Wasting Moments (both yours and mine)

Hawker Center - Chinatown

2007-08-28T18:58:00.001-07:00

hawker_center
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments

This Hawker Center was the first place I ate on the trip. The Hawker Center's are neat; food stalls surrounding open air seating. Lots of choice and variety on meals. This was lunch on Sunday, I ate a couple of pieces of dim sum, some seafood noodle dish, a yam fritter & a beer.

Boat Quay - Singapore River

2007-08-28T18:55:00.001-07:00

sing_river_boat_quay
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments

Here's a shot from Sunday's somewhat jet-lagged wanderings. South of the conference center on Bridge Road, looking toward Boat Quay / Chinatown down the Singapore River. There's a few more photos up on Flickr, but no food yet.

In Singapore

2007-08-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hi All --

I arrived in Singapore at approximately 7:30 am this morning. The flight was running a bit late getting out of JFK, but aside from that, everything went perfectly. Singapore Airlines is ridiculous. It seems like every time I woke up, there was someone hovering over me offing food, or a hot towel, or a beverage. If this is how the treat their economy class passengers, I can't even imagine business or first class. If I get the chance, I'll definitely fly them again.

Arrived at my hotel a little after 9, and my room wasn't ready yet. I went of in search of Internet access. The Singapore government runs a large network of free wifi hotspots, one of which was at a McDonalds two blocks from my hotel. Tried to sign up for the 3 years of free access, but it turns out that you can only recieve your password via text message from hotspots. If you're already online elsewhere, you can recieve it via email. I'm not looking forward to seeing what Verizon charges me for the mysterious SMS from SE Asia sitting on my phone in the apt. back in NY!

So, my first attempt at updating you all failed. I'm now sitting at a public workstation in a pool hall. My conference access turns on tomorrow, but I'll probably be out site-seeing, so there may not be pictures until Tuesday.

The rest of the day, I wandered down to the waterfront, through some odd watersports event, around some of the bridges and neat public spaces down by the harbor, then up through Chinatown and back toward the district where my hotel is. All food thus far has been hawker food from patios surrounded by stalls. They're everywhere, cheap and tasty. Trip one, lunch in Chinatown: some dim sum, a plate of mysterious slimy flat noodles with misc. seafood, and a yam fritter. Dinner, closer to the library and hotel, a plate of satey chicken skewers and a plate of chicken fried rice. Both meals accomponied by the ubiquitous Tiger beer.

I meant to go explore Little India & the Arab Quarter this afternoon, where I'll be staying for a few nights after the conference. Instead, I dozed off for a few hours. Hopefully that doesn't hinder the ability to sleep tonight. I doubt it, though: I'm still pretty tired.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm here. I'm well. Hopefully I'll start getting pictures up shortly after the conference begins on Tuesday.

Food and a Photo Stream

2006-10-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

dinner
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The conference closing is about to start. Just getting a quick post in to let you know that there's quite a bit up on my Flickr Photo Stream now:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/charper/

I figure I owe a food post. Unfortunately, I ate far too often bad food in the 'compound' so far this week. This meal is from a nice restaurant in town recommended by our tour guide on the way back from Cuyutlán.

I'm probably eating in town again tonight, and additional food photos may appear if I can convince some friends to set me up with some of their images.

Overdue Posting

2006-10-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the slight pause in posts; it’s been over a year, eh? But seriously, beyond that, not taking a lengthy vacation prior to the conference has severely limited my free time. I spent most of the weekend enjoying myself, and have been exceptionally busy with the conference ever since.

All that said, I’ve had a few adventures that I’d like to share with you. Before I get into that though, I’ll present you with a quick paragraph or two about the conference and about my impressions of Mexico thus far.

DC2006 is now a little over halfway done, and it has been wonderful. It’s amazing to me that this is my fifth Dublin Core Conference. Each year, they keep getting better and better. The community and people are wonderful, and there is so much interesting work being done. The ideas that people here have, and the projects they are working on, are brilliant and very important. Some things are more practical than others, but I’m finally starting to come around on the pragmatism and importance of some of the more theoretical data modeling research that has become more and more prominent over the past few years. More on that later; this is supposed to be a travel log, so I’ll not bore you with discussions of RDF, semantic web development and metadata at the moment.

Mexico is a very interesting place. Everywhere I’ve been, the juxtaposition of abject poverty and conspicuous affluence has been very pronounced. It’s such an odd contrast, and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else in the word. Manzanillo is an interesting town, but I’d highly recommend staying away from all-inclusive resorts. Although I’m not staying at the Karmino Barcelo, the conference is here, and I’m spending most of my time here. I could be anywhere. It almost feels as much like Disney World as it does Mexico. The place is like a compound, intentionally made as difficult to enter or exit as possible, unless participating in an organized tour.

Fortunately, over the weekend, I was able to get out and about. Saturday, I stealthily snuck into the Barcelo and hung out with some OCLC folks and some Australians. We managed to find our way out of Fortress Barcelo, wandered the beach, stuck our feet in the water and made our way up to the street for some Margaritas. Sunday, a subset of the above group went on an adventure, making our way to El Centro Manzanillo for breakfast, finding our way to the bus station and taking a day trip to Colima’s capital, Colima. The contrasting lifestyles were remarkably pronounced there. Monday, a friend and I hired a guide, Jose, who drove us down to the Turtle Sanctuary and Nature Preserve. Thus far, that trip was the non-conference highlight. Along the way, there has been good food, adventure, misadventure, misplaced objects later found, and a great deal of fun. I’ll be processing my photos, and hopefully acquiring more photos from a friend or two, and will provide more details and photo documentation over the coming days and weeks.

cheers_malaga

2005-09-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

cheers_malaga
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Bar in malaga. Exact copy of cheers. Down to Norm sitting at the bar!

snake

2005-09-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

snake
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Battery dying. Me with Snake. More later

Malaga

2005-09-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

No Internet access at the hotel here in Malaga, but quite a nice hotel it is. Thought I´d post a quick update from a bar\internet cafe here before grabbing a couple more drinks and wandering back to the hotel.

The coast down here is beautiful. Took a last early morning walk along the beach in Tarifa this morning, where I stuck me feet in the water again before checking out of my hotel and catching the bus to Malaga. Malaga is a really nice city. Very clean, sensibly laid out and somewhat modern. My hotel is somewhat near the old city center, so it´s quite central to everything.

Rolled into town at about 3:30 this afternoon, found the train station and bought my ticket to Madrid for tomorrow, checked into my hotel and immediately went to the beach. In two days time, I´ve been able to swim in both the Atlantic adn the Mediterranean! Surprisingly, the water in the later was much chillier than the Atlantic coast of Tarifa. I figured it would be warmer due to being a smaller body of water. The beach itself is drastically different as well: it´s small stones rather than sand, all interspersed with a fine dust. I may just have to bring a sample of it home with me.

Stayed at the beach ´til nearly sundown: reading, occasionally swiming in the chilly water, soaking up sun, and generally relaxing. These past two afternoons on the beach have really made it seem like a vacation. Tomorrow, I think I´ll hit the beach again early, check out of my hotel and visit the Picasso museum before my 3pm train to Madrid.

Since I don´t have access to the web here or at my hotel in Madrid, I won´t be able to post any more photos until the conference starts on Monday. At that point, you can expect a few more pics: me with snake (yes, I did pay the couple Euro to pose with the snake in Tangier), maybe another meal or two (tonight´s dinner was a fantastic combination platter at a somewhat fancy restaurant), and probably a couple photos from the DC2005 opening session. If you remember from last year, this is the point that the blog gets stuffy and boring and even my mom stopped reading.

Tarifa to Tangier

2005-09-08T16:27:00.000-07:00

The place I was originally looking to book the Tangier tour through never opened. Not this morning, not this afternoon, not at all. I suspect this is due to the week long festival that's going on here in Tarifa right now. That said, this morning I was able to wander down to the port and book a tour through a different travel agency. I booked it at about 8 and was on the ferry to Morroco before 9.

I have to say, I completely disagree with all the folks on the various forums that advised against the day trip to Tangier. While it really isn't enough time to experience such a remarkable culture and place, it's still an absolutely worthwhile way to spend a day. I had a great time. It's incredibly cheesy and touristy, but a great experience nonetheless. You start out on a bus tour of the new city, which takes you past the King's summer home, the governer's mansion, various government buildings and a smattering of churches, mosques and interesting looking commuities. During this portion of the trip, you stop at a really touristy point where you can ride a camel (see photo in previous post).

The tour guide was a wonder to behold. Fluent in as many languages as I know to exist, he gives the tour in all of them at once. Our group of 20 to 30 folks consisted of English, French and Spanish speakers. I suspect that if there were folks who sprechen Deutsch in our midst, he'd have added that to the unrelenting multi-lingual torrent of tour-guidance he emited. As it were, it was confusing to keep up with.

After the bus portion of the tour, your taken through the ancient portion of the city, the Kazbah, past a strategically placed snake charmer (pose with snake for picture? - 2 Euro) and off to lunch. The tour concludes with the obligatory obnoxious visit to various vendors of expensive goods (mostly carpets in Morroco, it was furniture and ... more carpets in china) and a bit more touristy shopping. It's a very canned experience, but an experienced not to be missed if in the area.

Was back in Spain by around 4 this afternoon, when I promptly went to spend the rest of the sunshine at the beach. An aside: reading Confederacy of Dunces, and have laughed out loud a number of times. This feels more like a vacation, finally. I'm almost touristed out. Maybe another museum or two (Picasso tomorrow in Malaga, maybe another in Madrid Sunday), but I'm mostly going to spend the next couple of days relaxing on the beach. That is, when I'm not on a bus or train in transit...

Took a couple of swims and the water was fantastic, if not a bit overrun by seaweed. A closer look at the map indicates that these beaches are atlantic, not mediterranian. Tarifa's port is directly on the Straights of Gibralter and the beach is to the Northwest. Tomorrow's beach in Malaga will be on the Mediterranian.

camel

2005-09-08T16:26:00.001-07:00

camel
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

A nice young couple from Holland took my picture while I was getting a 30 second camel ride. As you'll see in the next post, the Tangier tour is very cheesy and cookie cutter-ish, but still good fun.

atun

2005-09-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

atun
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Dinner in Tarifa: Grilled Tuna with fried potatos and cabbage. Also had a delicious seafood soup (sopa de mariscos)

sunset_tarifa

2005-09-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

sunset_tarifa
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Sunset on the Mediterranean on the Coast of Tarifa. The Tangier tour place was closed when I stopped by this evening, so I'll have to get an early start tomorrow and see if I can reserve this tour early tomorrow morning.

Timing worked well though: after I found this place was closed, I decided to walk down to the beach and stick my feet in the water. Turns out that I caught a sunset while standing in the surf. Got some great pictures.

Tarifa

2005-09-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

Arrived this evening. Surprised to find a couple of wireless signals covering a quaint but comfortable room here at the Hotel Alborada, just a few blocks north of the gates of the old city. I've got a tiny little balcony, a double bed, air-conditioning and Internet. The only thing lacking is verticle surfaces to put stuff on.

While it was originally my intention to try my hand at windsurfing here tomorrow, it sounds like way too much effort at this point. My feet are sore, I've been doing too much walking, and most of the places are 5-10 km up the coast.

My new acquaintances from Toronto included me on a mass email that said their Tangier trip was quite fun and very fascinating. I think I may try to book a spot on tomorrow mornings tour over there. That will get me back with plenty of time to lay on the beaches tomorrow afternoon, take a dip in the Mediterranean and check out this festival that's going on here in the evening. May take the time to do a whale-watching tour Friday morning, but probably not. Whale watching is something you can pretty much do anywhere.

Doing the bus thing in (and presumably out) of Tarifa is a bit challenging. You have to go through Algeciras, which is not a particularly savory or pleasant place. To make matters worse, the trip involves two different bus stations that are about a 10 minute walk apart. I wouldn't want to travel this route at night.

I'm going to get into town, scope out the Tangier tour office, maybe wander to the beach while the suns still out then grab some dinner.

Whirlwind Granada Tour

2005-09-06T12:38:00.001-07:00

Granada's got the goods as far as siteseeing goes. The Alahambra is amazing. My scheduled slot to see the Palacio Nazaries was between 10:30 and 11 this AM, and after a 40 minute wander across town and uphill, I barely made it in time. What a site! This was the royal palace when the area was under Islamic rule. When the last Moorish King was defeated, it became the Christian capital of the Spanish Empire as well. I stood in the room where Columbus asked Isabel and Ferdinand to invest in a hairbrained scheme. The other highlight of the Alahambra is the Generalife Gardens, in which I lost over an hour wandering and admiring the scenery.

The Alahambra took me til about 2, after which I wandered up into the Albayzin area for lunch and a couple of breathtaking views of the Alahambra across the gorge separating the two areas. Then it was back down into town for a visit to the Cathedral and the Royal Chapel (where the afore mentioned Isabel and Ferdinand are entombed). Then I took a walk through the Alcaiceria (an old silk and jewelry market), bought some postcards and returned to my hotel. En route, had an interesting experience buying fruit from a supermarket. A faltering toungue makes and a very infirm grasp on a foreign language makes communication a challenge....

It's almost 10 here, but my plan for tonight is to go get dinner and explore some of Granada's nightlife. I'll then sleep in before checking out and making my down to the coast.

lunch_eating_itself

2005-09-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

lunch_eating_itself
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Can't help but to post another food pic here. Rick Steves' book recommended a place called "El Ladrillo", which serves a barco of mixed fried fish. I had a media barco, literally, "half boatload." I think they were smelt, plus lots of tentacles, calamares rings, and prawns. Most everything had heads and tails and legs and the lot. This prawn seems to have been fried into a ring. And yes, Hank, folks do look at you funny when you photograph your food. But it isn't uncouth and brazen, I don't think. More cheesy, touristy and lame. But no lamer than dining alone anyway, eh? Fortunately, I've never much cared what those around me thought. So maybe you're right: maybe it is brazen.

patio_de_la_acequiea

2005-09-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

patio_de_la_acequiea
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The Generalife Gardens of the Alahambra are very tranquil and relaxing. Lots of beautiful flora, running water, shade, patios, and the like. This translates as, "Court of the Water Channel". This was in the vicinity of many other fountains, and a fascinating staircase that had water cascading down the center and the rails. I believe it was called "escalera de agua".

alahambra_view

2005-09-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

alahambra_view
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Me at the Alahambra. This view is looking out at the city from a side wall of the Palacio Nazaries. The food obsessed have been partially appeased. My mother now has her token image of me (a very bad likeness, I might add). Now all I need to do is find some way to appease Hank.

Sevilla -> Cordoba -> Granada

2005-09-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

Spent quite a bit of time on buses the past couple of days. When last I left you, I was raving about how fantastic a town Seville is. I stand firmly by that conviction. The flamenco show Saturday night was really enrapturing. The guitarists, vocalists and dancers were all really top notch. A picture or two can be found below. If I do the fantasy football draft tomorrow evening, I may try to find a way to post a video segment between picks.

After the show, I decided to scope out a new district of the town, and found my way to a very active strip of bars and clubs on the far bank of the Rio Guadalquivir. While barhopping there, I overheard a couple of young women discussing, in English, the pronunciation of 'Willamette'. It didn't register at first, but moments later I wandered back and interrupted their conversation. Turns out, there was a crowd of a hundred or so American college students all about to start a semester abroad. A bunch of the girls were from Oregon, and I also met folks from Saratoga, Buffalo and Rotterdam. Small, small world. I hung out with this crowd until the small hours of the morning, slept in on Sunday, and made my way to the bus to Cordoba.

Cordoba was a nice town, although very small, very quaint and very much not open on a Sunday night and Monday morning. The Mezquita was open this morning, and that’s really why I went anyway. Seeing as I was only in town for about 19 hours, and was a bit hung over most of the time, it wasn’t much of a problem.

I did have my first real sit down fancy meal of the trip so far: Cordoban salmorejo (a super thick gazpacho), Cordoban churrasco (barbecued pork with a crazy Arabian garlic and chili sauce) and a half carafe of Montilla. This will probably be one of only a few top end meals worthy of photographing that you’ll get this trip. Europe is not cheap right about now, and I will probably mostly eat tapas at various bodegas. Tonight’s dinner here in Granada was tapas and a walking falafel.

Granada’s a pretty cool town so far. Apparently has a huge college population. My hotel’s adjacent to the University, about 15 minutes walk from most of the attractions. Took a long stroll upon arriving in town and it’s quite beautiful. Tomorrow morning’s the Alhambra, then probably a bit more of a walking tour, dinner and a few cervacas before the draft. I think I’ll probably try to do as much site-seeing as possible tomorrow, and stay out way to late again. It looks like this town has a pretty hopping social environment, but like all of Spain, it doesn’t really get going until after 1.

churrasco

2005-09-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

churrasco
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Out of focus pork (must have been quaking with anticipation). There's another picture of the plate empty, and that one's much higher quality. The sauce was so good, but way to much garlicy goodness. I could still smell it when I woke up the next morning.

salmorejo

2005-09-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

salmorejo
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

A thick gazpacho common on Cordoban menus

Los Gallos Flamenco

2005-09-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

flamenco
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The flamenco performance at Los Gallos in Seville was remarkably good.

Sevilla!

2005-09-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

Sevilla is an amazing town! Finally getting around to trying to write about it. The layout is very convoluted and confusing. Now that I´m finally finished getting oriented, it´s almost time to leave.

The bar scene here is pretty incredible. I found a sort of a dive-y, very young and very fun neighborhood near my hotel to hang out in last night. There was one street corner where three bars stood. They were so crowded that the revelry spilled out into the street, cars had to navigate through the drunkeness. There were a couple of places where you could grab una cervasa at one bar and wander over to another with impunity. Fun times. Stayed out too late. Haven´t really sat down to any full blown meals yet. Eating is really just stopping off for tapas, snacking whenever, usually grabbing a beer, then back to siteseeing.

I finally did get my luggage. Funny story. The short of it is: I decided to spend 45 minutes taking a bus to the airport, only to find out that my bag was delivered to my hotel 15 minutes after I left. Good waste of almost 2 hours.

I´m not going to get to see all the sights I planned to here, but this is one of the most fun cities I´ve been to, and I am certainly taking advantage of that aspect of things. I spent the afternoon at the Alcazar, had Gespacho and smoked salmon on toast for early dinner. Gotta get back to my hotel, shower and maybe grab a bit more grub before going to a flamenco show tonight. Probably will be quite touristy and maybe a bit cheesy, but should be fun. Probably do a bunch more bar hopping thereafter. It´s way too easy to be out til 3 or 4 am here. Especially on the weekend.

Odd toilet paper sculpture

2005-09-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

Odd toilet paper sculpture
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

This lady was making a sculpture of floating TP over an exhaust vent for the subway, I think. Maybe I have odd taste, but I thought this was pretty cool.

Painting from the Prado

2005-09-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Painting from the Prado
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

I think this is a Raphael painting, from the Prado. Pretty cool museum.

Pleasant Evening

2005-09-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

The hotel isn't so bad. I do have a private bath, and thankfully the air conditioner is pretty good. I wouldn't really mind having to do the shared bath thing. My real problem here is that I don't find the facilities worth the money. I'm paying for ambiance and history rather than amenities.

I doubt my luggage will meet me here. My train for Sevilla leaves at 1 tomorrow afternoon. I hope it finds me there tomorrow though, otherwise I'll have to do some shopping.

My seatmates on the flight over were a really nice young couple from outside of Toronto. I bumped into them again at the Prada this afternoon and made arrangements to meet up with them for tapas and cervacas this evening. Good times. Pictures coming soon.

One nice thing about this hotel is the availability of a wireless signal in room. I'm exhausted, dispate an early evening nap, and want to get up early tomorrow to scope out other hotel options. Nice to be able to make a quick post or two from bed before crashing.

On the Road - Radio Silence Over (for now)

2005-09-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in Madrid. My luggage, however is not. Somehow, it was lost along the way. These seemed to happen to quite a few people. Fortunately, one of the women working at the Continental Airlines baggage claim area spoke impeccable English and was able to help me (and others) out. My bag should come in on the Continental flight tomorrow morning, but probably won't arrive til after I leave Madrid. Hopefully it will get to me in Seville by tomorrow night. My room here is small, with a single twin bed. I may try to find an alternative for some of the time I will be here during the conference. I'm not sure I want to do a whole week in this place, as it doesn't seem to be worth the money.

On the good side, Madrid is a beautiful city. I have access to an open wireless network here in my room, but am not sure if it's the hotel's or not. No pictures yet, but expect them tonight. It's about 1:30 in the afternoon here. I'm going to shower and go explore. Want to get to the Prado, and maybe grab a quick bite to eat. More later...

Bad Delivery Slogan

2005-02-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw a delivery vehicle for a restaurant that will remain unnamed. On the side of the car: the name of the establishment, a phone number, and the phrase "We Deliver Late."

Perhaps this is just my warped mind, but it seems to me that this is a very poor choice of words. It's very clear what they mean, but the statement could easily be misconstrued, and the alternate meaning does not reflect favorably upon their services.

bluecross_carrots

2005-01-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

bluecross_carrots
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

My health insurance company, Blue Cross / Blue Shield sent me a package of carrot seeds, in an envelope that said "Happy New Year".

Not sure if you can read the print, but it says: "Our resolution for 2005 -- to sow more seeds for transforming health care." A bit further down, "We look forward to growing with you in 2005."

I must say, their use of metaphore is somewhat endearing. Still, the gesture struck me as incredibly funny.

Draft posts finally posted

2004-12-29T22:26:00.000-08:00

Two draft posts sat in limbo for 10 days before finally being posted today.
And all because I was too lazy to proofread.

Flexible Plastic Scanner

2004-12-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Researchers in Tokyo have come up with a flexible plastic scanner that can be used to digitize fragile materials without having to worry about either damaging the binding or getting illegible results along the gutter. Looking forward to these being produced for sale. From Gizmodo

Gollum - Mentally Ill?

2004-12-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

A group of medical students from London have posited this question, and published a detailed mental history, analysis and diagnosis in the British Medical Journal. Bizarre. I believe BMJ is a double blind peer reviewed jounral. I wonder what the reviewers were thinking as they read this.

University of Oregon mentioned on Boing Boing

2004-12-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

A recent Boing Boing entry mentions the University of Oregon. This is a proud moment: my current institution has been mentioned in what is probably the best blog I know of. Apparently, we purchased a massive collection of Sci-Fi-Zines.

I can't tell from the post if this is the Libraries' doing, but I'd assume so given that SC&UA has been accumulating a fairly large Zine collection over the past few years.

Graphic Representation of Musical Genres

2004-11-16T19:52:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about data visualization and their relationships to organizational hierarchies and categorization for a few weeks now. Suddenly this rolls through my inbox:
http://www.musicplasma.com/

Type in an artist or band, and you'll get back an incredibly cool visual representation of relationships & similarities to other artists and bands. From there, you can zoom in and out of and move around in the cluster. Clicking one of the related artists will pop you into a new grouping. What a great way to discover new music based on what you know you like. They've got some pretty obscure stuff in there, too. It wasn't too easy to stump it other, at least with pop and rock. Classical got it all confused.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any description of how it works. The inter-relationships, based on genre and also time period, could be being pulled from some neat underlying RDF, but that doesn't explain how they track popularity and "representative of a musical style". I love the visual element, but (sadly) would also love a peek at the underlying data structures.

The design's super slick. I like the way you can change the style of various elements. I'm a bit taken aback that Neil Young's bubble is about twice the diameter of Dylan's, though!

Thanks for the link Betsy!

"Digital Futures" on C-Span

2004-11-15T07:41:00.000-08:00

A new lecture series on C-Span with the Library of Congress starts tonight at 6:30 Eastern. It'll be on every few weeks until late March. Starts tonight with David Weinberger talking about blogs. Then Brewster Kahle on December 13th.

According to the C-Span web site, "The series will examine how the digital age is changing the most basic ways information is organized and classified." Should be pretty interesting.

Another Travel Blog

2004-11-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

Most of you came here and started reading because this was billed as a travel blog. Then it went all exceedingly lame, and devoid of interesting travel tales. I promise, I'll be regaling you with more travel tales soon enough. But in the meantime, I seem to have spawned a trend in my family. My parents are currently in the midst of a 10 day trip to Hawaii. They're blogging, and posting photos (through hello instead of flicker) while they're there. My Dad's a much better photographer than I am, and my Mother, if she gets around to posting anything herself, writes much more elegantly than I do.

If my concert reviews, links to random stuff that I find entertaining, random thoughts and (forthcoming) techie nonsense is inspiring naught but ennui, please pay them a visit.

Election Day

2004-11-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

Like most of the nation, and probably much of the world, my eyes will be glued to the television for the next 4-6 hours. I don't really expect anything to be decided at the end of the night, but that won't stop me from watching.

Many of you probably know that I have some pretty strong opinions regarding the choice we, as a nation, are making today. That said, I'm going to refrain from being too political here. I won't be imposing either a gloating post or an angry rant tomorrow morning, in large part as a courtesy to readers with viewpoints that don't align perfectly with mine. Frankly, I have no desire to contribute anything (no matter how inconsequential my writings may be) to the divisiveness that seems pretty much universal tonight. I consider this to be incredibly contrary to the spirit of compromise, co-operation and unity that is so desperately needed to resolve the geo-political, social and economic issues we're currently facing.

I will say that the most important thing is that voter turnout is high, voting is encouraged rather than discouraged and we are given (and take advantage of) the opportunity to make a choice tonight.

As an aside (and probably a divisive one, despite what I just said), I've something to say about Eminem. I've always been entertained by the guy, but in the same vein that I'm entertained by the Three Stooges, Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns, and the whole series of Die Hard movies. These are things that have nothing to contribute to intelligent dialog, but tend to be really entertaining, either due to hilarity or some connection to primal instinct.

However, Eminem moved himself into the category of South Park by saying something important. Eminem has influence over a demographic that typically does not vote and he's attempted convince them of the importance of this particular election. I can respect that. Mosh was not supposed to be the first single off his new album, but he's released a video online. There's an excellent article about the Mosh video on Slate. It includes a link through to the video itself. Definitely worth checking out.

Gibson Blog

2004-10-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

After almost a year off, William Gibson is blogging again. The tone has changed since last years posts. He's focused on the coming election right now. Regardless, I appreciate his prose, just finished reading Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and am happy to be able to peruse more of his material.

A Library Funding Juxtaposition

2004-10-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

Two articles showed up in LISNews the past couple of days. This article is about the Cooperstown, NY Public Library, discussing how they only have enough money to pay for their online catalog for another year or two, and may have to go back to using a card catalog instead. Compare that to a Register Guard article about the Eugene Public Libraries new technology system for reading to the blind. They also have text magnification workstations and a device that translates text onscreen into printed braille.

Now, granted, Eugene and Cooperstown are two very different towns, and it makes sense for a place Eugene's size to have a bit more funding available to it. That said, I still think it's pretty amazing how variable community support for libraries is. Perhaps this is part of what brought me to, and keeps me in, Eugene.

I think this may be somewhat related to general civic engagement. NPR reported this morning that 29% of ballots sent out have already come back, over a week before election day.

This is up from 18% at this point in the 2000 election, and in some demographic groups, it is nearing the percentage of total voting age population who voted at all in the 2002 elections. From US census info.

Granted, fewer voters turn out for federal elections during Presidential election cycle off years, and the comparison is unfair given that the returns only indicate that almost 1/4 of registered voters voted. But given that a very high percentage of Oregonians are registered (1.94 million of 2.6 million voting age in 2000), this seems pretty significant.

A quick look at info on the Secretary of State website - 2.147 million this year. Lane county's at 36% election return as of late Monday.

Maybe I'm completely making up the relationship here, but somehow one makes me think of the other. People in this town, and this state in general, are engaged in politics, they care deeply about what happens in the nation and the world, and they are very involved in what happens in their community. It's quite nice.

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

2004-10-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Possibly some of you missed this. The exchange between Stewart and Tucker Carlson is amazing. Stewart really ripped into Carlson about Crossfire, and exceedingly partisan political analysis shows in general.

There's a great section where Stewart is accusing them of a lack of integrity and they turn around and accuse the Daily Show of the same thing. Stewarts response is absolutely priceless: "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?"

The whole 12 minute exchange is online here:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2653047

This also includes a link to Stewart rehashing the discussion on the Daily Show last night.

For those of you on slower Internet connections, CNN has the transcript up here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/15/cf.01.html

West Wing

2004-10-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

For my fellow TV addicts out there, the West Wing season premier is tomorrow night.

I thought last season was pretty hit and miss. Hopefully it won't go any further downhill this year.

Chronicles

2004-10-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

Bought books Sunday night.

Had to buy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America The Book: A citizens guide to democracy inaction. Looks to be really good.

Also bought Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan's new autobiography. The excerpts from it, as well as the interview, that were in the October 4th issue of Newsweek were just great. By the way, Dylan was on the cover. I bought it in the airport on the way to China. Really facinates me that Dylan has turned around and written a memoir. He's always been so reticent to do much in the way of publicity. I've spoken with some fellow die-hard fans who think it's another stitch in the tapestry of Dylan selling out, following closely on the heels of Canadian car commercials, Victoria's Secret adds, and feature films. The verdicts still out for me until after I read it. I'll post a sort of review at some point.

Another Dilemma

2004-10-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'd like to set the time back to reflect reality, which is increasingly seeming real now that I've been back in this time zone for more than 48 hours.

Problem is, when I do that, all the timestamps on my China posts will be updated accordingly. I'll have to do math to determine when I actually wrote something. And when Daylight Savings Time ends, and the time difference becomes 16 hours, the math will be even more confusing.

I guess I could change the time zone back then go through existing posts, clean them up, and edit the time stamps to reflect the reality of local time at time of posting. But that just smacks of far too much effort.

This is certainly a quandry.

Hmmm...

2004-10-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

Now I've got a bit of a dilemma. I need to find a tone and a theme for this blog now that I'm no longer traipsing around foreign countries. The travel thing really only holds water while your actually traveling. Will it prove difficult to keep the few readers I've found while I had something interesting to say? Only time will tell.

I think I'm likely to use this space to reference random, entertaining stuff that I stumble over during my virtual wanderings, as well as items that fall into my email and aggregator.

I'll probably also post a lot about metadata, digital libraries, web design, xml related technologies, digital preservation, and perhaps a bit of programming.

To keep it interesting, I'll likely continue to drop in some more pics from my travels abroad, and from the rest of my life. Also likely, the descriptions of these pictures will be much less rich now that the content is not as fresh in my mind. But hopefully it will still be interesting. Or at least it will hold your interest enough to make you see past all the boring technology stuff that will start showing up here in the near future.

We shall see.

Home

2004-10-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Well, after just over 2 weeks of travel, I'm back home. I haven't changed the time zone on any of my electronics, so I can tell you that it's really tomorrow. See, I'm convinced that my local clocks, the sun, and all that is lying to me. It's actually a little before seven tomorrow morning, and I've been up for over 24 hours, minus an hour or two of napping on the plane.

It amazes me that one can get on a plane in Shanghai and get off in San Fransisco just over 10 hours later, or actually five hours earlier if you pay attention to the local time.

The trip was absolutely incredible. I had an unbelievably good time and saw a great many amazing things. I took hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. Some of the best were posted to flickr and to this blog, but there are many more good ones (along with a bunch that are of considerably lesser quality).

The conference was also excellent, and as I cull through my notes and find all the (mildly to some of you, not at all to others) intersting tidbits, I'll post a selection of meeting highlights.

Spending over 2 weeks in China has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It has re-ignited the travel bug in me in the worst way.

I think I want to eat pizza tonight. I like pizza, and during my two weeks away, I found myself occasionally missing pizza.

I'm not really looking forward to returning to work on Monday. Hopefully I'll have my wits about me again by then, as I have at least two important meetings, the first of which is far too early in the morning.

Looking forward to seeing all of you soon.

Yet Another City Scape

2004-10-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

city-scape
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So this is really, truely my last post from China. My flight leaves in about 14 hours. I need to get some sleep, finish packing, and get to the airport.

To those of you who continue harping on the guilt trip about gifts: I hope you ingrates are happy with the crap I give you. I forsook (damn, making up words again) any more sightseeing on my final day in Shanghai, instead running all over town looking for the perfect personalized gifts for a bunch of people who've never given me anything. Now I have no idea what to do with the dozens of chopsticks I was orginally planning on giving to you all.

There's a pretty cool open air market right near my hotel. If I get up early enough, and can cram any more junk into my luggage, I'll probably head back over there for a few last minute things. Got some Yuan left over and, as it's a minority currency, there's no changing it back to US dollars.

The one bit of tourism I tried to do today was super lame. I took a couple hours to take the subway all the way across town to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It was a complete waste of time. Maybe I'm just "tourismed out", as I couldn't even sustain the interest to go back into the Shanghai Museum or the Art Museum today. I think it was lousy though: a smattering of exhibits that mimic things that have been in the Science Museum in Boston since 1985, and a who lot of empty space.

All told, this trip has been amazing. I have hundreds of pictures beyond what you've seen here and on flickr. The conference was great, inspiring even. As I said, I'll post a nice long summary of my conference notes when I get back to the States. Maybe I'll post something more interesting for those of you who don't care much about metadata. I'm hoping to retain my readership, and continue doing this blogging bit, despite not being on the other side of the world. We'll see how that goes.

Food at Conference Banquet

2004-10-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

banquet-food
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So, that last post had some odd formatting issues. That's what happens when you cut and paste from notepad.

Also, it flagrantly lied and claimed to be posted before lunch yesterday. The writing of it began before lunch yesterday. Didn't get posted until 5 minutes ago.

Again, sorry about the silence. You see, the late night carousing precludes getting to the library before the sessions, so no early posting. And the various meetings don't have between speaker type pauses in which to post. And immediately after each day of conf, was out carousing again. One point of fact though: most of the librarians here don't carouse too much. It's the other folks that are out quite late. But that's neither here nor there.

Seems all Hank's computers for anymore is Brenda saying hi... You actually working Hank? Maybe a little bit??

See you all on Sat or Sun or Mon depending on when I see you.

City from Art Museum rooftop bar

2004-10-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

rooftop-bar-view
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Wow. I think every year the DC conference gets better. The presentations I was able to attend were excellent. Missed most of the short papers, including Dav's, who was my boss from my

NIEHS days. Really too bad, as I wanted to see him speak. Unfortunately, the User Documentation WG meeting was concurrent with that session of short papers. The bibliography issues

came up at the tail end of that session, so I was unable to slip away. I was roped into registering as an expert for the AskDCMI service while there. I had promised to do this before, but had

never gotten around to signing up.

I guess I haven't posted since Tuesday morning. I'll give a quick rundown of the conference, which is now drawing to a close. Makx Dekkers just wrapped up his closing plenary, and I'm

posting quickly before lunch, then I have a day and a half of free time before returning to Eugene on Saturday. As always, trips to exotic places never last long enough. This is likely to be my

last post until I get back to Eugene, at which point I'll post a much more detailed account of some of the conference highlights, as well as some of my own thoughts and reflections.

Tuesday's Keynote was by Wayne Hodgins, Strategic Futurist at Autodesk, Inc. I talked to him pretty extensively at dinner last night. Fascinating individual, with a very interesting job and

take on things. Tuesday also saw a number of excellent presentations, including a talk about preservation by Douglas Campbell of the National Library of New Zealand. I'm planning to pass

this on to interested members of the Digital Content Coordinators group on Monday. There were also very good papers from Ann Apps of the U. of Manchester and Diane Hillmann from

Cornell during this session.

Tusday afternoon saw the betginning of working group meetings, which kept me out of most of the short paper sessions throughout the next two days. The working group meetings seemed

more productive than in either of the past two years. It also seems like most of the groups whose meetings I attended had come a lot further on accomplishing items on their workplan

between the Seattle and Shanghai meetings.

I attended the Libraries, Architecture, Preservation and User Documentation Working Group meetings. A bit of accidental volunteerism created a bit more work for me in the coming year.

Mary Woodley and I decided that the Glossary and Bibliography would be better updated semi-annually rather than annually. Not sure if this will mean more work or less, but it will certainly

help with maintaining the currency of these documents. I also finally got around to registering as an expert for the AskDCMI reference program. Finally, the preservation working group will

be getting an early peek at the preservation element set that PREMIS is working on. I offered to co-ordinate the group's comments on this document. I have a bit of an ulterior motive, in that

the aforementioned Digital Content Coordinators group at UO has been tasked with addressing our own digital preservation issues. Summarizing the comments of the DC working group will

give me a much stronger sense of how the community at large would be likely to make use of the work being done by PREMIS. I don't expect coordinating these comments to be too much

work. Essentially, I'll just have to look through responses on the list serve, pull out the salient points and write up a summary to pass on to the PREMIS people.

The evenings have been much fun as well. Have stayed out far too late the last 3 nights, hanging out with various groups of interesting and brilliant individuals. When at DC, I find that I

learn as much if not more from the coffee breaks and evenings out than from the conference itself. Last night, a large group of us went to the Shanghai Center Theater to see the Shanghai

Acrobats. Amazing stuff. Pretty incredible what these folks could do. Weren't supposed to take pictures, so I only took a couple.

Today, I'm going to be doing a bit more sightseeing and shopping. My last free day. Not really looking forward to going home. As soon as I get back, I have a massive stack of work that

needs to be done, and a variety of meetings beginning early monday morning. My leisure time here blew by, and the conference elapsed remarkably quickly, too. I managed to corner most of

the people that I had specific questions for. Once again, I'm coming away with an increasingly strong understanding of DCMI, it's efforts and directions, and a variety of related work. I think

the concept of application profiles has really revitalized the community and begun to lead us in new directions. The work is moving well beyond the original element set. I think that DCMI is

going to continue to have a very significant impact on the metadata community in general. For the second year, IEEE-LOM colocated their meeting with ours, and it looks like there is

tentative agreement to make this a more longstanding arrangement. As in the past, a number of individuals from the W3C, and from SWAD-Europe were in attendance, and the connection

between the Dublin Core and the technologies enabling the Semantic Web is becoming increasingly formalized.

The conference was a little smaller this year than last, but still unbelievably international. Here are some stats from Makx Dekkers closing plennary:
There were 160 attendees, 68 of these were from China and the other 92 represented 21 countries in Europe, North and South America, East and Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. There were representatives from the corporate sector, governement agencies from around the world, libraries, the larger library and information science community, educational institutions, the educational technology sector and a variety of international organizations. It's a remarkable group, very tight knit, very friendly, very ambitious and very, very industrious. I feel honored to be a part of these efforts, and inspired by what the people in this group are doing.

I'll likely post a much longer summary of my notes from the conference sometime over the weekend, or next week. This may be my last post from China. I fly back tomorrow in the early

afternoon. I'll see many of you next week, and talk to the rest soon.

Conference Reception

2004-10-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

cruise1
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The conference has officially begun. My free time now becomes much much less.

Yesterday say the opening ceremony, including the DCMI Reports and Intro by Makx Dekkers and an interesting Keynote by Zhang Xiaolin of the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The paper he was speaking from was excellent.

There were also 3 other papers, the best of which was "Maintaining a Vocabulary: Practices, policies and models around Dublin Core, presented by Thomas Baker. It focused on aspects of the DCMI community other than the element set itself, looking instead about how the initiative works, data models around metadata in general and, perhaps most importantly, work going on around the edges. The relationships of DC to other metadata standards, developments in the area of interoperability and cross-walking, and best practice for documenting terms, dealing with namespaces, etc. This is an area where DCMI is a bit ahead of the curve, and can provide other projects & initiatives with excellent insights.

I also attended an interesting Semantic Web special session, with representatives from both DCMI and the W3C, although I slipped out for a few minutes to check things out at the Collection Description Working Group meeting.

I'm sure you all care immensly about all of this. Please don't stop reading. If you must, just skip to the end of upcoming posts, where I'll try to have info about evenings and responses comments.

Definitely have no pictures of textiles, although there are some photos of really old looms in museums, and there is a picture of a woman weaving a silk rug. Haven't posted them, but may eventually. Either that, or just show them when I get back. Music has been good, when I've seen traditional music. I've heard way to much modern chinese pop music being played far too loudly out of storefronts. Haven't purchased any music yet.

And, yes: I'm a thoughtless jerk. Sorry, but there's too much to see here. One of the nice things about being a complete egotist is it allows one to focus entirely on oneself at all times.

Lunch was Dim Sum. The reception was definitely a dinner cruise down the Huangpu river. Beer was free, conversation was excellent, and the view was magnificient.

Quicky Night-time Posting

2004-10-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

bund-tunnel4
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had to pop back online quickly to download the latest Western States DC Metadata Best Practices document and the conference schedule. I keep forgetting that I'm ostensibly here for work. I figured I'd post quickly while connected anyway. So here's one of many images from the absurdly trippy journey through the Bund Tunnel this afternoon.

Apparently, there is an element among my readership that cares not for my depictions of historically significant sights or my astute observations about Chinese culture. Nor do these perusers of this blog wish to hear about pockets of astounding beauty, either hidden away in the corners of immense urban centers or on their more rural outskirts.

No, this group of readers is interested in hearing about one of two things: food and gifts. I'll indulge this group with a post that addresses both of these topics.

I think I had my best meal of the trip (thus far, anyway) this evening. No, I didn't go back to O'malley's pub for corned beef and cabbage, although I suspect I will before the next week is done. Instead, I went to a place called Fragrant Camphor Garden and had a pot of fruit tea and one of the chef's recommendations: Matsuzaka Beef Shaba Shaba.

The dish seemed somewhat similar to hot pot, although not in the traditional sense. This was very much a gourmet type fusion restaurant, so the meal was updated accordingly. I was served a plate of very thinly sliced raw beef, a few raw shrimp and a raw egg. Along with this was a bowl of rice, a soy based sauce (with dried red chillis, chopped garlic and green onions for adding to taste), a few chunks of cantalope and a metal device full of fire. Yes, a metal device full of fire. Atop this flaming tripod was a dish full of seeting, simmering, boiling broth and pieces of cabbage, mushrooms, various bits of processed or re-formed seafood in the shape of roll-ups or scallops (perhaps they actually were scallops, but didn't seem so to me). The raw meats and eggs were to be added to the broth and cooked in it. Then you pull them out, drop them onto the rice to cool, dip them in the soy-based sauce and devour. Absolutely delicious. I have a couple of photos, which I'll post later.

On to the second topic. I recently read a comment that stated an expectation of personalized gifts. Let me remind you: I'm in a Communist country, attending a conference at which the primary topic of discussion will be metadata standardization. The word of the day, folks, is uniformity. To mix my metaphors I can promise you cookie cutter gifts, all from the same cloth. The only uniqueness will be the flaws of poor craftsmanship that come with shopping at the stalls of street vendors and hovel-like back alley shops. Even the text of postcards is selected from a collection of pre-composed phrases. To personalize any of this smacks horribly of effort. Frankly, I just don't care enough. You'll have to be happy that I'm buying you things at all.

The comments have been entertaining. Thanks for being interested, reading along, and sharing your reactions. Knowing that family, friends and colleagues are following my journey provides a warming feeling and helps temper the effects of the whole "solitude in the midst of millions" thing.

Yu Yuan (Yu Gardens)

2004-10-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

yu-yuan2
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Last day of vacation is drawing to a close. Conference starts tomorrow morning.

Dinner last night was sauted pork with garlic, red chillis, and red bell peppers. Cantonese, I think, as the place I grabbed it at was a combo Cantonyese / Thai joing. Did some bar hopping in the vicinity of my hotel after dinner. Good fun. Scoped out a few places where I'll likely grab drinks with fellow conf attendees this week. Found an Irish Pub called O'malley's: first place I've been in all of China where Westerners outnumbered locals by about 3 to 1. Mostly Euros there to watch the Wales v. England World Cup football qualifier on the big screen outside. Had a few too many (too expensive) Guinesses and Kilkenneys and stayed there later than I meant too. May go back there tonight for Irish style dinner. T

Today was a busy one. Wandered around the Old Shanghai area. The Yu Gardens are here: absolutely beautiful and quite easy to get lost in, especially without a map. The area around Yu Yuan also has some great souvenier shops and markets, and some excellent food.

Many of you know that I hate to shop, but I would hate it a lot less if this haggling thing were standard fare in the states. The marked price, if there is one, is always way to high. Folks see you looking and offer a 20 percent discount. I've been able to talk them down to 40-60% off the ticket. Seems that this works pretty much everywhere, although stores with no markings will try to get you to offer the price first. You can usually refuse, get them to offer too high and begin talking them down. Often negotiations are done by passing a calculator back and forth. Makes shopping so much more fun.

After wandering about that area for far too long, I grabbed a quick bite to eat: steamed dumplings and some fried bread type stuff with seseame seeds and what seemed like date inside. Then I wandered back up to the Bund, went through the gaudy psychadelic ride that is the Bund Tourist Tunnel under the river to Pudong, wandered around there a bit and took the subway back to my hotel.

I got a hotel account to post photos. .60 Yuan a minute. I managed to post the 6 on flickr in under 5 minutes, so that's not too bad a price. Then I can make my way over to the library (and conference venue) and use their internet room: half hour for 2 Yuan. Should end up being pretty cheap. Can't get to Gmail from here, but can get to yahoo. Also, Anonymouse is back up, so I can read comments again. I'm going to go grab some dinner somewhere. More tomorrow.

Xi-an's City Walls

2004-10-09T04:43:00.000-07:00

me-on-wall
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

and me standing on them.

Yep, another post with a picture of my ugly mug. Can't find anywhere to post pics from yet, but hopefully soon enough. I'm safely back in Shanghai. I'll be here for a week. The conference starts Monday morning, and it's currently Saturday night. I'm at the conference venue, as they have the cheapest internet access in town here.

I'm going to go grab some dinner soon, maybe hit a few bars here in the Ol' French Concession, wander back to the hotel and crash. The Donghu Hotel cetainly isn't the classiest place I've stayed so far, and it's a huge step down from the Bell Tower Hotel in Xi-an, which probably was the classiest place I'd stayed in so far. But the Donghu gave me vouchers for free breakfast each morning & it's less than a ten minute walk from the Shanghai Library, where the conference is. So I won't complain. They do have internet access there, but again: somewhat pricey (by Asia standards). I'm beginning to think about money in terms of Yuan, without thinking about how cheap things are in terms of US$. I'll probably log in there once or twice to post photos if I can't find somewhere else to do so from.

I'm going to do a bit more sightseeing and shopping tomorrow, and try to get some rest before the conference.

The anonymizer I use is down til tomorrow, so I can't read comments at the moment. Hope you're all well.

unrecycling?

2004-10-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

unrecycling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

No time to upload new photos from last night and this morning, as I've got to check out of my hotel and catch a plane back to Shanghai, so I'll use this image uploaded yesterday. For some reason, I find the translation funny.

Found the Muslim Restaurant last night. Had a meal called yangrou paomo. It's local muslim cuisine. You're given a loaf of flat bread and a bowl. You break the bread up into tiny chunks and put them into the bowl. They bring it back to the kitchen and add a soup made of mutton broth, mutton, green onions and celophane noodles. The soup is absorbed by the chunks of hard, dry bread. It's served with pickled garlic and a sort of red chili paste, which can be added to the soup. It was delicious.

Went up the drum and bell towers early this morning, caught traditional musical performances in each, then went back to the muslim quarter for more haggling.

Came back to the hotel, caught the last half hour or so of the debate, and commenced packing.

Audbren - washed boxers with woolite in the sink. They dry quickly enough that there's no need to pay. I'm not running around in dirty undergarments!

As I said, posting will probably become more work related soon. Not sure how internet access will be in Shanghai. Hopefully I'll be able to post new photos from the Shanghai Library in between conference sessions. We'll see.

unrecycling?

2004-10-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

unrecycling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Museum Fun

2004-10-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

really-old-art
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a pretty mellow day today. Slept in, woke up, got a little work done re: prep for conference next week (I am officially here to be involved in proffesional development), wrote a few postcards. I was up pretty late, im-ing with my dad, getting absorbed in the news of crazy shit transpiring in Iraq, posting numerous pictures, etc. Woke up to more news of unpleasantness in the middle east, this time in Isreal. Now CNN's talking about US airstrikes in Falujia. Great.

Well, I'm not here to rant politics. I did something I've never done before: had a few pieces of laundry done by my hotel. Again, much cheaper than it would be in the US. 100 Yuan, about 12 bucks, got me clean jeans, slacks, 2 pair socks, 3 t-shirts and a polo shirt. Plus washed some of my own stuff in the sink. Thrilling post so far, eh?

Went to two museums, took a walk on the city wall, wandered around the Muslim Quarter, stopped into a bar for a beer. That was my day once I got a late start. Took 109 pictures, most of which are museum pieces. Probably would bore the hell out of you if I posted more than one to the blog, but there's two or three more on flickr. And you can always ask me to see more pics when I get back. Maybe I'll put together a cd or dvd as my dad suggested.

Between museums, I was getting a bit hungry. I often skip lunch (as many of you know), but wanted to do a late dinner tonight at a muslim place near my hotel. I'll be going there right after posting. So I did something I've been wanting to do, but feel guilty about. I had a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. I wanted to see if it was the same here. It is. Exactly. The place was packed. Absolutely packed. They all always seem to be. There's even little walk up McDonalds on the street that only sell Ice Cream. We don't even have those (do we?). So I guiltily indulged in American Fast Food while in China. You gonna hold it against me? Huh? Are ya?

Aside for the techies reading: I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but shell scripts are cool. My camera's 5 megapixels. 3 or 4 pictures would wipe out my monthly flickr allotment. So, I've been automating the generation of large thumbnails using a combo of imagemagick and bash. All I have to do is say:
for img in *
do
convert -resize 500 $img small_$img
done

This creates a small version of each image in the current directory with a width of 500 pixels. It's these I've been posting. When I first tried to do this, I had image magick too far back in my path, and windows was trying to run the windows convert app, which reformats a partion. Fortunately, the arguments weren't right and it resulted in an error rather than converting a Fat32 partionion to NTFS.

Aside for the photography buffs reading, I've discovered that the flash on my camera is pretty well useless beyond 4 or 5 meters. The secret to taking night photos is to click into manual mode and shoot at 100 ISO or lower. Now, what I don't understand is the fact that reducing the EV by 1/3 to 1 step improves the image as well. This is the equivelant of increasing the f-stop to let in less light, right? Why the hell would that help? It makes the image a bit darker, but greatly increases the clarity, makes the likelyhood of blurring much less. Don't get it, but it works.

I've thrown a "Dave Attel style" shot of me on the city wall on flickr, to appease my mom. I've got ones like this from the great wall and a few other places, too.

I'm going to go out and eat dinner, and maybe do a bit more street shopping. I find that I really enjoy the bargaining with vendors for random trinkets, knick-knacks, souvineirs and gifts. I've gotten myself some pretty good deals (I think...)

Hank, the football stadim was built in the 70s. They since realized that the sunlight really isn't good for 2200 year old artifacts, so the other two pits are much more dim. Not as great for photography. But, until recently, they didn't even allow photography in the pits, so I can't comlain. By the way, the only other person who posts as many comments as you is my father. He's retired. What's your excuse? Shouldn't you be methodically making your way through the names file or something? Jeez.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go up the Drum and Bell Towers early am, then come back here, write a few more postcards, try to do a little more work, maybe hop on AIM and see who's around, and watch the debates. Then I'll check out, leave my bags with the concierge, and do a bit more wandering around before my 3 pm flight. Then it's back to Shanghai. 2 more days, and the blog becomes considerably less entertaining for most of you. Instead of posting about exotic travels, I'll be posting about DC2004, metadata, digital libraries, and interoperability. I'll probably lose most of the readership I've established thus far, huh?

Dumpling Banquet

2004-10-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

duck-dumpling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a "Dumpling Banquet" at a restaurant called De Fa Chang this evening. Consisted of 2 cold dishes, 16 different varieties of steamed dumplings, and a final course of dumpling soup. All that, plus 2 half-liter bottles of Chinese beer, for 80 Yuan (about 10 bucks). The reason I mention this is to point out how inexpensive it can be to travel in China. 4 star hotels can be had for 65-100 US$ a night. You can get a room comperable to what you'd get in a Holiday Inn or Best western for half that. The dumpling banquet is the most expensive meal I've eaten so far. Plane tickets are cheap, a full day's tour is really cheap, admission to sights and museums is cheap.

The cold dishes at dinner were interesting. One was a delicious plate of some kind of sea-weed. The other... well I managed to eat about three of them, left the others on the plate. I'm pretty sure that they were pickled chicken's feet with hot peppers. I've got pictures of that, too.

The dumplings came in varieties like pork, ham & corn, shrimp, walnut, yam, beef, vegetable. Some of them are shaped like what's in them, like the duck pictured here. Hopefully eating more duck won't lead to another losing week in fantasy football.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking it a bit easier. I'm going to go to the local Shaanxi Museum, which is supposedly one of the 4 best in the country. I'm also going to check out the inside of the bell and drum towers, walk down to the wall, and maybe wander around the Muslim Quarter a bit. I think I'll actually take advantage of the free internet and do a bit of conference prep in the evening.

A few notes to some of you out there:

-I've been able to read comments by getting to the blog through an anonymizer type proxy. I'm pretty certain blogspot is blocked here in China.

-Hank, thanks for the frequent comments, and the updates on your work schedule. Tell CMET that I said hi. Tell Brenda that if she wants a counterfeit, low quality, cheap-as-hell Louis Vatton bag, she should post a comment. Funnilly enough, I wandered past a Louis Vatton store this evening.

-Hi Eric, Hi Claire! Hope all's well in Arizona.

-If there are more of you out there lurking and not commenting, I'd love to hear back from you. Let me know what you want to know more about, see more of. More pictures of food? More pictures from museums? My mom wants to see more pictures of me, but that probably isn't going to happen.

-I'm surprised none of my librarian friends are pointing out errors in spelling and grammar. Hopefully I'll come back to these and clean them up someday. For now, it's all the time I have to write them and keep seeing stuff.

Dumpling Banquet

2004-10-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

duck-dumpling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a "Dumpling Banquet" at a restaurant called De Fa Chang this evening. Consisted of 2 cold dishes, 16 different varieties of steamed dumplings, and a final course of dumpling soup. All that, plus 2 half-liter bottles of Chinese beer, for 80 Yuan (about 10 bucks). The reason I mention this is to point out how inexpensive it can be to travel in China. 4 star hotels can be had for 65-100 US$ a night. You can get a room comperable to what you'd get in a Holiday Inn or Best western for half that. The dumpling banquet is the most expensive meal I've eaten so far. Plane tickets are cheap, a full day's tour is really cheap, admission to sights and museums is cheap.

The cold dishes at dinner were interesting. One was a delicious plate of some kind of sea-weed. The other... well I managed to eat about three of them, left the others on the plate. I'm pretty sure that they were pickled chicken's feet with hot peppers. I've got pictures of that, too.

The dumplings came in varieties like pork, ham & corn, shrimp, walnut, yam, beef, vegetable. Some of them are shaped like what's in them, like the duck pictured here. Hopefully eating more duck won't lead to another losing week in fantasy football.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking it a bit easier. I'm going to go to the local Shaanxi Museum, which is supposedly one of the 4 best in the country. I'm also going to check out the inside of the bell and drum towers, walk down to the wall, and maybe wander around the Muslim Quarter a bit. I think I'll actually take advantage of the free internet and do a bit of conference prep in the evening.

A few notes to some of you out there:
-I've been able to read comments by getting to the blog through an anonymizer type proxy. I'm pretty certain blogspot is blocked here in China.
-Hank, thanks for the frequent comments, and the updates on your work schedule. Tell CMET that I said hi. Tell Brenda that if she wants a counterfeit, low quality, cheap-as-hell Louis Vatton bag, she should post a comment. Funnilly enough, I wandered past a Louis Vatton store this evening.
-If there are more of you out there lurking and not commenting, I'd love to hear back from you. Let me know what you want to know more about, see more of. More pictures of food? More pictures from museums? My mom wants to see more pictures of me, but that probably isn't going to happen.
-I'm surprised none of my librarian friends are pointing out errors in spelling and grammar. Hopefully I'll come back to these and clean them up someday. For now, it's all the time I have to write them and keep seeing stuff.

Army of Terra-cotta Warriors

2004-10-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

me-again
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Today's tour was a great experience. The english speaking guide made the day all the more educational, and my fellow travelers from Australia, the UK and France were very pleasant company. The culmination of the tour was the Army of Terra-cotta Warriors, which was just incredible. I can't resist the tempation to provide more history lessons. Qin Shihuangdi was the first emperor to successfully unify the various states that make up modern day China. He ascended to the throne at the age of 13, and by the time he was 21, in 221 BC, had successfully conquered the 6 other neighboring states. Because he was such a despotic ruler, he burried the army of warriors to protect him in his second life. They were eventually unearthed just east of his tomb.

China's history seems to be constant cycle of unification and division. Someone will succeed in conquering and bringing together all of the various factions, this will last for a period of time, and civil war will eventually break out and the empire degenerates into seperate states again. A famous Chinese classical novel, "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" begins with this sentence: "They say the momentum of history was ever thus: the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide." I think I'd like to read this book.

I took somewhere upwards of 150 pictures today, so what you see on flickr is only a small, small fraction. This is only the 4th picture with me in it that I've taken, and it will likely be the last time I impose my countenance on you in a post.

Xi-an

2004-10-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

bell-tower
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Xi-an has probalby been the highlight of my trip thus far. This is surprising given that it was added as a side excursion, the main purpose of which was to see the Army of Terra-cotta Warriors. To start with, Xi-an is much more in line with my preconceptions of what a major metropolis should be like. Perhaps it's more the result of the national holiday coming to an end here, and things getting ready to settle down again, but the scale of Beijing and Shanghai while I was there was just far too much for me to comprehend. The culture and language barriers are enought to make it really hard to find the proper context for the things I'm experiencing, but the intensity of activity in both those places added to the disorientation. I'll find out better when I get back to Shanghai during a more normal weekend whether my experiences were the result of the holiday or the fact that both cities are twice the size of NYC.

But, yes, back to Xi-an. For starters, it's one of the few cities in China that has a City Wall still extant (insert crass South Park references here). My hotel is right accross the street from the Bell Tower (shown here), and a bit up the road is the Drum Tower. Actually, looking more closely at the picture, I think this may be the drum tower. During the Ming Dynasty, in the 14th - 17th Century, the Bell was rung to mark the opening of the city gates, and the drum was sounded to signify their closing. Similarly, there is a Bell and a Drum tower in the Dayan Ta (Big Goose Pagoda), which was the first stop on today's tour, although they served slightly different purposes. The bell told the monks that the workday was to begin, while the drum signified it's end. As a side note, the Big Goose Pagoda was originally built to house the scriptures brought back from india by the monk featured in the story "Westward Journey", also sometimes called "The Monkey King". Read this back in a lit course in Alaska, and remeber it being a great book.

Proof - Great Wall Trip

2004-10-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Proof
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Relatively brief post, but lots of new pictures posted, mostly from the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, and Ming's Tombs. I'm in Xi-an now. Nice hotel, I've got a balcony with a great view of the Bell Tower. The place has free internet access, too, so I'll be able to post a bit more in the next couple days.

The language thing was tough on the great wall trip. Tour guide spoke no English. I know enough Mandarin now to ask what time the bus leaves.

I managed to find the Tibetan place I was looking for after posting last. The menu included some bizarre fare such as Yak Genitals Stewed with Tibetan Caterpillar Fungus. I went with tamer food, a creamed spinach dish with tofu and a half rack of lamb ribs. Great stuff. Some of the wait staff ended up playing some traditional Tibetan music. There's a picture in the flickr stream.

I did manage to get to the Summer Palace for a couple hours this morning, but not before being distracted by the beginning of the VP debate. The grounds of the Summer Palace are way too big, simply too much to explore in an entire day, yet along a couple hours.

I booked a spot on a CITS tour tomorrow, goes to the Terre Cotte Army Museum, the Huaqing Hot Spring and the Big Wild Goose Pagado. Normally includes the Banpo Neolithic Villiage, but it's apparently closed for restoration. The CITS tour has an English speaking tour guide, which should be nice.

I'm debating wether to do a Chinese Language tour of the sights west of the city on Friday, but am not sure whether I should do that, or just try to catch some buses and see selected stuff on my own.

I'll be posting pics and thoughts probably each night while in Xi-an, before heading back to Shanghai on Saturday.

Hall of Supreme Harmony (Great Wall pics coming later)

2004-10-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

supreme_harmony
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Now I find a relatively cheap Internet Cafe, with decent cheap coffee and the ability to upload photos of cd. But I don't have a cd of photos, since I haven't been at the hotel since 7 this morning. Once again, I'm just starting to get accustomed to Beijing and I'm leaving tomorrow.

I spent today up north, visiting the Great Wall and the 13 Tombs of the Ming Dynasty Emperors. Actually, only went into one tomb, and spent the rest of the time wandering around the complex.

The Wall is huge. Climbed about a mile segment of it over the course of a couple hours. My legs are probably going to be killing me tomorrow. I probably took over 150 pictures today, so there will likely be some posted in the near future. I ended up going to the Badaling section of the wall, which is the main tourist attraction and significantly restored / rebuilt. I was hoping to get to one of the less crowded, more genuine sections, but the logistics would have been tough. There's a cheap tour bus you can pick up near Tian Na Men Square that takes you to the tombs & the Badaling with a couple of irritating diverisions to a wax museum, a store that sells all things jade, and a massive junkfood emporium. The total trip took about 10 hours, with a 2 hour stint at the Tombs and a 3 hour stop at the wall. Traffic gettin back into town was insane. I thought Boston, Montreal and LA were crazy traffic-wise. This has them all beat hands down.

Here's another pic from the Forbidden City to hold you over until I get some of the Wall & Tomb pictures up. It shows the Hall of Supreme Harmony and the Three Tier Terrace below.

I'm pretty tired already, but I'm going to head down the street to try and track down this Tibetan joint for dinner. Maybe pay a visit to some of the shopping areas. Hopefully, I'll be able to get over to the Summer Palace tomorrow before my flight to Xi-an.

imperial_garden

2004-10-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

imperial_garden
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Spent the vast majority of today inside the Forbidden City. Roger Moore narrates the english language version of the audio tour. Pretty funny. Took over a hundred pictures while there, of varying quality. I really like this one of part of the Imperial Garden. The archecticture and history of the Imperial Palace is all pretty incredible.

Everything is taking considerably longer than I originally anticipated, so I'm expecting to have to scale back my original, exceedingly ambitious Beijing itinerary. I did get back to Tiananmen Square during the day today, and did some walking around in general. I'd been hoping to get up to the Summer Palace as well, but that just didn't happen. Possibly because I spent the morning relaxing, watching football and posting pictures.

I'm planning to get up ridiculously early tomorrow, take the bus to the subway, the subway to a location where big tour busses run off to the Great Wall and the 13 Tombs every half hour all morning. My book indicates that I should allow 9 hours for the trip. I'm hoping to get there for the 2nd or 3rd bus (they start at 6:30), so there may be a chance that I have time to see something else later in the afternoon.

I spoke to some students from Beijing University today, and found out that the National Day holiday is a week long for many people. This explains why everything is so packed. I won't be able to go through Mao's Mausoleum; I looked today and the line was at least 2 hours long.

I'm thinking I may try to head out to the Summer Palace by cab Wednesday morning. That should give me a few hours out there, since my flight to Xi-an doesn't leave 'til 2:30.

I managed to find the Beijing Duck place I was looking for this evening. Wow, was that good. It didn't occur to me until just now, but I should be taking pictures of food, too. The roast duck is just amazing. They coat it in molasses, pump it with air, fill it with boiling water, and dry it out before roasting it. First they give you a plate of skin and meat, served with shallots, a plum sause and thin pancake things. Then comes a soup made of the bones and innards. Both stages are delicious.

I've made the pictures a bit smaller so that I can post more of them. I can only post 10 mb a month, and I'm already through almost 1/4 of those. I altered my script so it generates thumbnails at 450 pixels width rather than 600, which should help.

I'm also not going to blog every picture I post. For those of you who want more picures, you can get a stream of them off of flickr directly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/china/
These are all the photos tagged china, so mine are interspersed with a couple other people's. I think you can get a stream of just mine by clicking the "Wasting Moments" link under any of my pictures. For those of you who are syndication fans, flickr provides both rss and atom feeds of images by user or by tag. You can subscribe to mine, and not even bother reading my blog. Although, if you want to do both, the blog also has an atom feed.

It's only 9:30, but I'm going to sleep pretty soon so I can get an early start on this Great Wall trip tomorrow. I'm not going to pony up for another day on the hotel network here, but there's a net cafe near where the bus should be spitting me out at the end of the trip tomorrow. I may post some thoughts, but may not get to post the next round of pics for another day or two though.

old_bells

2004-10-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

old_bells
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Last post for the morning. These are the Bells of Marquis Su of Jin. They date from the King Li Reign, in the Westrn Zhou province in the mid 9th Centry BC!! When I see things from 3 thousand years ago in Western museums, the objects never represent as much civilazation. It's just amazing how long ago a rich cultural heritage was established here.

Since I'm already eating the 10 bucks on the internet for the day, I'll hopefully post some Beijing pictures when I get back to the hotel tonight.

bund

2004-10-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

bund
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Looking across the Huangpu Jiang from the Bund. The Bund area is an intense, crowded raised walkway along the western banks of this beautiful river.

cityblock

2004-10-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

cityblock
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So much neon!

inflatable

2004-10-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

inflatable
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

I mentioned that the Friday I arived was National Day here. Shanghai was pretty crazy, and from what I gather, Beijing would have been even more lively at that point. I still suspect that the Tianamen Square area was probably more crowded than usual last night because it was still a holiday weekend. Here's some of the inflatable stuff. The two guys in the center are selling a variety of inflatable toys.

park_hotel

2004-10-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

park_hotel
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The building at left-center was my hotel in Shanghai. It was built in 1934. It was a bit more pricey than my other hotels, but the comfort after extensive travel was worth the price. Plus, they upgraded me to a suite.

Beijing

2004-10-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

I updated the setting that keeps non-members from posting comments. Kind of lame that that's the default. I wouldn't have thought to check. Clearly blogger wants all of you to blog.

So, it seems that as soon as I start to get oriented in Shanghai, it's time to head north to Beijing: a very confusing city. To start with, it's the size of Belgium. A major road can change names 6 or 7 times alongh it's length. Two such segments will only differ in name by 2 letters: Jianguomennei and Jianguomenwai Dajie. Literaly, the road inside or outside a gate that no longer exists. This naming issue foiled my attempts to find a couple of the places I was looking for.

My hotel's on the outskirts, a massive posh tourist hotel in the midst of construction and suburbs. I tried to do the bus / subway combo to get to the center of town this afternoon, but failed dismally. Well, not quite: I did find my way to Tianamen Square (much bigger than I expected) but it took me much longer than I anticipated. I took the bus the wrong way, and ended up in a pretty sketchy neighborhood. Got lots of odd looks while waiting for the return bus at the end of the line. I'm likely going to try again tomorrow, but fortuanately a cab rides only about 3 or 4 US dollars.

I'm still having much trouble finding the Internet cafes. The one's listed in Lonely Planet don't seem to exist anymore. Too much turnover. Just discovered that my hotel's got broadband that I can jack into in my room, though. It's a bit pricey, at 1 Y per minute, topping out at 80 Y for the day. That's really only about 10 bucks, and since I've thrown $5 at T-Mobile for an hours worth of connectivity before, it doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

So, I'm posting this from my room, shortly after eating an absurdly large and ridiculously spicy Sichuan meal. Chicken with green onions, red chiles, peanuts all drenched in chili oil. Amazing stuff. Plus a side of fried dumplings stuffed with pork. Now I'm really full, and really exhausted. I've been up before 6 both mornings here so far. That just has to stop! But I don't expect it will. I'm going to take it a bit slower tomorrow, although Beijing's really got too much to see. My hotel has ESPN, so I think I'm going to stick around here and see if the Sunday night game between St. Louis and SF is on. If not, maybe I'll sleep in. Either way, I think I need to get a 10:30 am or so start on the day. I'm hoping to get to the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple, the Forbidden City the Monument to the People's Heroes and the Mao Zadong Mausoleum tomorrow. I saw most of the stuff around the Forbidden City this evening, but it was all closed. The area was unbelievably packed. I'm not sure how much that is because it's a holiday weekend, and how much it is that this is just a huge city. But it was intense. Streets were shut down to allow for the throngs of padestrians. I couldn't even get to the Peking Duck place I was looking to eat at, and by then I was so worn I decided to make my way towards the Sichuan place instead. That got me out of the crowds, anyway, and the food was fantastic (although 3 hours after eating it, I'm still sweating).

Since I've got this connection in my room, I should be able to get caught up on photo posting tomorrow. I'm just too tired right now.

Um... Deer in my yard in Eugene??

2004-10-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

small-IMG_0031
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Okay, so this is strange. I'm at an Internet cafe in Shanghai. Last night, from my hotel (really expensive internet access), I could post through blogger, but couldn't access my blog. A bit of googling leads me to believe blogspot domain blocked in China.

Now I can't access blogger either (at least from where I am). I've tried a variety of anonymizers, but they're either blocked or don't support cookies. But flickr works. Alas, I can't get to a cd drive here. What a pain.

So, I'm having a fantastic time so far. Last night was a national holiday, so the streets were just insane. Everything was either inflatable or blinking. Seriously. Folks were buying and selling inflatable wings, hats, boxing gloves and a variety of inflatable bats and hammers. Random groups of teenagers and children would accost one another in the street with their toys. It was really neat. I actually was bonked by a couple of inflatable hammers at random.

It's unbelievable how well organized a city of 16 million people can be. It would be pure chaos if it weren't for all the police, military and other random public service folks exerting control over the throngs of people. Shrill whistles stop the flux of pedestrians when the lights change, and the crossing guards take their responsibilities quite seriously if someone tries to ignore their pleas (which it seems they always do).

My somewhat posh hotel upgraded me to a suite for the same price. More space than I need. I didn't realize this until today, but the elevator is key coded for my floor, where the suites are. I had been using a poorly lit stairway to get from the floor above mine to my own floor, but now I figured it out.

I got up super early today, and was on the streets again by seven-thirty. There's a bloody Starbucks down the road from me. My morning coffee cost twice as much as my breakfast (xiao long bao, a sort of dumpling / dough blob, quite tasty). Then I walked a couple miles down to the Bund, an area along the river separating Shanghai proper from the Pudung New Area. Scoped out the Bund tourist tunnel, a psychedelic train ride under the river, but decided to hold off on that. Wandered back up to my hotel, near the Peoples' Square. Walked around that area for a bit and found my way to the Shanghai Museum where I spent most of the afternoon. Amazing place. My camera battery ran out on the second of four floors, since I don't think I've charged it in a month. Must remember to charge it more frequently, like nightly. Got some really cool pictures of ancient bronze work, stone carvings and some ceramics. Was out of luck in the galleries of painting, calligraphy, seals, furniture & more. I may have to stop back and try to grab those last few pictures. It's pretty near the Shanghai Art Museum, which I hope to pay a visit to when I'm back down here. Admission was only 20Y, or about US$2.50.

Had a really good, really cheap dinner of stir-fried pork, shrimp and celery (among other ingredients), soup, salad (which I didn't eat), tea, slices of melon, an odd egg that was somewhat unrecognizable, but definitely hard-boiled, and an interesting fruity, custard-like dessert. All for under 50Y!! The place was somewhat near the French Concession area, near the Shanghai Library where the conference is. I was hoping to get online at the library, but it was closed (I still can't quite figure out why). But then I found this place, which is really a haven for gamers. Getting to this end of town involved the metro, which was a fascinating experience. Unbelievably crowded. Again, people with whistles trying to keep you from getting on the train while the doors are closing. When I was finally far enough up the queue/mob to get on one, the inertia of the crowd launched me onto the train when the doors opened, where I was packed into no space and got off 2 stops too late due to difficulty exiting. Had to backtrack on the northbound train. The number of people here is almost overwhelming. It's just too wonderful.

I've got to get up early tomorrow, and cab it to the airport for a 10am flight to Beijing. Hopefully the blogging will be easier from there. Shanghai is a beautiful city, and if I can find a way to get the photo stuff to work better, you'll see that for yourselves. Hope all's well on both coasts.

In Shanghai

2004-10-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

I'm here. First off, a note on time. I've set the timestamp to GMT +800. Hopefully that won't effect previous posts. So, it's 15 hours later here, than it is on the West Coast, 12 hours later than on the east coast. I'm posting this at quarter to 10 pm local time, so it's 9:45 am in NY and 6:45 am in Eugene. Sometimes I'll actually be in a different day, but I believe it 's now October 1 for us all.

I've got crazy airline stories, it's a national holiday here, the streets are insane, and I'm very tired. I'm going to wander around a bit more, then go to sleep. I'll be posting a bunch of photos sometime tomorrow, then Sunday it's off to Beijing.

Last US post for a while

2004-09-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

Now that I've mass emailed way too many people about this site, I'm even more resolute to make use of it.

So, it's almost time to go. I managed to pull everything together, although somewhat last minute (as usual). Now I've got a spare moment to post before my ride shows up. Weather.com shows that the rain seen by all 3 of my destination cities is going to be clearing up tomorrow. Suits me fine, since Eugene's rainy days will be nearly upon us when I return.

Just got word that my insurance is going to cover my immunizations after all. That's one less bit of debt for me when I get back. Whoo-hoo! If you read that list of things the other day, add to it a smattering of injections.

And speaking of said list, I have to say that it felt really odd to be registering a trip with the Dept. of State. I gave my government exact details of my physical whereabouts while on foriegn soil. Very unlike me, but I think it was a good idea. At a friend's suggestion, if I have time, I'd like to stop into an American Embassy and see if my info found its way into their database at all.

I keep thinking of last minute things to throw in my luggage: index cards for giving addresses to cabbies, eyeglass prescription in case I lose / destroy 2 pair contacts and 1 pair glasses, random little stuff like that.

On a completely unrelated note, according to this article in the Oregon Daily Emeral d (campus newspaper), only 14 percent of U. Oregon's funding comes from the legislature. That's just ridiculous.

Okay, well, next post will be from Shanghai.

Pre-Trip Silence

2004-09-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't posted in about 2 weeks. That's probably because I leave for China the day after tomorrow. I'm going to be visiting Shanghai, Beijing and Xi-an. Three free days in each, plus an extra 5 days in Shanghai for DC2004.

To give you an idea of the kind of things I've been doing to get ready to go:

Plane tickets and hotels
Chinese Business Visa
Electrical Outlet Adapters
Assembling first aid kit
Registering Trip with US State Dept.
Getting Renter's Insurance
Finding out China Eastern Airlines baggage policies
Getting my address book in order
Letting Credit Card providers know I'll be using my cards in china
Printing Business Cards
Buying random supplies (travel belt, compass, flashlight, shoes, other stuff)
Getting Traveler's Checks
Trying to learn a bit of Mandarin Chinese
Making photocopies of important documents
Packing, cleaning

In addition to all of this, I've been trying to find a new housemate. Plus, I moved my room to the larger one at the end of the hall. All my random crap is so much more spread out here. It's much less cramped.

Plus, I've still been finding time to watch too much football (if there's such a thing).

Hopefully, this is enought to explain my recent silence.

I should be posting here much more regularly while in China.

I've still got to tell lots of people that this blog exists. I'll do that tomorrow.

Football Season's Here

2004-09-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

Did almost nothing but football this weekend.

Disappointing Ducks game on Saturday. First non-conference home loss in 10 years. Really shouldn't be losing to Indiana. Nonetheless, the game was fun.

Running a fantasy league with many members of the ol' extended family this year. I'm just barely holding on to a victory over my dad this weekend. Tony Gonzalez can't catch a ball. Pennington had a great game. Martin had a fantastic game, and I had him on the bench. Argh. Play my brother next weekend, which should be a lot of fun.

I love this time of year!

Reception

2004-09-12T20:56:00.001-07:00

small-IMG_0180
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

And another from the reception.

Wedding

2004-09-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

small-IMG_0169
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

John and Hilary got married last weekend. Their ceremony was really nice. I got a bunch of good pictures, and a few blurry lousy ones. Here's one from the ceremony itself.

Trip's coming up soon

2004-09-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted in about a week. Been kind of busy. My trip is less than three weeks away! I got myself innoculated against some stuff on Friday. Going to get additional injections on Monday. Good fun.

GMail!

2004-09-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to get my hands on a GMail account. Thanks Brandon! I'm hoping to archive important stuff there, and I may take a stab at using it for some discussions that could take advantage of the built in thread association.

I'm itching to play with GMailFS, but that will likely have to wait a while.

Talking to Myself

2004-09-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated for a week. Probably because no one's reading, which, in turn, is probably because I've told no one I'm here.
Either way, I'll be letting people know about this site shortly, so thought I'd put up a bit of background info about this trip I'm preparing for. But I think that will be another post. Some family and friends may be sufficiently confused that they'll read the archives.
This weekend was insanely busy.
I finished my Visa application on Friday night and FedExed it on Saturday morning. Sent it to a company that handles visa applications with the PRC Consulate. I bit disconcerting to be sending my passport in the mail. It should be there tomorrow, so I can call them up and find out what info is missing.
Went immediately from Kinkos to my friends Hilary and John's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony at a beautiful park outside of Springfield. I had no idea said park existed, but it was a perfect choice for a wedding locale. I took a bunch of pictures, and may post one or two here with H&J's permission.
Sunday was the family fantasy football draft. I like my team. My housemates gave me shit for being on the phone talking about football (and computers) to parents, brother, 2 uncles & 3 cousins for about 24 consecutive hours Saturday night until post draft on Sunday. It was fun, and should add another level of cohisiveness to our already strong family bonds.
Spent all day today finishing the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Bibliography. This is the main reason I get to go to China, which makes working for 10 hours on Labor Day worthwhile. Nonetheless, verifying a couple hundred links is no way to spend an afternoon.
All told, things are coming together. As I said, full explanation of impending travel will come shortly. Until then, I'm the only one here, so I'm really just talking to myself anyway.

The Dead

2004-08-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

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Originally uploaded by Wasted Moments.

One more: Dead show from my birthday this year in Columbia Meadows (20040702). I'd just gotten my new camera a few days before the shows, and was amazed at the quality of pictures I was able to grab.

Oregon Country Fair

2004-08-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

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Originally uploaded by Wasted Moments.

I'm experimenting with photoblogging with flickr and blogger. This seems pretty cool. It doesn't take too much time, so could be an effective way to share experiences in Asia while I'm there.

Blogging Again

2004-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

So, I'm starting up a blog. Primarily it's (hopefully) going to be a mechanism for communicating with family and friends while I spend 16 days in China next month. I'm going to get warmed up to the blogging during the leadup time to this trip, and hopefully integrate playing with flickr and playing with blogger into one big mess o' blogging and photoblogging. Maybe the blog will outlive the trip. Maybe I'll post a variety of insightful and interesting things for some time to come. Then again maybe not; almost certainly not the insightful and interesting part.