Blogging on the Fly

Image via Wikipedia

I'm a bad blogger. I admit it. The problem isn't the content of my blog -- generally, I think I write pretty informative and entertaining posts. But all the gurus say that, to develop a loyal readership, you have to present new content on a regular basis, and that is my downfall. A quick look at my archives will reveal the infrequency of my blogging.

But that, dear readers, is about to change. I have bought me some new gear. (Have I mentioned how much I love gadgets?) I've been looking at and reading about the Nokia N810 internet tablet for well over a year, and the price just dropped on my birthday, so I ordered one for my birthday prezzie to self. Here are just some of the features of this pint-sized powerhouse:

• Wifi, with Mozilla browser
• QWERTY keyboard that retracts
  
• Internet radio (with BBC installed!)
  
• Skype installed
• Media player
• Photo viewer
  
• GPS (fee for service)
• Games (including Mahjong solitaire, my fave)
• Slot for memory card for photos and music

I'm thinking this will be great to take along when I travel. No longer will I have to beg or borrow computer use and/or wifi from my host. I'll have access to all my travel research that I keep in Google docs spreadsheets, and I'll be able to blog from anywhere. Now all I need is a new trip or a more exciting life to blog about.

Foto Finish

Finally, I can say that I've finished uploading my photos from London. 287 of them, to be exact. It's been a chore, but I've enjoyed revisiting all these spots as I edited, uploaded, tagged, and geotagged everything. And it's been lovely to receive comments from my mates on many of them. I'm particularly chuffed when a Londoner tells me that I've captured something in a new way, or introduced them to a place they haven't been. By the end of this trip, I no longer felt like a tourist. I'm not sure if I'm an honorary Londoner yet, but I'm closer to that than to tourist, that's for certain.

There might be a few more photos that I'll upload and post to Guess Where London, but my Flickr set is essentially complete. If you haven't looked at it for a while, give it another look and let me know what you think.

Update on the Uploads

I imagine that my four loyal readers must be wondering what's up with the promised pix. Well, I never got around to adding any to the posts I wrote from London, but I can report that as of this morning there are 167 photos in my London, Sept 2008 set on Flickr. (You can see them flash by in the wee slideshow on the right side of my blog.) I've been trying to upload in chronological order, more or less, and I'm now up to mid-day on Friday. You'll see tons of graffiti, several boot scrapers, and lots of things from my walks east and west along the Thames. The shots from Friday afternoon will be more street art, and then it will be All Things Architecture from London Open House Weekend. This is taking me for-fucking-ever because I'm meticulously -- ok, compulsively -- tagging and geotagging everything. The cool thing about that is that you can see where I've been on the map of London. That link takes you to a yahoo map, which is good for the overview but pretty much rubbish on the detail. Underneath each individual photo I've given a link to Google maps, which let you really see down to the street level. I was actually able to locate the two trailers (caravans) I photographed near Surrey Water.

So, check out the pix, leave me some comments, and be patient as I finish this monumental task. I should be done in another week or so. Cheers!

The Little Differences

Remember that bit in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta is talking to Samuel L. Jackson about the "little differences" between America and Europe, like how they put mayonaise on French fries and you can get a beer in the movie theatres in Amsterdam? Here are a few of the little differences between the States and the UK:


It's autumn now (but we call it "fall" cos it's the time when stuff falls from the trees), and there are horse chestnuts all over the ground. In the UK, they're called "conkers," and they're bigger and heavier than our American variety. Conker tournaments are an old pastime, and one is still held in October on Hampstead Heath. Kids poke a hole in the chestnut and tie a string to it, and then try to smash their mates' conkers with theirs. The last conker hanging on a string wins.


The snail population of the UK is out of control. They are everywhere, and people whinge about how they crawl all over their garden and eat their plants. I told my mate Maggie that we didn't have snails like these in Massachusetts, and she offered to give me some from her garden to bring home. I declined. The ones in this picture are casting their long shadows on a gravestone at St Mary's Old Church in Stoke Newington.


Stinging nettles grow wherever the ground has been disturbed by humans, and graveyards are prime places to find them. These are in Abney Park Cemetery. The leaves have hundreds of tiny hairs on them -- if your skin comes in contact with the hairs, it will sting something wicked. Fortunately, nature has provided a handy antidote -- a plant called dock often grows where stinging nettles are found (but there's none in this picture). You can soothe the sting by crushing the dock leaves and rubbing them on your burning skin.

Of course, there are many other differences -- like French fries are "chips" and potato chips are "crisps" -- but we all get conked on the head just the same when stuff falls from the trees. Happy autumn, mates!

Back in the Tofu Valley

Hey mates! Another long travel day yesterday. I got home about 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, but my body thought it was 1:30 a.m. Exhausted as I was, I woke up at around 4:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So today, I'm taking it easy -- doing laundry, catching up on e-mail and Facebook, adding links to my blog posts, and dumping all my pix onto my computer.

I still can't believe that I didn't have a drop of rain the entire time I was in London. I'd like to think that I brought the nice autumnal weather with me from New England, but I think the UK was just due for a change in weather pattern after all the rain they'd had in August and early September.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures and my little travel tips on how to do London on the cheap (my total out-of-pocket expenses were £165). One last tip: Your shoes don't matter so much as your socks -- buy good hiking socks if you're going to walk as much as I did. Whatever blister guard^® is, it really does work. I probably wouldn't have gotten the blister on my little toe if I'd been wearing my bestest socks on Saturday.

Watch for my photos as I start to upload them to Flickr.