Posts tagged #places

Track real-time flight status, departures and arrivals, airport delays, and airport information using FlightStats Global Flight Tracker from Cirium.

Curaçao Jews Home page –Learn about the Jews of Curaçao: their rich history, magnificent synagogues, historic cemeteries, fascinating museums, and other delightful other sites. Find everything you need to plan a visit. CuracaoJews.org is an initiative of the Jewish Cultural Historical Museum as we approach 400 years of Jewish life recorded on the island of Curaçao.

Wandermap – Your hiking routes online Wandermap is one of the largest collections of hike routes on the web. Hike routes can be mapped or uploaded from GPS devices. December 26, 2021 at 01:57PM

I absolutely adored Spock. Loving Dad was much more complicated. – The Boston Globe A son of Boston, Leonard Nimoy was also my father. What is this doing in a technical link blog? Well I am a big Startrek fan so bear with me this one time! June 17, 2021 at 10:23PM

Another way to get a cell phone while traveling.

Another way to get a cell phone while traveling.

If you don't want to do the whole cruise or road trip thing, you need a train.

How to travel by train or ferry from the UK into Europe & worldwide... Train times, fares, how to buy tickets, advice & information.

Just playing with my new blogging platform to see if it works ok!

I admit I am always a little bit offended when I hear that a friend of mine (François?) chooses Aruba as a vacation destination. And it happens pretty regularly. Oh I always say that the two islands are very similar, but the truth is that I’ve spent very little time in Aruba, so… Anyway, for those of you who want to explore this delicate topic more deeply I present to you:

Aruba versus Curacao: Caribbean Showdown – Curaçao Chronicle:

At first glance Aruba and Curacao seem very similar. They’re both Dutch islands, they are about 75 miles apart from each other off of the coast of Venezuela and they even have most of the same cultural influences. But believe me; the two islands couldn’t be more different. These differences aren’t a bad thing; it’s just that some travelers will prefer one over the other depending on the type of vacation experience they’re looking for.

Today my first Amazon order with sales tax. Too bad for me, but good for our state!

The Many Mysteries of Air Travel – NYTimes.com:

If you’d like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smith’s new book, “Cockpit Confidential.” Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the book’s format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the “Ask the Pilot” column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

I came across this article a few days ago. The Ticktock of the Death Clock – NYTimes.com. Yes a depressing topic. The author muses on the wonderful internet resource DeathClock.com which purports to tell you, to the second, when you will die. Hah Hah funny.

Oddly though the article turns this topic into a positive and constructive messasge. Once the author sees that according to DeathClock.com he only has 18 years to go, he ups and quits his job:

Yes, just like that. Call me crazy. I worked as an editor and, ironically, my soon-to-be-former boss had once gi...

We were on vacation in Greece and Turkey a few weeks ago and I noticed many TripAdvisor Certificate of this or that, hanging in windows of random shops on remote islands (and big cities) and I got to thinking, are these for real? Is there a simple way to get a counterfiet certificate? It’s just a piece of paper and I somehow doubt that TripAdvisor in Massachusetts USA is aware that “The Citadel” shop on Santanelli is sporting a fake certificate.

[p.s: Searching for “get me tripadvisor certificate of excellence” produced these high res images ready for editing and printingat your neighborhood color print shop. ]

About a year ago I started reading Rolling Stone magazine. It’s true what Taibbi says, it’s definitely not People or EW magazine. Yes it does have good ‘cultural’ coverage about music and art and so on, but the writing is good and interesting and very often has nothing to do with music. All the uproar about the Tsarnaev cover (I haven’t received the issue yet but I almost feel like I have) is so over the top.

I mean get over it people, it’s just a magazine cover. Anyway, Mike Taibbi below has a far more reasoned reaction to the outrage than mine, and it’s a good article.

...

Last year we went with National Geographic to the Galapagos islands for an amazing journey of discovery. The Galapagos are a set of islands, part of Ecuador, that I had heard about all my life, but never thought of as somewhere I could actually visit. Well, you can. We could. It was a wonderful trip. Here is an article about that trip to the Galapagos was written for the Sidney Morning Herald by one of our co-travelers.

I was a volunteer for the Democratic Committee in Arlington Mass. They have an impressive operation, just like what you’ve heard. For example, the systems they used to deploy us volunteers.

I walked in the campaign office, untrained and unschooled. Within minutes I was assigned my very own ‘turf’. What is a turf? A turf is a neighborhood of about two to four streets assigned to me and only me.

I was handed a clipboard with a sheaf of sheets describing my turf. The clipboard included:

A map of a nearby neighborhood, with a series of dots on certain, but not all houses A list of addresses in street order, first one side and then the other With each address a list of ...

http://images.travelpod.com/bin/tripwow/flash/tripwow.swf Galapagos Slideshow: Pito’s trip to Galapagos Islands was created with TripAdvisor TripWow!

Instead of charging extra (‘congestion pricing’) to drive your car during rush hour, how about giving me a reward (a lottery ticket) for driving using less congested routes? That’s a clever idea that is being tested by a Stanford professor:

“[…]So this spring, with a $3 million research grant from the federal Department of Transportation, Stanford deployed a new system designed by Dr. Prabhakar’s group. Called Capri, for Congestion and Parking Relief Incentives, it allows people driving to the notoriously traffic-clogged campus to enter a daily lottery, with a chance to win up to an extra $50 in their paycheck, just by shifting their commute to off-peak times. The program has proved so popu...

If you are a theatre fan I strongly recommend a play I just saw last night. It’s called “Luck of the Irish”. From a review on Boston.com:

“… It’€™s one of numerous instances in Greenidge’s superb, beautifully realized new play — now receiving its premiere in a Huntington Theatre Company production directed by Melia Bensussen — that illustrate the playwright’s sure grasp of the nuances of race and class and her insights into the complexities of human nature.” (from Boston.Com)

Run, don’t walk to see this play at the Huntington Theatre in Boston!

This is from a play we saw last year at the Huntington Theatre. The play is Prelude to a Kiss by Craig Lucas. It production was quite good but this particular speech struck me as the best part of the play. Don’t read it as depressing just as really good writing and really true.

An annual event, the streets of Willemstad (Curaçao)are covered with art by well known artists:

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615

(See: Willemstad Word Gekleurd)

Yesterday was great. The buzz in the place is unbelievable. This place is the Launch Conference. Organized and run beautifully by Jason Calacanis (who has become much more warm and fuzzy than I remember). Here is Rafe Needleman’s summary of day one.

And with all due respect to Boston and Scott Kirsner in particular, I cannot see a gathering like this happening in Boston. There just are not nearly enough interesting startups to pick from. Now, no, I don’t claim to know anything like all of them. I am sure there are lots of great proje...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILhiW76B3H8&w=560&h=315]

We are thinking of planning a trip to Costa Rica. Part of the trip is to get from Tabacon to Monteverde, which I gather is a very popular tourist route, being between two of the most scenic parts of the country.

We are trying to gather information about that drive. Is it realistically 3 hours? Or is it more like 6 hours?

Part of my research uses Google maps, right? Have you seen the Google maps 3D driving simulation thing? It’s amazing!

Follow this link to the Google Mapspage, and then locate the 3D button in the white margin on the left next to the directions. Click the button and BE AMAZED!!

I Just came back from seeing “Gods Of Carnage” at the Huntington Theatre (in Boston) tonight. Couldn’t wait to post my recommendation.

It’s short (about 80 minutes – no intermission), fast paced, well acted and funny. It’s a story about two couples who are thrown together to discuss a playground altercation between their two sons. That’s the set up.

The story takes up an evening when they get together to discuss it. Huntington has been embracing the web and social media in excellent fashion of late. I just noticed the ingenious new bit, which is doing a “trailer” for a ...

I was recently visiting Curaçao and remembered that I had read that Netflix was now available in South America so I thought I would check it out. (Curaçao is not technically in South America but close enough!) Well, it worked.

For one reason or another, I found a british program called “The Hour” which I also remembered having been positioned as the BBC’s answer to Madmen. Which it is not.

What it is, is a compelling drama about the creation of an hour long news program on the BBC in the years following WWII.

So compelling in fact, that we watched the whole mini-series (6 or 7 episodes) while we were ther...

It felt like a war zone without the danger! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUdhro7G2o&w=420&h=315]

We just got back from the monthly meeting of “Boston Postmortem“.

Huh, what is that? Well as a result of my teaching at Brandeis this summer – Mobile and Game Software Development – I have developed a greater appreciation for the gaming world. When we had Ed Baraf of Blue Fang games speak to our class, among the many things he taught us was that there’s this great meetup in Waltham called the Boston Postmortem.

It was very well attended and the crowd sounded and felt like a community that knew each other and was pretty tight which ma...

Here’s how we make Garoza (Charoset) in Curaçao.

Trust me, add a little horseradish, a couple of matzah, delicious!

This is very close to where I live, and people are amazed to know that you can actually go by boat from Arlington to Boston Harbor. This video is beautiful proof of that. [vimeo 16535358 w=400 h=225]

The Mystic (in Three Minutes) from Sarah Ginsburg on Vimeo.

You may not follow the news, but Curaçao is undergoing major constitutional changes, as are all the Netherlands Antilles. In fact, as of this Sunday, Oct 10, (“10-10-10”) the Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist as a legal entity. The easiest way to explain this to Americans that I have come up with is, that it’s as if all the islands of the State of Hawaii decided that they should all be their own state, the state of Oahu, of Maui, etc.

This is from an article in the BBC Caribean:

“A series of negotiations, with Holland in the role of part partner/part arbiter, resulted in an agreement in which Curacao and St Maarten will become ‘separate countries’ with direct ties to Holland.

The t...

They may not like me to say this, but as a longtime subscriber, I’ve been very disappointed for the last several seasons at the Huntington Theater in Boston. A very hit or miss program with only a few memorable plays. Well I did stick with the Huntington and it’s time for me to say, like, Randy Jackson of American Idol: “The Huntington Theatre Is Back (man)”

This year we’ve been treated to a series of memorable, interesting, well produced shows. It’s been a pleasure.

Most recently, and still running are ...

I came across VentureFizz. It’s a broad resource for Boston area techies: “VentureFizz can help you see what’s buzzing in Boston’s tech community” Particularly useful is their Event’s calendar, which as far as I can see is one of the better ones. An analogous site is Greenhorn Connect, which is trying to achieve something similar but seems more focused on up and coming entrepreneurs.

I was supposed to fly from San Fransisco to Boston today. Monday (2 days ago) I got an email from JetBlue saying, more or less: “Sorry to tell you, but your flight has been canceled. Please call 1-800-xxx to make a new reservation or get a refund.” No explanation of why. I was taken aback, but I guess it happens all the time. After spending 30 minutes on hold, I was able to make new plans which had me leaving a day early (yesterday.) Back safe and sound now. To JetBlue’s credit for the moment, they are waving all change fees and more importantly, any fare differences. From their web site it seems like the flight was canceled due to ‘weather.’ While indeed tonight at 10pm we’re supposed to be in the middle of a blizzard here in Boston, on Monday, when they canceled, the weather today was predicted to ok. I guess they have better weather forecasters than the weather channel!

I get asked from time to time to recommend ruby, rails, and other developers in the Boston area, either for full time or part time gigs. I’m developing a list of good local job resources – started so far with the help of pal Brian D:

Dave Beisel‘s WebInno Job Board:http://jobs.webinnovatorsgroup.com

Boston Ruby group’s job board:http://bostonrb.org/jobs

Tom Summit‘s Genotrope: http://www.genotrope.com/genotrope/HitLists.html

Working With Rails national job board:http://workingwithrails.com/browse/jobs/recent

I’ve been a subscriber at the Huntington Theater for years and years now and this new play is the best one by far this season and one of the best in the last few years. “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller, at the Huntington Theater in Boston, MA, USA

I have to say that the productions at the Huntington recently have been uneven at best. I don’t know whether my tastes have changed or whether something’s different but I more often leave with a “meh” than with a “yay!”.

Last night was a Yay! I recommend going to the Huntington Theater in Boston to see “All My Sons”

I’ve been working quite a bit on the Open Source Digital Voting foundation project over the last 9 months or so. It’s really weird but I’ve turned myself into a mini-expert on how elections are organized and run here in the USA. It’s fascinating and way complicated. OSDV is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing a suite of election (as in Democracy) hardware and software.

The umbrella name for that project is TrustTheVote: an open source project, which will work closely with election officials around the country to learn requirements and then develop software which in turn will be offered free of charge to those who want to de...

I am traveling on my usually favorite Airline; and of course everyone knows that they are suffering, right? And yes, the flight to L.A. is ridiculously inexpensive. But still, let’s say these raised my eyebrows:

When I checked in, I looked at the seat assignment chart and there were no free seats (I wanted to switch to an aisle seat.) Over the P.A. they said, more than once, that the plane was totally totally full. Yet when the doors closed, there were at least 8 empty seats visible to me from where I was sitting, including two whole rows. Don’t they have, like, computers, to keep track of who is on the plane and how many seats it has? They don’t serve food on the plane anymore. O...

Just found out that the WebInno group is back in session after a summer hiatus. This is one of the best open meetings for techies and entrepreneurs to meet and talk and see each other’s stuff. Here’s the official blurb: “The Web Innovators Group (WebInno) is comprised of people engaged in internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area. We aim to support entrepreneurs, visionaries, and creative thinkers in the field by holding events which foster community interaction.

Our regular meetings provide a forum for entrepreneurs from self-funded/early-stage startups to present new services to their peers, as well as an opportunity for...

Pretty cool report via Boston Globe, but see my minor complaint about it at the end: “Hold all that gloom and doom about Massachusetts as a state with little to offer young folks. According to Forbes.com, the second-best place in the country for young college grads is none other than Cambridge, or more specifically the Cambridge-Newton-Framingham area, which ranks behind only San Jose among metro areas with over 1 million people.” (from Boston Globe)

It’s actually quite interesting to see the underlying detail of how the study was conducted, w...

My friend Amy just recently arrived from an incredible trip through Asia. If you are curious, check out Amy’s blog: “My travels in Southern Laos were indeed more successful in terms of being able to get out and see things than my time in the capital. I took an overnight bus with beds down to Pakse. This sounds like a really nice way to travel but as we found our beds, the only other westerner on the bus and I realized that these twin size mattresses were for two people, not one. We asked to be put together but there were no changes allowed so we spent the evening sleeping with strangers. This is not a recommended bus experience but we a...

If you live in the Boston area and somehow connected to technology professions you should be interested in this meeting being put on in June: What’s Next In Tech – Where will the next waves of growth will come from?

Date: Thursday, June 25th Time: 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM (ET) Where: Boston University, School of Management, 595 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, 02215 Price: $40

(If you are a student interested in attending this event and would like financial assistance, scholarships are available through www.stayinma.com.)

Take a look at the program, Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe has lined up a...

This weekend I had a chance to attend BarCamp Boston (4). As usual it was fun and interesting and I had a chance to hang out and talk with a bunch of interesting people.

If you don’t know how a Bar Camp works, it is of the genre of “Unconferences” and one of the keys is that it has no program, ahead of time.

Kind of a leap of faith, you know? Anyway, the image to the left (and click on it to see the enlargement) shows how at the end of the meeting the program is fully visible, and actually quite interesting! Click on it to see a big englar...

This is probably not high on your radar, but if you have interest in the island of Curaçao you may have heard about the big referendum issue that is being hotly debated these days. I won’t even try to capture the sides of the argument, rather I want to refer you to this outstanding paper written by people from Harvard Law School that cover the issues and sides thoroughly. It is, by the way, extremely well written.

The paper is called “A Look Through the Constitutional Prism” and it was written by Jeremias Prassl and Ben Gardner.

Here’s a taste:

“These issues were counterbalanced by a major advantage we brought to this ...

Check out this post NBC’s Boston affiliate isn’t going to show Leno’s new show: "WHDH, the NBC affiliate in Boston (I’m watching it right now) says that they’re not going to show Leno’s new 10PM show. Starting in September, the station is going to show local news at 10PM instead!" (from: from TV Squad)

This is pretty interesting. I was wondering how the world could give up the 10:00pm time slot, each and every day on NBC. So ‘our’ station is choosing to opt out. Didn’t realize this was even possible!

Hey, how about doing me a favor? It will only take you a minute or less. It won’t cost a penny. Help the famous and wonderful Club Passim win a grant from, who else, Virgin America.

Spread the karma, it will come back to you!

JUST CLICK HERE CLICK HERE JUST CLICK HERE

Chris and I, this morning, looking forward to a great day. We’ve waited and worked for this. And now the day has come.

I saw the inauguration communally on a big screen at the Regent Theater in Arlington with hundreds of other cheering folks. It was a fun and exciting event. People even stood up for the actual oath of office.

Quite something!

Hey! If you live in Boston or Cambridge, and you like music, especially Folk music, then you’ve probably been to Club Passim in Cambridge – Harvard Square actually. It’s a lot more than a ‘Coffee House’ – it’s an institution where many of your favorite 70s acts got their start. Passim is a tiny little folk music club in Harvard Square that’s existed years and years and where musicians like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan played at the very beginning of their careers. I am friends with various people at Passim, over the year we have attended lots of shows there.

We have been members for ...

As a favor I am posting this notice about an event that looks like it might be fun: Battle of the Bands

The requirement is that at least one member of the band must work for a New England-area technology or life sciences company or a venture-capital or private-equity firm that invests in technology. All levels of bands are welcome—from club veterans to garage hackers. All musical styles are welcome – entry deadline is Dec 12, 2008.

The event will take place on January 22, 2009 at the Middle East in Cambridge. Last year Jeet “Miki” Singh, co-fou...

Scott Kirsner of the Innovation Economy blog, as well of the Boston Globe says that: “To me, the biggest way to make Boston more competitive and innovative right now is to do a better job connecting students with our innovation economy. Which is why it pains me that our trade associations and networking groups make it so hard for students to get involved.” (from Innovation Economy)

He goes on to grade a variety of formal and informal groups who put on meetings regularly in the greater Boston area. It’s a ...

Aleksey (my colleague on BlogBridge) is planning to move from the Ukraine to Australia. Here’s a fairly fascinating account of the experience of proving that he knows enough English to be permitted to Australia. Check out this post from noizZze to read about his interesting adventure: “IELTS test is an indispensable part of the process as we have to prove our language abilities along with technical skills and other stuff when applying to the Skilled Immigration Visa. According to the requirements, I need a pretty high score (somewhere around 7 of 10) and Kate’s needs to be at least 5. One interesting fact th...

If you live in the Boston area and are in the tech business you should check out the more or less monthly Web Innovators gathering sometimes referred to in shorthand as WebInno. Here is the WebInnot blog and here is the WebInno registration page and announcement of the next WebInno event. For all of y’all who suffer from the boston-isnt-as-cool-as-silicon-valley syndrome, I strongly recommend you check out the next WebInno. Here again are the coordinates:

“It’s just over two weeks away until our July 15th Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another great set of demonstrators for the event.

As usual, the doors officially open at 6:30pm at the Grand Ballroom in the Cambridge Royal Sonesta, with the “main dish” presentations to the entire crowd starting at 7pm.” (from WebInno)

Recently three friends of mine got nice press coverage, so I thought I’d share them:

Reed Sturtevant is doing some great things at Microsoft in Boston

Paul Engiish and Kayak are showing the true prices of air travel

Ted Morgan of Skyhook are performing magic with photos and no-GPS

So in fact, there IS cool tech stuff going on in Boston 🙂

I just returned from RailsConf, a conference all about Ruby on Rails. Many bloggers have written about it so I won’t summarize it further. In the coming days I will be posting on various of my discoveries and contacts made. For today though I want to just direct your attention to the picture on the left. After the conference (which was in Portland Oregon) we drove to Seattle and spent one full day in ...

I’m in Portland Oregon for a few days for a conference, and this may be an unfair sample, but I was amazed to see how many more people seem to be smoking cigarettes – on the street, in restaurants, etc – than what I am used to in Boston. Only one data point, but notable. I wonder why.

This, from American Airlines: “Your trip is eligible for check-in now. Save time at the airport and check-in on AA.com® any time from now up to one hour prior to your departure. To use our new instant check-in feature, simply click the button below and print your boarding pass. Save this email and use your personal check-in button for quick and easy check-in for your return flight.”

Anyone have any idea what possible benefit I get for checking in online? I don’t think any of these

Save Time? How? I still have to go show my Id before getting my boarding pass don’t I?

Checked bags? Still have to go to the counter as usual, don’t I?

Checking in online seems cool, but why???

I recently was on a trip with United Airlines. It’s a long story, but basically the short form is that the pilot didn’t show up, our flight was about 2 hours late, and I was going to miss the connection, also on United. A bunch of us were in the same boat (or plane) and so there was quite a buzz in the gate area, upon which a lawyer who knew something about air travel said, “Make sure you mention Rule 240”. Huh?

Rule 240 is like a magic code word. When you use it with airline personel they know exactly what you mean and they seem to act on it (a little bit scared of it, even.) Rule 240 states that, if you miss a connection and it’s the airlines fault (i.e. pilot doesn’t show up, but not a s...

Well it’s not really ‘coming’ – it was here all along, just dormant. Here’s the down-lo: BarCamp Boston 3 May 17-18, 2008 http://barcampboston.org/

BarCamp is an unConference, organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. There is no registration fee, but you don’t just attend a BarCamp — you can participate in discussions, demo your projects, or join into another cooperative event.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software, programming languages, and the future of technology.

More information and free registration at: http://barcampboston.org/

I’m coming. Are you?

Last week I went to the monthly “WebInno” – web innovators group –meeting at the Sonesta in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). I am quite impressed with the attendance and the quality of the people presenting. The gathering was quite crowded and the buzz was very loud, lots of dynamic discussions going on all over the place, people trading war stories and comparing products. It was stimulating and fun, and I plan to go next month again.

In the meanwhile, Don Dodge of Microsoft writes a post “...

I just came back from the theatre, the Huntington Theatre, Boston’s, production of a brand new play called “The Cry of the Reed”by Sinan Ünel. This play and production is truly amazing, great, dramatic, thought provoking, and overall excellent. We were discussing this play the whole drive home. Talking about war, religion, morality, ethics, human nature, theatre and drama.

I like seeing these productions before the pundits and professional reviewers decide if it’s any good. I went there tonight not even knowing what this play was about and happy not to have been influenced by some stupid reviewer. This world premiere better get a five star rating IMHO.

Em. Yeah. I liked it.

I just came across this announcement for the ‘Battle of the Tech Bands’ on January 22 in Central Square (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.) “Musicians from Boston’s tech and tech-investment companies play their geeky hearts out—you pick the winners!”

Sounds like fun! Check out the Battle of the Tech Bands here!

Two nights ago, Friday, I got to go to the TechCrunch Boston party at The Estate in Boston (which oddly enough doesn’t seem to have a web site.) Those of you who know me will be ‘surprised’ that I had to miss the ‘drinking-focused after party, held at an Irish pub, from 11:00pm on. Lately it seems like every week there’s another tech networking event in our area, which is great. This one was huge though, seemed like 500 or more people, elbow to elbow. Great fun!

Here’s ...

On September 11, 2007, the [tag]Boston PHP User Group[/tag] is meeting about “Building the PHP-stack for the [tag]enterprise[/tag]”: “PHP has become ubiquitous when it comes to personal blogs, content management systems, ecommerce sites and more. Take any list of Web 2.0 sites and you’ll find that more than 50% have PHP as back-end technology. What is less known is that PHP is also making significant inroads in the enterprise. Join BostonPHP, IBM and Zend as we discuss where “Enterprise” PHP (and OSS) is going and how it’s going to get there. : (from Boston PHP)

If you are into [tag]PHP[/tag] you should check it out!

I just returned from a very brief visit to Madrid (4 days) and came back enamored of the city. Madrid is beautiful and vibrant, always busy with people that seem to be having constant good time. People seem to be eating constantly and yet no one is fat 🙂 And the weather is fine! It seems (see AP photo to the left) that I didn’t experience everything that was going on this weekend though 🙂

Recently I visited Curaçao to participate in the celebration of the 275th anniversary of the building of the Snoa. This is from an article written by Sam D. Gruber (who I met there) “As evening fell in Willemstad in Curacao on April 16, scores of well-dressed people headed to the narrow Hanchi di Snoa, and into the courtyard of the Snoa — Curacao’s venerable synagogue built in 1732, home to Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas, and one where no Sabbath or major holiday has gone uncelebrated in 275 years.”

Read the whole article ‘A Birthday Celebration for Curaçao’s historic synagogue.

Here’s an email I received recently. How many different languages do you count? “Danki pa e artíkulo d Sam. Mi a haña un email di dje siman pasá kaminda ela kontami ku pronto e artíkulo lo sali i ku e lo manda mi e link. Maar jij was veel sneller. Avery a gusta e artikel hopi (mi tambe trouwens). Lo mi skibi Sam. He is a good writer. Trouwens su mama a muri in the meantime (ela skibimi).

Chag Sameach (Shavuot)”

Lately, for some crazy reason, I’ve found myself, multiple times, in Toronto, Canada, and Willemstad Curaçao. My Sprint phone doesn’t work in either place. As luck would have it, my Sprint contract is about to expire and so I am trying to figure out whether I should change carriers. If you are in the same boat, here are some very handy links that I came across:

T-Mobile International Cell Phone Service Information Verizon International Cell Phone Service Information Cingular Wireless International Cell Phone Service Information Sprint International Cell Phone Service Information

From reading these, T-Mobile seems to be the right choice for me and where I live. Do you use T-Mobile? How do you like it?

I’ve been a member of Costco for years. Yeah, you always buy more stuff there than you intended, but it’s so much fun! I uncovered today that Costco also has great discounts for travel, rental cars in particular. If you are not part of a big corporate program, call Costco Travel, ask for your rental car company, and you get connected to their ‘Costco Desk’ (is it a real desk?). Anyway, the point is I got a real nice discount over what the default Hertz web siteprice or Kayak deal was. Just a LifeHack for you.

Yeah a weird thought. So when I came across an analysis called The Dutch Defend Their World Empire, I was fascinated, in a sick sort of way. “[snip…]The Dutch problem can best be described with the words, “not enough”. Not enough forces to successfully repel an invasion of Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire; not enough naval power to carry out operations to retake the islands; their fighters do not have enough range; and not enough logistical support to support an operation.[snip…] (from The Dutch Defend Their Empire)

Also, from the comments:

“[snip…]The United...

This is the Seaquarium beach area. It’s very beautiful as you can see. Click on the photo if you dare. It’s huge but impressive.

Check out this post from Bostonist:

Attorney General Martha Coakley announced today that the Boston area cut a deal with Turner Broadcasting and Interference, Inc., the brains behind the marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres that made life in Boston a little nutty last week.

Boston will receive $2 million dollars for its trouble. In return, Turner Broadcasting and I...

A quick reminder of the upcoming BostonPHP meeting: BostonPHP will host a panel discussion on Venture Capital and Open Source Software with Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture, Larry Bohn of General Catalyst Venture and David Beisel of Masthead Venture. Sounds interesting. Follow the link for more details!

Check out this post from Crave RSS:

(Credit: Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa)

What I really should be saying about this, just to tick off fellow Craver Mike Yamamoto, is that I wish this underwater restaurant were in the Antarctic Ocean, so that I could go and see some penguins swim by. Alas, I don’t know how …

(from: Dine with the fishes at Hilton Maldives’ underwater restaurant)

For those of you who avidly follow Curaçao politics, yes, all two of you, and I know who you are, do you think this is a good thing? I am not so sure… “The Dutch government has signed an agreement granting qualified autonomy to the territories of Curacao and St. Maarten, paving the way for the formal end of the Netherlands Antilles.” (from Radio Jamaica)

We’ll see how it develops.

North Panorama Arch

Originally uploaded by Pito.

Look at that picture. In the bottom right of the image, very small, you can see Pito and Chris. Yeah, Arches is amazing. I am not sure exactly how many arches they have but there are lots and lots, and some are really huge.

I can’t go into the details here (even to the extent that I understand them, which I don’t) about how the arches are formed, but perhaps wikipedia can shed some light?

Anyway, Arches is very near Canyonlands National Park and both are spectacular, but quite different. They are both near the town of Moab which has some interesting stories to tell too.

Definitely worth a visit!

Technorati Tags: arches

Continuing my series about my recent trip through 5 National Parks, here’s Capitol Reef. This is a little known National Park in Utah.

Interesting cocktail party tidbit (if what the rangers tell us can be believed): in the “old days” the explorers, trappers, and homesteaders tended to use nautical metaphors for land masses, and when they encountered a geographic feature which blocked their passage, stopped their progress, they would refer to it as a “reef....

Bryce Canyon National Park As promised here is the first of the collection of posts inspired on my recent trip. All I can say is “Utah is an amazing place.” This is one of my favorite pictures taken at Bryce. It looks otherworldly to me… If you check out Flickr you can see the other pictures that I took while out there. I actually took over 400 so this was my first attempt at identifying the 100 best. Still sorting. Anyway, as you can see from the ...

If you’re looking for a really wonderful place to stay while in Bar Harbor, you should check out the Bass Cottage Inn! Here’s a review:

“Had he recognized my name when I registered? Did he know I was there to review his inn? Why else would he be so welcoming? It turns out my suspicions were misguided; the man simply loves his job.” (from “A welcoming inn by the bustle of Bar Harbor”)

I just returned from a trip in the American Southwest, starting in St. George Utah, to Bryce Canyon National Park, Capitol Reef Park, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and ending in Mesa Verde National Park. A spectacular trip. I am now back, invigorated and ready for action.

http://wikimapia.org/s/#y=38324420&x=-110401611&z=7&l=0&m=a

One of the funny things that happen when I am away is that I get ideas for new blog posts which I can’t actually post. So here’s the backlog that I hope to unleash on you in the coming days and weeks:

Why do I blog, anyway?

...

Curacao has in the past won or gotten very close to winning the overall Little League World Series! So far it looks like the Curacao team has won the Caribean title. Take a look at the standings so far: Little League World Series Standings

Oddly enough the way the overall World Series is structured is that the US always makes it to the Semi Finals. Seems a bit rigged don’t you think? At least it’s better than the big leagues where the “World” in “World Series” means US and Canada 🙂

Check out this picture! Yeah I thought it w...

FlightStats – Worldwide flight status / tracker with historical performance data

Comprehensive airport and flight information: delays, actual times, estimated times, scores etc.

(tags: travel flight airtravel)

â__We Are Who We Believe Ourselves to Beâ__: Curaçao Jazz and the Expression of Identity by Nanette de Jong

Interesting article about Curacaoan identity

(tags: curacao identity)

Just a quick reminder that we are having another super-informal-geeky-but-not-exclusively-geeks Geek Dinner, and we have a lovely new location, sponsored by our friends at Permabit. The location is on First Street, in Cambridge, MA, USA, in the so-called Davenport Building, on the second floor.

See you there!

Here are the coordinates:

When: July 19, Wednesday, 6:30pm to 9:30pm

Where: Permabit, 25 First Street, 2nd Floor. Across from the Galleria Mall.

Topics of discussion: AJAXPHPOPMLRSSJAVAETC

Please confirm your attendance by clicking here!

We are having another super-informal-geeky-but-not-exclusively-geeks Geek Dinner, and we have a lovely new location, sponsored by our friends at Permabit (Thanks Tom and Katie!)

Who is we, again? Bela Labovitch, Adam Green and me. We’ve organized two of these this year, and they were lots-o-fun. People met, talked: no cures for cancer were discovered but in general people felt it was good enough to try again.

What happens at these things? Just a lot of chatter about products, technologies, politics and in general, “wats goin on” in the Boston area, Geek-wise. Oh and of course...

Ingredients for Web 2.0 Success

(tags: funny)

Hurricane? What Hurricane?

Here’s a really fun article in the Washington Post about Curacao…

(tags: curacao Travel interesting)

As you may have heard, we’ve had torrential (and I mean torrential) downpours here in Massachusetts. I happen to live on a little isthmus (look it up) between the upper and lower Mystic Lakes in Arlington Massachusetts.

[](https://i0.wp.com/s3.media.squarespace.com/production/1075723/128...

I met Mark Mark Withington at the last Geek Dinner. He runs the Boston PHP Group. They meet every month. This month’s meeting is about the ZEND Framework. Looks interesting. If you’re PHP dude, check it out!

When: Thursday, May 04, 2006 At 06:30 PM Where: Optaros, 60 Canal Street 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02114 What: BostonPHP meeting. Topic: Zend Framework More info: Here

Technorati Tags: PHP

There is a lot of stuff going on with OPML these days. OPML stands for Outline Processing Markup Language, invented and evangelized by Dave Winer some number of years ago. Since then though, at least from my observation, it’s had its greatest traction as an import / export format for RSS Aggregators.

But now, there are lots of cool new ideas floating around, prototypes and products being built, that rely on and leverage OPML...

I’ve discovered how hard it is to work on a laptop with a tiny screen, 1.2GHz and, esepcially, 256Mb of memory. Sloooooow! I’ve been keeping up with emails but not really getting into a blogging mindset. This is just a cheat post to make my blog not appear dead 🙂 Curacao? Those of you who know me, know. Those who do not, probably don’t know where Curacao is. Look it up on a map. A little island (and I mean little) in the Caribean, right off the coast of South America. It’s where I was born and grew up,so I get back here regularly. Nice.

You probably already follow TechCrunch but if you don’t take a look at Flyspy, a very clever new idea for adding very useful information to booking flights online.

“The way it works is that I give it a departure city and a destination city and optionally a departure date and length of stay. The search result, which returns very quickly, will present me with a graph of flight prices over the next 30 days so that I can quickly look at which days are the cheapest to fly. To book a flight I just click on the point in the graph. Simple.” (from “Flyspy Brings The New Web To Airline Ticketing“)

Very cool!

Technorati Tags: onlinetravel

Just a quick reminderof a Geek Dinner organized by three of us: Adam Green, who writes Darwinian Web, Mark Doerschlag, and yours truly who writes this Blog and also runs the BlogBridge project.

What is this “geek dinner” thing again? Well we’re inviting all their geek friends to hang out and geek out for a few hours. Each of us have almost non-overlapping networks so this is a chance for us to make new connections around town, and for you to do the same.

Location: ...

Here’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about how to get travel information in your your home page, like My Yahoo and others. This all hinges on RSS of course, which means you can bring your travel information into BlogBridge and other aggregators.

“Recently, these sites began allowing consumers to populate their home pages with similar information they’d find in e-mail newsletters, with two added benefits: all the relevant information from multiple sites appears on one page, instead of multiple e-mails, a...

Inspired by Geek Dinners popping up all over, we thought it might be fun to try it here. Who is “we”? Adam Green, who writes Darwinian Web, and yours truly who writes this Blog and also runs the BlogBridge project. Adam also has a Ruby Blog (he’s been swallowed whole by Ruby) as well as a Mashup Blog. The third “we”

is Mark Doerschlag..

What is this “geek dinner” thing? Well 3 guys inviting all their geek friends to hang out and geek out for a few hours. Each of us have almost non-overlapping ...

I don’t know how I missed this article, but it sure is an interesting and significant development for one, like me, who was born and grew up in Curacao.

“Under the new structure, the Netherlands Antilles will be dissolved and Curacao and St. Maarten will become separate, autonomous members of the kingdom, according to the agreement signed by the leaders Saturday night in Curacao.” (from Miami Herald)

Technorati Tags: curacao, netherlandsantilles

Did you know that Curacao is the 7th favorite place that travelers from Boston consider when they are looking for nude beaches in the Caribean? Miami is the first, Aruba the second.

This important bulletin brought to you by Kayak Buzz, a neat web-2.0-kayak-mashup-with-google that I just came across. You can look at the URL above to see how it’s formed. The funny thing is that the nude beach search isn’t available unless you include the magic, secret “&ac=nude” clause.

You should check out Kayak, it’s a really good travel search site that automates what you know you are already doing – which is to visit all the other travel sites with the same itinerary to see who has the best deal at this moment.

Technorati Tags: travel

For a while now I’ve been fascinated with my Flickr SmartFeed of the Maldives. The pictures are one more beautiful than the next. Maybe this betrays my Caribbean heritage, but this one just blows me away.

Technorati Tags: flickr

I Just came back from seeing ‘Falsettos‘, an unusual (and unusually good) musical, at the Huntington Theatre, in Boston. The themes cover the gamut from family, children, love, judaism, homosexuality, life and death. The music is unusual and complex and very nice. I recommend it highly. So much that I also just got the music from iTunes!

Technorati Tags: music, recommended

Michael Feldman of Dowbrigade has a really interesting report on something that I didn’t even know was going on in Boston. Apparently they/we are thinking about providing wi-fi access across the city:

“However, there are a number of important issues to be resolved before one of these plans becomes operational: opposition from current ISP’s and wireless phone providers, differing business models for paying for and possibly charging for the service, which of several competing technologies to support, and the proper role of municipal and state government in regulating access and content.”

M...

Welcome back Chris Lydon! Those of you who have lived in the Boston area for a while (and who are NPR listeners) will recognize the name. Chris has been on local and national TV and radio, and a couple of years ago did some really early, innovative podcasting work (yes, before Adam Curry 🙂

Anyway, he is launching a new radio show, called “Open Source”, and he is debugging it in public, which is pretty cool! Check out the show’s blog for background and also links to the first three beta test shows. ...

On a lark, I used my frequent flyer miles to fly First Class on American Airlines today, heading out to the O’Reily ETech Conference. I hadn’t done it in quite a while.

It felt so ‘eighties’ to me – faux luxury dining in a tin can at 40,000 feet:

“Mr. Salas, would you like a drink before take-off? Mr. Salas, what would you like for dinner tonight? Spinach and Cheese Pasta or Chicken Kiev?” …I am handed a heated towlette to wipe my weary brow… *“

Mr. Salas, is there anything I can do for you? Mr. Salas, what would you like to drink before dinner?”*

…I get a nice bowl of mixed nuts, heated! And my diet-coke… …Dinner is served. Linnen napkin, nice salad with capers and vinnigraite…

“Mr Salas, white or red wine with dinner? Mr Salas, is there anything else I can do for you? Mr. Salas can I take that for you?”

It’s just a little bit too subservient for my taste. But at least the legroom is excellent, even though the silverware was plastic.

There’s this little island in the Caribean called Curacao. I happen to know a lot about it because that’s where I was born and grew up. Now I live in the United States, but continue to keep up with what’s going on in there. This is from an article about an Open Source Conferencethat happened, where else? Yes, right there in Curacao.

*

When I agreed to speak at this island’s first-ever free/open source conference last Wednesday, I was warned that Linux and open source were not well-known here. This was not true, but most of Curacao’s Linux and open source software users thought they were alone…

*

I am away from home, at my home in Curacao for a reunion of Salas folks from around the world. I saw an childhood friend of mine, Raul, who asked me ‘So what’s a blog, anyway’? I was taken aback, because, what would Raul be doing, reading my blog, and especially with the rather ‘odd’ image that I left as the top entry before I headed down here? So, this is just a reminder of what I already knew, of course, that anyone around the world can read this. And secondly, that anyone with the name Salas might be tempted to see what’s to be seen on www.salas.com, so be careful what shows up on the front page!

A blog is a contraction of the word “Web Log”, as in web diary or web journal. A blog is a w...

Several people asked me about what the security situation in Spain felt like. I have to admit it did give me pause to be going to Spain little more than a month after the terrorist attack on the trains in Madrid. In fact our travel plans included several long train rides. I checked with friends who live in Spain, and also looked at the various State Department notices, and all in all decided that the risk wouldn’t be major. I did expect to see a major security presence — you know, soldiers with machine guns in the airports, etc. But otherwise I wasn’t especially worried, but curious what we’d find. I remember how shell shocked we were in the U.S. two months after 9/11. Well, here’s the surpr...

In the accompanying photo you can see one of the ubiquitous TV screens sprinkled all around the Spanish subway system. They display up-to-the-minute information about arrivals and departures, in real-time, also ads and other commercial announcements. Very useful!

But wait, look closely: This is a Windows based application, if you can believe it! There’s a big fat Windows error message displayed in the middle of the screen! If you look really closely, you can tell it’s in Spanish!

So as not to leave you hanging, I just want to report that we are back and had a great time in Spain. We went from Granada to Sevilla to Madrid, by plane and rail in 8 days. Spain is a very interesting and fun country.

Geeking out from an Internet Cafe in Granada, Spain. We´re here for a short vacation, and we have a little time to kill this afternoon so I thought I´d quickly post an update for those of you who know (or care) that we are away. Granada is a nice little town in Southern Spain, with a Moorish or Middle Eastern influence. We spent hours yesterday wandering around the Alhambra, which was great, although we are paying with our feet today… Tomorrow we leave for a few days in Sevilla. See you there.