My favourite photographer is the late Galen Rowell, whose books (especially The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, sadly out of print for UK readers) were my inspiration for returning to photography as an adult. My favourite Galen Rowell photograph is “Last Light At Horsetail Falls” – I have a numbered print of it on the wall at home. It epitomises his approach of visualising the photograph you want to make and putting yourself in the place where you will be able to create the image you have visualised.
So I was thrilled to discover that the US National Park Service, as part of their excellent series of Yosemite videos, has create eight delightful minutes about the natural phenomenon Rowell was able to represent. It makes me realise I have still never made a winter visit to Yosemite; I really need to do that.
One of the best travel purchases I have made is an unlocked high-speed USB 3G modem. It allows me to get broadband-speed internet access for the duration of each trip abroad for a per-trip price comparable to one night of internet access at a hotel, using a locally-purchased pre-paid data SIM at each destination.
The modem I bought is a Zoom 3G Tri-Band USB Modem (that’s the UK link, looks like it’s also available in the US), and so far I have used it successfully with SIM cards for TIM Italy, Mobistar Belgium and 3 UK. In each case I inserted the SIM, selected the network provider from the software and it worked instantly, usually at the 7Mb HSDPA speeds. There’s simple and easy Windows and Mac software pre-loaded on the stick – I’ve not tried it with the EeePC and Ubuntu yet, I’d be interested to hear from people about their experiences. The SIM card I bought today from Mobistar in Belgium was €15 and gave me 275Mb of bandwidth to use over the next month – more than enough for broadband everywhere at FOSDEM.
Until we see the regulators sort out Europe’s mobile market and get rid of the ridiculous avaricious feudalism that blights us, this is a great solution for reducing the cost of getting online everywhere and I recommend it.
Update: As you’ll see from the comments, I also use this with a Zoom Travel Router (also available from Amazon in the US). I just plug the USB stick into the router (which is battery powered as well as working with a power supply) and it provides WiFi to multiple devices. It also allows you to connect to a wired ethernet and provides WiFi acces the same way Apple’s Airport Express does.
I just got home from a week in Brazil, where I gave talks for IBM and for a large ForgeRock customer and also at the remarkable Campus Party. This is the second year I have spoken at Campus Party in Brazil and once again it was an interesting and overwhelming experience.
Campus Party started in 1997 as a LAN party in Spain (where people bring along their computers to connect to a massive network and play computer games) but has spread across the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world to become a global activity. The event in Brazil is held in a huge exhibition centre. Delegates pay to attend, then live on-site for the week, camping in pop-up tents inside the exhibition centre.
That was the source of one of the off-the-wall activities I participated in. Every delegate received a bath-robe from one of the sponsors, and near the end there was a bid to establish the Guinness world record for the largest crowd wearing bath-robes. Only a fraction of the Campuseiros participated, and there was still a dense crowd exceeding 1,500 people. Check the video:
The noise in the place is phenomenal and draining. There’s no daylight inside, just 24-hour activity. To get a flavour of the energy and variety, take a look at the Fickr photos. It’s now far more than a LAN party for two big reasons:
First, people are there for far more reasons. There is a Software Freedom camp (who were the hosts for my talk), a PC case-mod tournament, a group meeting to attack the digital divide, install-fests, live and electronic music – every aspect of the connected society as experienced by the 18-30 age group at which the event is targeted.
Second, there’s also conference content – and lots of it. Speakers this time included Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee and Steve Wozniak – and those are just the English-speakers. There were government panels, star speakers and novel content of every shade and colour.
The most striking difference takes a while to dawn on you, though. Usually at a conference there’s a theme – a programming platform, a social issue, a research thread. But not here. Unlike any other event I have ever been to, there is no single theme bringing everyone together, apart from the uniting motif of being a young adult in the 21st century. What’s brought people together is the Internet and the future. That has to be the ultimate post-post-modern un-conference possible.
Apologies for the silence over the weekend – we’ve been taking a break in Helsinki. Because of it being the darkest part of the year, the city has a week-long night-time festival of light-related art installations, Season of Light, now in its third year. It’s not unlike the “nuit blanche” I saw in Paris earlier in the year, but the 0ºC temperatures and falling sleet onto packed snow made the crowds a little smaller! We were able to tour the closing evening of the 2011 festival, walking snow-covered streets and encountering ambient music and shifting colourscapes.
One favourite was the stunning LED-lit cross in front of the cathedral, which showed a blazingly colourful sequence of abstract images accompanied by rich and full ambient music, shifting strong colours cast onto the building and the snow-field around it and candle-lights in all the windows of the buildings in the square surrounding it. You’ll find more and better photos of the installation at the cathedral on the event’s Facebook page.
Another was the fire dancing, held in a building courtyard north of the cathedral. Full of energy and gentle humour, the agile fire-juggling dancers were clearly having great fun despite the sleet falling on them and were warmly appreciated.
2010 was a year of change for me, with many things I’m glad are past and with the roots of new things I am looking forward to exploring and growing. For 2011 I am full of hope:
that we will see successful new ways of doing business while promoting everybody’s freedoms;
that we’ll see the community of software-freedom-loving communities flourish and find new unity of purpose;
that we’ll see the emergence of a realization in our political leaders worldwide that the internet offers new opportunities for liberty rather than a threat.
My goal for the year is to do all I can to make those hopes real, both in my own life and in the wider community. I wish every reader here a very happy new year, full of hope, and look forward to working with you
It really is time Imogen Heap released an album of B-Sides And Rarities. There’s some really good stuff out there uncollected on any album of hers. I’m maintaining a track listing for the album I’d like to buy, just in case she needs any help 🙂 – I’d welcome pointers to your favourite tracks I’ve missed here.
If you didn’t listen to it when I recommended it this time last year, it’s worth your time to go listen on Spotify, Amazon UK or Amazon US. Try Sol Invictus, Midwinter Toast, the beautiful December In New York and (for some darker humour) The St Stephen’s Day Murders (which includes some British references American friends might need help with, such as the reference to Irn-Bru). If your taste in “holiday music” is dominated by Bing, Frank and carols, you might not like it, but I have a hunch a whole lot of people who are reading this will find it’s the first seasonal album they have wanted to buy for themselves.
The video is also available for download, and there is also a video of an interview with Coleman Barks. A great and beautiful gift, thanks Wikipedia (where I found it).
All views expressed on this blog are those of Simon Phipps and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other entity, including current and former employers and clients. See my full disclosure of interests.
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