The main point about multitaskers is not the particular choices I made, but an attitude of doing more while carrying less.
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| — | Some observations on being an Accidental Tourist. I’m reading my own advice while mulling over some choices for an upcoming trip. That’s whom I wrote it for (me). |
![LIVING A DIGITAL LIFE — And life before digital content.
I was decommissioning an old computer and found a packing list for summer teaching in 2000. Clothing was essentially the same as in my packing list for the upcoming summer session but everything else (which means content and equipment) is completely different. Well, I still take a computer, of course.
I used to take several paper books, including a full size textbook for the class, notebooks and a binder with class notes, a ZIP drive for backups, ZIP disks, paper photos for the family, a magazine or two to read at the airport, a Discman and CDs (being at the forefront of packing technology, I used a CD pouch instead of the jewel boxes), and a few DVDs.
(The following year I got my first MP3 player and my first digital camera. And a ginormous 5GB firewire external drive!)
Now: all content is digital and travels in my laptop, backed up on a 1TB portable hard drive, several 16GB flash drives, and the cloud. I might still take a [disposable] magazine, but otherwise my music, audiobooks, eBooks, research papers, teaching materials, photos, movies and TV shows, and computer code all travel as files.
A new cultural meme has arisen where people ask casual acquaintances what is on their content consumption devices, so in that spirit, here’s what I’d put on my iPod Touch and iPad if the trip was tomorrow (engagement takes about four weeks):
Music: Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Purcell, Chopin, Liszt, and Fauré playlists, a playlist of 216 “classical” albums, my standard Jazz playlist, an auto-generated 1024-track playlist of “classical” music that I haven’t heard in at least three months, a nostalgia playlistlist of 70s-80s-90s music, and a few new jazz albums I bought from Ted Gioia’s “Best of 2011” list. (Except for the last ones, all of these reside permanently in my iPod Touch and iPad.)
Podcasts: Back To Work, MacBreak Weekly, TED talks (video), SALT from the Long Now foundation.
Audiobooks: Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen and Hot Water by P.G. Wodehouse, On China by Henry Kissinger, Quantum Man by Lawrence Krauss, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinford by Evelyn Waugh, and Worm by Mark Bowden. That should be enough for the flights and the various train rides, plus elliptical exercising (for oxygenation) in the hotel gym.
Movies: Since ripping DVDs with Handbrake to watch the movies on the iPad is a violation of the DMCA, I can’t have any movies on the iPad, can I? In an alternate universe I’d load the second season of V (2011), the first season of Sherlock, the first season of Hawaii Five-O (2011), the latest season of House, Cowboys and Aliens, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Despicable Me (a feel-good movie for all occasions), The Incredibles (ibidem), Margin Call, Moneyball, and Wall St: Money Never Sleeps.
Kindle books: Civilization by Niall Ferguson, Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens, The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker, Notes from the Hard Shoulder by James May (of TopGear), The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, and Holidays in Heck by PJ O’Rourke.
iBooks: Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street (shown above), Émile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris, and Voltaire’s Candide. (I downloaded several public domain iBooks.)
PDF: All my class readings, many additional research papers and reference materials, and the O’Reilly books Beautiful Visualization and R in a Nutshell.
Games: I usually don’t play computer games, but my iPad has Solitaire, Mahjong, and a few crossword puzzles.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly310eV91R1qaiztzo1_500.jpg)
LIVING A DIGITAL LIFE — And life before digital content.
I was decommissioning an old computer and found a packing list for summer teaching in 2000. Clothing was essentially the same as in my packing list for the upcoming summer session but everything else (which means content and equipment) is completely different. Well, I still take a computer, of course.
I used to take several paper books, including a full size textbook for the class, notebooks and a binder with class notes, a ZIP drive for backups, ZIP disks, paper photos for the family, a magazine or two to read at the airport, a Discman and CDs (being at the forefront of packing technology, I used a CD pouch instead of the jewel boxes), and a few DVDs.
(The following year I got my first MP3 player and my first digital camera. And a ginormous 5GB firewire external drive!)
Now: all content is digital and travels in my laptop, backed up on a 1TB portable hard drive, several 16GB flash drives, and the cloud. I might still take a [disposable] magazine, but otherwise my music, audiobooks, eBooks, research papers, teaching materials, photos, movies and TV shows, and computer code all travel as files.
A new cultural meme has arisen where people ask casual acquaintances what is on their content consumption devices, so in that spirit, here’s what I’d put on my iPod Touch and iPad if the trip was tomorrow (engagement takes about four weeks):
Music: Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Purcell, Chopin, Liszt, and Fauré playlists, a playlist of 216 “classical” albums, my standard Jazz playlist, an auto-generated 1024-track playlist of “classical” music that I haven’t heard in at least three months, a nostalgia playlistlist of 70s-80s-90s music, and a few new jazz albums I bought from Ted Gioia’s “Best of 2011” list. (Except for the last ones, all of these reside permanently in my iPod Touch and iPad.)
Podcasts: Back To Work, MacBreak Weekly, TED talks (video), SALT from the Long Now foundation.
Audiobooks: Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen and Hot Water by P.G. Wodehouse, On China by Henry Kissinger, Quantum Man by Lawrence Krauss, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinford by Evelyn Waugh, and Worm by Mark Bowden. That should be enough for the flights and the various train rides, plus elliptical exercising (for oxygenation) in the hotel gym.
Movies: Since ripping DVDs with Handbrake to watch the movies on the iPad is a violation of the DMCA, I can’t have any movies on the iPad, can I? In an alternate universe I’d load the second season of V (2011), the first season of Sherlock, the first season of Hawaii Five-O (2011), the latest season of House, Cowboys and Aliens, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Despicable Me (a feel-good movie for all occasions), The Incredibles (ibidem), Margin Call, Moneyball, and Wall St: Money Never Sleeps.
Kindle books: Civilization by Niall Ferguson, Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens, The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker, Notes from the Hard Shoulder by James May (of TopGear), The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, and Holidays in Heck by PJ O’Rourke.
iBooks: Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street (shown above), Émile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris, and Voltaire’s Candide. (I downloaded several public domain iBooks.)
PDF: All my class readings, many additional research papers and reference materials, and the O’Reilly books Beautiful Visualization and R in a Nutshell.
Games: I usually don’t play computer games, but my iPad has Solitaire, Mahjong, and a few crossword puzzles.
Now I know today, what I did would have the approximate romance of a Twitter feed – Am deep in Somali wilderness, see you later with an eight in it. But in those days it was a $200,000 phone call. It took three motor vehicles, a raft of armed gunmen, two guys with college degrees in electrical engineering, a diesel generator, huge damn satellite dish, a communication satellite. Actually, if you added it all up it was probably more like a $2 million phone call. I miss that.
“
| — | P. J. O’Rourke, discussing travel and his latest book. |
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
I travel around the world eating and drinking and making self-indulgent television about the experience.
Anthony Bourdain has a new show: The Layover: Mondays @ 9|8c on Travel Channel.
Worth a look, methinks.
I like these amateur-quality videos made by professionals, like “Cooking up a Cumbrian Fry B&B-style” by Rick Steves.
I disagree with the characterization of carb- and sugar-loaded foods as healthy and the disparaging of the one part of English food that is actually edible (the breakfast fry-up) as unhealthy.
Cumbria, Cumbria… why is this name familiar to me? Ah! This is why.
Meet my toiletries kit, by RickSteves (yes, the PBS travel guy).
I fit my toiletries in a 1qt ziploc bag, like most air travelers. Of course, when I go somewhere for a long time, I just follow Mr. Steves’s advice and buy local. (Since local means European and I lived in Europe for 26 years, it’s really not difficult.)
But everything else being equal (same frequent flier status, etc.), when a flight is oversold in economy and the airline needs to upgrade someone, are they going to choose the passenger in the tank top or the one wearing the nice dress or suit? You already know the answer, (but as always, it doesn’t hurt to be extra nice to any staff you should encounter).
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| — |
Fly Guy: Do well-dressed fliers get more perks? Yes, they do. If you dress well and behave yourself you’re more likely to get an upgrade. Also happens if you’re better looking than average or charming. Discretionary decisions by gate agents are made at their discretion. A tip of the travel fedora to Put This On. And a counterpoint from Sanjiv Das. |
The iPad is too bulky to carry with you all day while you’re traveling a new city. I’ve seen an iPad, with its larger, harder-to-secure form factor, suddenly ripped out of a traveler’s hands in a plaza in Madrid. I want something I can slip in my pocket and hold with one hand while walking around, like an iPhone.
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| — |
Some interesting links and observations for traveling (or not) with the iPad from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. As a portuguese man I’m loath to defend Spain, but the plaza in Madrid has nothing on the intersection of Market and 6th St. in San Francisco, where people get their smartphones ripped off their hands. Obviously the point about hard-to-secure form factor makes the iPad even more steal-able by snatch-and-grabbers. Interesting post (quoted by the TUAW) on traveling with the iPad at Everything Everywhere. |
In the end, I flipped ahead to the end of the book and saw myself shuffling out of the keynote hall at Moscone West and thinking “I could have stayed home, read three liveblogs simultaneously, phoned some sources in San Francisco, and written the exact same column I’m about to write in the next two hours.
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| — |
Keynote Day – Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth This describes so many trips taken for work purposes. So much unnecessary travel to deliver a short presentation and answer some questions, both things that can easily be done remotely (and in many cases the questions would be better if instead of a presentation one used a written report). Well, the Nerd Rapture commences in 90 minutes. Gotta go. |
Imagine a country where everyone is good at his or her job. Imagine a country where everyone has respect for elders and teachers. Imagine a country where every shop clerk treats each customer like an honored guest. Imagine a country where everyone wears expensive clothing, the food is slurpy, and there aren’t any napkins because apparently nobody needs them. Imagine a country where everyone has good taste.
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| — |
Phil Greenspun on Japan; I can’t stop comparing the first paragraph with what I’d write for Portugal. Obviously it would be very similar. |
