_Mark_
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Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in the "_Mark_" journal:
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01:12 am
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European Vacation
I'm back and just about over the jetlag... and since I'm now a year behind on Iceland stories, I figure I should at least get some of the Spain stories down now...
Instead of going to EuroPython this year (it's next week, in Vilnius) I arranged my habitual two weeks in Sweden to overlap with Jesse and Kaia's "elopement". That's a fascinating story told elsewhere and a few hundred pictures over on flickr. Barcelona seems to be a nice and well-behaved city; even the less pleasant parts merely reminded me of Brooklyn :-)
Since I don't actually like cities to start with, Laura found a British couple who do casual bird-watching tours of the Ebro Delta. I've only posted about a dozen of the nearly seven hundred pictures I took that day (mmm, eyestrain... and when I was back in the hotel with a cold facerag over my eyes, I *still* saw flapping wings in various configurations :-) The delta has a fascinating collision of ecosystems - on the one hand, you have the Mediterranean and the brackish mixture of that with the mouth of Ebro river; on the other hand, you have vast rice paddies irrigated with fresh water drawn by canal from far upstream on the Ebro. In between, lagoons and marshes, and a range of nature preserves easily reachable over the course of the day. Sightings included night heron, coot, flamingo, swallow (nesting *in* one of the bird-viewing blinds :-) tern nests, bittern, purple heron, avocet (and chicks), various ducks and ducklings, egret, mundane and exotic gulls, and some fish. Plenty of long-lens work, as well as occasional closeups (the night heron seemed pretty fearless, as well as entirely uncamouflaged.)
Also of minor note, I didn't bring a laptop to Spain, just a somewhat-obsolete Archos PMA430 "image tank" with wifi. This served pretty well, running OpenPMA but that wasn't much of a challenge - all that actually needed was USB Host support and rsync, I didn't do any captioning until I was back in Sweden (and much of it I deferred until the flight back to the US.)
Current Location: home at last
Tags: photography, spain, sweden, toys, travel, wedding
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01:38 am
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phototourism
I've already spent some time this year driving because driving is fun, and coincidentally taking interesting pictures in the places I end up. Over the next year I want to spend more time driving places because I can take interesting pictures when I get there. Not so much "pictures of interesting places" as "interesting pictures of places".
This one, though, is your basic Maine Tourism shot, and practice with using the panorama support on the new camera (with a stone wall to brace against, no tripod involved.) It's also a reminder that boats are cool... and plentiful :-)
Tags: picture, travel
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01:56 am
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Cruising
Another good driving day, south and east this time. Found more of where the Sudbury River goes, stumbled upon a "last cruise night of the year" with over a dozen cool cars including the tailfin pictured here, saw an amazing anti-sunset, and poked at both sides of Duxbury beach. Also found "Nut Island" which has the looks of a mad scientists lab (some water processing gear, I think :-) Also watched more small planes.
Of course, any day where you can keep the top down is a good day :-) More driving than I expected, but good practice for the spring trip.
Tags: car, picture, travel
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01:56 am
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More SmartCars
Earlier this year I went to Gothenberg, Sweden (for Europython 2005, among other things) and saw a number of SmartCars... including this different-looking fourtwo sport coupe. (More pictures over on flickr; I just finally got around to uploading them.)
Tags: picture, smartcar, travel
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02:31 am
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More travel
This time, the northerly route - 2A, 13, 2A again, 2 when 2A ran out... then through Turners Falls and down 5/10 to Deerfield, where I stumbled upon The Magic Wings butterfly conservatory and spent a little while taking pictures and getting visually overstimulated (wheee :-)
Then down 5 to 23, across to 7 and then down 41, down to 4 in Sharon and back to 7. May try doing the return trip via Rhode Island...
Update: Did go back via Rhode Island, 7 to 109 to 6 to 44 to 101 to 126 to 114 to 123 to 106 to 138 to 93 to Cambridge. Eastern CT is reasonably pretty, Western RI has better roads, though.
Tags: butterflies, picture, travel
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04:05 am
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So that's what weekends are for...
Saturday: Explored Littleton and Acton. Found a 1953 Jaguar, a number of horses, cows, and sheep (Littleton is inside 495, but feels more like Western MA), and Prouty Woods Community Forest, with some nice trails and a loop that goes down to Long Lake (which google calls "Long Pond", Hmph.) which is used for Canoeing, fishing, and swimming. I should send the New England Forestry Foundation an updated map; the maps they supply have accurate trails, but no landmark labels. Fortunately the trails are extremely well marked, and it isn't all that big, but I'm going to start keeping a small pack for "accidental hiking" :-) Failed to have dinner at Kimball Farms (being the only Thing To Do out there, it is very crowded on a Saturday night, I guess) (and ice cream wouldn't have been a good choice for dinner, by that point :-)
Sunday: Drove down to the Container Store and got some Stuff, including tools to experiment with chocolate writing for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hartmans's birthday party. Got rained on - concluded that the sunroof is particularly for weather in which you don't trust the sky enough to keep the top down :-) Was too warm/humid for the chocolate to set correctly (I've gotten used to Summer and didn't think about it, should have cranked the A/C down more - I've got a temperature and humidity sensor in the kitchen for that very reason) but it was edible enough to vanish rapidly, so that turned out fine.
Monday: Explored Pepperell and Groton, ran off the edge of my map and ended up in New Hampshire via some back roads. Switched maps, stumbled across an L.L.Bean Factory outlet - picked up some safety supplies for the "accidental hiking" pouch. Also found a small airport and watched a lot of teaching planes (from Daniel Webster College) land and take off again.
Getting familiar with more of Massachusetts seems like a good precursor to a longer trip in the spring - partly it's a matter of "limbering up", partly it's just *so* pretty here this time of year. Also learning that I need much better tools for writing up travelogues like this...
Current Mood:  energetic
Current Music: Komm Zu Mir - Lola Rennt soundtrack
Tags: picture, travel
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04:22 am
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"The highways and byways of the land..."
The month has been busy - not just with work (though it has been - and we're hiring again, will post jobs shortly) but with other parts of life. I've done more exploring in the last month than in the last two years, the convertible is both *way* cooler than I'd imagined it would be, it's also makes for a very relaxing ride - so I'm in better shape when I get to work and when I get home, and I actually look forward to the driving, and have done more exploration just because getting there would be fun. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a 60's era movie, just driving around and seeing the scenery because I can. Driving to Nova Scotia for a wedding was quite an adventure, as well as a beautiful event, and I want them to start running Catferry service to Hawaii and Europe too. Driving to Rockport (see the attached picture) was much calmer but also quite pleasant. I'm working on a list of further trips...
On the techie side, yes, codemonth is coming, as is IAP after that. I haven't sat down to play with Django yet, but the more I read the more impressed I get. Jam (from Perforce) is a very cool make and/or build-script replacement, now that I've finally clicked with it. I also haven't found a laptop that inspires me and that I can actually *get*, the IBM tablet has doubled in shipping time, a replacement mac from the current crop would be boring, and the Flybook is a bit risky as a linux platform.
The New Orleans disaster is kind of sad... I've been to New Orleans, and saw enough of the French Quarter to find it interesting - and now it's pretty much gone. It might be that it was exciting because it was ephemeral, but while hurricane risk has been present and real for a long time, it was a lot more ignorable than, for example, the Cold War, and I don't think it actually had that strong an influence. Ah well. At least it's a reminder to see things "now".
Tags: hacking, picture, travel, work
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05:57 pm
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Ergonomics Again
Another upgrade to a place I spend a lot of time seated...
Tags: car, picture, travel, work
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12:23 pm
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I'm *baaack*
Two weeks in Sweden, including 3 days at Europython 2005 (and I even pulled off a "what I did on my summer vacation" lightning talk, about writing code to talk to a bluetooth gps, record location and picture, and then later plot it, all on the phone, mostly during the train ride down to Gothenburg...) and a bunch of decadent dining, several boat rides, only a little bit of sunburn... now I'm just a little jetlagged and tired, but that should be over soon. More details and stories (to go with the pictures) soon.
Oh, and there will be Lodjur pictures. And video (lots and lots of it. We saw the *kittens*. All three of them. *terribly* cute...)
Tags: kittens, python, sweden, travel
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