Digital Walkabout

rtGO - tagged and released, part 2

Not much has happened since I decided to enroll at a registered traveller with rtGO and the TSA - the holidays resulted in a long delay in my receiving my pass. Four weeks later, I now have it. Thus, despite the advertised wait period one should generally expect three weeks to pass between registration and receipt.

I will have to give it a go on my next trip. More on this as I carry on.

rtGO - tagged and released

I decided to enroll at a registered traveller with rtGO and the TSA, hoping that with this pass I can enjoy more efficient transits, especially from the delay plagued SFO. I am well aware of the privacy objections of this programme, yet having worked for many years in Silicon Valley where one's financial records are up for review by one's employer, "it is too late for me, my son." I'm already on the grid at multiple locations and instances. :-( To register one must preenroll with most of the usual information and undergo [yet another] background check - up to 10 days from start to finish. As I continue on my travels I will blog on how effective is registration and hope to convey its value.

2006 Review

My air and train travel for 2006 is mapped below. Continuing the London travel trend, with the 2006 W3C TP in Cannes-Mandelieu, France, the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and multiple trips to Brasil, I ended up surpassing my 100k miles for 2005 (by 40k miles; or for a total of 235,634 km).

The principal difference this year was the increase in non-business travel, in particular the increased travel to Brasil and attending some of the World Cup games in Germany.

With this I'll attempt something amusing with a summary of my year in blogging through a monthly cut-and-paste of the most memorable phrase.

Jan: mashing up the enterprise
Feb: ws-polarisation
Mar: the fun was in the photo sharing
Apr: redhat heart huckabees
May: much ado about policy
Jun: rubber-stamp spec
Nov: who needs privacy?
Dec: thinking XML

Places I've visited and other strangeness

I saw visited countries, a project from Douwe Osinga, and made my map:

My European and USA maps can be seen in the "My Blog Photos" album....

Not a moment too soon. A couple of weeks after I made this map, the project has strangely been pulled from the site, with no explanation, even though Douwe has other projects referencing it. Then, I saw today that it had returned. It started my thinking about the impact of hosting environments for web content and the unintended and unexplained consequences they have. The current trend seems to place more content under the control of those who may act in a more arbitrary manner. At the same time, with the continued assault on free speech and expanded censorship, it seems like those of us in the US are being prepared for greater control over what we can publicly express. Although lip-service is paid to the ideal of liberty, and no country brazenly admits that it is committed to a policy of religious, intellectual, artistic, or political censorship, the US has continued to find ways to curb freedom of speech domestically as well and leverage the efforts of other governments - in particular, China - as test bed for how far it can go w.r.t. censorship, especially on the web.

Irritation with censorship aside, the above represents countries on whose soil I've trod, at minimum in transit.

2005 in review

From Paul and Jonathan comes an interesting way to look at the year in review - the year in travel, as mapped through Great Circles. My air and train travel for 2005 is mapped below. With multiple trips to London, I'm still well over 100k miles for the year. Little wonder I'm so knackered....

 

I liked Paul's summary of his year of blogging through a monthly cut-and-paste of the most memorable phrase. I cannot claim a list approaching his wry summaries, but here's my attempt at it (from my old blog):

Feb: loosely coupled
Mar: superhacker and phoneboy
Apr: tiger without tiger?
Jun: we didn't think every DVD player would become a Java PC
Jul: the latest in a string of failed strategies
Aug: cloudscape lives
Oct: MT meets little whingeing
Nov: the edo-era version of a .50 desert eagle
Dec: departure of the hyper-enthusiasts