No Slippage!
Earlier this month I lost the first gadget of my life. A brand new iPod Touch. Fracking thing slipped out of my pocket in a cab and was gone before I even realized it. After mourning for weeks I knew I needed a better plan for the replacement. I tried to do the honest thing and went to the Apple Store looking for some kind of rubberized thingy what would attach to the iPod and keep it from being so dang slippery but no luck. They have approximately 10 million of those things for iPhones, but not a single one for the Touch. And since they are just slightly different sizes… well forget it. So, what to do. I started thinking about about things I’ve owned in the past that I didn’t lose, and which ones of those were definitely not slippery. The answer was immediately obvious. A skateboard.
I went down to the closest skate shop I know of, which is unfortunately smack dab in a mall, and bought a yard of black grip tape. I point out that I bought the black stuff, not the multicolored or diecut stuff because when I pointed at it in the shop, and said “the black stuff, right there next to the Animal Chin DVD” the kid at the counter said “What DVD?” and I said “Animal Chin” and he said “who?” and I said “Fucking Animal Chin for fucks sakes you work at a skate shop and you don’t know who the hell Animal Chin is what the fuck is this world coming to?” Actually I didn’t say that last bit, I said “the Powell DVD with the asian guy on it, to the left of that” and the kid said “oh.”
Going to Yrup
I finally stopped putting it off and booked the first chunk of my travel plans for the end of the year. As I may have mentioned previously I’ll be spending December as a resident in Vienna, Austria thanks to monochrom as well as a good chunk of the previous and following months. Since I’ll be in Europe for about 2 months I’m going to do what I can to check out neighboring cities and countries as much as I can, as much as time allows. Though I don’t want to stress about it too much. I’m trying to apply my patented “figure it out as I go” travel planning to much of this which is a bit zen, and a bit nerve racking all smashed up together. What I’ve got figured out at this point is that I fly from LA to London on around Nov 20th, and then back from London to LA around Jan 15th. If you are perceptive you already figured out that London is not Vienna, and are probably asking WTF? Well I’m using the magic of Frequent Flier Miles for that part of the trip and I could use them to get to London, but not to Vienna. London is closet to Vienna then LA so I figured that would be a good first step. It is right? Right?
I’m looking at a few of the econo-inter Europe airlines to get me from the UK over to Austria but if anyone has any suggestions I’m all ears. Opodo seems like a good springboard. Anyway.. I need to get there fairly quickly as I’m speaking at Roboexotica 2007 which begins on the 22nd. The theme of this years conference is “The Ghost in the Machine” and I’ll be applying some of those theories to online communities and giving a talk that, for the moment anyway, I’m calling The inmates have taken over the asylum… but that’s OK because as it turns out they are far more entertaining than all those stuffy doctors. We’ll see.
Early on in December I’m psyched to bring my old friend Scott Blake over to Vienna as well, where we’ll be showing off a bunch of his amazing work. Then at the end of the month I’ll be heading over to Berlin for 24c3 and will be there through New Years. 2008 is where the planning goes really up in the air. I’m sure we’ll head back to Vienna after the congress, but I’m not sure how long I’ll be saying. I know I fly out of London so I need to end up there but I’ve got about 2 weeks to do that so I may try to swing by a few Metblogs cities and meet folks who I’ve only previously e-mailed with, or cities where we aren’t and see if we can get something going. Because of this ending gray area I’m thinking of just getting a one way ticket from London to Vienna when I arrive and then figure the rest out when I need to.
I’ve never really spent any time in London so I’m considering trying to get back there by Jan 10th or so I have a few days to look around. Other potential stops are Graz, Paris, Gent, Prague, Amsterdam, Budapest, Born. I’d love to say I’ll be going to Dublin or Edinburgh but those aren’t directly in travel routes I’ll already be taking so I don’t know. I’m thinking of just grabbing an EU Rail pass of course, as luck would have it, that doesn’t cover the UK. Suggestions of course are always welcome.
Rocking with Walter Schreifels
Anyone with any real taste in music knows how amazing Gorilla Biscuits and Quicksand are but recently after finding my Rival Schools CD (which had been lost in a box for years) I’ve been really getting into that. Of course these are all Walter Schreifels projects. I remembered a tape a friend from NYC sent me back in the early 90’s with Walter’s band between GB and Quicksand which was called Moondog. Thanks to the internets I just found that album was actually released (online only) and is available here. I just bought it and it’s everything I remember it being. The one thing I’m totally dying to hear now and can’t find anywhere is the alternate recording of GB’s “Start Today” with Walter singing rather than Civ. That was never released, and I think it was only even recorded for pacing but I loved it and wore through the copy of a copy of a copy I had many many years ago. Any of you guys got a lead on that? Please?
Mandatory Reading – How To Kiss
You know how sometimes you hear someone say something and you instantly think of a list of people you wish had been there to hear it with you? You know how sometimes you can just relay the story later and all is good, but other times there’s no way that works. That’s pretty much the reaction I had when I heard an episode of Violet Blue’s ‘Open Source Sex‘ podcast where the topic was kissing -specifically “How To.” I literally saw a scrolling list of people in my head (who I may or may not have ever kissed) who really needed to hear it, but preferably many many years earlier (before I may or may not have kissed them). But since I had no time machine, I forgot all about it. Luckily, I just noticed that Violet just released an ebook on the same topic. This I can recommend, and for $10, holy crap that’s way worth it. Really, you don’t want to be a crappy kisser. Yuck.
(And no, this isn’t just in-kind payback for her earlier flattery, though I’m totally flattered.)
Goodbye Yahoo! Messenger
I’m officially done with Yahoo! Messenger. I was never a huge fan but I always liked to be on there as well as whatever other flavors of IM I had in arms reach to keep myself accessible to just about anyone but between getting flooded with spam messages everytime I log in, and repeatedly asking me if these spammers can add me to their address book no matter how many times I say no it’s just not worth it. Sorry Yahoo! but your product has some major issues that AIM, Jabber and GTalk have been able to avoid so for now I’m disabling my account. Maybe you guys could like, make it better or something?