Letters From Exile

Severe Delays - London Underground Tube Status API

2009-01-04T21:48:00.000Z

I spent most of my holiday break relaxing and catching up on little projects around the house. I did manage to get some time together to build a service that I have wanted for awhile.

As many of you know, I wrote a little iGoogle gadget to display the current status of the London Underground network (the Tube). It worked well, but relied on a backend that I didn't have any administrative control over. So, when the TFL changed their page layout, which they seem to do a couple of times a year, it took awhile to get things fixed.

The last time this happened, I dropped an email to Malcolm Barclay (author of the great iPhone TubeStatus app) and asked him if he would like to collaborate on this problem. He agreed, and we were off.

I put together a source code repository and a site at www.severedelays.org. The API is still a little new, but I've been running my iGoogle gadget on it for about a week now with no serious trouble. It's pretty easy to use and I provide data in two formats XML and JSON.

To make a request you fetch the following url:

http://status.severedelays.org/uk-lon/current?format=xml

This will give you an XML formatted doc with all of our most recent information (right now that is just tube lines, but more is coming). If you prefer JSON then change the format to json.

The next release, which will probably come out in a week or so, will include information for tube, dlr, and London Overground, as well as the messages for each station. There will be an API for getting at particular pieces of data (/uk-lon/lines/current or /uk-lon/stations/current).

You might ask why I've got the uk-lon identifier in the URL. That is where you come in. Do you want to include data from your own network? I would love to hear from you. It would be great to get information from any and all mass transit networks, and even road congestion data too.

This service runs on top of Google's App Engine. I hope you find this useful, and please drop me a line if you have any questions.

More Protests

2009-01-04T21:32:00.000Z

Last night and tonight have brought more protests in London. Last night there was a large demonstration at Trafalger Square, and the an attempted march toward Kensington, but apparently the police blocked that from taking place. The protesters reassembled at High Street Kensington for a couple of hours in front of the Israeli embassy.

Jenna and I saw the protests on our way to get groceries last night. There were a lot of angry people in the road, and the police had traffic on Kensington High Street blocked off. As we were watching the protests, people started throwing things towards the police, or maybe towards the embassy (the police were standing between the crowd and the embassy so it's hard to say).

A line of about 100 police in full riot gear moved in, and that was when Jenna and I decided to move. We didn't want to be between the police line and the crowd. Over the next hour or so the police segmented and dispursed the crowd.

There was a new demonstration tonight, but it didn't have the same force of the group last night, and organizers are promising another large demonstration next weekend.

Third day of protests at home

2008-12-30T15:47:00.002Z

This is the third day of protests at the Israeli Embassy down the street from my flat. I snapped this picture on my way to get some groceries this afternoon.

Murder Rates Compared

2008-12-30T09:28:00.000Z

This morning The Times published an article that mentioned the high murder rate in South Africa in the context of that country hosting the 2010 World Cup. The Times quoted the absolute number of homicides in South Africa last year, "18,487". Unfortunately, without context, that number is completely meaningless. I wanted to know what that number really meant for day to day life.

To help with that I found a page on Wikipedia that compiles the homicide rate for several countries per 100000 people. That changed the South African number to 38.6. Then I compared that rate to the rates in several countries I have visited in the last year.

This chart gives much greater context for understanding how incredibly high the murder rate in South Africa really is.

Lighter

2008-12-27T23:46:00.003Z

I just went through security at BGI in Barbados and had a sad experience with airport security. I was carrying a lighter in my carry-on that my wife had given me for my birthday last year. It was a pretty nice one that hadn't been cheap.

The reason I was carrying it in my bag was because my airline (Virgin Atlantic) forbids lighters in checked luggage. Given this rule, I packed it in my bag and headed through security only to fond that I'm not allowed to tale a lighter through security in Barbados.

Essentially the authorities have set up a system where you can bring a lighter into the country, but aren't allowed to tale it home. In fact I learned later that the only way I could have gotten it home was to ship it home as a parcel.

So, be warned.

Why I Voted No on Proposition 8

2008-10-29T07:43:00.002Z

I voted in California by Absentee Ballot a few weeks ago, and I've been talking about my votes in this space over the last few days.

Today, I want to talk about why I voted NO on Proposition 8. For my friends who don't live in California, the Wikipedia definition of Prop 8 is:

Proposition 8 is an initiative measure on the 2008 California General Election ballot titled Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. If passed, the proposition would "change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California." A new section would be added stating "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

In essence, Prop 8 takes away the rights of same sex couples to marry in California. I find this not only un-American, but disturbing at a very deep level. Prop 8 is bigotry codified in law. Americans should be better than this. We should know that in our country all people are equal under the law and have the same rights under the law.

I was so proud when I read that my employer publicly took a position to oppose this proposition:

However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

This morning, I saw a link to a video that Lawrence Lessig made about his opposition to this initiative. Take a look at what Lessig has to say on Prop 8:

Why I Voted for Obama

2008-10-28T07:33:00.000Z

There are many, many reasons that I voted for Obama a few weeks ago. Today I want to share a video with you from a campaign event in Ohio.

"There are no real or fake parts of this country. There is no city or town that is more pro-American than anywhere else. We're one nation. All of us proud. All of us patriots."

Why I Voted for Obama

2008-10-26T11:10:00.001Z

I voted awhile ago by absentee ballot, and I voted for Obama. There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is education not experience. When I interview someone, the first thing I look at is where they went to school and how they did there.

Why do I do this? Because the school you go to is a great filtering mechanism. If schools didn't filter we would all go to Harvard, Berkeley, and MIT. We would all go to the best schools because we want to ensure that we get the best education. So, while the school a candidate went to isn't the only determining factor, it's an important one.

Then I look at how that person did at school. Did he graduate at the top of his class at Harvard? Did he graduate at all? Did the candidate work hard in school? That's important. The only reason a person has to work hard at school is if they are motiviated. For the first time in a person's life, they are on their own, and no one is really pushing them anymore. There is no external scrutiny, and that tells me something about their character.

Now, I apply those decision criteria to the people running for office, as summarized on this blog:

Barack Obama:

Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.

Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:

University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.

Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.
John McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Sarah Palin:

Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester

North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study

University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism

Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester

University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

I have to say that is a pretty stark difference, and that difference is one of the biggest reasons for me to vote for Obama. I want smart people in office. I want people who are smarter and have worked harder than me to represent me to the world.

Reading Books on iPhone 2.0

2008-08-26T21:52:00.001+01:00

I've always been a fan of ebooks, and have read them for years on Palm devices with software from eReader.com.

I wrote a short article a year ago about reading ebooks on the iPhone, and another one last September on using Books.app, but the conclusion in each of those cases is that the iPhone would be a great platform for ebooks, but the software wasn't there yet.

I'm really glad to say that the software is "there" now with the release of several software packages on the iPhone. In particular I've been using eReader, and Stanza for reading on my iPhone, and have been very pleased with both.

In each case the app provides a full screen text view, with a tap or slide motion to turn the pages. Both are extremely easy to use. eReader works with all of my books from eReader.com, and allows me to download books that I have purchased in the past. Stanza will read several formats, but it's biggest use for me is a library of free out of copyright texts that I would otherwise pay for at eReader.

Of the two I would say that Stanza has the best UI, but eReader has the best book selection (by virtue of their online store). They are both free in the iTunes store, so give them a try and let me know which you like best.

Missed it

2008-08-25T09:30:00.000+01:00

If you follow my tweets, you know that I was in New York last week for a couple of days. This was a rare trip for me for two reasons. First, Jenna was with me, and second I wasn't there for work. This trip was strictly about seeing New York, and more importantly deciding if it was someplace that Jenna and I would like to live when we are done in London.

One of my ulterior motives for this trip was a visit to The Museum of Modern Art to see Van Gogh's The Starry Night. It is one of my favorite paintings, but I had never had a chance to see it in person. When we went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a few months ago, I learned it was in New York at MOMA, and was looking forward to seeing it there.

Sadly, when we got to the gallery we learned that the painting was now traveling, and I wouldn't be able to see it.

According to the sign it will be back in New York in Autumn, so maybe I'll get a chance then. If not, then it's coming to Amsterdam in 2009, and I'll go over to see it there.

Keeping up with friends

2008-08-12T05:45:00.001+01:00

I've been using twitter for about a year and a half, and other social aggregation services like FaceBook and FriendFeed, but recently I've found that there are a couple of developments that, combined, really make the service worth the time.

First is the growing convergence between these services. When I write post on twitter, it goes into my status message on Facebook, and is also aggregated on FriendFeed. When I comment on a post on FriendFeed, the comment can be sent to twitter as well, and when I write a post on my blog, it ends up on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Second is the number of people watching these services. From my point of view that number has finally reached a majority of the people I try to keep track of, and in many cases I'm starting to connect with old friends who I haven't heard from in years.

Third is the amount of activity on these sites. People are really starting to use them and even better, people are really starting to interact on these services.

I ran into Christina Kuhn today at work, and we got to talking about the fact that she knew I was in town because she saw my status on Twitter. The she mentioned that one of her friends just announced her pregnancy on Twitter. I had to laugh when she brought this up, because I follow the same friend, and found out about her news the same way.

Over the last few days I've had a bunch of replies from people I knew in high school, former jobs, and old friends. It's starting to feel like a real community. Do other people have similar experiences?

Google Translate for iPhone

2008-08-10T15:44:00.000+01:00

One of the things I love about working for Google is the 20% time. While it's popularly touted in the media as "one day a week to do whatever you want", it's really just an acknowledgement that there are times when you get an itch, and have to scratch it. The company let's you do that on their time for up to 20% of your time.

This is a great way to explore new areas, and try new things. It's also a great way to get a product out the door that might not happen otherwise.

My latest 20% project is an iPhone interface for Google Translate. You can see the blog post where I introduced the feature over on the Google Mobile blog.

This was a fun project to work on. First I got to dive deeper into client-side javascript and HTML5 AIPs. Second I got to work with some great engineers like my friend David Singleton.

So far the response to the app is pretty good. There are about 1200 links on a relevant Google Blog search, and about 40 results on the same search in Google News. So far, I've seen a lot of great recommendations, and will have to plow through all these articles to see what people are saying.

I'm already hard at work on adding recommendations and incorporating feedback, expect to see more updates in the future.

Apple running away from success

2008-08-04T22:21:00.000+01:00

When you are trying to create a new development ecosystem the number one thing you have to keep in mind is that the developers are the lifeblood of that system. Why was palm the number one handheld for so long? Because it had an incredibly strong development community. What kept that community so strong? The support from Palm in the form of development tools, and resources.

Why has the Mac and Mac OS X been so successful? Because apple has supported developers by giving away commercial grade development environments, and publishing huge amounts of information about the OS so that you can build any app you can think of.

How is apple screwing the pooch on the iPhone? Because they are messing around with developers income streams. I sight two cases from last week:

First Nullriver, which built a tethering app to allow you to use your "unlimited data" from your iPhone contract on any computer. It was a clever little hack, Nullriver got it into the app store, and downloaded by a bunch of people before Apple pulled the app from the store shelves. This in itself might have been OK, but Apple didn't see fit to communicate at all with the developer:

We still haven't gotten any answer from Apple as to why NetShare was removed from the App Store. Calls to ADC yield wait times of a few hours and we're forced to give up. E-mails to various contacts at Apple and the developer program have also given us no response. Is this acceptable business practice? We don't think so. When an application fails to be approved or even more importantly so, when an application gets removed from sale, Apple should be required to provide a valid reason.

Second Box Office is also pulled from the App store. This case may be due to a name change for the App, but the basic issue is similar, a lack of communication from Apple:

I'm currently investigating why Now Playing/BoxOffice was pulled from the app store. Hopefully i'll get some actionable information soon.

In each case Apple could have avoided trouble by responding to developer questions. In both cases the developers have tried to get in touch with Apple to find out what is going on with their applications, and in neither case have they received any information from Apple.

This is just poor customer service on the part of Apple for it's developer customers. These are the people that Apple is planning to use to make the new iPhone an unmitigated success, but Apple is going to find it a lonely road if they don't start paying attention to their developers.

Support is about more than splitting a revenue stream, it's about responding to issues as they arise, and answering questions. Support is about not leaving your developers out to dry when they are depending on you.

Googler to Xoogler Ritual

2008-07-30T07:35:00.000+01:00

Change is inevitably part of life, but I find that the longer I stay at Google the more I feel the change that happens when friends leave.

I've been at other companies where people left, but in those cases it was a lay-off or a terrible place to work. So, you either felt sad for everyone getting laid-off or happy for the person who 'escaped'. My first job was with Indiana University, where it seemed like people fell into two categories. First were students, who were expected to leave in a few years, and second were lifers who never left. I did leave, and went to work for Cisco in the late 90s. That company ended up doing big lay-offs, and many of my friends ended up going elsewhere. After Cisco I did a couple of statups, where people came and went. In early 2005 I joined Google, and have been content since then.

My point is, that most of the places I've been turnover was either expected or catastrophic, and therefor easier to deal with.

Today, my friend Greg Stein announced that he has left Google, a few months back another friend announced that she was leaving, and of course awhile back my good friend Chris Sacca left. Of course there have been others who left in that time, some I've know only by name, and some I've chatted with a few times.

While I'm happy that each of these people is getting the chance to go do new and exciting things, and I'm also glad that the company has such a deep talent pool, so that new people get a chance to take on the jobs that departing Googlers have left open.

There is still a little sad feeling when I see one of these announcements, and I change the label in Google Reader for that person's blog from Googler to Xoogler.

Why does an iPhone need a computer?

2008-07-28T21:56:00.000+01:00

The iPhone is a bridge device that is moving away from the tethered computer model. It's about time. If you look at the latest version of the iPhone, you have several features that all rely on a data connection to work:

Maps
YouTube
Stocks
Weather
iTunes Store
App Store
Email
Safari

There are applications which require the GSM network:

Phone
Text

Then there are some features that can either rely on a data connection or use a tethered model:

Contacts - Sync with Address Book, or sync over the air.
Calendar - Sync with iCal, or sync over the air.
Photos - You can email your photos or use iPhone to transfer them.

There are applications which do no syncing at all:

Notes
Clock
Calculator
Camera

Finally there is one application which requires a tethered computer to be useful:

iPod

It makes you wonder why Apple has chosen such an inconsistent approach to their data model. Why can some data be synced over the air (OTA), some only over WiFi, and some requires a computer? I'm surprised that they haven't simplified this to at least WiFi and OTA.

The specific inconsistency that really bothers me though, is why do I have to download PodCasts on my computer before I can put them on my iPhone? Usually the Podcasts are the same size as a large audio file, and most are under 10MB (which is the limit for OTA App Store downloads), so what gives here?

I think Apple should take a look at their sync strategy, and figure out what the iPhone is supposed to be. Is it an accessory, implying that it should be tethered, or is it a stand alone computing device that happens to share music with your computer?

Great opening lines

2008-07-27T22:30:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about great opening lines for books ever since I saw this post. My favorite opening line for a book has always been from Stephen King's, The Gunslinger:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

It's a simple line, direct, to the point, and uncluttered. Yet, it sums up the entire story, and sets the path for King's greatest literary work (The Dark Tower series).

Grupthink, has a thread on this very topic, currently they have 1984 at the top of the list:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Of course, Dickens is on the list as well:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

I disagree with this entry. Yes, what is quoted above is a great line, but the first line in A Tale of Two Cities actually reads:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I understand what he's doing here, and it is a fine piece of writing, but it is a little wordy, and I'm pretty sure that if I had written something like this in high school I would have been marked down for it.

It seems that there are several lists of this type online, I like the list from American Book Review, and another on bestuff.com.

What I'm really interested in though is you people reading this. What is your favorite? Leave it in the comments.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture

2008-07-26T18:03:00.001+01:00

Randy Pausch was a CS professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. Just after that diagnosis, he took part in a lecture series at CMU that was described as what you would say if this were your "last lecture". This was Professor Pausch's last lecture as at the time he was expecting another five months of life.

The lecture is on the topic of childhood dreams and how to fulfill them. He tells several great anecdotes from his own life, and includes helpful advice on how anyone can make their own dreams come true.

Professor Pausch died last week, ten months after doctors gave him six months to live. For the rest of my life, when I hear someone talk about "dying with dignity", I'll think of Pausch. In life he taught thousands of students, in his death he taught millions.

Do you remember your first Google?

2008-07-24T21:59:00.000+01:00

Cory Doctorow asked on boingboing today if you remember your first Google? I thought it would be fun to try to answer that one. First, I took the question to mean do you remember the first time you used Google to search for something. The short answer is that I don't.

Next, I decided to take a look at my email archive to find my first mention of Google. I found a message from April 3, 2001 which was a response to a question from my Mom, that gave her this search URL for more research:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22%2Bwww.cyberrebate.%2Bcom%22

She was asking me if I had ever heard of a company that was offering 100% rebates for stuff online. It turned out to be a scam. One of the things that really surprised me is that even after 7 years, the URL still works.

Hiking in Austria

2008-07-19T12:34:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago I went hiking with a friend in the Austrian Alps, we climbed a couple of the mountains including Klomnock, in the map below:

View Larger Map

This was the first time in years that I had been backpacking, and there is nothing like a trip up to 2331 Meters (7647 Feet) to make you realize how out of shape you really are. Especially if you're carrying a backpack full of camping supplies.

The trip started from a conversation over coffee a year ago with Markus. I mentioned to him that I had always wanted to go walking in the Alps, and that I was thinking of taking a trip along some of the trails in Switzerland. Markus told me he really enjoyed walking in the mountains, and suggested that we take a trip to Austria, near where he grew up.

I readily agreed, and plans were made. Over time, life happened, and plans got postponed and changed. After another lunch with Markus, we finally nailed down a date and I made a commitment in the form of booking a flight from London to Zurich.

The plan was for me to fly to Zurich to meet Markus, then we would drive to Carinthia, to start our walk. We mapped out a route that was fairly ambitious with 10 peaks during our two days of hiking. In the end we topped 2.5 instead, but it's all good fun.

This part of the Alps has an extremely robust network of well maintained trails with signs and shelters. I'm told that it's possible to hike from one end of the Alps to the other without ever sleeping rough or packing food. However, we wanted to be prepared since we weren't sure how much progress we would make. We were walking with sleeping bags, tent, cooking gear, food, and water.

In the end we never needed any of our supplies except our rain gear and our water, but it was better to be prepared then to be left wanting.

We drove to Austria, and up into the mountains. The drive, like much of this region, was obnoxiously beautiful. The roads were smooth and uncrowded, and the weather was relatively good. We hit a couple of rain showers, but nothing major. We drove through mountains and valleys, through little towns and small farms, through monumental tunnels, and around heart stopping scenery.

When we finally reached the park the roads narrowed, and we climbed, and climbed, and climbed. We started to see more cows than cars, and in fact got shocked by an electric cow gate across the road. Tip for the future: keep your window up when you drive past these things.

This part of Austria doesn't see too many English-speaking tourists, and even fewer Americans. They also have a local dialect that makes it difficult to understand. This wasn't a huge problem for me for two reasons. First, I don't really speak German anyways, and second Markus was there to translate. Mostly my interactions with the locals were limited to nodding, saying "danke", and pointing to random things on menus. We all got on well though, so it worked out fine.

Markus and I slept in a B&B the first night, it had a great view of the valley while the sun went down, and we enjoyed some dinner, and some schnapps.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast, and hit the trail. The trail started just off the road by the B&B, and as far as I could tell was nearly vertical. I looked up with a slight feeling of dread, but told myself, "this is just to get up to the trail". It was partially true, as the trail did level out about a mile later and 500 meters higher.

After the first 20 minutes I was drenched with sweat, and seriously questioning my sanity for taking this trip, then I looked to my left and saw this:

I don't know if it was the sheer beauty of my surroundings, or the fact that we had actually stopped walking for a bit, but I felt much better. We hiked on, Markus always in the lead and waiting for me. We got to the top of this first ascent, and saw that we had finally gotten to the base of the mountains. There was no place to go except up, so that's what we did.

When we got to the top of our first mountain, we saw a lot of people dressed in tennis shoes and designer clothes. I thought this was odd given that we had just spent the better part of a morning hiking to the same place. That was when Markus told me that there was a lift up to this part of the mountain, and that these people were all just coming up for a quick walk. I seriously thought about killing him at this point, but frankly didn't have the energy and wasn't sure I'd be able to get myself home from here. Instead we took a break, and watched the tourists walk around for a bit. The clouds were coming in, and it was cooling off. We decided to make our way over to our next peak.

For the next hour or so, we had some of the most enjoyable hiking I've ever experienced. The trail was gentle and rolling, the weather was cool, and the scenery was amazing. The clouds had come in, and we were a little worried about the weather, but it wasn't too bad.

The trail started to get a little more adventurous, and there were places where it looked like we might be walking right off the mountain.

Occasionally the low clouds we were hiking through would clear, and we would be greeted with the most amazing views.

The trail got steeper, and narrower as we headed to the top of Klomnock.

We also started to see more snow. It was the end of June, and I really hadn't expected to see snow on this walk. At least, not up close, but there it was. We didn't have to hike through drifts of it, but it made me feel pretty adventurous.

It started to rain while we were on the top of Klomnock, so we didn't hang around. We hiked around the top of the mountain to go down the opposite side from our ascent. That was, it turned out, the steep side. There were pieces of rebar driven into the side of the mountain making a ladder, of sorts, which we had to climb down to get off the peak. Then there were steel cables bolted to the side of the mountain for hikers to use while they negotiated this part of the trail.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of any of this, as I was mostly concerned with not falling off the mountain at this point. You'll have to trust me when I say that this didn't really resemble a trail as much as it resembled a ropes course.

It took us a few hours to reach the bottom of the mountain, it was pretty slow going with big drops on one side and a small trail and a cable to help us cling to the side of the mountain. I actually think that this was the hardest part of the trip. It turns out that going down is much harder than going up. Also, there was a lot of careful foot placements to be made on this part of the trail, as falling would have been bad.

We finally made it to the road at the bottom of this mountain, and to a restaurant. We put down our packs and had a nice big lunch. It was great timing as about that time the skies opened up and it rained for close to half an hour. We waited out the rain, called our wives to let them know we weren't dead yet, and had some more drinks.

It had gotten very cold since morning, and the rain had made it even cooler, so we took the opportunity to add layers to our clothing. When the rain stopped we asked a local for some advice, and decided that after the two mountains in the morning (it was now about 3pm) we were going to head for a mountain hut to spend the night. All we had to do was hike over a ridge and down into the next valley.

We headed out to attack the ridge. It was steep, but the weather was clear and we were making pretty good progress. About two thirds of the way up it started to sprinkle. The sprinkle turned into rain, and the rain brought thunder and lightening.

Walking around at the top of a ridge with a frame backpack and a metal hiking stick in a lightning storm is a bad idea. So we ditched our packs and took shelter next to a bolder. We saw lightning flashes all around, and the rain got harder. The thunder and lighting were very close together telling us that the storm was pretty much right above us.

Then it started to hail. Hail stones the size of marbles pelted us for about 20 minutes, accumulating in my shirt collar, boots, and everywhere else. Once the storm passed I found about an inch of hail on top of my pack. We just covered up as good as we could and waited for it to pass.

The storm moved off into the mountains, and took the hail with it, so we took that opportunity to make for the top of the ridge before another storm came in. I've never walked up a ridge so quickly in my life. We made it over the ridge, and descended to the first plateau before we stopped for a break. It started to rain again, and the rain followed us in a steady gentle rain the rest of the day.

We found a sign on the plateau helpfully telling us that the hut we were destined for was only a 20 minute walk away. There are several such signs along the trails in the Alps. They generally seem to point in the right direction, however the time measurements (there were no distance measurements) were radically inaccurate. For example, this sign told us it would take 20 minutes to make it to the hut. In reality it took about two hours.

As Markus and I made our way down the mountain and into the valley towards the hut we speculated that perhaps the times were taken by unladen teenagers who were given some incentive to get to the next sign post as quickly as possible. We can say with certainty that they were not made by a couple of weighed down and out of shape guys walking in the rain.

When I say that we were making our way down the hill, you may have an image of a gentle slope and us walking straight down. That would be inaccurate. Instead what we were doing was scrabbling down a narrow zig-zag path on our way down to the valley floor a mile or more away and about 1000 meters below us. It was steep, rocky, and slippery from the rain. I fell once, but was lucky enough not to go rolling down the hill, which, while it would have gotten me to the bottom faster, probably would have delivered me in slightly worse shape then the state in which I finally arrived.

The first half of this decent was rocky with huge boulders littered along the side of the mountain. It was beautiful, just as the entire region was. I have no doubt that if it had been clear, then the view would have been incredible. However, we were still in the clouds, so our best view was of our feet as we made our way to the hut. We did see several cute little mountain salamanders, who had decided to come out and enjoy the rain.

The second half of the decent took us through a cow pasture, where the trail became much less distinct, and a little more treacherous. We had to contend with a field littered with hidden potholes, and also littered with cow pies. Wet cow pies. The kind that would engulf your entire foot up to the ankle if you stepped in one by accident.

We did our best, not entirely succeeding, to navigate around these hazards. Generally this part of the hike was considerably more agreeable. The rain had died off a little, and turned into more of a constant mist. There were cows in the fields, and the grass and flowers gave off a pleasant scent. The trail was still tricky, but the slope had evened out some, which made the hiking easier.

It was at this point that we first heard the cows on the move. In the mountains, the farmers put a big bell on the cow that seems to be the leader. That way, he only ever has to find the cow with the bell, and the rest will follow her to wherever the farmer is leading them. It is not the fact that the cow has the bell that causes the rest to follow. It is more a recognition of leadership.

So, when we heard a cow bell, we knew that the cows were somewhere nearby and that they were on the move. It turns out that they were on their way towards us, and what ensued is best described as a slow speed chase. It reminded me of the OJ Simpson slow speed chase, which to my surprise is a cultural reference that even works in mountains of Austria.

We decided to ignore the cows, and just make our way down the hill as fast as we could. This was, however, their home turf, and they knew it much better than we did. In no time the cows were right at our heals. I felt like the pied piper, but instead of rats I was leading a heard of about 20 cows down a mountain.

We thought that, perhaps they mistook us for the farmer and wanted us to milk them or feed them or something. That didn't explain, why the kept trying to lick us though. That, my friends, is what this scene turned into. Two grown men running from a heard of cows with outstretched necks and tongues poised for a big wet lick across the arm. We were determined not to let this happen. It one thing to be chased by cows, it is entirely another thing to be licked by them.

So we took a diversion. We saw a part of the trail that looked decidedly unfriendly to cows. It was fairly unfriendly to people as well. We scrambled our way over to and then down this part of the trail. It worked! The cows were no longer behind us, and we could hear the bell fading into the distance. We felt pretty good for getting away, and took our victory as a sign that things were looking up for us. We plunged down the rest of this steep section of the trail, only to have our victory snatched away at the base.

The cows, it turned out, had flanked us. While we were scrambling down the steep part of this trail, they had hoofed down the gentle slope, and were waiting for us at the bottom of the trail. As we ran for the fence, which was finally in reach, we had to admit that we had been bested by a heard of cows and we would never be the same.

We reached the hut about 20 minutes later and told our story to the farmer, in reality Markus told our story to the farmer, I just nodded when it seemed appropriate. He said that most likely the cows smelled the salt on our skin from all our sweating that day. They wanted to lick it off instead of walking all the way back to their salt lick by the barn. This did not really comfort me.

The hut was wonderful. It was nestled in the valley at the end of a small dirt mountain road. The next morning it looked like this:

As the afternoon wore on the hikers who had taken shelter at the hut made their way home. The rain had stopped, but Markus and I were going to spend the night in the bunkhouse, so we had no where to run off to. We sat in the kitchen and talked with the nice people who ran the place. There were three of them. The farmer, who was in charge, and a husband and wife team who had decided to do this in their retirement. They made us hot tea, and chatted. The wife even spoke a little English, and we talked about a trip they had taken to San Francisco many years ago.

Towards dinner time a mini-bus rolled up to the hut from the road. It was full of guys in their 80s from the neighboring village who were on an annual mountain hut tour. As the evening wore on, I came to understand that a mountain hut tour was much like a pub crawl in London. This was apparently their last stop, and they were pretty drunk when they arrived. They piled into the kitchen for beer and dinner, while Markus and I went outside to eat, enjoy the fresh air, and have a pipe before hitting the sack for the night.

The old guys were singing songs, and laughing. They sounded like they were having a great time, and occasionally Markus would tell me what they were singing or what they were talking about. They were rowdy, but not mean or destructive. Markus seemed a little embarrassed by them, but I thought they were harmless, and added a fun quality to the evening. It probably helped that I couldn't understand anything they were saying, we both had to admit that they were very good singers.

We ordered our dinner, and while it was cooking, some of the guys came out to chat with us. They ordered a round of schnapps and sang us a song. Of course, Markus and I had to reply in kind (with the schnapps not the song) and we continued this way back and forth for much of the rest of the evening. By the end of the evening, about half the guys were outside with us, singing even louder and telling us how this area had been during the war.

They were also really surprised to see an American. This happened all over in the region, and Markus and I decided that we could use the novelty to get more free drinks. I would say the few German words I knew, and they would laugh and order more schnapps. By the end of the evening, even I could tell that these guys were slurring their words. At one point the old guy that seemed to be the most interested in us decided that if he spoke German with an English accent, I would be able to understand. It didn't work, but it did make Markus laugh.

The guys were a lot of fun, and they left in their mini-bus a few hours after they had arrived (they did have a driver, so no worries about old drunk guys careening down mountain roads at midnight). One stayed to sleep in the bunkhouse saying that he was going to walk home in the morning.

The next morning I was up really early. I sat outside and watched the sun come up over the mountains, had breakfast and got ready to go. Markus and I had decided that we would take it easy as we headed back to the car for the end of our adventure.

We started by hiking up through the cow pasture again:

We then hiked up the valley to the place where we had started our serious ascent the day before.

We even spied a marmot on a rock making a funny little noise. We had seen a few on our hike, but this was the first one who stayed put long enough to be captured in a picture. You can see him on the rock in the middle of this picture, although you may need to click through to actually make him out.

We finished our hike by taking a different route back. We hiked over a smaller mountain, to a road, and then took the road back down to where we had started. Once we found the car, it was a short drive out of the mountains, and then through Germany to Switzerland and home. I stayed in Zurich for a night, and flew to Naples the next day, but that is a different story.

Back from Naples

2008-07-07T07:36:00.000+01:00

Jenna and I had a great time in Naples. We took a huge number of pictures, especially in places like Pompeii, and also in Capri, Sorrento, and the Almalfi Coast. We had a great time, and really enjoyed learning about this part of Italy. We met some wonderful people as well as accumulating some fun stories. All will be posted here over the next few days.

"I'm Voting Republican" YouTube Video

2008-06-15T11:06:00.003+01:00

You have to watch this video from the guys at I'm Voting Republican. Apparently it's one of the fastest spreading videos online over the last week, and really sums the whole thing up.

I think that this election will have many more messages like this on both sides. The democratization of media through venues like YouTube will allow more people to have their say, who just would not be able to have an audience in the past.

Posting from iGoogle

2008-06-11T14:54:00.001+01:00

The blogger team released a new iGoogle gadget to allow you to post to your blog directly from an iGoogle page today. You can learn more about it from the Blogger in Draft blog.

Lame iPhone 3G Banner on O2 Site

2008-06-09T21:42:00.003+01:00

iPhone 3G Banner on O2 Site, originally uploaded by Allen Hutchison.

Here is what the O2 site has on the new iPhone tonight. A message that says, "Come back tomorrow to find out more". Apparently they couldn't push new files to their web server tonight, that would be too hard or require someone to stay late.

New summary feature from FriendFeed

2008-06-07T12:06:00.003+01:00

FriendFeed has been innovating at a pretty rapid clip lately. It's indicative of a small, close knit, really smart team. Today they have released a feature that might change my mind about the service in general.

I'm sure that I'm not an average web user. Most of my friends have several services setup in FriendFeed, and there are several hundred posts a day to wade through if I have more than a couple of friends setup in the service.

A few weeks ago I talked about the fact that there was just too much noise in my FriendFeed and I was declaring attention bankruptcy. Specifically I said:

FriendFeed really has potential, and can provide some great stuff to read, however, it can also provide a huge amount of noise. Maybe it's just me, but when I had about 40 friends on FriendFeed, I found the application almost completely unusable. It was generating hundreds of items to read a day, much more than I could keep up with. So, I started deleting "Friends" and made a new rule for myself that I will only subscribe to people I have actually met and talked to more than once.

Today, FriendFeed has released a new feature that will address this problem. They are now providing a summary view for the day, the week, and the month. This summary seems to be made of the most discussed and liked items among your group of friends, so it's totally personalized for you.

I really like this new feature, but I wish that I could just subscribe to the feed of the summary instead of my entire stream. Actually, what I really want is the ability to subscribe to summarized results for some of my friends, and full streams for others.

Attention Bankruptcy

2008-05-13T21:46:00.004+01:00

Last week I took a critical look at what I was paying attention to. I started with email and mailing lists, moved to social networks, and finally ended up at my feed reader. In each application I was sifting through huge amounts of data, and in many cases not really coming up with much to show for it.

Yes it was nice to know that I always had something to read online, but that wasn't really a good enough reason for collecting all of this attention debt.

In each case I looked at a particular set of in-boxes (social networks, email, rss, etc...) and used a star or bookmark mechanism to see how much of that in-box I really found valuable.

I started with email, and the first thing I learned is that I was subscribed to about 20 mailing lists that I just didn't care about. After a week I hadn't marked a single message with a star, and in many cases had just marked all of my unread list mail as read just to get rid of it. So, I unsubscribed from just about every list.

Then I moved on to social networks. I don't pay attention to most of them and filter the mail they produce to a bacn file, where I can safely skim it once in awhile. I ignore about 90% of the things that happen on Facebook, so I went through my profile and killed almost every application that was on it. Then I took a critical look at FriendFeed.

FriendFeed really has potential, and can provide some great stuff to read, however, it can also provide a huge amount of noise. Maybe it's just me, but when I had about 40 friends on FriendFeed, I found the application almost completely unusable. It was generating hundreds of items to read a day, much more than I could keep up with. So, I started deleting "Friends" and made a new rule for myself that I will only subscribe to people I have actually met and talked to more than once.

Finally, I went through my rss feeds. This was probably the worst area for me. I found it was impossible to make a keep or trash decision for most of my feeds. I mean, I had subscribed to them so they were all interesting, but it was just too much stuff. So I made a list of the feeds I had to keep, and then deleted everything else (about 80% of my feeds).

A week later, I find that I can go to bed in the evening feeling completely caught up with no unread mail, feeds, or other hanging attention grabbers. I haven't felt out of touch on anything, and have much more time for thinking, writing, and work.