, june 10, 2009
11:20 pm	arduino parallel port programming cable In playing with my Arduino board, I've had occasion to "brick" it a few times. Not completely, because there is a low level programming header on the board where you can reprogram a new bootloader into the flash. I didn't have a cable to do that, but I borrowed one and it worked fine. I decided I'd need a programming cable for myself, so for only a few dollars in parts, built a parallel port programming cable. Since the only computer I have with a parallel port is my desktop machine (which is actually under my desk), I used a rather long (2 metre) ribbon cable for the connection. This might have been a poor choice, because loading the 32 kB of flash memory took just under an hour! That's something on the order of 100 baud. Hopefully I can get it to go faster by shortening the cable, and hopefully a lot faster. It will just be more awkward due to where my parallel port is. But at least I have a way to unbrick my Arduino now. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
thursday, may 28, 2009
10:46 pm	definitive metal family tree Yesterday I ran across the "Definitive Metal Family Tree" from the documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey". The original chart is pretty compact and hard to follow the lines, so I had a go at reformatting it. I dropped the data into a Graphviz file and tweaked the layout so it looked decent. The result is a chart that's much easier to read because all the genres are sorted mostly by timeline with clear inheritance arrows between them. Click on the image to view the readable full size one: (8 Comments |Comment on this)
tuesday, may 26, 2009
7:32 pm	everything old is new again It seems that these days, whenever I start a project and have been working on it for a while, I discover that somebody else out there has already done the same thing. Before I started on my Arduino AVR emulator project, I did some searching to see whether there was any other emulator in existence out there (open source, since I did know about AVR Studio which is Windows-only). Somehow during my searches, perhaps by not thinking to use the word "simulator" instead of "emulator", I failed to find SimulAVR which is an AVR emulator that has been around for a long time. The original version was in C and has been abandonware for a number of years. A couple of years ago it was ported to C++ and has had activity as recently as a few weeks ago. The design of SimulAVR turns out to be very much like mine, although having been around much longer it's got far more features. Nevertheless, I plan to continue working on mine just because I've already come this far. And I do have some features and plans that aren't part of SimulAVR. Another idea I had was to build a GUI on top of the emulator, which would let you connect up virtual switches or LEDs or servos or whatever, and "run" the emulated circuit powered by the emulator core. I've got the basics of this working, except instead of being drag-and-drop, the "circuit" is hard coded into the Qt interface layer. I even thought about implementation, like how SVG might be a great way of representing circuit component graphics. But then I found Fritzing, which is a really cool open source circuit design application that support drag-and-drop circuit design (with multiple views such as physical layout, circuit diagram, and PCB routing). This is very much like what I had in mind! But again, much more extensive. Sure enough, it even uses SVG to represent graphics elements. Now, given a circuit design in Fritzing (that includes an Arduino of course), my next idea is to try to "run" the circuit using the AVR emulator core. This could be considered a fusion of the emulator and circuit design. We'll see how this goes. If anybody knows whether this has already been done, please let me know! (Comment on this)
saturday, may 16, 2009
12:56 pm	emulino: arduino cpu emulator About a week ago I got an Arduino board for some project ideas. Naturally, one of the things I looked for was a free, cross-platform emulator that could run AVR code on a desktop machine. I only found one on Sourceforge which was started a few months ago but development seems to have stalled. So I decided to write my own. How hard could it be? The AVR CPU is a pretty simple 8-bit microcontroller. Instruction words are all 16 bits wide, and only a handful of instructions have an additional 16 bit data word following the instruction. Given the instruction set reference, I wrote a script to help create a big 64k table of function pointers, one for each possible instruction. The main loop looks something like this: for (;;) { u16 instr = Program[PC++]; Instr[instr](instr); } This loads the next instruction word into instr. Then that value is used as an index into the Instr function pointer table, and calls the function at that index with the instruction word as an argument. The instruction implementation function can then pull apart the instruction word if it needs to. For example, this is the implementation of the LDI instruction, which loads a constant value into a register: static void do_LDI(u16 instr) { // ----KKKKddddKKKK u16 K = (instr & 0xf) | ((instr >> 4) & 0xf0); u16 d = 16 + ((instr >> 4) & 0xf); Data.Reg[d] = K; Cycle++; } It turns out there are only 93 distinct instruction words that need to be implemented. I've got 80 of the important ones working, plus some basic peripherals like the USART for serial communications, EEPROM storage, and the simplest timer that could possibly work. With that, many of the sample programs that come with the Arduino IDE run perfectly, plus it can run simple Java code using NanoVM! I have a long list of ideas to build around this emulator core, including: More useful built-in peripheral implementations Cycle-correct emulation including interrupt handling Interactive AVR code debugger Integration with the Arduino IDE as a separate run target (instead of avrdude) A GUI framework around the emulator with a full-noise visual debugger Drag and drop circuit components (LEDs, switches, displays, etc) I called the emulator emulino, which in addition to being a combination of emulator and Arduino, also happens to be an obscure conjugation (third person plural present subjunctive) of the Italian verb emulare, "to emulate". You can find the current code on Github in the emulino project. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
tuesday, may 5, 2009
9:14 pm	arduino board and electric meter project I just got an Arduino board to play with. It's cool! Following the getting started guide, I installed the USB driver, loaded the Arduino IDE, loaded the embedded equivalent of "hello world" (which blinks an LED), plugged in the board, hit the Upload button and it worked on the first try. Full marks to the Arduino community for top notch execution. I have a plan for this device, too. Recently the electric company replaced our electric meter (which in our house is indoors) with a new digital one that they can read remotely. In order to better manage our energy use, I'd like to be able to measure the amount of electricity we are using in real time. Lacking any ability to hack into the electric meter, I had an idea: There is a red LED on the front that blinks once per some amount of electricity used (I don't know what that amount is yet). If I mount a photocell in front of that LED, and count the pulses with the Arduino board, then I can set up a data logger that logs the rate of electricity use. From there, graphs etc. I'm a firm believer that the first step toward managing something is to measure it. Now, to figure out what other bits and pieces I need for this... (5 Comments |Comment on this)
monday, may 4, 2009
11:20 pm	pyqver - identify minimum python version The other day on Stack Overflow, somebody asked a question about whether there was a tool to determine the minimum version of Python required for a given script. Apparently such a thing didn't exist, and I've also had a need for such a tool in the past. So, in the spirit of having an itch to scratch and doing something about it, I put together pyqver (for PYthon Query VERsion) which attempts to determine the minimum version of Python required to execute a particular script. It's reasonably complete but there are some aspects that are not yet handled (as mentioned in the README file). Feel free to fork and improve it! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:25 pm	thawte notary data retention It occurred to me today that it's been a few years since I first participated in the Thawte Web of Trust (for cryptographically secure email signatures). Sure enough, it looks like I was approved as a notary just over five years ago, on 24 April 2004. Thawte notaries are required to keep copies of documentation for assertions they make for five years. I think. So, I looked it up: Retention of Copies Each thawte Notary must retain a copy of the identifying documentation used to confirm the member's identity for every assertion made by that thawte Notary. thawte Validation Statement The member and the thawte Notary must both sign a copy of the "Statement of Validation" provided by thawte during the identity assertion process. The thawte Notary must keep this signed statement on record for 5 years. So which is it? An identity assertion requires the notary to obtain two pieces of paper - a copy of the other person's identification and a sheet that both parties sign. From reading the above, it looks like the signed Statement of Validation only needs to be kept for five years, but the copy of the identifying documentation must be kept indefinitely. I think I'll try to ask them, there's a contact form on the site. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
saturday, april 25, 2009
9:57 pm	islands of the world photo captions I just finished adding captions to my Islands of the World photos. So now if you're browsing them you can get a better idea of what they are. I also had fun with the 100 km gallery for Iceland. When driving on long trips, we stop every 100 km, write down the distance/location/time on a notepad, get out, take a picture, and swap drivers. This time, I made an interactive map with Google Maps that shows every place where we stopped to swap (click on the marker to show the photo). The map also shows our driving route as recorded by my GPS. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
monday, april 20, 2009
8:02 am	islands of the world photos I've finally selected a mere 341 photos from our round the world trip! You can find them in the Islands of the World 2009 gallery on my web site. I've also done a handful of captions and will be working on the rest of them as time permits. If you've got any "what/where the heck is that?" questions, feel free to ask. (Comment on this)
tuesday, april 14, 2009
10:50 pm	islands of the world, part 4 It's good to be back home. 12 April - Visited Ginza, Shibuya, Akihabara, and Ginza again (in that order) in Tokyo. In Ginza and Shibuya, Amy visited fabric stores while I wandered around and peoplewatched. The number of people cramming the streets in Shibuya on a Sunday was pretty amazing. Saw lots of people (mostly young women) wearing shirts with English words on them that didn't make a lot of sense to us. One of the funniest said "Lost Girl - Fantastic Trip". Huh? In Akihabara, we visited the giant 7 floor electronics marketplace and I ended up getting a new pocket camera (a Canon PowerShot SD880 IS, though mine is the Japanese label IXY 920 IS). The sales guy was even kind enough to supply an English version of the manual (the camera itself already had an English language interface setting). Finally we attempted to find a good sushi place and after being stumped by incomprehensible directions or foiled by the place being closed on Sunday, we settled on a fine restaurant on the 9th floor of some place in Ginza. As would be expected, the food presentation was exquisite and so was the food. 13 April - Our flight departed at 18:15 so we had some time to kill. We packed up and left our bags at the hotel, then went to the public part of the Imperial Palace gardens for a look around. It was Monday lunchtime so many people were in the gardens quietly enjoying their lunch and the abundant cherry blossoms (we apparently hit the tail end of cherry blossom season, yay!). We admired the cleanliness, unwound in the tranquility, and took pictures. I was reminded of goulo's description of the sights in Beijing, where one would be accosted by street vendors selling souvenirs at every turn. Not a single one was to be seen in Tokyo. We caught the bus back to the airport, which was great because it was twice as fast as the metro+train, definitely more comfortable, infinitely more convenient (since the bus terminal is literally next door to the hotel), and only about twice as much (roughly US$30 each). 14 April - Home! After a 11-ish hour flight, we came over the north end of the South Island from the northwest, and had a good view of Mt. Cook on the right side of the plane. As we came in on approach, seeing the foothills of the Southern Alps and the Port Hills really reminded me that this is home. Our house needed a good airing out and the weather cleared up today to help us with that. I sat in the sunny bay window in our living room and soaked up the autumn rays. It's been a fantastic but exhausting trip. We have somewhere around a thousand photos to sort through, and I haven't even started that part yet. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
saturday, april 11, 2009
2:58 pm	islands of the world, part 3 Has it been a week already since my last entry in Egilsstaðir? Time flies when you're having fun! 3 April - We pushed onward toward Akureyri, there wasn't much for us to see in the northeast of the country. The road to Dettifoss (the largest waterfall in Europe) was still not cleared since the winter. We stopped near Mývatn and saw some boiling mud pots and steam vents. Drove up to Húsavik just so we could take a picture of the Icelandic Phallological Museum (sadly, it wasn't open). Stayed in Akureyri for the night, visited the local hot pools in the evening. 4 April - We awoke to a complete change in the weather, it was crisp and clear and sunny! We had noticed lights from a ski hill above Akureyri the night before so we drove up to check it out. It would have been fun to go skiing but we decided we didn't quite have the time. We both thought Akureyri was a charming little town even though we didn't get a chance to spend much time there. We pushed onwards north through Dalvik, planning to go around the peninsula, but just past Ólafsfjorður we found the road was closed (oops, forgot to check before we went that way). On the way there was a long tunnel, something like 3.6 km long, single lane with pullouts for westbound traffic every 200 m or so. Finally we made it all the way to Stykkishólmur for the night. 5 April - This was our "lazy day". All we did was climb up a small hill a few km outside of town, wander around the town (nothing was open, it was Sunday), check out the pier and lighthouse, and that's about it. 6 April - We drove all the way around the Snæfelles Peninsula, with pretty good weather. We could see the ice cap on the mountain most of the time, which was great. We tried to go snowmobiling on the glacier, but alas the place wasn't open (this was a common theme). However, the Blue Lagoon southwest of Reykjavik was open, so we went there for a swim before returning to Reykjavik for the night. 7 April - Travel day. Got up well before the crack of dawn to drive the 45 minutes or so to the airport, in time for our 7am flight to London. Got to London, dropped our stuff, and headed out to see things. Lack of planning and poor timing got us to the Tower of London at about 3:30pm, which the ticket agent helpfully informed us wasn't enough time to see much before they closed. So we walked along the north bank from Tower of London to Millennium Bridge, then crossed over and walked along the south bank to Waterloo station. It was low tide so we even went down and walked along the rubble and muck at the very bank of the Thames for a short while. While we didn't see any major attractions that day, it was nevertheless quite enjoyable just to walk around. Met up with teferi for dinner. 8 April - Went to the Science Museum and saw a bit of it. We did see the Pegasus computer, which is the only surviving operational vacuum tube computer. We were fortunate enough to be there on a day when a few members of the Computer Conservation Society were there operating the computer - they do that once a fortnight. We had an interesting discussion with one of the original designers of that very machine (he had joined Ferranti a year before they started building the Pegasus). Then we went back to the Tower of London and did the pretty much the whole tour, both the hour long tour from a Yeoman Warder and also seeing the Crown Jewels. 9 April - Did a two hour walking tour of "the square mile", the part of the city that was originally a Roman fort. As our guide demonstrated, it's impossible to fit two thousand years of history into a two hour talk. However, the parts that he did talk about were interesting and entertaining. While Amy hunted down more yarn stores, I went back to the Science Museum and finished wandering through that, as well as a small part of the Natural History Museum next door. One could easily spend a couple of weeks at the museums there and still not see all of it. We then did the London Eye just before sunset, which gave us a lovely view of the city. 10 April - Travel day. Got up reasonably early (after the crack of dawn this time) to catch a flight to Frankfurt, and then on to Tokyo. Tried to sleep on the plane without a whole lot of success. 11 April - Arrived in Tokyo. With only a couple of minor missteps, we successfully took the train from Narita to our hotel (which took two hours). Exhausted, we ventured out to find something to eat for lunch. Japanese people try very hard to be helpful but it's really difficult when we can't understand what they're trying to say! Nevertheless, we did happen upon a small restaurant that was still open to serve us. Back at the hotel now, Amy has succumbed to the call of the jet lag demons (and is taking a mid-afternoon nap) while I'm trying to stick it out and am therefore writing this summary. We have done so incredibly much in such a short time that we're both getting a bit travel weary and are looking forward to going home in a couple of days. We don't have any particular aspirations for seeing anything in Tokyo, my plan is to just be here for a couple of days and experience basic Japanese survival. And to readjust my internal clock to a time zone closer to home. (Comment on this)
friday, april 3, 2009
11:44 am	pictures from Iceland Some pictures from Iceland. (Comment on this)
11:08 am	islands of the world, part 2 Grr, I just wrote a week's worth of summary text then accidentally hit Reload which threw it all away. LJ's auto-save certainly didn't do whatever it was supposed to do. I'll try again. Stupid browser. I left off in Ireland. (This Icelandic keyboard is crazy, I'll take a picture.) 24 March - Drove out to Mizen Head, which is the most southwesterly point in Ireland. There is a lighthouse there which is now all automated, but there are exhibits and lots of historical info about the history of the light. It was WINDY! 25 March - We took it easy because Amy got a cough and wasn't feeling well (which later turned out to be an ear infection). Went for a short walk, as well as a drive up Mt. Gabriel (near Schull). Again it was seriously windy at the top. 26 March - Returned to Coachford in time to catch a production of the new musical "Michael Collins" in Cork. It was about the life of Michael Collins who negotiated the first steps toward a free Ireland in the early 1920s. Very patriotic. It was well produced and apparently well received by the audience. The theatre where we saw it actually had particular relevance in the real-life events portrayed in the musical, which was cool. 27 March - Went into Cork and explored the town a bit. 28 March - Travel day. Flew from Cork to London (Gatwick) on Ryanair, where they nickel and dime you to death after advertising a €5 fare which ended up costing us almost €100 for both of us. Still not a bad price, but annoying. Saw very little of London except the train from Gatwick (what you save on Ryanair you pay in the £36 train fare) and the tube. Had a pretty good Indian meal on Brick Lane (aka. "Little India"). 29 March - Travel day again. Flew to Reykjavik, picked up our rental car (a 4WD diesel Škoda Octavia, which turned out to be a great choice), drove into town, and wandered around town a bit. Despite all the people who said, "You're going to Iceland? You realise the country is bankrupt, right?" the country seems to be continuing to function just fine. 30 March - Drove out to Þingvellir, the site of the first political centre in Iceland a thousand years or so ago. It's also a great place to see tectonic plates in action - the North American and European plates are moving apart and the rift valley is abruptly visible there. Very windy and cold. Returned to Reykjavik to navigate the health system (good thing most people here can speak English) so Amy could get some antibiotics. 31 March - Again from Reykjavik, saw Geysir and Gullfoss and a few other things I have pictures of. Drove to Vik in clear weather except for the last few kilometres where a snowstorm obscured the car in front of us, only perhaps 20 m away. Managed to locate accommodation in Vik, had a four course "hotel room" meal consisting of mushroom soup, cheese sandwiches, fish, and hot chocolate using only a small electric kettle and two coffee cups! 1 April - Drove back west to a glacier (which I can't find the name of at the moment) for a glacier walk with a guide. We hiked a couple hundred metres (in altitude) up a glacier and our French guide was full of interesting information. Windy and rainy but it didn't detract from the day at all. Drove eastward again past Vik to a hostel for the night. 2 April - Since we're heading all the way around the Ring Road and sort of got a slow start, we pushed all the way ahead to Egilsstaðir. We passed an incredibly huge glacer that was some 20 km wide at its tongue. Saw lots of smaller glaciers, many waterfalls, and all kinds of scenery. If you're following along on a map, where the ring road turns inland just before Egilsstaðir, it goes over a small pass that is only about 400 m in altitude, but was seriously snowy. The snowplows keep the road passable, but we sure were glad we have a 4WD vehicle with studded winter tyres. Tomorrow we will continue along the northern side of the island, where we want to spend more time and where the weather forecast should be better. Although the snow, wind, and rain we've had so far has not been a problem, it would be nice to be able to see more of the mountains too. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
wednesday, march 25, 2009
10:20 pm	pictures from Frankfurt and Ireland Here are some quick pictures from Frankfurt and Ireland. I've got a whole lot more but those will have to wait until later. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
monday, march 23, 2009
10:40 pm	islands of the world, part 1 Previously, I left off with us still in Austin. 20 March - Up bright and early to drive to Dallas for our next flight (it's Friday, must be time to fly to another country). We left off with a visit to Rudy's for breakfast tacos, the post office to mail some stuff back home to Christchurch, the Czech Stop for some kolaches, and then directly to the Dallas airport. After successfully navigating the rental car return we checked in for our flight to Dublin. 21 March - Arrived in Frankfurt after a fitful couple of hours sleep on an overnight flight. We evidently had the "screaming children" flight and combined with some turbulence and the time zone change, we were pretty knackered. However, we pressed on and took the train into central Frankfurt to poke around for a couple of hours. We bought some chocolate truffles, found a part we needed for Amy's camera, got some food, and visited a wool store before heading back to the airport. Much later that afternoon (long day!) we arrived in Dublin, picked up our rental car, and found our hotel. Having a real bed for the night was excellent. 22 March - Got up at a reasonable hour (I woke up a couple of times much too early), and headed into central Dublin to look around. We had breakfast at a small cafe and wandered around the streets a bit. By that time it was almost noon so we decided to leave the city instead of seeing more sights and head toward Cork, which was our next destination. It was nice to be able to drive on the left side of the road again, which is what we've become used to in New Zealand. We stopped at the woollen mill in Avoca (unfortunately they were closed because it was Sunday but we had a great lunch there), experienced the ubiquitous tiny Irish roads, and stopped in Waterford. Also unfortunately, the famous Waterford crystal factory has been in receivership for a couple of months and was not open for tours. Although we couldn't see some of the things we wanted to, we had an excellent day anyway. 23 March - We went to the Blarney Castle and yes, we both kissed the Blarney Stone! It's cheesy but we came all that way so we figured we might as well. Had a fantastic lunch at the local pub in Blarney, along with a proper Irish Guinness. Drove out to West Cork to the village of Schull. It was just after dark when we got here but we plan to explore tomorrow. (Comment on this)
thursday, march 19, 2009
11:28 pm	pictures from Canada and Texas (Comment on this)
9:48 pm	islands of the world, still part 0 Previously, I left off with us flying into Dallas on the 13th. 13 March - Arrived in Dallas, unexpectedly raining. Got lost trying to find our hotel, due to various new construction since Amy last lived there getting in the way. 14 March - Went up to north Dallas to visit one of Amy's friends from school. On the way, we stopped at some mall to look for something or other we needed. We went into one of the big department stores and were immediately assaulted by advertising in three of five senses: They had TV screens playing infomercials among the clothing on display, they had annoying music playing from speakers in the ceiling, and the whole place smelled of perfume. I don't want to be around when they experiment with the remaining two senses, touch and taste. We left there as soon as we could and went to some of the other regular size mall stores, and they were full of perfume too. I couldn't even stay inside one of the stores, it was that bad. We didn't find what we were looking for and didn't stay any longer than we had to. 15 March - Left Dallas before lunch and headed south toward Austin. Stopped in West at the Czech Stop for their world-famous-in-Texas kolaches. Also stopped in Waco at the Dr Pepper museum, neither of us had ever been despite living for years in Texas. 16 March - Nuclear Tacos at SXSW! This was the highlight of our time in Texas. This is the seventh year that our group of friends has fed the hottest tacos you can imagine to SXSW attendees brave enough to try them, for free. We again served hundreds of people, bringing spicy tears of joy to all (well, mostly joy). This is definitely something I miss now that I don't live in Austin any more. 17 to 19 March - For these days we milled around Austin, catching some SXSW panels and shows, running errands we needed to do, shopping for things like a new rainjacket for Amy that are much more expensive in New Zealand, spending time with friends, visiting yarn stores, and so on. While driving around, going from air conditioned car to air conditioned house to air conditioned stores to air conditioned restaurants, sweating while walking outside between each place, we were both reminded of one of the reasons why we don't live here anymore. It's only March, technically still the tail end of winter, but the temperature was well over 25°C each day. We were also struck by the sheer scale of the city here. During the course of running a few errands, we drove the equivalent distance of clear across Christchurch several times today. It didn't take as much time as it would in Christchurch (because Christchurch doesn't have freeways running through it), but the distance was there. And the amount of traffic here in Austin is astounding compared to what we have become used to. It's safe to say that we won't be moving back to Austin anytime soon. I'm working on uploading some pictures right now, should have them online later this evening. Tomorrow we drive back to Dallas to catch an overnight flight to Frankfurt, then on to Dublin. It feels like we really haven't started our true holiday time yet because we've been spending time in familiar places with familiar people. That's definitely not a bad thing, but tomorrow the real adventure begins! (1 Comment |Comment on this)