adventures


8
Jun 14

We’re cruising

The Manhattan skyline, as seen from Bayonne, New Jersey. They call it Cape Liberty now, because everyone smirks at Bayonne. As if a name change could change what you saw on the way in. Either way, the views are nice, the weather is warm, the sun is out.

NYC

We had breakfast at the in-laws’ favorite diner. We loaded the car, unloaded the car and reloaded the car correctly. We did not photograph how we stacked all of the luggage. We should have.

We drove to New Jersey, unloaded the car, gave the luggage to the union guys and then worked our way through the process of getting on board. We were early enough that this went smoothly. The clerk who processed me in remarked on how young I looked in my passport photo.

That was only eight years ago. Have I aged that much? Excuse me while I undergo several new skin treatments.

We got to our room, took the traditional OJ toast and are waiting on our luggage and to get underway.

OJ

So things will be sparse for the next week. A photo here, a video there. We’ll get back up to speed soon after.

Until then, I’ll have a relaxing time for you.


6
Jun 14

Dinner on the road, while on the road, from the road

We took a drive this evening …

tunnel

And we went through this tunnel …

tunnel

Which isn’t dramatic at all, but I enjoyed the pictures and wanted to share them.

At one point during our trip I counted four Dunkin Donuts within eight miles. I don’t really have a point for that either, other than to point out that Waffle House has some catching up to do. Wikipedia tells me there are about 1,700 Waffle Houses. A story from boston.com says there are 7,200 Dunkins. They have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, the purpose of our trip this evening was to eat dinner with our friends Paige and Kevin. Paige took our engagement photos in the middle of a nor’easter. She laughed about that tonight. She took our wedding pictures on the hottest day of the summer. I laughed about that tonight, too. Everyone laughs! And you can do that when the weather is mild enough to dine on the back deck of a Victorian house that has been turned into a restaurant. That place is formal about casual dining.

Here’s Paige and The Yankee:

Paige

Things to read … because reading always makes for casual dining.

If it is World Cup time it must be time for more stories about oppressed people who work under a multi-multi-billion dollar international entity: Pakistan workers fire ‘Brazuca’ ball to Brazil

Veterans bid farewell to D-Day beaches after emotional tributes

So this gentleman slipped out of his nursing home and traveled to France. Well, the Royal Navy, for whom he sailed, says “Life without limits,” so this makes sense: Hove veteran disappears for Normandy trip.

I’m a bit surprised this is still the case, Web TV soon to beat terrestrial reception in the US:

The percentage of US households with a television that relies exclusively on an antenna for television programming reception (6%) is about to be eclipsed for the first time ever by the percentage of households relying only on the Internet for TV programming (5%).

It seems it won’t be the case for long.

New head honcho on the Bulldogs’ hardwood … Samford Names Padgett Head Basketball Coach


4
Jun 14

A river runs through me

Yesterday I learned a bit about your basic fly fishing cast. I grew up fishing for bass and bream and catfish so this is all new to me. My father-in-law is an old pro, though. So I got the motion down in a yard yesterday. This evening we stood in a chilly stretch of river and threw little tiny bits of plastic and hair at hungry fish.

Here I am, showing off how good a pair of borrowed waders can look:

truck

Here’s Bob, showing us where all the good fish are:

truck

The Yankee got one. Her dad got one. I had one on the line early, but I couldn’t get him in. I spent most of the time just making the fish hungry for the guy a little farther down stream, who was catching everything in site. Fish from other rivers where getting in to this water for the pleasure of being on that guy’s hook.

Things to read … because reading is always worth a nibble.

Mastering the Internet of everything:

The IoE is about the intersection of people, processes, data, and things. Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a framework for making sense of data, information, and knowledge flows. Processes, data, and things are relatively easy to control, but people are complex adaptive systems in their own right. How can people be part of the IoE but not be overly controlled by the other three dimensions? What new skills will be needed to master the internet of everything?

Much of PKM is about finding balance. This will be even more important with the IoE. In seeking knowledge sources, we have to balance aggregation, or getting as much information as possible, with filtering, or ensuring that we have more signal than noise. What happens when we add processes and things to all these data sources? Will it make things easier, or perhaps less visible? Our networks of people may help, as long as they are diverse enough, as we will be ever decreasingly able to keep track of [the internet of] everything.

We will have to get skilled at constantly lumping data and things together, then filtering and categorizing the changing landscape. We will have to become adept at breathing information in and out, able to only make sense of a small portion at a time. Our reliance on other people for sense-making will increase.

Will algorithms do that for you? There are only more sophisticated questions coming as we swap paradigms.

How Not to Pay the Price for Free Wi-Fi:

Part of globe-trotting nowadays is flitting from one free Wi-Fi network to the next. From hotel lobby to coffee shop to subway platform to park, each time we join a public network we put our personal information and privacy at risk. Yet few travelers are concerned enough to turn down free Wi-Fi. Rather, many of us hastily give away an email address in exchange for 15 minutes of free airport Internet access.

So how to feed your addiction while also safeguarding your passwords and privacy?

Ever wonder how some historic football team would fare against their modern counterparts? Check out this infographic on player size and you’ll see, they’d be mauled.

Two media prospectuses:

The Pricewaterhouse Cooper Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018

Ericsson predicts tenfold increase in mobile data traffic in five years

Ran three miles today. My mother-in-law, who is a thoughtful and giving lady, picked us up something called the Arctic Chill Towel which … oh, let’s let this enthusiastic corporate spokesman explain it to us:

Felt pretty great around my neck on the track today and it should come in very handy this summer.


2
Jun 14

Back from Alaska, animal videos

We made it back to the continental United States, and to the east coast. We landed at JFK, were picked up by my father-in-law and then spent most of the day just trying to stay awake until it was time to go to sleep.

All red eye flights should be discontinued by Congressional vote.

Here are the last two videos from our amazing Alaska adventure. This first is the moose we saw eating on the side of the road in Denali. I got within 15 feet or less. When I got to close, the moose would just amble away.

This one has to do with the puppies you found here the day before yesterday — or three weeks ago, whichever it was. This is four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King telling the visitors to Husky Homestead, the kennel where he raises his dogs:

Alaska is a great trip. You should visit. I hope we get to go back!

But not on a red eye.


1
Jun 14

So long Denali and see ya Anchorage; leaving Alaska

I forgot this panorama yesterday. It is almost like I felt you might have, perhaps, seen enough of this beautiful scenery and didn’t want to burden you with any more of Denali. Who could get tired of this, though?

Alaska

As always with panoramas, click to embiggen.

We left Denali today, drove back to Anchorage, cleaned most of our clothes and repacked, this time for the airport. Our Alaskan adventure has, sadly, come to an end.

Cheers to our good friends and wonderful hosts:

Alaska

They are sweet people and have been wonderful to us as always. And they are terrible enablers. We would have done none of this adventure without them. They’ve only been in Alaska for about five months and they already come off as experts, at least to us. Adam’s work keeps his attention far more than a 40-hour work week, but I hope they get to go and do and see more and more of the area; it is surely beautiful.

Today, Adam is already in France and now Jessica is joining him there. He’ll be jumping as a part of the D-Day anniversary festivities next week, which is some incredible news for him. To catch up, Jessica will be flying with us to Seattle. We are due back in New York at around 1:30 tomorrow. Her trip will, really, be just getting underway. Leaving from Anchorage after midnight to fly to Paris and take two trains to the English Channel is just about the worst red eye flight you could imagine.

If my math was correct she’ll be traveling for almost 31 hours. Of course, she’ll make it halfway around the world, but still.

Her layover in Seattle is ridiculously long, so we bought her way into the Delta club. I insisted. Better chairs, more plugs, no crowds, free snacks, private restrooms. The one in Seattle has showers, apparently. For all of the driving around and putting up with us she did, she deserves to not spend almost eight hours as an airport refugee.

As we’re sitting in the airport, waiting on the plane, listening to these guys talk about their work schedules on the north slope — the real frontier — I realized something: This is the first time that I have seen darkness since Tuesday of last week in Wilton. Every waking moment it has been daylight or something vaguely resembling twilight. It wasn’t creepy until just this moment …

Anyway, here are the last of the scenic Alaskan pictures — I have some random shots that’ll land on the Tumblr site eventually — but these are the last mountain shots. It has been a wonderful trip, and they tell us we have to come back to see the other Alaska, the winter Alaska. Wouldn’t that be neat? I bet all of these mountains would look different then!

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

Alaska

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Alaska

The only two bears we saw:

Alaska

Alaska

But this guy was the best animal in the entire 49th state:

Alaska