Back in 2007 I had a crazy idea to skim my flickr stream and pick a few photos from each month to try and illustrate how I spent the year. I found it to be pretty cathartic and gave me a whole different impression of the year I’d just experienced. I liked it. So I did it again in 2008. And then in 2009 it was kind of “a thing” so I did it again. And then again in 2010. I really like doing this. It’s a pain in the ass, but it’s awesome to reference.

I’ve been slow getting to it this year for no good reason, I can’t believe it’s April already. Gah. I’m sorry. So here it is. The first photo I posted in 2011 was this one of Ripley and Lucky cat just waking up. I guess that’s a good way to get this moving

Waking up, sort of

Which I think must have been followed by a hike up to Runyon Canyon with the family based on my pics. I had a beard.

Bite your tongue!

We then ventured up to Seattle to eat donuts

AYHEMD

And drink some coffee

Benched

And upon returning I helped construct one of the most legendary pieces of furniture in hackerspace history, the MacBenchPro

MacBench Pro at @crashspacela

In February I made Ripley some kind of fort that he thought was cool for close to 5 minutes

Rips haz a fort

And finally got the bike I’d ordered a year and a half earlier, though it wasn’t exactly as I’d ordered it.

New bike sneak peek

I drank more coffee

M E T H O D

And we launched Coffee Common at TED in Long Beach

Stamped

In March Ripley turned 1 year old. And eat a bunch of vegan cake.

The cake is not a lie

And then I made a to trip to Florida for a funeral of an old friend who died unexpectedly. Which really sucked. But I got to see some of my favorite people who I don’t get to see often, which was really awesome.

Dooley

Pat

Quintessential Wollard

It was a weird cathartic kind of homecoming

Spoke Haüs, 2011

From there I bounced over to Austin, Texas to talk about online activism at SXSW and had coffee with another old friend

Outside houndstooth

And then back to LA just in time to cheer on the LA Marathon runners. From a coffeeshop.

Vantage Point

Rips had just started walking and they had just opened the meadow near the Silver Lake reservoir so it seemed like a good idea to let him run around there a bit

Meadow!

Rips in the meadow

And then then I went to Japan for a meeting that I thought might impact my year, but may have changed my life

iGeigie prototype

Dan & bunnie

Pieter & Ray

Inspector

Safecast was born. In May I headed up to Portland for a planning meeting

David & John

And spent way too much time at my hotel wondering if I could ever be a bathrobe kind of guy

Tile and mirror

Back in LA I gave my first talk about what we were doing with Safecast at the first Farmhouse Conference

Farmhouse

And then had some coffee

Refuel

And was in awe by how grown up I thought Ripley was looking

Belly

By the end of the month I was back on the east coast and visited my friends in upstate NY

The Black House

And then back to the city to finally see one of my favorite bands of all time play live

Gorilla Biscuits at #bnbbowl2011

In June I headed up Cambridge to visit the MIT Media Lab and keep planning with the Safecast folks

Pieter Franken, Leah Buechley, Akiba

Pieter Franken and Ray Ozzie

Ray Ozzie explaining our new Safecast map concept

Back in LA I found that Tara at built Ripley a castle. Well, she’d ordered it. Someone else had to build it.

Slide

but he loved it.

Belly

July brought more coffee

Shot

and my bike FINALLY the way I wanted it

Bike pix!

And Rips beat the heat with some arts and crafts

Painting

And popsicles

Suck it

In August I was back to Japan for more Safecast presentations and work

Joi introducing the radiation seminar

Speaking with residents who are very stressed out because they haven't been able to get any info from the govt

We talked to locals and went deep into areas where people hadn’t been for a while. With good reason.

Approx 16,000 CPM surface here

Overgrown. Abandoned.

Empty streets

But we met some new friends

Tadao Mumakata (@telejapan)

And more progress was made. Then back to LA. With a new camera.

View from above

That takes some nice pictures.

Tara and Ripley

Tara in Atwater

Ripley at the beach

Aaaanannnd… more coffee.

Kenya Tegu

September. Holy moly. This was exhausting. The month started off in Linz, Austria for Ars where we were showing off some of the Safecast tech

Final iGeigie exhibition installation

Linz street market

Then to Vienna

Johannes

Vienna stairs

Mike Borras, Vienna

But just long enough to say Hi before heading to

So there's that

Dubai. Where were hung out just long enough to eat and then get on a bus to

Road to Oman

Oman, where we got on a boat and went diving within eyeshot of Iran.

Marina

From there I swung back through Tokyo just long enough to see some protests

Protesters

And then home. Our new home. Since we just moved.

3600

But then, boom – off to Ireland for coffee

Delivering Handsome

Colin

Just kidding, I was there for Funconf and Safecast

bGeigie on the @funconf bus. #safecasting #Ireland

Fireside chats at Funconf, Lismore Castle

@rands & @rlop

Dinner speach

Yes, that was in a castle.

Then back to LA, where Rips was finally big enough to get some new old toys

Jumbo Machinders for a giant sized toddler

In October I was back in Cambridge to talk about Safecast a bit more at the MIT Media Lab fall event, lots of friends were there which was great

Boris Anthony, Cambridge

Sarah and Ian

Pieter Franken, Cambridge

Chiaki Hayashi

Robot

Crystal

Wait. That last pic – Crystal wasn’t in Cambridge, she was in NYC, because I went there too. But only for like, 12 hours. I didn’t even bring a bag on the plane. I had to speak at Web 2.0 but had to be back in Cabridge that night. So be it!

I got back to LA in time for coffee

Yeekai Lim, Cognoscenti Coffee

and hanging out with Rips

Ripley

The dude is getting huge. It’s nuts.

November. Back to Japan.

Dan & Pieter discussing the readings

Safecast meeting

At the Koriyama community center

Tsunami destruction

Joe at the Koriyama community center

Robin

And back to LA. Remember when I thought Ripley was getting big before?

Rips, by Tara

He’s totally a little man now. It’s unbelievable. Happening right in front of my eyes.

Rips

And then people started occupying

Occupy Los Angeles

Occupy Los Angeles

Occupy

December was a Mr Toad’s Wild ride.

Rips is now closer to 2 than he is to 1.

Crafting

at the LA River

And we went on a trip to the east coast. Starting in Poughkeepsie

The Black House, Poughkeepsie

And then to NYC

NYC Christmas tree lot

We AirBnB’d it, and found a convenient place, but had a lot to think about.

Tara and Ripley

Then we went to Florida where we thought we’d get a nice photo of Ripley and Santa.

Ripley Hates Santa

He thought otherwise. So we spent the day at Disney.

Imagination Dancing

Spaceship Earth, Epcot

Magic Kingdom

Rips driving

And then went south to Sarasota, and the #1 beach in the world.

Tara and Rips at Siesta Beach

Me, Siesta Beach

Tara and Rips at Siesta Beach

The end of the year and the end of our odyssey brought us back to LA, just in time to give all of our posi travel mojo to a good friend about to embark on an adventure of her own.

Xeni & Tara

In retrospect, 2011 was all about journeys. Both physical and emotional. Here to there, and back again. Over it, through it, and into it. And motion beats stagnation, so here’s to whatever the next 12 months brings…

So there’s one wild card to this, and that as I’ve been shooting more on film, the more photos I’m getting developed months later (with no exif data) so it’s confusing, and I have probably 12 rolls of film from 2011 that I haven’t developed yet. I just noticed that I didn’t post a single photo to flickr in Jan or Feb in 2012, though I know I took a lot of photos, so next year this will be a major pain.