CogBlogged from ‘July, 2011’

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog My scrambling of the title of this book I just finished means nothing, or maybe it does represent my confidence of understanding. ZatAoMM is certainly among the Books I Ought to Have Read but Didn’t, and served as a perfect early book of reading while on the road. The heady philosophy parts are still muddy to me, and I write this without reading any other expert opinions, but the ideas about what it means to be on the road, the unpacking of form versus function (or looking at form AND function), and what the lead character attempted in his teaching are still ringing powerful echoes. I knew a little bit about the book before hand, but what I got from reading was much more, and have so many highlights. The opening quote now unfolds much more than when my eyes [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Number of days on the road: 35 Miles Driven: 3790 Number of States driven in: 6 Number of Islands Slept On: 1 (Whidbey Island, WA) Money spent on gas: $793.40 Photos posted: 882 (that is an average of 25.2 per day) ds106 Mile marker Photos: 3 Number of posted photos of the best smile in the world:: 7 – number in my heart: ∞ Number of nights in hotels/B&B: 9 Number of nights camping: 7 Friend/Relatives Homes Visited/Mooched Upon: 8 Number of ferry rides: 1 Miles on bicycle: 87.1 (longest 20.3) Miled hiked: 25.4 Miles kayaked: 3.8 Laundry Stops: 3 Boxes of Synders Pretzels Consumed: 1.5 (just bought a new one in Freeland, WA) Cans of Pringles Snorted in Car: 2 Number of Breweries Visited: 2 (Revolution Brewing, Paonia CO; Laughing Dog Brewing, Sandpoint ID). Best Green Chili Bowl: Golden, [...]

Here is another one from the Department of Internet Serendipity, where I am fortunate enough to have a mail slot. I got to Seattle yesterday, with a plan for a quiet catch up night at a non-descript airport hotel as I wait for my girlfriend to fly in tomorrow (now today) (now soon). That act of booking a hotel online triggered an entry in my TripIt account which was noticed by Steve Dembo who was flying in the same night. He suggested we try and meet up for drinks as also Vikci Davis and Lee Kolbert where here for the same meeting Steve is here for. I’ve hung out with Steve before but this would be first time to meet (outside of twitter and blogs) both Vicki and Lee. Fast forward to the bar at the Bellevue Hyatt (yes the Box does prefer vodka martinis)– cc licensed ( BY ) [...]

July 24 is a bitter sweet memory here at the Dog House, that being the day in 1993 that I made the dreadful decision to put Dominoe to sleep, the faithful dog who traveled cross country with me form Baltimore to Phoenix, who tagged along on my excursions up and down the west, and whose story became the core of 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. That photo above is so typical of her somber reflective pose, but do not think she was always so stately, I have a lot of her playing, chewing, and wagging her wiry tail (before 1989 when she whacked it too hard against a fence in New Mexcio and it ended up being docked because it would not stop bleeding, but that is a later story). I have a collection of scanned photos from which I can pull from each year that will [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog As I drive around the country, I spend a lot of time behind the wheel trying to make guesses at what is worth stopping to see. I cannot pick everything, else I would not get anywhere, and there is a certain amount of blind luck involved (or missing). This morning I hit a nice jackpot. I had gotten a good early start for the day, so I knew I had some time to explore- I was just maybe 30 miles up the road, when I passed a marker sign for a “heritage” site in Coleville National Forest, off of highway 20 in north eastern Washington state. I chuckle a lot about those big “point of interest” or “historical marker” signs you see on the highway; I never stop because most of them describe something that is no longer there, plus, [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Number of days on the road: 28 Miles Driven: 3300 Number of States driven in: 6 Money spent on gas: $594.70 Photos posted: 731 (that is an average of 26 per day) ds106 Mile marker Photos: 2 (Idaho and Washington) Number of nights in hotels: 6 Number of nights camping: 5 Number of New Water Sports Tried That Might Result in New Purchases: 2 (Paddle board and jet ski) Miles on bicycle: 66.8 Miled hiked: 17.9 Miles kayaked: 3.8 Number of times washed clothes bumming from friends: 2 Best Campground: Hermits Hollow, Colorado Friend/Relatives Homes Visited: 6 Amount of music @pumpkiny gave me on DVD: 20 Gb. Amount listened to (0 have not had time yet to browse!) Number of Towns mentioned in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I also passed through: 4 (White Bird, Riggins, New Meadows, [...]

Tomorrow marks the 4 week mark for this Road Odyssey, which is about 1/4 the time I thought I’d travel (but that is not firm). I’ll cross the 3000 mile point in the morning, somewhere in north Central Washington State. On the map, I won’t make the quarter turn until first week of August, when I reach Victoria, and turn east for the long stretch across Canada. When I called my Mom today she noted I had not blogged recently! WTF, Mom? Now I have a publishing quota? (kidding, and I reminded her I wrote one 2 days ago– she says “I have nor logged on in 4 days!”) But yes, I am spinning the blog writing wheels. Should I journal the things I am seeing? Aren’t my photos (heavily captioned) doing that? Hence I am in my tent trying to blog something via my iPhone (yes, a real wilderness [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Here is another genuine character I met on the road recently. Going past the road to tiny Cottonwood, Idaho, a giant wooden beagle on the left caught my eye; how could I pass up the sign for Dog Bark Park? cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The big dog is actually a multi-story B&B- yes, you can arrange so spend a night (or more) inside a giant dog house- a house shaped like a dog; see http://dogbarkparkinn.com/. The big one is “Sweet Willy”, and is adorned with a sign that reads “a Noble & Absurd Undertaking.” (the little companion, Toby, is 12 feet high). Dennis and his wife also do wood carvings of dogs and other things, as well as chair saw art on a bigger scale. There was a giant hydrant hiding a spot a [...]

It’s been fun to see positive reaction to this little experiment, and with some time today, I have added some new features, moved it from my lab testing server to its own domain http://pechaflickr.cogdogblog.com/, and just now posted the source code http://code.google.com/p/pechaflickr/. What is it? It’s just like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, two great tastes…. well it is a way of practicing improv skills by using the pecha kucha presenttion format, but rather than planning a presentation with your own slides, it draws random images from flickr from a tag you provide. The idea was not mine; it was a few weeks before Northern Voice 2o11 when Giulia Forsythe asked if my Five Card Flickr could do this kind of “powerpoint karaoke” I actually made a version that used the same images that are in the Five Card Flickr site, but that was limited to the tags I use for [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This is Richard Dean, an affable and eager to share park guide I stumbled into in Arco, Idaho. I had just visited a rather interesting museum located on the property of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL)- the place where nuclear fission was used to runt he first breeder reactor (which means the process of fission of U-235 created as a by product, more material that could be used to generate with), the EBR-1. Nearby Arco, aka “Atomic City” was the first city to be powered by electricity from a nuclear generator, the EBR-1. The EBR-1 museum has much of the original (or replica) machinery form the 1950s in the building where it really happened, all kinds of fun things ripe for taking quirky photos (which I did). I really stopped in Arco to get gas and ice, and as I [...]