Handmade 70 foot boat drives through Redwood City

The handmade 70-foot boat I reported on earlier made its way to the Redwood City Harbor today.

Apparently there were all kinds of problems... the special heavy transport vehicle that was carrying the boat crushed on one side, causing the boat to tilt precariously.  They managed to fix the vehicle in situ, but they ran out of time, lost their transit permit, and had to park the boat for the day.  They got another permit the next day (today), which let them get from Woodside to Redwood City.

Redwood City let them move the boat during the day, so they managed to get it to the harbor before the high tide cutoff.  Apparently the next launch "window" would have been in June.  So today Redwood City residents were treated with the excitement of having a 70-ft boat snake its way through their downtown.  Because the vehicle was so large, they had to take an extremely circuitous route to get to the harbor.  

It made the evening news on that analog broadcast medium.

Apparently it's still going to be another year of work before it can set sail, but the hard part's over.

[travel] Connecting with alternative communities overseas

A friend pointed out that I should see if I can meet people in various alternative communities during my travels.  This sounds brilliant -- I'd like to get as deep an impression of the places I visit as possible given my limited time, and while it's awesome to look at ruins and other historical goodies or get the pulse of a city by walking its streets, I'd love to connect with locals who have similar interests.

There are a lot of different subcultures out there, but I'd essentially be looking for ones that fit in well with my own passions... so therefore makers, futurists, technology geeks, tech entrepreneurs, burningman-types, people who practice open relationships, artists (especially artists who like to make use of interactivity and electronic media), and other intellectuals of various sorts would all be interesting to find.

I imagine that these groups are most likely present in larger, modern culturally diverse cities that are well-connected to the rest of the world (eg Singapore, Bangkok, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Dubai, most major European cities) but chances are there are enclaves in smaller cities too.

I have a potential tour of CERN lined up, and I already know a bit about some avant-garde artists and robotics researchers in Vienna. 

However, I'd love more info, so if you all have contacts or know of any communities in cities I'm visiting (or will be near), let me know. 

Here's a list of places I'm going.  It's slightly out of date (I've dropped Bali and rearranged some things) but mostly still relevant.

[travel] Gadgets for world travel

So I've been doing some more research on gadgets I'd like to take for world travel.

I'm thinking I will get an EEE PC.  It satisfies just about everything I'd need a computer for in faraway places:
- Cheap ($250-$350)
- Light (2lbs) and small (9" screen)
- Long battery life (8hrs)
- Compact international power adapter.
- Wi-fi
- Lets me get photos off my camera and onto Flickr.
- Has a big enough keyboard that I'll actually bother to type emails and lj entries.
- Lets me browse the internet for relevant travel information.
- Has a little camera, so I can skype and videoblog.

The alternative would be to use internet cafes, but I'm concerned about limited availability, typing all my passwords into public terminals, not being able to stay on a shared computer long enough to upload all my photos, not being able to write down thoughts or access my data while traveling on buses, trains, airplanes etc.

I likely would use it after traveling too, as I could bring it as a notebook to cafes, lectures, and other such places.  My Windows laptop from work is bulky, somewhat old, and cumbersome.

The EEE PC has really good reviews, but I'm curious if you all have any cautionary tales before I run out and buy one.

EEE PC site and the overwhelming Epic comparison sheet of all the models


--------

Secondly...  MAPS!

Remembering how many times I got lost back when I traveled in Europe (usually when I traveled off the edge of my travel book's maps) I'm thinking it would be nice to have a navigation system with relevant data, like Google Maps on the iphone.  

It turns out that the future's here, it's just not evenly distributed or cheap.  For a whopping $110/mo extra, I can get 100MB/month of data coverage on the iphone in 65 countries around the world, which covers many of the places I'm visiting but not Thailand or Vietnam.  So far my iphone data usage has been 150mb/month, but I also use it like water.  If I don't do silly things like showing people YouTube videos, I'm sure I can keep it down to 100mb/month.  While $110/mo is expensive, I could look at it as paying $4 a day to not get lost and to be able to immediately find the addresses of any point of interest.

I'm annoyed there's not a downloadable version of Google's world street map for the iphone so that I could just use the app on GPS on the phone without the data plan.  It's not that much data.  I'm sure all the world's streets as well as hotels, restaurants, bus stations, tourist sites, major landmarks etc would fit in 4GB.  I found a company that sells a digital map to all the world's streets for $50. 

The alternative would be to get a GPS device and load that company's maps onto it.  I'm probably going to end up using it anyway in my car.

[travel] Old-school organization

I'm compiling little "country guides" for myself that are essentially cheat sheets for 90% of the relevant info I'd need to get around that country.

The cheat sheets cover
- Major things I want to visit, how I get to them, when they're open etc.
- Bus/train/plane schedules and fares
- Contact info for local places to stay.
- Maps (photocopied from my travel books)
- Currency conversion (which I'll have memorized by the first day anyway)
- Basic phrases (photocopied from travel book)
- All the advice Ive received about stuff in that country, in really really small text. 

Basically, it's a hell of a lot better than thumbing through a tour book every time I want to look something up. 

Are there any other things you all can think of that I should have on the cheat sheets?

Personalized condoms

This could either make you look like a total douchebag or it could be funny and cool.  However, the space of possible designs people come up with is a vast sea of douchebaggy ideas with a few tiny islands of fun and cool ideas popping up here and there.  Hell, even the brand name "MyFace condoms" is douchey.

http://www.ripnroll.com/MyFacecondoms.htm

But seriously, in the right hands, it could be funny,