vanderwal.net

Off to Amsterdam and Design Engaged

I am off to Design Engaged today, which is in Amsterdam. I will try to keep up with things here, but you can hopefully follow along with photos at vanderwal on Flickr.

I will be posting the That Syncing Feeling presentation after it is presented on Friday, which may be Saturday.

Could somebody please remind folks in the Netherlands they are a loving and accepting people. Being of Dutch heritage is something I take great pride and I would like to keep it that way.

METRO Trains More than Bump

Washington DC METRO crash will make a mess of things for a few days. This accident with one train going over another, was noted as one train "bumping" another by METRO just after it happened. Fortunately today was a driving day as I had a dentist appointment, but tomorrow will be an utter mess.

This is the latest in a string of messes on the system of late. In the last two years my commute has gone from 35 minutes to nearly an hour on the train each way to and from work. Driving has also become horrible and had similar congestion problems. Part of the problem is lack of funding for maintenance and up keep.

SeatGuru

While on the subject of travel sites, SeatGuru is another site to have in your pocket. I have yet to book my flight to Amsterdam, but the airline I will most likely go with is not listed. This will work wonders for domestic flights however.

Boutique Hotel Guides

Adam has provided a link to greatsmallhotels, which seems to be a very good resource along with Tablet Hotels. Both resources focus on boutique hotels around the globe. The price range in greatsmallhotels is broader and has some wonderful looking options at the lower end of the scale. Tablet Hotels has slightly better reviews, the interface is more appealing to me, and I really like the "Sensory Guide" to guide you to things around the hotel's location that match: look, listen, taste, touch, and scent.

Airport Bliss

On my recent trip through the Minneapolis airport I heard a lot of Prince over the airport loudspeakers as well as from the stores. That was a great welcome to Minneapolis. I have been through that airport four times in the past couple months and the airport and the view flying in has me very intrigued with the city, or at least wanting to get out of the airport for a few days.

The impact of the airport made me think about other airports and I can think of none that I have been drawn step out and explore. This could be because the airports I do enjoy I also enjoy the city. Portland has a nice airport with good amenities and it seems to echo the nature of the city. I have not been impressed with the Atlanta airport and have not been outside of the airport. I liked Heathrow terminal 4 and I have enjoyed London and its surroundings. I have spent a fair amount of time in the Paris Charles DeGaul airport and always find things to explore and enjoy, much like Paris. All I remember from Schiphol in the Netherlands is the signage, which seemed very good and nothing else stood out and that is not representative of what I know of the Netherlands and particularly not Amsterdam.

The Minneapolis airport is built in a box layout with parallel outcropping for the waiting areas. There is one main mall area that includes a Lands' End store, which is something I have never seen. The voices on the loudspeakers oozed Mid-West nasal, "Would the person who lost a Hi-Un-Day car key come to the main kiosk."

Accounting for Abscense

It is good to be back in our house, but a large part of me has not quite caught up as it is still out West, home. We had a great trip visiting family in Washington and California and some friends in the San Francisco Bay area. The only thing that would have improved it would have been more time to see more friends and better soak in the community. We were very happy to see our friends and family that we did and we wished we could see them more often.

The trip was a great trek with Will, who turned seven months just before we left. For a relatively little guy compared to us adults he sure has a lot of stuff. He was a real trooper on the plane flights out West, then to California (he seemed somewhat amazed at what he could see looking down outside the window as we flew over Mount Shasta as he was look left stare down and press his head to the window then spin 45 degrees right and do the same), and then back East. He seemed to make everybody smile in the airport and on the streets has he practiced his waving and smiling every chance he got.

When we got to California it was just plain hot. It was in the mid-90s in the Central Valley and we were sweating and dreaming of the cool San Francisco air. When we arrived in SF (after lunch in Oakland at Zachary's Pizza for a fantastic deep dish) it was still 91 degrees. I only had heavy jeans, dress khakis, and heavy cargo pants. I was so disappointed in what the locals called amazing weather. As soon as we checked in the hotel and got Will napping I headed out for some lighter pants or shorts. We had a great location in a wonderful hotel in the Financial District, the Park Hyatt was a great place to stay with Will as the staff went out of their way to be accommodating and we had nearly every amenity right out our door in the Embarcadero Center and surrounding streets.

We became more awake the longer we were out West as Will took quite a while to adjust to the time and kept us waking on East Coast time until Thursday. We took advantage of staying in the heart of the City by walking up through Union Square on Wednesday and then saw my old neighborhood and had lunch at Cha Cha Cha after cruising Noe Valley, which provided my old Spinelli blends from Tulley's.

Our way back to the Central Valley we stopped at St. Mary's College to take a very quick peek at the changes, cruised through Walnut Creek to see the catalog outdoor mall it has become, and to Lafayette for dinner.

SeatGuru -- An Airline Seat Guide

You know that all seats on commercial airplanes are not created equal. But, you do not know which is best. SeatGuru is where you should go to find your answer.
[Hat tip Doc]

IA Summit in Austin

Late last night I got back from the IA Summit in Austin. The Summit was great as it sparked a few ideas, I learned new things, I got to see friends of like minds, and learned the world is still alright. The Summit Blog offers a good snapshot of the Summit. I could not have enjoyed the Summit without James' iCal of the Summit as I was able to drop it into my Personal InfoCloud and truly get what I wanted out of the Summit.

The sessions were very good this year, there was always something I wanted to attend (on a few occasions there was more than one session I really wanted to attend). I really enjoyed Jesse's James Garrett'sBrand-driven IA session which was entertaining and insightful. Victor Lombardi's Incorporating Research on Navigation into a Design Method really gave me a strong insight into some of the current research, particularly a summary of Andrew Dillion's Shape of Information, that helped flesh out some of my own ideas. The UT Austin student's presentation on Extreme IA, using Extreme Programming methodologies for IA research and tasks. Tony Byrne's Critical Review of Enterprise CMS was extremely valuable for myself as it made the current CMS marketplace more coherent for me (I went to an all day session on CSM on Friday that was largely an echo of much of my CMS experience and provided a few good insights that I did not have in my tool belt, which did not strike as large of a chord as the Critical Review).

I need a little time and sleep to digest the conference some more.

Travelling

I knew the Summit would be jam packed into nearly all my waking hours so I was looking forward to the travel time to write and reflect. My trek to Austin was an educational experience as I had purchased US Air tickets off Travelocity for the round trip. My ticketing info said US Air flights with partners United and CanadaAir. On Thursday evening I stood in a non-moving line at the airport for 45 minutes only to jump the line to ask about my flight. The agent said, "We no longer run the flights to Chicago, you are now on a flight run completely by United". I went to United to find out I was very late (30 minutes before the flight and trying to point to the long line at US Air and trying to eek out the words 45 minutes). It was a fast trek behind the counter agent as she rushed me to the short security line with my carry-on and my check-in bag as I did not have time to check my bag and I was short on time to get to the last gate out on the airports tendril. That morning I moved my small pocket knives to my check-in luggage so I would have the ever resourceful and needed tools in Austin. I was stuck in Security as they dug out the offending .75 inch pen Swiss Army knife and the regular sized one then rescanned my bag.

By the time I got to the gate the doors to the flight had shut (10 minutes before the flight). I was on to the adventure of finding a flight or series of flights to Austin assisted by the helpful gate agent. He tried 9 different combinations as he muttered about the snow in Atlanta and the Carolinas. Finally he said he was going to make a last ditch effort with Continental. I followed him to the gate to Houston and was able to get a seat to Houston and a connection to Austin on the last flight to Austin. Then a snag. The flight was leaving in three minutes, but my ticket was a US Air ticket for a United flight and needed to be converted by US Air to United so they could in-turn transfer it to Continental. The helpful gate agent said he would go back out to the lobby and exchange the ticket and he took off jogging. Five minutes later he returned with my exchanged tickets and they reopened the gate doors and the very helpful Continental gate agent carted my luggage down the gateway, but with out the wheelie extending handle out so he looked like a hunchback galloping after me). I finally sat in my seat and was quite numb from the experience). I was able to relax a little and write a little on the flight and on my 2 hour plus layover in Houston, but only about a third of what I had hoped to get done.

For the return flights I decided to leave even earlier for the Airport. It was a good thing I did so as I went looking for US Air and CanadaAir (regional) for my flight back as that is what the ticketing said, with both flights co-branded with United. The Austin airport does not have a presence for US Air nor CanadaAir. I thought I was in for another great adventure. This time I tried United first (no other closely related options). I handed the ticketing agent my ID and she handed me my United tickets, but my flight was delayed with "wheels up" at 5:40 and boarding at 6:00pm. This was as confusing as the rest of the trip for me so I just went with it. It turns out I was on a small regional jet that did not have enough room to write on the laptop, but I did have a great seatmate that had also been to the conference and we had a very good chat. The flight from Chicago home was the usual tight forward accommodation that does not permit opening a laptop. But, I did get home after 1am this morning.

NY Times Does Austin Texas Style

Those going to Austin this upcoming weekend for the IA Summit or a few weeks for SXSW should read the NY Times What's Doing Austin travel review or one of the other Times Austin travel reviews. Unfortunately for me my trip is going to be jam packed with IA conference and I and cursed not to be able to make it to SXSW Interactive.

Fred an iBook and Cambridge photos

My friend Fred picked up an iBook just prior to his trip to Cambridge, England for a summer study session. So far the switch has been good. He has posted his first pictures from Cambridge on his .Mac site. His pictures bring back wonderful memories of mine from the other side of the Oxbridge family.

He has found a rather inexpensive WiFi connection in a coffeehouse there. If you know of others post them and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.

BBC Proms means Summer

Summer means many things and BBC Proms are one of the highlights. Great classical music at great prices in and wonderful venue. When going to the Proms get there a little early to wander around and take in the building.

More Portland and IA Summit photos

A few Portland and IA Summit photos (81) have been added to the photo gallery. It looks like I still need some tweaking of the BetterHTML tool to up the quality of the photos. I had been hoping to complete these earlier but errands and constant sleeping hindered progress.

Portland Moving Public Art

I uploaded my quicktime movie of Portland moving public art(3.5MB Quicktime movie) that is located across the street from Powells Books. This was taken from my digital still camera, but I really wanted have a picture of this in action. Now I share.

Portland Photos begin

I am posting photos from Portland. I started with Design Within Reach and Portland Rose Garden. I had a little help from BetterHTMLExport for iPhoto on Mac OS X, which did a decent job. I may tweak it some to improve the quality of the pictures.

People photos and hopefully write-ups will come tomorrow. I was sucked into (yeah right) to the Georgetown NIT game tonight. Back to being productive tomorrow.

Portland Dreams

The trip to Portland, Oregon was wonderful. The city was not quite familiar at first and many things seemed to be about 90 degrees off. One night walking with Joy we came across a public square near the Bank of California building and it was very familiar as it was near (I believe) a building my dad worked in and I remembered the view. The problem was it all was facing the wrong direction.

Portland was rainy in that wonderful clean Oregon way. I spent nearly all of my time downtown. I had a great meal, with Joy, at Jake's Famous Crawfish on Thursday night. The bread at Jake's is an elastic sourdough with a perfect crust. I had the clam chowder, which seems to have a sweet smoked bacon and the hint of wine or sherry. Joy had cod and I had shark for our main course. Each of them was great.

Portland is a city that pays attention to the details. The street and public signage is very clear and easy to use. The city is filled with public art and ornamental iron works. Portland also has a great blend of older buildings which have kept their decorative elements and newer buildings designed with personality. The public transportation is some of the best in a U.S. city as it is easily accessible at street level. On the way out I took the street car to the airport and found it very easy and dropped me off right at the airport needing minimal walking to get inside (there was an issue with a quick door closing that could have been rather problematic, were it not for some friends).

I was very impressed with the PGE Park, a multi-purpose outdoor ballpark-stadium. I saw many Portland Maverick games (now the Beavers) in the 70s here as well as the Portland Timbers professional soccer team. The park has the true feel of a post-WWII ball park with retro signage and iron works. Much of the feel is it is an older park, but it feels new and clean at the same time. Portland is in contention to get a major league baseball team, as is Washington, DC. and from this trip and seeing the park, it has a true baseball feel to the area. The feel reminded me of Fenway Park in Boston, but much closer to the downtown. I know Portland is planning a new Portland ballpark, but PGE seems wonderful.

One of the best assets of Portland has to be Powell's Books. The book assets of the store are truely impressive. I wandered around on Thursday night for a while, but spent a couple hours and a few dollars (or so) there on Monday before leaving. I found great buys (they have used books next to the new books) on many books I had been looking for and picked up Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought, which has been of particular interest, but I had not been able to find a copy to see if it was what I had hoped it would entail. My book purchases caused me to have an overage charge for my bag I checked on the airline, but it could have been the Tully's Coffee.

I have many photos of Portland to download and post over the next few days.