The other night I was speaking with Courtney outside of the 12th Street Pub in Lincoln and the subject of information filtering came up, specifically with regards to Twitter and Google Reader. Since “this is what Twitter should do” posts are all the rage right now, I figured I would share some thoughts on the topic.
Courtney brought up the insightful and for some reason not obvious (to me at least) point that all filtering in 1 to many services like this is done on the receiving end, the “pull” end of the process. We talked about why this is a problem and how it could be addressed.
Generally, in a world of “information overload” there needs to be a better way for producers to selectively target and filter the information they send out. Not all of this burden should lie on the information consumer. (Continue reading…)
This has been a long time coming, but I’ve finally gotten everything set up and transferred a good portion my internet presence to this new website. This is the home for now of any writing, etc I do. This means you can ignore the old, ugly blog from now on. If you subscribe to my posts through RSS, you will also need to update your feed.
The Name
I spent days of intense meditation looking for the perfect name for the new site. After three days of no sleep or food, an idea came to me: just give up and just pick something. So I settled on “Shuttlebum.” The name is sort of a reference to a term I picked up from one of my favorite Sci-fi books: Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany. Shuttle-bums are basically uneducated people who work on ships that fly around the galaxy. I feel like that’s a decent metaphor for my excursions here. (Continue reading…)
Cinque Terre was one of the destinations I was most looking forward to before my trip began. I was super pumped for doing some hiking and had heard about the beautiful trails with gorgeous views of the coast line.
I had booked a hostel in the small village of Riomaggiore, located at one end of the Cinque Terre. It was about a 4 hour train ride from Ventimiglia, during which I met a couple from Wisconsin whose names I can’t remember. The train rolled into Riomaggiore in the middle of the afternoon. I walked through a colorful pedestrian tunnel that connects the main street of Riomaggiore with the train station. It led out into a softly winding street that crept up the hill away from the water. The road was lined with small markets and pizza shops, as well as a few hostels/restaurants.
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Oscar: “What kind of muffin would you like?”
Alfred: “I don’t care.”
When faced with a mostly inconsequential question like this many people often respond like our friend Alfred. At first glance the use of this phrase may seem like an altruistic endeavor, deferring the power of judgment to your question asking friend. In reality this is often not the case. Instead of shifting a privilege, what actually happens is a burden is passed from Alfred onto Oscar. Oscar must now exert energy to make the decision himself rather than simply responding to the request of his friend.
In a perfect world, Oscar would not think at all and merely make a choice at random. I tend to think this sort of ideal is rarely manifested in daily life. Instead Oscar will spend a few moments weighing any number of factors: the number of muffins remaining of each type, a past history of Alfred’s choices, his own preferences for which muffins he would like to get rid of quickly, what Alfred actually wants even though he is saying he doesn’t care, etc. This results in a momentary deadlock and a small but unnecessary amount of extra stress. (Continue reading…)
If you read my first post, you might remember that Torri Superiore (TS) was one of my favorite destinations on the trip. Often times when I tell people about it I am asked how or why I decided to go there for two days, so I present that information here (feel free to skip ahead if you don’t care).
The Prologue
Although I did minimal research for my trip before I left, I did spend some time looking for some areas where I could “get away” so to speak from the city/touristy travel. I had a couple of recommendations for Cinque Terre (my next destination), but I was struggling to come up with other concrete locations. Having just finished the book Deep Economy, my search quickly took a turn towards environmentally conscious or ecologically sustainable communities. I had also recently discovered the concept of Earthships so I ended up down that path. I was unable to find any Earthships near train lines, but I did stumble across the term “ecovillage” which led me down a promising tree of links. (Continue reading…)
“Nice was nice,” as the typical response goes. Actually it was pretty awesome. The train ride there sucked though because, once again, I hardly slept. But the 26ish hours of sleep I grabbed in Paris carried me through the next day.
The train arrived in Nice at 7:30 in the morning. Luckily Nice is a lot smaller than Paris so it’s harder to get too lost. I couldn’t check into my hostel until 9:00 so I grabbed breakfast with a side of internet while I waited around.
Checked into an empty 3 bed room at the hostel at around 9:00 and immediately jumped in the shower. After cleansing my body and soul, I thought it would be a good idea to try to clean some of my clothes in the sink “like a real backpacker.” That turned out to not be as easy as it sounds. I had a little cheap braided clothesline with me that I used to hang the few washed articles up in the room with. They took forever to dry, even with the window open on the room. The rest of the trip I managed to find washing machines to do the job for me instead, occasionally in exchange for some coins. (Continue reading…)
