Yet Another Blog

Just got an unexpected package through the mail – a gift set from Google, straight from San Jose. The box contains a whole bunch of branded goodies: wireless mouse, USB key, USB hub, carry wallet and light. Very nice surprise- I can only imagine they’re sending these out to select Adsense customers; there’s no note inside and the sender’s address is fairly ambiguous (I had no idea it was even from Google until I opened it).

Right, over a day since I got back from the London Geek Dinner and I figured I ought to write something about it.

The event was interesting, enjoyable and useful. It was held at the Texas Embassy just off Trafalgar Square – a regular meeting place for these geek dinners, apparantly, and I can see why. They have cracking food and I’m told the margueritas are excellent (unfortunately, yours truly was driving…)

As a networking event it was useful to get around and meet people. This is one of my first such events, and I’m still to overcome the whole approach strangers thing. Despite that I managed to meet some pretty interesting people, including:

• Ewan Spence from AllAboutSymbian
• Andrew Denny from canal blog Granny Buttons and PR company The Publicity Works
• Emma Stewart (briefly, just before I had to rush off)
• Matthew Westcott, iPod hacker extraordinaire
• Jen Dixon from Regular Jen 
• Neil Dixon, NeilDixon.com and Britcaster.com
• Ian Yorston from Radley College
• Neil Turner (more of a quick hello though)
• Robert Scoble

Definitely worthwhile – it looks like there’ll be a smaller one for Sussex people (I’m Sussex-ish) in Uckfield in January – I’m already on the list there and it should be another useful and interesting time.

I didn’t take a camera, but loads of photos can be had at Flickr including ego-feeding photos here and here from Andrew and Jen respectively – thanks!

I am writing this on a train to London on a palm computer with barely enough battery to last for this post. Today I am off to the London Geek Dinner at the Texas Embassy on Trafalgar Square.

This is a bit of a follow on from last week’s trip to Ireland where I met with a bunch of really nice and interesting Irish bloggers. I am starting to make a point of going to these events; they are a great way to meet people and to get my own name more recognisable. Networking, basically.

This evening I’m looking forward to meeting a whole new group of people. There’ll be some reasonably high brow people there. Robert Scoble (who I met in Ireland), Dan Gillmor and Hugh McLeod stand out in the guest list.

In other news, full text searching in Blogwise is but a gnat’s breath away. I am already successfully parsing RSS feeds and discovering new ones through Pings and Autodiscovery. Search by keyword has been completely rewritten and is now far faster- no longer will Blogwise search be on Grabperf‘s ‘slowest site’ list!

All this should coincide with a redesign, which will finally include text ads on every page. This is something I’ve put off for as long as possible but is finally necessary to keep Blogwise running. I want these to be as unobtrusive as possible and the redesign will be structured to display the ads effectively but not offensively.

Russell Beattie has been running ads in an interesting way. He only shows ads for those visitors who’ve followed a direct link (ie through search or from others’ blogs). This makes all kinds of sense: his regulars either bookmark his homepage, read his RSS feed or type his address directly. They visit his site with the specific intent of reading his content, and are therefore far less likely to click ads than the casual surfers who came from Google and are far less likely to stick around. His results so far seem promising, and I wonder whether a similar technique could work on Blogwise.

In the next few days I should have more on Ireland, on Blogwise and on stuff in general. Stay tuned!

I’m off to Ireland on Wednesday, for an Irish meetup in Cork. Should be interesting – I’m looking forward to meeting Robert Scoble, and quite a few other names on the list have interesting backgrounds. Should be good! Then it’s a three day break in the countryside and back home on Sunday.

 

Right, well, I’ve been a bit slow writing this up, but I thought I ought to comment on my America trip now that I’m over the jet lag and have had a full week and a half to do this!

Essentially – great! For those of you who don’t/only partially know I went on a trip to America with a mate, visiting New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. In eleven days we covered roughly 9000 miles and took about 800 photos between us.

New York City is exactly how the movies, TV series and stories portray it. Huge skyscrapers and wide roads, plenty of yellow taxis and horns sounding at all hours. We stayed in Manhattan, in a hostel next to Central Park – looking back we couldn’t have wished for a better place to stay. Both days included a walk through the park.

In fact, walking was a big part of our days. At one point we’d walked from 63rd Street down to Battery Park (but wussed out and took the subway back). We also walked around the usual sights – Ground Zero, UN Building, Empire State Building, New York University, Washington Sq Park, Madison Square Garden. We also took the ferry to Staten Island, wandered around there for a bit, got a Taco Bell and came back. The Statue of Liberty is nice, but smaller than I was expecting.

By the way, there’s a big hotel opposite Ground Zero – Hilton Millenium Hotel I think – I’m sure millennium has two n’s in it (Google seems to agree). A bit embarrasing if they never checked that.

As for the people: well, what a great place. We didn’t venture too far off Manhatten so I can’t be sure the smiles weren’t for tourism dollars (such a cynic, me) but the people we met were polite, patient and generally all-round pleasant folk. One minor encounter on Staten Island with an irrationally rude person I’m putting down to an anomoly.

On to Philadelphia by Greyhound on the New Jersey turnpike (which is, by the way, a great ride if you’re a Sopranos fan). Philly/Phila is a very historical city – it was where the declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were drafted (and I think, signed); the US government resided there for ten years before moving to Washington DC, and the Liberty Bell stands there to this day as a reminder of America’s freedom. It was also an important battle site between the Americans and the British in the American Revolution. We, err, came second.

From everything I saw, the locals call it Phila while the tourists (and thus, the tourism sites) call it Philly. Can anybody confirm that?

Finally, to Chicago where we stayed at the house of a very nice couple my travel mate knew from his university days. Staying with locals is definitely a great way to see a city. You get a sample of all the area as the residents see it, not the tourists (which I prefer as a more ‘genuine’ experience). We ate at several local restaurants, all with diverse backgrounds and origins. We saw the sights of suburban Chicago (including a wonderful sand beach onto Lake Michigan), travelled the tollways and Metra, and had some great evenings out.

We of course also did a few ‘touristy’ things – went up the Hancock Tower (which is free if you buy a drink at the bar two floors above the observatory!), saw the Bean (a huge metal warped sphere), went to the Shedd aquarium and rode the Loop. Chicago is, like New York, quite vertical. Donald Trump owns some land on the Chicago River and is planning to build the world’s tallest concrete-based tower there. Sears and Hancock already conquer the skyline and there are a myriad of other neck-stretching towers in the city.

So, that’s about it. We also saw a bit of Newark – the only notable thing there is the rabbits all over the grass at Newark International. I’ve never seen such ‘tame’ wild rabbits.

Other notes

• Chicago O’Hare airport has the most pathetic flightside provisions I’ve ever seen (although that’s been limited to Heathrow Terminal 4, Vienna Intl, and Philadelphia)
• Most things in American toilets (or ‘washrooms’) are automated. This includes taps, some toilets and I’m fairly sure a towel dispenser too. Unlike Britain however, you need to remember to flush urinals manually.
• Tipping is a bit odd at first, but you get used to it.
• American bills and coins are hard to identify. I spend at least 20 seconds looking for a quarter in my hand while at a corner store. It seems this is universal; the lady behind the counter asked "isn’t that a quarter there?". It was a dollar.
• You can buy a large (and I mean large) bottle of Vodka for $12. You can also buy 3 liter bottles of drinks. Americans like choice apparantly; every variety of Coke imaginable is sold in the States.
• Mountain Dew is revolutionary the first time you try it, but you quickly tire of the taste of it.
• Chilli sauce, jalapenos and other strange green liquids are as common a seasoning/topping in America as salt and pepper is here.
• American suburban roads have stop signs everywhere.
• I swear every Dunkin’ Donuts we passed had a cop car parked outside.
• Taco Bell is a genius idea and should be brought to the UK.
• Drive through ATMs are also genius ideas and should be brought to the UK.
• Turn right on red is a nice idea and should be brought to the UK (carefully).
• I have an unhealthy addiction to coffee. I drank my way through every standard item on Starbucks’ menu while in America. Peppermint frappuccino is niiiiiiice.

There we are. Photos are all on Flickr with even more commentary!

I am deeply aware that Blogwise is currently completely down. Unfortunately I’m currently in the States and won’t be back until Wednesday. I’ll do whatever I can to try getting the website back up in some form, but it’s likely that I’ll need to be back in the UK to get it running.

Many, many apologies. This is by far the most serious failure since Blogwise’s inception over three years ago, and by complete Sod’s law it happens on the 11 days I choose to take my first break!

More soon, hopefully good news!

Right, I’m flying off to the States for a while. 11 days in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. Since I won’t be near a computer for a while I’ve switched the comment moderation on, to stop all those lousy spammers getting through. Fortunately I have some people looking after my various website bits & pieces while I’m away, so Blogwise shouldn’t topple over for instance.

Much to show, photo-wise when I get back. Bought some sodding great CF cards the other day so I’ve no excuses not to take loads (unless the battery runs out…)

See you on the 16th…

Since getting the 350D (and for a quite a while before) I’ve been trying to read as much as I can about how best to take photos, what all the settings do and how they complement each other, and how accessories can be used to give effect to a photo.

There are, naturally, plenty of tutorials on the Internet, but one that stands out is Neil Turner’s. I happened to come across his site via the excellent DPReview website, which also carries a series of tutorials.

Great stuff for getting into photography.

*sigh* Saw the first Christmas advert on TV last night. WH Smith, what is wrong with you? It’s bloody October.

Now that the ads are going out, it’s time to guess when the first Christmas decorations will appear. This is actually usually quite a treat – there seems to be some competition amongst neighbours in one particular road, so the decorations get more impressive year after year.

The road has about 300 houses on it, and I reckon the first decorations will be up November 10. You are welcome to make your own predictions, and the closest guess will win my eternal respect (cash value 0.0000001p).

Well, I finally bit the bullet and got the Canon EOS 350D. Gotta say it’s a brilliant camera. For those who don’t know it’s an eight megapixel digital SLR, which refers to the mechanism by which photos are taken.

In practical terms, it means you don’t get an LCD viewfinder, and you don’t get videos. However, you do get an accurate viewfinder, remarkable battery life and the quality of photos are simply superb. The EOS 350D also allows you to mess about with all the usual parameters of cameras (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc) very quickly. The auto focus is incredibly fast, the power-up and capture times are almost instantaneous and all round the results are great.

I also bought a Sigma 70-300mm lens – had great fun with it already, and I’m expecting to buy more as I can afford them

Among the purchases was a heavily protected backpack. In just over two weeks I’m off to America and I’m planning to take loads of photos (I’m also planning to get a bunch of 1 and 2Gb CompactFlash cards – RAW images are huge!). At the end of the month I’m also off to Cork, Ireland for three days, and the camera will be in hand there too. In the meantime, you can see my flirtations with the new camera already on Flickr.