November 2007 Archives

I just reviewed my archives for November 2007 and I didn't do as badly at NaBloPoMo 2007 as I thought I had. I only missed one day.

My goal was to moblog one photo and write one text post each day. Most days of November I accomplished both. Many of the days (Nov. 16 - 26th) that I was on the road, I was only able to send a moblogged photo with a bit of text. But on Nov. 25th, I failed entirely. It was the only day that I did not post a photo or text all day for the whole day. Oops.

All in all, I had hoped to get more writing done. Moblogging, or sending photos and/or text from my phone directly to this blog via Lifeblog and my data plan, is relatively easy. I just need to pick a photo that I like, open Lifeblog, type some text (non-qwerty mobile phone keyboard), and then push the send button and off it goes to my blog. Given I was in Ireland and England this month, my mobile bill will be painful when it arrives, but it was worth it.

I had grand plans about catching up on writing up all the big topics I have been wanting to blog about (mobile creativity, Whole Foods, PHP vs. Ruby on Rails, etc.), but writing up big topics and traveling don't mix, esp. when one's hotel / B&B does not have an internet connection.

There is always December.

Wed. Nov. 28, 2007

9:30am (GMT) - @ AA counter checking in, as the agent is asking all the usual questions, a disheveled posh-ish woman comes up and starts yelling at the agent about locked v. unlocked baggage, £65, etc. The agent tells her to wait, she keeps yelling, he finishes up with us and two security folk arrive to deal with crazy lady.

9:45am (GMT) - @ security having bags x-rayed, can hear the same bat shit crazy lady yelling at passport control about locked luggage.

10:10am (GMT) - @ Heathrow food court / shopping mall thing. Have successfully avoided the yelling lady. Have a lovely conversation with a London lawyer and her 3 year old daughter who likes my hair.

10:55am (GMT) - @ gate, bat shit insane posh-ish lady now yelling at 3 security people and 2 American Airlines agents about her luggage, a receipt and £65. I wish I had a tranquilizer dart and £65 in cash. I would give the bat shit insane lady the £65 pounds to shut her up and then tranquilizer her. I tell my mom that AA and the Heathrow security should kick her out of the airport.

11:30am (GMT) - Sitting in seat with power point. Praying to all the deities that rule airplanes that BSI Lady will not be in my row.

11:42am (GMT) - Guess who comes tripping down the aisle announced to everyone in a loud voice that she is VERY TIRED and VERY UPSET. She stops at each aisle and and window seat to announce to each passenger. AA crew members are appalled. She sits down 2 rows behind me.

11:43am (GMT) - BSI Lady is now yelling at a stewardess about her luggage and £65 pounds. The nice teenager next to her gets up and asks me if she can move to my row as there is an empty seat. I give the nice teenager the aisle seat.

11:57am (GMT) - The plane starts to taxi and BSI has found a sympathetic man in her row to calm her down.

12:10pm (GMT) - Up in the air. Plane has not blown up. BSI is still ranting and raving about her £65 and lack of receipt. Loudly.

12:45pm (GMT) - Beverage service starts. Typical AA flight back to the US, the Americans get coffee and apple juice, the Brits & Irish get drinks (wine, beer, and gin). Crew smartly refuses to serve alcohol to BSI.

1:32pm (GMT) - Lunch served. Gluten-free meal is another big winner. Green curry chicken with potatoes and green beans. A fresh salad and gluten-free mini-loaf of bread, plus fresh fruit. Dinner of teenager next to me looks and smells bad. Note to world: Order the gluten-free meal, it is much fresher and nicer.

1:41pm (GMT) / 5:41am (PST) - Is wondering why a number of really handsome men that I have seen in the last few weeks have rings on their middle left finger but on no other finger? Fashion or symbol... Anyone know why?

1:43pm (GMT) / 5:43am (PST) - Is happily drinking glass of moderately crappy wine. If you can't drink at 5:43am when can you? Even if it is sunny outside... All the better to read xml dev docs by.

1:44pm (GMT) / 5:44am (PST) - According to the back of the seat flight map, we are approaching Iceland. Will finish wine before the usual Greenland turbulence. Surprisingly BSI Lady is completely silent. Maybe asleep?

2:18pm (GMT) / 6:18am (PST) - Watching 60 Minutes on the back of the seat screen, a segment on glacier melt and penguins.

2:27pm (GMT) / 6:27am (PST) - back to reading docs. Not as nice as penguins.

2:46pm (GMT) / 6:46am (PST) - Just starting over Greenland's land mass. Sky outside looks like sunset, even though it is mid-day. According to the back of the seat flight map, we are on the top edge of daylight for the north.

3:46pm (GMT) / 7:46am (PST) - Watching some back of the seat screen show, Mark Harmon is still hot.

4:46pm (GMT) / 8:46am (PST) - Over North America, Baffin Island to be exact. 3006 miles to LA. Time to LA 5 hrs 39 miles. Just watched the cop show with Mark Harmon and the new Hairspray by lots of channel switching.

5:00pm (GMT) / 9:00am (PST) - back to reading docs. hmph.

9:07am (PST) - done ready all of the docs. Now on to the specs. vlargh. Just switched all my clocks to California time.

10:53am (PST) - 3:33 hrs to LA. Somewhere north of Regina, Canada. Need a good walk and a nap.

11:21am (PST) - After a number of hours of silence, BSI Lady is back ranting and raving about being charged £65. Truly extraordinary mental persistence. People like this should be the detectives on cold cases, if only they could see the forest for the tiny tiny tiny tree.

11:25am (PST) - Am now considering taking a change collection in the cabin to see if we can raise £65 to shut her up. I think I will take a nap instead.

11:26am (PST) - Now she is crying. Drugs, anyone? Mentally unstable, without a doubt.

11:29am (PST) - I have had to pay for overweight and/or extra luggage before up to 60 euros, and did not carry on, and on, and on, and yell, and rant, and go nuts for hours and hours. Hello! Weight restrictions! Hello, if you don't like it, leave stuff at home.

12:52 (PST) - Over Salt Lake City. I have officially officially hit bored. 1:25 hrs to LA, so says the back of the seat screen.

Tue 11.27.07 - Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth" in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.

Tue 11.27.07 - The romanesque ambulatory and contemporary sculpture at St. Bartholomew the Great.

Photos of these two trees taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Eden sent an email to NaBloPoMo 2007 participants today encouraging us to keep blogging strong to the finish line at the end of the week. I appreciate the encouragement, but I have utterly failed to post daily here at Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, due to traveling and a lack of wifi and/or mobile connection. I wanted to, the spirit was willing but the connections and flesh were weak.

Yes, I could have used my US sim chip to blog short notes to this space every night from my phone's Lifeblog (my UK sim chip does not have the needed email/ISP data plan that Lifeblog requires), but either tiredness or cheapness got the better of me most nights.

My biggest problem with blogging is that I always compose whole posts in my head when I am miles away from my computer and then when I get back and have the time to write it all out, edit, rewrite, and then publish the post, I am too tired or have lost the train of thought or...

Having a Nokia mobile camera phone with internet connection the last three years has greatly helped me to keep my computer from being the black hole of digital photos, as now I can post my photos to this blog or flickr when I take them, but my brain is still a black hole of writing / text / opinion posts. Either I need voice recognition software that will translate recorded ideas into text that then can be posted or I need a direct brain to blog link.

I even have a folder on my desktop with posts that are started but not finished, idea rough drafts, and whole written pieces that need revision before posting. I had hopped to use the November NaBloPoMo challenge to move those posts and ideas out of the folder and on to this space. Sigh.

Well, there is always December and I still owe y'all a bunch of photos from the last 11 days of traveling around Ireland and England. Yeah, that is what I will do on the 10 hour plane ride on Wednesday back to LA, I will edit photos and write posts, if I can wrangle a seat with a power port...

Fri Nov. 23, 2007 - Today was a big day for travel. Mom and I started out the day after checking out of the lovely & funky Litten House B&B by walking over to the Chichester Cathedral.

The dreary rain of Ireland and the off and on rain of Wednesday had fully cleared out and a good wintry wind came in its stead. I was all bundled up and it was brisk to say the least. Of course, I loved the clear, clean, cold air. Not only was it invigorating but it made for great exterior photographic light all day, be it at Chichester or Stonehenge or Old Sarum.

The wind bit the most and was downright cold on the Salisbury plain as we hurriedly trotted around Stonehenge. Mom wondered if it was warmer when they built Stonehenge out on that hill.

Tonight we walked from our B&B down to town to have dinner and it didn't feel as cold as this afternoon, due to lack of wind, but when I checked the temperature it was 32F or 0C!

Our "Stones: Cathedrals and Circles" tour of Southern England will continue tomorrow as we will visit the Salisbury Cathedral in the morning and Avebury in the afternoon before moving on to Oxford tomorrow evening.

Thurs 11.22.07 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Tonight I had a very non-tradritional Thanksgiving meal of the world's largest plate of mussels at Woodies in Chichester. Delicious.

Thurs 11.22.07 - This evening, Mom & I got stuck in over 2 hrs of traffic to go 7 miles...

When I first started traveling in college, I loved the "Let's Go" series of travel guides as they led to one to the cheapest of the cheap all over Europe. Sometime in my mid-to-late twenties they failed to satisfy and I moved my travel guide book loyalty to the Lonely Planet series. Lonely Planet had a wider range of budget, moderate, and higher priced options for each town, as well as write ups on more of the history and points of interest, less of "Let's Go"s nightlife and ultra-cheap focus.

I find Fodors guide books to be too stuffy, the DK guides to be very broad in terms of photos and visual diagrams but missing in actually moderate priced places to stay. So, I have kept my loyalty the last ten years to Lonely Planet. In 2004, I purchased the Lonely Planet Ireland guide and it was my faithful companion on Erika & I's 2004 Thanksgiving trip to Ireland, as well as my year at Trinity College, Dublin. But most of the Lonely Planet guide books I have used are written mostly by locals, not travelers, thus big bits are left out, the bits that locals wouldn't care about but travelers would.

Here is my list of things that I would love Lonely Planet to change, fix or cover in their otherwise excellent travel guide books:

1) No hotels near the major airports are ever listed. Not in the Ireland LP, not in the London LP, not in the Spain, nor Andalucia, nor Scotland, nor... Sometimes the most practical thing when you have an early departure or late arrival is stay within a mile or two of the airport. Lonely Planet, please put in a few airport hotels or B&Bs for each major airport. Thanks.

2) Area codes or Full Phone Numbers next to listings: The Lonely Planet guides list country phone codes in the back, and major area codes at the section head, but not next to the listing. While driving two nights ago, we were flipping to 3 separate section trying to get the full number to dial from my mobile to find a B&B to stay at. Very frustrating, esp. when one' mobile's sim chip is not from the same country as one is in.

3) Lonely Planet, please list wifi (wireless internet) locations, free wifi and for pay. This matters. Not just internet cafes or which places to stay have a stand alone computer, but please list wifi for every one of the listings in your books that has wifi. One of the hotels we stayed at in Ireland this last week had free wifi, one had none, and one had paid wifi. I would have booked my stay with preference for internet connection. All the better to blog with and finish up the client loose ends. kthnxbai.

4) Please list more neo-lithic, bronze age, and iron age or other non-major historical sites in the UK & Ireland. If you are a local writer for these guides, you probably think Americans or Germans or Italians are nuts for going to visit old hunks of rock out in muddy fields. These old sites are delightful and really worth exploring. Please list with some directions and explanations.

I am writing this from the Dublin airport where Mom and I are waiting to fly to London Heathrow to start our week in Southern England. I went to the big bookstore in the Dublin Airport mall to get a Lonely Planet England or UK guide so we can know where we are going and where we are going to stay. In an interesting twist, the whole section of travel guides at the airport had Mexico, California, Peru, Egypt, New Zealand, and many other smaller countries, but did not have a single travel guide for the UK, England or Wales. London (3 different publishers), Scotland (2 types) and Edinburgh, but no England or UK...

Hopefully, a bookstore at Heathrow will have a Lonely Planet England. ;o)

... for at least 15 minutes. I even needed sunglasses during those 15 minutes. Given that I left my sunglasses in my car in SoCal, I should be glad that the big dark heavy rain laden clouds returned promptly.

Today was Mom and I's last full day in Ireland for this trip. We ventured southwest from Letterkenny to Glenties and then down the N-56 to the N-14 via Donegal town to Sligo. Most of the drive was lovely. The above photo was taken on the small, one lane road to St. John's Point.

While in the Sligo area, we visited the Creevykeel Goort Cairn, Strandhill Beach with surfers (to quote one after Mom asked after the water temps, "It is feckin freezing!"), and then off to Carrowmore Megalithic Tombs just before sunset.

The sky was completely dark by 4:30pm and we were off down the N-4 to Dublin. Tomorrow we fly back to the UK for the last week of the trip.

Mon 11.19.07 - Today Mom & I drove from Donegal to Omagh to go to the Ulster American Folk Park. About 2/3 of the way through the park, the clouds cleared a bit to give a view of blue sky. Photo taken on the 'Pennsylvania' side of the park, thus the log cabin.

After a lovely early dinner at the Sperrin Restaurant on the A-5 just south of the Folk Park, we drove to Letterkenny in Donegal for the night. Tomorrow is Donegal and Sligo.

Photo of a Crane in Dublin taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

... so I can trot around the world taking photos of construction cranes. In lieu of winning the lottery, anyone want to sponsor me with a mobile art grant?

Conclusion from Day 18 of NaBloPoMo 2007 and Ms. Jen's blog : daily text posting whilst traveling is not necessarily compatible without spending too much on international data on one's mobile and/or trying to find wifi and the time to blog whilst visiting and exploring. Right now, we here at Black Phoebe are in a bit of a fail mode.

The photos are relatively easy but the text blogging, not so much. This whole thing is causing me more stress than necessary. The worst part is that I have quite a few blog posts I would like to write, but by the time I get to my computer late at night the last thing I want to do is write on mobile, or development, or life, or the world, or even possibly the universe, or the political / philosophical implications thereof. Or the recent daily impassioned post I have building in my head about my hate / hate relationship with PHP, PEAR, and the Flickr API. Or even what I did that day in travel-land.

Bah. So, rather than continue my blogging self-flagellation party here, I am now going to turn off the computer to research what we are going to do in the next few days in Ireland, where we should go, and possibly where we should stay. Otherwise, Mom and I will be driving around the M-50 in circles.

Sat 11.17.07 - Walking to brunch.

Fri Nov 16, 2007 - The Registrar, Jurgen, The Vice Provost, Ruth, The Vice Chancellor, Dermott, and another College official.

Fri 11.16.07 - Mom, Me, and Ruth just before entering Trinity's Public Theatre for the Commencement ceremony.

Here are a few tidbits from a late Thursday evening in London on the eve of going to Dublin for graduation:

1) Why I love National Blog Posting Month #2... Quite a few of my very favorite bloggers who usually blog very irregularly are participating this month. I have been looking forward to my RSS reader queue for the daily tidbits from the following:
Fussy
Heather Powazek Champ : Words
Ugly Green Chair
Wordridden

Maybe when NaBloPoMo is over Mrs. Kennedy, Heather, Whitney, and Jessica will post more frequently. Now if we could have only convinced The Adnostic and Hadashi to do NaBloPoMo this month!

2) I am too tired to post my photos from today here. I will blog them later. My Mom arrived in London from LA today and very early tomorrow morning we depart for Dublin. Tomorrow is graduation for moi at Trinity.

3) After Ireland, Mom and I were planning to go to Spain, but I canceled the tickets to Spain tonight. We went to dinner with Donna from WOM World this evening and I was gushing about my favorite medieval English architecture to my Mom and Donna, when Mom suggested that we ditch Spain for a tour of Southern England next week.

Donna departed after dinner, Mom and I talked about it some more and I canceled our tickets to Malaga and hired a car for England instead. Avebury, Salisbury, and Wales, here we come...

4) This evening I gave away the last of the seven Peek-a-Poohs that I brought with me. Donna's Nokia N95 is now the proud wearer of a purple Libra Peek-a-Pooh.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 on Wed. 11/14/07 at the Future of Mobile.

Wed. Nov. 14, 2007 - Future of Mobile - BFI IMAX Theatre

Carson Systems / Carsonified put on the Future of Mobile today at the BFI IMAX theatre next to Waterloo station. Per my usual, here are my typed notes from the conference. Due to the theatre-style seats, lights directly in face, and IMAX screen, the likelihood that I will be able to type an accurate translation is very low. After the first break, I moved seats. Photos to come.

*****

9:10 am - Tony Price - Keynote
AMF Ventures
Mr. Price talks very fast. Some of what he is saying is very good, but so fast, it is not sinking it. Some of what he is saying is cheesy. Cut out the cheese, slow down, and this would be a good talk.
"Who will I trust with my digital footprint?"
Tony states that the screen is not the thing, sound and uniqueness is the thing with mobile.

Tues. Nov 13, 2007 - All Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 while walking around the City of London.

Thanks to my high school World History instructor, Mr. Giroux, and my freshman in college history professor, Dr. B. Bradford Blaine , I have a deep and abiding first love of medieval art, architecture, history, and accomplishments (go visit the Magna Carta, if you doubt anything good could have come from 450 A.D. to 1500 A.D.).

Mr. Giroux was the best sort of extra bright and eccentric teacher for a 15 year old to have. He taught several generations of high school students and was a couple of years away from retirement by the time I passed through his class in 1982-1983. He started out the day by saying to me, "Miss Hanen, your uncle John (class of 1969) was one of the best students I have ever had, I expect you to do better." I had no choice, I did. When my brother arrived the next year, Joe received the following speach, "Mr. Hanen, your uncle John and your sister Jenifer were two of the best students I have ever had, I expect you to do better." He didn't, but Joe still loves all things history and medieval regardless of his performance in Mr. Giroux's class.

Long memories and family jokes aside, Mr. Giroux spent about 1/3 of the year covering the middle ages when they were only 1,000 years out of a potential 10,000 to cover. Mr. Giroux was openly and deeply in love with Eleanor of Aquitaine, of which their separation in centuries and stations in life is why he never married. Best of all, when Mr. Giroux retired the LA Times did a big article on his full scale model of Aquitaine that inhabited his whole living room and took 30 years to build.

How could one not fall in love with all things 500 - 1500 A.D. with a 9th grade history teacher like Mr. Giroux?

Sun. Nov 11, 2007 - Today is Remembrance Day in the UK, Veteran's Day in the US, and "Red Poppy" Day according to Ms. Jen.

Starting this Thursday, while at Chicago O'Hare airport, I saw a few red poppies pinned to coat lapels. Growing up in SoCal, I don't remember red poppy pins as a way to symbolize the Great War (WW1), although my Mom says they wore them to school when she was a child in the 1950s in Los Angeles.

The first time I can remember noting them was in Ireland two years ago. Ever since arriving here in the UK early on Friday morning, I am have been seeing Red Poppy lapel pins en masse.

Walking around Hyde Park, the Great War Memorial, the Australian Memorial, and St. James's Park this afternoon, red poppy wreaths and lapel pins were everywhere. I apparently just missed the big parade, but was just in time for the Welsh Guard veteran's march.

Nokia's Lifeblog for one's mobile phone and PC was released in 2004. I had the opportunity to participate in a project with Lifeblog in late 2004 through to early 2005.

I use Lifeblog all the time, on all of the Nokia phones I have owned since Dec. 2004, as the best way to view my photos on my phone, or to send the photos as MMS's to my Flickr account, or to post the photos to my website using Lifeblog's Atom posting to this Movable Type 4 powered blog (Thanks to the MT team for making this happen with 4.0, you guys rock). I don't use Lifeblog for the PC, as I have a Mac.

Though Lifeblog is the single most useful application on any of the Nokia N-Series phones that I have owned, I have a few beefs with Lifeblog:

1) Lifeblog has been stagnant and has not moved with the times, as there have been very few changes or upgrades to the mobile app since 2004.

2) Lifeblog is PC-centric and there is not any Mac interface. Wake up, Nokia, there is now a significant Mac population out there. Many of us own your phones. (Nokia's Multimedia Transfer (beta) for Mac does not count, as it is not an app for both my computer and my phone).

Here is my wish list for Lifeblog:

1) Lifeblog, interface with my Mac. Thank you. Be it a Lifeblog for Mac or a complete and consistent interface with iPhoto, I care not, just do it. I prefer Lifeblog over iPhoto, as Lifeblog for the computer also keeps track / a history of my mobile video, emails, and texts - i.e. my whole mobile life.

2) Lifeblog, I have this lovely Nokia N95, it has GPS. Please take the GPS data and embed it into the EXIF data of my photos, so that when I send them to Flickr or my blog via Lifeblog I can use the geo-coordinates to map the photos or videos. ShoZu does it, so can Lifeblog.

3) Lifeblog, please have an update the app menu function on the mobile. ShoZu does. I never know if you have a new version until I go to the website and download and .... And while you are at it, give me an "About Lifeblog" menu choice so that I know what version of Lifeblog I currently have on my phone.

4) And last but not least, actually the most important request to the list... Lifeblog, please make your mobile app work with internet data rather than email, or let me decide which to use. When I am at home in California, this is fine to have to use the email / ISP data on my phone, as I have a contract with AT&T that allows me to have an email connection. But when I am abroad (like now) I have a pay as you go sim chip that only allows for phone, text, and internet data but NO email / ISP data. So, I can't use Lifeblog when I am in Europe. Lifeblog, ShoZu uses regular ole' internet data, please give me that option. Thank you.

Here I am at the end of my wish list and I should honestly ask myself, why not use ShoZu, as they have GPS interaction with my photo EXIF data and they use internet data rather than MMS or email? Well, ShoZu does not post to my blog. Lifeblog does. ShoZu has lots of ShareIt partnerships with companies, but not with my mt-atom.cgi script. Lifeblog does have a connection to my mt-atom.cgi script.

Come on, Lifeblog, sharpen your sword. Get out there, be the best.

Ok, so I am not doing so well on the daily blog post business... I had vowed I would give y'all text and photos in separate posts each day. Late last night I got the photos up and was too tired to write words about my great, fun day in Oxfordshire. Here I am today feeling repentant...

Oh well. Y'all forgive me, right? ;o)

Today I had loose plans that due to various travel schedules have not resolved themselves, now I have a free day in London. What to do? What to do?

My plans for the next few days until the Future of Mobile on Wed. and my Mom arriving on Thurs., is to visit with friends and see London during the day, and then work on various bits in the evenings. With the on set of darkness around 4:30 or 5pm, I need to hop to it and not be sitting in bed at 11:37am on a Sunday morning....

Hopping to it!

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri Nov. 9, 2007 - My plane arrived at Heathrow at 6:38am this morning. I did not really sleep at all on the plane nor eat after last evening's lovely gluten-free plane meal. The Heathrow line for passport control was very long, but the agent I dealt with was very nice and easy going. Thanks, sir!

Just a little before 8am found me at Paddington Station and off to my hotel. Damian the fabulous desk clerk / manager was able to get me into a room by 10am, where upon I showered and meant to take a 2 hour nap before going to lunch and then to the Regent's Street Apple Store to watch the big to do for the UK release of the iPhone. Six hours later I woke up for a deep sleep.

After much rushing, I arrived at the scene of the London iPhone geek queue by 5pm. I found Steve Marshall right off the bat standing about 20th in line, as he had tweeted his placement in the queue, and Dave Stone who was observing from the edge of the sidewalk. For the next hour, I hung out with Steve and Dave, as well as chatting with various mobile company folk who were friends of Dave's. It was a blast. The security and cops were a little over organizing, as the crowd wasn't overly large or obnoxious but instead was happy and excited. Free pizza and champagne was given out to folks in line by local merchants, lots and lots of UK press was out and about interviewing folk. All in all, darned good spectacle and fun.

After Steve and the rest of the line was let in the Apple Store to make their purchases, Dave and I went around the corner to the Liberty Bar to have a drink with Walid and Sokratis of TrustedPlaces as well as Paul Walsh. Dave and I had a lively conversation about mobile, our various punk youth experiences, running with the Trickster, and other bits, which melded into a lively conversation with Paul and Sokratis about the future of the web, the mobile web, and device adnostic web standards. Good fun. An excellent way to start out a trip to London.

From there I went off to find food, as the others had to go their ways. Now I am back at my hotel and am hoping to actually go to sleep before 1 am London time...

Thurs. Nov. 8, 2007

Flying through the Air with the Greatest of Ease
or The small, bouncy child version thereof
or the non-Twitter but NaBloPoMo version

Approx. 4:30pm (PST) or 12:30am (GMT) - After a long and stressful week that included a scheduled small nervous breakdown from 5:05 pm to 5:07 pm on Tuesday afternoon, I am on a Boeing 777 flying over the Great Lakes en route to London. London Calling, the November edition.

Due to completing tasks and finishing my Jane Austen-a-thon, I did not get to sleep until 2am. When the alarm rang at 6:04 am, I was hurting from too little sleep. No matter, zip bags up, and get them out to the car. I drove over to my brother's house and together we drove up to LAX.

My first flight was uneventful as I cat napped. The plane landed in Chicago a bit early and I miscalculated time, I thought I had an hour and a half until boarding my next flight to London, it was really 45 mins. I had a bit of steamed rice and mixed veg at the Manchu Wok place at the food court and a lovely chat with some folks from Yorkshire who had just visited their grandkids in Houston. I then went for a walk, got a little lost, and kept hearing "Last boarding call for London gate K-12" over the paging system. Oops. Last one on the plane.

The flight to London is going well so far. I have the "H" right aisle seat and the block of the middle 5 seats is occupied by a woman and her three children under 6 years old, of which the two boys are bouncing off the seats, walls, aisles, etc. Should be interesting. The Simpsons movie has them somewhat quieted down but the oldest is still kicking the seat in front of him. The lady in front of him is watching the Transformers movie.

The best part of seat backs with video screens is being able to vaguely watch the various movies in one's view, partial attention with no sound. The best way to watch a movie. Unless one is having a Jane Austen-a-thon or Kevin Smith-a-thon, then it should be one movie at a time with sound.

The meal service is now coming by and it is the very first time I called beforehand and ordered a gluten-free meal. I am quite curious what it will be.

mt_20071108_230114218.txt

To quote the Bouncing Souls, "Here we go"...

Tomorrow is the big day: the departure for London Calling, the November Edition or the Future of Mobile Edition, as well as, Dublin Calling, Ulster Calling, and Andalucia Calling.

As I have started all the packing and the last stages of planning, I had to run lots of errands today. One of the errands took me to the Main Place Mall in Santa Ana, so that I could obtain a variety of Peek-a-Poohs for the small Hickseys. Whilst at the Mall, I stopped in at the AT&T/Cingular store to inquire as to why my sim chip has been going screwy of late. Some days my phone announces that it is Cingular. Some times AT&T. And some days, oddly, T-Mobile. What?!?!?! For fear of a large roaming bill, I decided to stop in to the AT&T/Cingular store and see what was up.

At the store, I found three men there, two obviously clerks and one in a suit, of which all three matched up my idea of the typical mobile / cell phone store employees: Mr. Indifferent, Mr. Helpful/Nice, and Mr. Pindick. When I walked in Mr. Indifferent and Mr. Pindick ignored me. Mr. Nice asked after what I needed, I explained to him that I was wondering if my old school AT&T sim chip from 2004 is on its last legs and described the issues I was having with it. Mr. Nice was very helpful, said yes I needed a new sim chip, and recommended where I could get a new AT&T sim chip without paying $25 for a new one and having to sign up for a new contract that his store would require.

I then asked when AT&T will be upgrading their 3G network. Mr. Nice did not know, he suggested I ask Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager and Mr. Pindick. Over to the other two I went and inquired. Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager asked which plan I had, I told him that I had an old school data plan from 2004, he was impressed. But his phone rang and he walked off to answer it.

Mr. Pindick, after arguing that I could have had an unlimited data plan since 2004, asked to see my current phone, I pulled my N95 out of my purse of which Mr. P. inspected.

Mr P: "Do you know that your phone is European manufactured?"

He didn't give me time to answer, "No shit, Sherlock, that is why I bought it."

Mr. P: "This phone does not work on the American 3G network, only the European and Asian ones. Which is why you don't have a good 3G connection with our network. You need an American 3G phone."

On he pressed. Me, repressing a snotty reply to the effect of "Cingular/AT&T has a 2.5 G network, the "EDGE", which is why I am asking when you will be upgrading to a REAL 3G network." He went on...

Mr. P: "Nokia has released an N95 for the American market."

Me: "No...." ((BLAH))

Mr. P as he turns my phone over and fondles it: "The American N95 has a black cover (his thumb rubs over the back cover of my phone repeatedly), instead of the purple one that this one has."

Me: ((Mr. Pindick is having thumb sex with my phone!!! AGH!!!))

Mr. P: "The new Nokia lacks a camera lens cover and has a bigger battery. Too bad you don't have that phone, you wouldn't have the problems with the network."

Me: "When will AT&T be selling them?" ((Knowing they aren't at this time and knowing even if I had the new Nokia N95-3 for the US market that the Cingular/AT&T network would still be slow...))

Mr. P: ((????)) [He did not answer.]

Me, smiling and taking my poor abused phone back: "Thank you."

Mr. P, voice dripping with condescension: "I guess you need a better plan and a better phone."

Me: leaving.

Going to a cell phone / mobile carrier retail store has become as unpleasant as going to a car dealership. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable as the call center folks can't help me replace my sim chip.

Dear Mobile Carriers, please screen out the Mr. Indifferents and Mr. Pindicks of the when you are hiring for your stores. Thank you.

Thur 11.01.07 - In Alex's driveway.

Guy Fawkes wanted to blow up the new order (the Protestant Ascendency) to return to the old order (Catholicism). Today, I am going to have to blow up the old order (a mishmash of PHP4 & 5) to install the new order (PHP5 with PEAR & PDO). Wish me luck, taking down foundations is always risky...

How is it that England has a bonfire night on Guy Fawkes Night, Ireland has a good bonfire on Halloween, but we here in the US don't have a good bonfire night to start the descent into winter? Extending daylight savings time a week doesn't count.

We could argue that here in California we had a month of bonfires of the wrong sort.

I have spent all day today digging away in the Flash and PHP Salt Mines. I am very tired but am hours away from being done. I am now drinking tea in a attempt to revive myself, so I can keep going.

I had lots of thoughts earlier today for NaBloPoMo posts but now they have all escaped my head. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

Now back to the the salt mines...

Six months ago today, on May 4, 2007, I moved into my new apartment with only what was needed for the immediate weeks and full intentions to go back to my brother's garage loft to get the rest of my boxes. I did get my books a couple of months ago, but I have been too busy, too over committed, to get the rest of the boxes and unpack.

I have said yes to too many projects and jobs. I feel like I have been running like a hamster on a habitrail wheel, lots of running but going no where. The worst part of the overly-busy, too many projects, too much yes-ing of the last few months, is that I don't feel like I have done anything well.

I am looking forward to the next few weeks in Europe as a time to take a BIG deep breath and slow down.

In the boxes at my brother's contain many necessary things in which to live an adult life, but until I can clear a few days from my schedule, I will continue to eat with plastic forks, as I have no idea which box my silverware is in...

December, when I get back, I will clear the first three days to make friends with the spiders in my brother's storage area.

No. I keep trying, but no, I can't.

Why? I can only get as far as the above title before Movable Type's AJAX conspires against my Nokia N95's browser. I have tried to use the file uploader, which I was able to use from my phone's browser with MT 3.4, but in MT 4 the file uploader uses Lightbox and I can't toggle around in it enough to press "upload" on my phone. And for whatever reason, in the mobile browser, I am unable to fill any text into the "body" of the post. Frustrating. I could do all of this from my Nokia N80 and the N95 with MT 3.4, but not with Movable Type 4.0.

Bah. Desktop/Laptop-centric blogging software. Bah.

What ever happened to Progressive Enhancement and Unobtrusive AJAX? Have Steve, Jeremy, and other standardistas been preaching to the wind? I should hope not. Web based software and applications should be device agnostic and the site should work whether the device has javascript or not.

Why try and why care? In less than 5 days, I get on a plane for Europe for the great "Ditch Thanksgiving 2007 Tour" or the "Let's cash in frequent flyer miles go to London, Ireland, and Spain for 3 weeks Tour". Whilst I am gone, I don't want to pay AT&T my arm and Scruffy's leg for international data fees to post photos and text to this blog, so I will be using my UK Vodafone sim chip with Pay As You Go that I have overly topped up. Only problem is that sometime in the last year, since I was last last ( previous to the last time) in the UK, Vodafone changed their PAYG plan and it is really really hard to mobile blog with the non-contract PAYG.

When I was in the UK for various events in 2006, I was able to to use about £20 per week on PAYG to send my photos as MMS's to my Flickr account, Flickr would then send them on to my blog. At the beginning of Ocober, when I was in London for FOWA 2007, I found that it appeared that I sent photos to Flickr via MMS, my N95 confirmed the photo was sent, and later when I would check there would be no photo on Flickr. Vodafone UK's MMS was not interacting with Flickr.

When I attempted to use Lifeblog, it was a no go as Lifeblog uses email/ISP data to send and with a PAYG account one does not get email/ISP data. I then tried to use Flickr's mobile uploader, but that did not work as it wanted to go through the MMS to send the photo. ShoZu was not working for me at all while in London and upon reading ShoZu's forum's it is not enough to change your Access Point, you have to reactivate for each APN.

The best part is that Vodafone PAYG's data plans, both 3G & WAP, have Flickr blocked as adult / unappropriate content. The whole week I was in the UK this Oct, I tried to get Vodafone to unblock it to no avail.

Vodafone, you may have the best 3G connections in the UK and Ireland, but you live in the dark ages. Flickr should not be blocked, nor should my MMS. If I pay you for a sim chip and top up, let me use the PAYG £s however I want. Don't trottle me. Give me 3G unblocked, give me MMS, give me email/ISP. I will pay for it, give it to me.

I want to be able to use my Nokia to blog as I go, not wait until I get back to my computer to bluetooth the photos to my MacBook Pro and then load them up to Movable Type 4, if I have a wifi connection (the UK yes, Ireland & Spain most likely no). Thus, my experiments this week with trying to post directly from my phone's browser to my MT4 installation. If it works here, it should work in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. Except it isn't working here due to the MT4 obtrusive, non-progressive javascript.

Fri 11.02.07 - A malti-poo seen at the groomers.

While waiting for the Pogues to go on last night, Julie Wanda, Wes, and I stood in the beautiful art deco lobby of the Wiltern Theatre and watched the world go bay. Wes and I both wanted to get a drink and Wanda warned us off, "The drinks are bad and expensive. DON'T do it."

Now wine is really the only alcohol I can consume without getting sick, really sick, due to allergies to brewer's yeast, wheat, rye, corn, and barley, as well as gluten troubles (no beer). The grape is my friend. Except many wines are not my friend, as wineries use a lot of hidden ingredients that are not listed on the bottle and I am allergic to some of them. The worst of it is that many wineries use oak chips with wheat gluten to give that oak-ey taste, and that becomes a celiac problem. Given that the US does not require all the wine additives to be listed on the bottle, drinking a glass of wine can be a crap shoot. When wine is good, it is very good. When it is bad, it is very bad.

The cheaper the wine, the more likely that it will be a dreadful headache in a bottle. Wineries add a variety of sugars, flavors, and chemicals to non-vintage grapes to make the wine tasty and higher in alcohol, thus the evil wine headache. American wineries do this (avoid any wine labeled "California" rather than a county or a wine region). Chilean wineries do it. So do the Australians. etc. etc. etc.

I have had a ton of folk tell me they don't drink wine due to the fact it gives them a headache. If you go to a reputable wine shop, like the Wine Country, and attend one of their tastings, you can learn more about vintage and regional wine and which ones are drinkable and which are not. In my experience, the drinkable, no-headache wines, tend to be over $10 a bottle and are usually not sold at my local grocery store, or if they are at the local grocery store they are over $15 a bottle.

And I am hear to tell you that due to economics in food & beverage business, the likelihood that any of us will find a drinkable, no headache wine by the glass at a bar or restaurant or concert venue is very very slim. Most bars can get [Name Large Company Swill Here] for under $4 a bottle from their distributor, pour up to 5 glasses of wine on the bottle, and then charge you $5-7 for your headache. Do the math, it is too good for them to turn down.

Even the *supposed* "premium" wines like BV, Chalone, Kendall Jackson, etc., sold by the glass at many restaurants also are mass produced by very large companies and have many unlisted additives (BV is a huge headache in a bottle for me). The LA Times earlier this year in its weekly Food section reported that there is a movement afoot to get legislation passed that would require all wine in California to label all ingredients and additives. It is not just the big producers but also little wineries have piped up in opposition to this movement as they say it takes the "mystery" out of wine making. I call bullshit on this. Your mystery is making me sick.

I have poured over the big distributor's catalogs while in the office at Alex's, I can tell you many of the non-headache wines start at $9 - 11 per bottle via the distributor, even if you or I can buy that same bottle at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods for $12 (TJs is using economies of scale to make a slim profit). What bar owner is going to get the good wine when they can make oodles off the cheap wine?

But it is a self-defeating loop, as then customers won't buy the wine after a while due to it giving them a headache, the bar then says, "We don't really sell wine, so we should only get the cheap stuff." The bartenders are skeptical and when you ask, "Do you have wine?", they make a face and thus sell less wine.

We have broken the cycle at Alex's by finding a decent priced, decent tasting, not-too headachey wine (Sangre de Toro), that customers like a lot and the bar sells before the open bottles go bad. So, when I am out at another concert venue, I am always hopeful that they too have taken the plunge to get better wine... I am also hopeful for world peace, too. I am an optimist.

Last night, at the Wiltern, they were serving a mass produced Australian white and red. Julie warned me off of it, and I foolishly hoped it might be decent. $7 later, I had a glass of wine in hand. It tasted decent on the first few sips and then degraded from there. Halfway through the headache started and I today I have had a huge headache all day. A headache from less than one glass of wine.

And I was charged $7 for the headache. Nice.

Wiltern, you are a great concert venue, you can serve good wine and still make a profit without gouging your customers. Thank you.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Get your engines started, here we go, National Blog Posting Month!!!!!

For the next 30 days, I will be posting not just mobile blogged photos everyday, but also text / writing posts everyday. I have tons of things that I have been meaning to write for you all in a folder on my desktop, but I never seem to allow myself to actually blog it due to time restrictions and the distractions of life. Well, time restrictions and deadlines will have to line up 2nd to blogging this month.

From Nov. 16th to the 28th, it may be a challenge for me to get something here everyday on time, as I will be traveling in Ireland and Spain with spotty to no internet connection, so with the help of my trusty Nokia N95 on those days I will be blogging from my mobile.

Been having trouble posting to your blog with any regularity? Well, join us. Even if you can only post a photo a day or a few sentences, giving 10 - 30 minutes a day to blogging will make it easier to blog, you a better writer or photographer or podcaster or video-ist or artist or.... Do it!

Thanks to Mrs. Kennedy for organizing NaBloPoMo!