The dogs are barking and the birds are singing. First light hasn’t yet hit Porto, Portugal today, but I’m awake, a victim of jet lag and an inability to sleep in spite of being dead tired.
Ah well … gives me a chance to catch up on my blogging!
I flew into Lisbon, Portugal yesterday, planning to take the train up the coast to Porto, where I’m attending an Intel eLearning conference. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed, causing me to miss the last train … so I had to rent a car, with interesting challenges:
At about 3AM local time I was finally 300 km farther north and in my Porto hotel room – ready to sleep about 4 hours and then get down to the conference, which is being held in the Alfandega, a converted riverside warehouse. Getting there in my rented car was a little enjoyable, too:
In any case, I’m here, the conference is great, and Porto is an amazing city. Here are just a few photos of things that caught my eye – hopefully there will be many more over the next few days:
I’m in Taipei with a colleague for meetings with Asus.
Fortunately, through a combination of good timing and good luck we’ve been able to see and do a few things while here, including visiting the Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building in the world) and parts of the city.
Here are a couple of the highlights:
Note, if you check the photoset on Flickr, you’ll get the full titles and descriptions …
I recently traveled to Cairo to speak at the Intel Learning Alliance summit.
The conference was great, and I met many, many wonderful people. So was the city, and I made sure to take an extra day or so to ensure I could see at least a few of the sights.
The first few are people, and if you want the details on who they are and what they do, you might want to go to Flickr to see all the notes. The majority of the photos, however, are of the city and architecture …
It’s been tough re-adjusting to normal life after our Hawaii trip.
This morning was cold, wet, and punctuated by the arrival of 200+ stampeding emails flooding my work in-box. Ah well … it was great while it lasted.
Every so often, I’m going to post pictures of what we did and saw in Hawaii … and here’s the first one. It’s a photo I took on the deck of the USS Missouri, the ship on which General Douglas MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender in Tokyo bay. This was the surrender that formally ended World War II.
And here’s the exact spot it happened:
The Missouri is now docked in Pearl Harbor, overlooking the last resting place of the USS Arizona. Ironically, that’s where the WWII began for America, when Japan launched a surprise attack on December 7, 1941, the “date that will live in infamy.”
From the somewhat cool and gently gratifying department: I’m in the Shmap.
What is the Shmap, you ask?
Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest.
They’re available for iPhone and iPod touch, and they use photos that amateurs like myself have taken. Here are the two places my photos are being used:
As you’ve undoubtedly noticed if you’ve been reading my blog lately, I’ve been in Nashville attending the NAESP conference. Great city, great conference, and this is a great opportunity to check out the new Wordpress gallery feature.
Some of my Nashville photos, after the link … click on any to see larger versions (and again to get a full-size version.) Oddly, the multi-file upload feature promisedinWordpress 2.5 did not work.
It’s been ages since the latest outage, but yes, Flickr is down right now.
Naturally it’s right after I come back from a nature walk by the Fraser River. I’ve never, ever seen it so calm as I saw it today … hardly a ripple anywhere. The biggest disturbance on the surface of the water was caused by a solitary seagull.
Unbelievable. I’ve never seen a river so calm – as calm as a mountain lake sheltered by surrounding peaks on a calm day.
[ update: Flickr's back up, and here's one of the photos ]
I’ve sort of made a New Year’s resolution. Silly of me, I know.
But it’s not a real New Year’s resolution. It’s not like I solemnly stated it or something at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. It’s just something I think I want to do.
I’d like to take at least one picture, every day of 2008, that I’m happy enough with to upload to my account at Flickr. (Which automatically updates, by the way, via the magic of widgets, my photos blog page.)
I’ve already missed a day … but only one day. And I think I’m going to keep trying.
Here’s today’s effort … a detail of a painting by my brother-in-law, Jeroen Vermeulen.
Hi John,I am delighted to let you know that one of your photos witha Creative Commons license has been selected for inclusionin the newly released third edition of our Schmap VancouverGuide:Science WorldIf you like the guide and have a website, blog or personalpage, then please also check out our schmapplets -customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap VancouverGuide, complete with your published photo:http://www.schmap.com/schmapplets/p=18955080N00/c=SE28031505Please enjoy the guide!Best regards,Luke Ritchie,Managing Editor, Schmap Guides
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
I'm a software exec who cares about UX and UI, scours web & social media, lives in Canada, plays hockey, uses a Mac (mostly). Oh, and I blog and speak at conferences.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
