Jetlag is a bitch. I have some more stray photos to add to the Gallery and I should probably do a final wrapup of the trip, but at the moment, it’s all I can do to get through the stacks of snail mail and spam. If I didn’t say it to you there, Thanks to everyone in Europe for putting up with us! We had fun, it was real, you’re welcome to come visit us, etc…
Tag Archive for '/eu2k4'
We’ve been in London for a couple of days hanging out with Ben and his family, eating home cooked food, drinking massive amounts of wine and getting my butt kicked at Go. I did learn a new game called Go Football, which I also got pasted at, and will surely spread around Seattle when I get back. We’re now checked in to a hotel much closer to a tube station, and as soon as I get over this nasty head cold, we will do some thorough exploring of central London.
On tomorrow’s agenda is a visit to Deckspace, as well as Dorkbot London, where James has volunteered me to do a lightning talk about OPN.
On a completely unrelated note, I do not appear to be allergic to Ben’s Bengal kittens. I wonder if this is true of the whole breed or simply a fluke? My guess is that Brenna will have me on a kitten sniffing tour soon.
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Poking our heads out the hotel window this morning, we noticed a bunch of street cleaners standing around, and that all the intersections around us were blocked off by police. In the distance, we could see a crowd gathering. Perhaps it’s our Seattle nature, but we figured it must be some sort of protest or strike. On further inspection, it turned out to be the Techno Parade. Trucks with mobile dancefloors kicking the phat beats while all of Paris watched in bewilderment or in many cases, joined in the fray. We followed along for a while, then stopped by a neighborhood cafe for a beer.
As amusing as it was, I don’t think this sort of thing could happen in Seattle. I didn’t see any political messages, and some girl on rollerblades gave me a packet of hair gel. |
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After getting completely lost walking around yesterday, we made it to the catacombs today. As far as tourist attractions go, I’d say this is something everyone should see. It’s certainly worth the five euro admission fee.
The pamphlet we picked up estimated that six million anonymous Parisians are entombed under the city while two million live above ground. Luckily, the ‘tour’ was not guided in any way, but a casual stroll through dark dank hallways lined with bones deep under the city. Flash photography was not allowed, so only a few of my pictures came through without massive blur. |
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We’re in Paris now, It’s a place I would not want to drive a car. Big city, beautiful architecutre, lots of places to get a ham and cheese croissant, but scary scary traffic. After fighting for a while with hanging the syntax USB dongle out the window and having the drivers just start wigging out on me, I’ve resorted to using Orange’s WiFi hotspot to update things and check my mail.
Tomorrow we see the catacombs.
We decided to drop by Brussels and check out the city for a couple of days. While in Leiden, we checked Expedia and found one with good rates. When we got there, the rates were about three times the price for walk-ins. The hotel had a WiFi hotspot powered by Proximus, but they did not have any scratch cards left, and we couldn’t figure out how to register via SMS or credit card (yay hotspots!). A kind desk clerk let me use the back office computer, which enabled us find a better rate (across the street), and pre-pay for the room. We were the first customers they ever had who showed up before the expedia confirmation came through. I had always sort of doubted the merits of expedia, but I think I’m sold now. To top it all off, this is the first room we’ve had which actually has a double bed and not two tiny ones squished together.
After a short train ride this morning, we are now in Leiden. Wireless Leiden has nodes all over the city, so it should be a lot easier for me to stay in touch. Amsterdam was a beautiful, but it is really nice to be in a smaller city, with less of the tourism and all of the great architecture. We are staying with Dirk-Willem van Gulik, so I am sure we will climb up in some church towers and get some tasty antenna pics 
Today there is a street market as well as ‘monument day’, where all of the local historical buildings open up and allow the public in to see what a 600 year old building looks like inside. I picked up a brochure, but of course, it’s all in dutch
Why is it that every time we arrive in a new city we are hungover?
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We’re now at ASCII, a tech squat that’s getting evicted next week. I’m really glad I got to see the space functioning. free tshirts as well as the first stable free and cool internet connection I’ve had since hitting Amsterdam make this place tops in my book.
I’m simply amazed by the density of this city. It’s extremely packed area with people and there is a ton of activity going on everywhere you look. We’ve had excellent curry twice since being here, as well as taking in our fair share of guinness and ‘english breakfast’. The bicycle is ubiquitous, but there are tons of cars of all sizes and shapes. The denali would be so much fun here. |
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Amsterdam is strange. We’ve had several people inform us that it’s the pickpocket capitol of the world, but so far, we’ve managed to keep track of our things. I can see how it could happen here. The streets/alleyways are extremely narrow and crowded, there is legal gambling, prostitution and a healthy dose of drug users, so it doesn’t really surprise me that people resort to snatching wallets to make ends meet. I question the ‘world’ part of the statement though, because I’ve heard the same sort of thing about many other cities.
The Red-Light District is definitely surreal. I’m really sort of amused by the amount of window-shopping going on, especially since in the middle of it all is this really neat looking church. Sitting and having a coffee while the kids come by high and laughing and the footballers have a beer while waiting for their game to start has been very entertaining. The food choices are diverse, and there are Internet cafes on pretty much every block or alleyway, but I have yet to find any free wireless access.
According to everyone from the conference, I need to check out ASCII before they get evicted at the end of the week, but I really don’t have an idea of where it is. If anyone knows, please send me an SMS because checking email over GPRS is pretty much useless.
Sunday I think I checked my email a total of 3 times, and couldn’t really get to anything due to the spam:mail ratio. Intensity was at an all time high as I spent much of the day writing out the OPN hack/proposal on a paper tablecloth and evangelizing it to everyone I could. James Stevens has transcribed my table scratchings, and pictures were taken of the diagrams, but so far I haven’t seen any of the online results. As soon as I get some steady net, I will link to the document, or re-post it here. My only spare moments of blogging have now taken place while sitting near windmills waiting for cars to pick me up or drinking my morning coffee in the hotel/apartment room. Every morning as I drink my coffee at the Apartments, I delete loads of spam and when I am lucky enough to get a connection to the Internet, I synchronize and get more. Yay email…
Monday was the first official ‘work day’. People were in and out of the convention center all day checking out installations and grain silos, or hanging out building can antennas. There was a steady supply of fruit (Canned pineapples as well as pears were consumed steadily), but a few of us decided to make some antennas from Grolsch mini-kegs to make it all a bit more interesting. The mesh workshop where everyone with a laptop capable of running OLSR participated to make an 8 node mesh appeared to be going strong, unfortunately, the OSX port is forthcoming, so my participation consisted of loaning cards out and watching the hacking from the beer table.
Monday night, I organized a small tacos and beer party back at the CUWin room, which happened to be the Penthouse suite (Note: it pays to be loud about reservation mistakes). Brenna whipped up some tacos, a crate of beer was acquired, and hilarity ensued til the wee hours.
Tuesday we hitched a ride to Amsterdam.
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