The Woodman Institute Museum in Dover NH is famous for having a four-legged chicken, but that’s only a small example of the weirdness you’ll find inside. A big collection of snakes and bugs and bears in top hats along with other examples of taxidermy fills the first two floors. The top floor is dedicated to war and includes the obligatory rusty cannon ball that killed and maimed.

The absolute scariest part of the entire museum, however, is the hall of dolls. Amanda Etches-Johnson calls it the stuff of nightmares.

All I know about Denmark is what gets imported: Legos, of course, but also a tradition of exquisitely clean and functional design. That’s why, as I prepare for my talk in Copenhagen later this week, I’m incredibly conscious of my own design and a bit jealous of Jessamyn’s outstanding use of orange.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll be all week. Any tips? Anybody up for a drink?

A long time ago somebody started the Newtons Around The World gallery, and it came to symbolize the love we Newton users had for the little device as well as our geeky pride.

The trend seemed to continue with iPods Around The World, and now iLounge wants to start a gallery for the iPhone. I was about to submit when I noticed the legal fine print:

By submitting, you agree that all photographs, and private information you submit are entirely yours at the time of submission, become the property of iLounge upon submission, and that you have not submitted and will not submit such images to any other contests.

The thing is, I give my photos away to anybody who wants them under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License, and I’ve granted commercial use to pretty much everybody who’s asked (the exception was somebody who appeared to be setting up a splog and wanted some of my food photos to illustrate it). But the idea of entirely giving up my photos to iLounge stopped me in my tracks. I would happily offer them a non-exclusive license, but willfully removing my work from the creative commons and even my own use isn’t something I’m about to do.

Fortunately, photosharing services have exploded since the Newton and iPod galleries were created, and tagging allows us to opt into the gallery without having to give up our works. Here’s my iPhone on the summit of Mt. Monadnock (yes, I had connectivity), and here’s a collection of iPhones around the world on Flickr.

iphone, iphones around the world, travel, photos, gallery, copyfight, creative commons

That’s me on JetBlue Flight 481 to Long Beach, wearing my noise canceling headphones. Sandee saw me wanting them, so she was especially happy to make them a Christmas present to me. And, with all the flying I’ve been doing lately, I was especially happy to have them.

I wanted the QuietComfort 2s not just because I like big, old skool, over-the-ear headphones (I don’t, actually), but because I really wanted the extra noise reduction that design offers. I had tried the QuietComfort 3s in a Bose store and wasn’t convinced they were better. Smaller, yes, but still large enough that I can’t lean my head against the window without knocking them off my ear. That, and I really didn’t want to have to carry yet another charger when I travel — the 2s take a single AAA battery (so carrying extra or finding more is easy), the 3s take a custom rechargeable battery. Still, if the 3’s electronics are really better, I’d like to see them applied to the OTE design to get even more noise reduction.

As it is, however, I’m quite pleased. Listening without music, headphones do a good job of quieting the drone of the plane, and with a bit of music, it largely disappears. And unlike with my iPod earbuds, which I had to run at full or nearly full volume, I can now listen — and hear the music — at volumes from the lower half of the range. What I didn’t like, however, was how bulky they are compared to my old earbuds. Sleeping required new attention to where I was leaning my head; tip my against the window or fuselage and not only would I rick knocking the headphones off my head, but the vibration would suddenly be amplified by the noise canceling hardware.

headphones, comfort, bose quietcomfort 2, bose, noise canceling, noise canceling headphones, noise reduction, noise suppression, travel

The Switzerland’s Verzasca Dam is now added to the list of places I’d like to visit.

Verzasca Dam, travel, places I’d like to visit

“Take a deep breath.” I did, and with it Lisa Souza, my massage practitioner at San Francisco’s International Orange, pressed into a knot just below my shoulder blade, deep in the latissimus dorsi. She worked along the length of it, not as a baker kneads bread, but rather as person wringing water from a damp cloth. Each press was deliberate, powerful.

I’d asked for the deep tissue treatment. Eight hours in planes from Boston (six hours to LGB, almost another two to SFO) had taken their toll, and this, I hoped, might spell relief.

Then she found it, and paused for a moment, now with her elbow bearing down into it. In that instant my toes tensed and I held for a time the deep breath I’d just taken. Lisa turned, shifted her pressure, I exhaled. The coiled knots had been dispatched. The soreness of flights too long, the stress of the office I couldn’t escape, had been forgotten.

In that dreamy space that followed, I wondered if massage treatment should, as a matter of general practice, be scheduled as soon as one’s flight and hotel arrangements are made. Catherine Wargo, director of client services for International Orange, agreed. I asked her what advice she might have for somebody traveling, as I often do, to a conference:

What most men wouldn’t think of, but I’d really recommend is a facial. The dry air in planes dehydrates the skin and leaves you looking ashen. Facials exfoliate the skin so you can present a fresh face at the conference.

What else? Catherine suggests leg and foot therapy, either as focus in a massage treatment or as an add on. Yes, it might help prevent deep vein thrombosis, but also, “it just feels good.”

advice, International Orange, massage, spa, therapy, travel, treatment

As noted here, I’m going to WordCamp in SFO in early August.

Matt describes it as a BarCamp-style event (where “’BarCamp-style’ is a code phrase for ‘last minute’”) with “a full day of both user and developer discussion.” I’m just going for the free t-shirt, of course, but I can imagine a number of folks will get a good value out of the sessions and discussions that will likely run, especially all the developer stuff.

Also, if you’ve got some suggestions about what else I should be doing in San Fran, leave a comment or contact me with any suggestions.

blog software, blogging, conference, San Francisco, SFO, travel, WordCamp, WordCamp 2006, WordPress, WordPress Developer’s Conference, WordPress Developer’s Conference

Central Library in Portland wasn’t open when I returned the next morning to get some snapshots, but you’ll have to take my word that they did a great job renovating it ten years ago. The outside preserves the original appearance of this historic building, and the early hour of the shot hides the hive of activity that I found the previous afternoon.

I have to thank Caleb and Caroline for showing around town, and offer my apologies to Heidi and Alice, who had offered me tips and suggestions that I (again) didn’t have time to follow up on. Someday I’ll enjoy a Stanich burger; someday I’ll find Rimsky-Korsakoffee; heck, someday I’ll even get to Powells.

But as wonderful as those suggestions may be, I couldn’t imagine a better evening than I had with food and conversation at Farm Cafe followed by a sweet treat at Staccato Gelato.

farm cafe, food, multnomah county library, oregon, portland, portland or, travel

Iain Anderson’s animated film, Aiport, shows even the most pedestrian of designs come to life with a bit of creativity.

Elsewhere, a post at Copyfight, suggests that the availability of those symbols — their freedom from copyright and trademark restrictions — was a key factor in spurring their broad adoption, creating both the culture and the free imagery for artists like Anderson to use in their cultural commentary.

aiga, airport, airport symbols, culture, Iain Anderson, icons, symbols, travel

Oregon City apparently boasts one of only four municipal elevators worldwide. One hundred thirty feet tall, with an observation deck at the top, it seemed to be worth stopping for. Jason wrote in to Roadside America explaining:

It began as a water-powered elevator in 1915, but was upgraded to an electric-powered elevator in 1954. It is an example of Googie architecture, which is reminiscent of the space-age housing structures in the Jetson’s cartoon show.

The picture above is a badly shot and badly joined panorama from atop the observation deck. I was attempting to capture both the view and artworks below each window, but I didn’t do it right. The larger size actually reveals some detail, though.

oregon, oregon city, oregon city or, elevator, observation deck, panorama, travel, municipal elevator

If I didn’t like flying, or at least if I couldn’t tolerate it, I wouldn’t making my third distant trip in as many months. And though I know many others spend a whole lot more time in planes than I do, I still think Vasken has a bit of a point in the following:

I couldnt help thinking about the horrid dichotomy that is airline travel… on one hand, my flight from Philly to Manchester takes 50 minutes, or 6+ hours less than the trip takes in a car–on the other hand, it took me 5 hours to get from my house to the place I was staying in PA, a savings of a mere 2 hours. Looking back, the stinking train ride took a full hour to transport me a whole 10 miles, the drive home was another hour (45 miles), and the security line comes in dead last (a full 15 minutes for 20 feet). The 50 minutes in the air? 350 miles, and they bring you drinks. What a marvelous technology, rendered almost useless by the inadequacies of American public transit and the paranoia of its citizens.

Anyway, see you in Corvallis.

travel, airlines, air travel, flight, flying, time, security, wasted time, vasken hauri, flying time, trasnportation

You won’t get your salad dressing on the side in San Antonio. I don’t know what it says about a place, but in New England it’s so common I never learned to ask for it on the side, it just happens. Not so in San Antonio.

You’ll also have trouble finding a place to eat dinner away from the riverwalk, as all the neighborhood places I found are open only for breakfast and lunch. And I can’t say it with authority, but I don’t think there are any bookstores downtown either.

There’s no criticism in the above, just observations. Praise follows.

The city is clearly the most walkable I’ve ever seen. Cars move leisurely through most streets, allowing pedestrians to amble freely. And though there was little traffic noise, a descent to the riverwalk seemed to put one into a different city. Side note: much of the riverwalk has no guard rails to keep teetering tourists out of the drink; as with the salad dressing thing, I don’t know what this means, but I commend the civic leaders for it.

There’s probably a city ordinance that demands that everybody who visits the city is required to get their picture in front of the Alamo, and I complied, though only on the last day, despite being in a hotel abutting it. Indeed, my hotel, The Crocket, was a surprise pleasure. It wasn’t the free WiFi and continental breakfast, it was the Lady Bird Johnson fountain out front and nice architecture. The rooms were basic business class, but the economy price set my expectations too low and set me up for a nice surprise.

The high point of my stay in town? I had my first-ever old-style shave in the barbershop at the Gunter Hotel, which still has their old telephone switchboard from 1909. My feeling is that guys were plumb stupid to let barbers disappear from our lives.

The photo above actually comes from somewhere nearer Georgia than Texas, but I never did capture an iconic picture of San Antonio, so that’s all I’ve got.

ala, ala midwinter, san antonio, san antonio tx, texas, travel, riverwalk, tourist, leisure

What didn’t work out because of our problems with the hotel was our drive to Barstow to see Sandee’s friend Joanne.

I don’t know much about the town, but Wikipedia told me to look out for the original Del Taco, Rainbow Basin Natural Area (site not loading now, try this instead), Calico Ghost Town, and the old Solar One solar energy generating experiment. Along the road, however, is the the World’s Tallest Thermometer, in Baker, California.

travel, barstow ca, baker ca, barstow, california, road trip, i15, desert, sight seeing, sightseeing, drive

Karen has the smart-sexy-funny thing going on, but that doesn’t stop her from eating donut after donut or beating Will and me in every white-knuckled kart race we ran last weekend.

Drivers sit only an inch or two off the ground in karts that are said to go 40 miles an hour. Eight minute races may seem short, but at between 20 and 30 seconds per lap (my best time was 23-some-odd seconds, Karen’s was at least a second faster), you’ll get plenty of chances to skid out at every turn. We each bought two races for $18/each (with $2 coupon), which turned out to be all we needed.

The race track is Maine Indoor Karting in Scarborough Maine. More information and video at AroundMaine.com.

At least they don’t wrap it in management BS like the guy at F1 Boston:

RJ has always believed that racing is a microcosm of successful business management. “To succeed in both racing and business,” says RJ, “requires strong leadership, teamwork, attention to detail, a competitive spirit and a focus on performance.”

I have more than a few problems taking pleasure in the racing, but at least I don’t need the pretense.

tags: attractions, driver, go kart, kart race, maine, maine indoor karting, scarborough, scarborough me, tourism, travel, waste of fuel

Dick Porter, of Onset MA, has been building his collection of over 5000 thermometers since the mid-80s, though the collection has nearly doubled since 1998 when it was just over 3000. He calls it the world’s largest and only thermometer museum. He’s certainly passionate about them, and he’s been an invited speaker at more than a few thermometer and weather related events, like the christening of the world’s largest thermometer in Baker California.

The collection, which Porter values at about $4 per piece, fills his home’s small basement, and visitors should expect him to be an active docent. He has stories about many of the thermometers, even some memories of the day the scientific community decided to honor Anders Celsius by eponymously renaming his centigrade scale. Thinking of scales, Porter even has a few Reamur thermometers. Impressive, yes, though Wikipedia notes a few more temperature scales he didn’t mention. I guess it’s challenges like that that get a guy through the day.

It’s all at 49 Zarahemla Road Onset, MA 02558, and visitors should probably give Mr. Porter a call (508) 295-5504 to confirm he’ll be home to host you. All info current as of my October 2005 visit, more info at Roadside America and Odd New England.

tags: attractions, dick porter, massachusetts, museum, onset, onset ma, thermometer, thermometer museum, thermometers, tourism, tour, travel

My old passport is expired and my wife has never had a passport, so I had to look this up. Fortunately, the US State Department has a pretty good website for it. There are rules of course, especially for first-timers or expired passport holders. You’ll have to fill out a DS11 application form and bring to one of the 7000 facilities — mostly post offices — around the country. A photographer’s guide is worth looking at for those considering taking their own photos, as the State Department cares greatly for the lighting, composition, and quality of those photos. They even have special instructions for those submitting prints from digital sources.

expired passport, first timers, foreign travel, getting a passport, international travel, passport, passports, state, state department, travel, travel documents, us government, us passport, us state department

BostonNoise.org says “Jacques’ Cabaret is Boston’s oldest gay bar. The upstairs features live female impersonator shows five nights per week, including weekends. The downstairs basement is open only on Friday and Saturday, and hosts local bands.”

Jacque’s official website shows Norell Gardner & his cast of miss-leading ladies playing every Friday and Saturday upstairs. The Raw Bar, “a return to the old style of cabaret where artists entertain each other, for the pure art and enjoyment of it, creating a space for talented people who don’t have the opportunity to perform because their music or performance is more artistic than commercial,” was featured in the Globe and plays downstairs at Jacque’s Underground on the second Friday of every month.

Directions are easy:
Jacques is located between the Theatre District and Bay Village, at the intersection of Piedmont and Broadway and behind the Raddison Hotel. Closest T stops are: Boylston Street (Green Line) and New England Medical Center (Orange Line).

Notes:
Door is $8, bar is cash only, closes at midnight.

Googling Jacques Cabaret brings up a few interesting sites. One result leads to some very tall heeled boots with this description:

In our home city of Boston, a quiet Tuesday night spent on the town involves champagne and cocktails at seven, dinner of french provincal by nine and after the last napkin is thrown onto the table, perhaps a jaunt down to the quiet neighborhood where Jacques Cabaret & Lounge lies, to take in an eyeful of amazingly talented Drag Queens with bossoms as supple as that of a women’s (and legs that appear seemingly endless). Named after those long,scantily hosed legs, our black seven-inch spike heel can help aspire a woman to greater heights, or if she doesn’t need the help- the dagger like silhouette of these boots will weaken any one who’s eye follows the lines from the curve of the arch to the inside of the soft thigh. Available in two materials- either matte stretch black lycra, or shiny stretch patent leather. Sizes 5-14

boston, bar, jacque’s cabaret, jacque’s, cabaret, travel, theater district