Travel

One recap of 2012 which was an odd year what with the international move and all. Still in the second half I managed to get a lot of travel in leaving aside the almost monthly trips to Amsterdam by train. Dopplr unfortunately does not give me a total amount of kilometers travelled for 2012 anymore.

Last Monday was the last day in Berlin before the holidays so something of a push here and there to get things to go through. That night we had a vvvv workshop at the studio hosted by Joreg to teach somewhere around eight people the basics of node based graphical environments (the only other one I had used extensively before was Open DX and of course there’s Quartz Composer and Impure Quadrigram).

I picked up a Monocle at Sydney airport for a long flight without laptop (along with a book) and I was a bit disappointed 1 in finding that the magazine hadn’t progressed much since I first read it years ago. It still is that strangely a-political collection of fluff pieces for the spendy class and because of the current realities of print publishing now also brimful of advertorials.

After some weeks traveling to Beijing and Australia, last week I was back in Europe, touching down in Amsterdam Tuesday morning early. I had a very nice flight in from Sydney with the only annoyance being that my laptop had broken upon arrival there. This made me spend half a day of the two I had there in the Bondi Apple Store trying to figure out what the problem was.

I’m sitting here at Beijing Airport writing these too late weeknotes on their free WiFi 1 which is an oddly implemented but still excellent service.

I spent two days in Ghent a Belgian city that is lovely in its own right, but really shines for a long week every summer when it has its own festival: the Gentse Feesten. I’d been there once before some ten years ago and had a lot of fun there. So Tourism Flanders gave me the chance to revisit.

I am repeating regularly these days that I am through with theater. I thought I’d see a couple of plays here at the Festival d’Avignon and then decide for myself whether this position is justified. Avignon has the reputation for programming the best theater of Europe. A reputation that turns out to be mostly unfounded.

The week before last I spent in Athens mostly hanging out, going to the beach and getting some work done.

I spent last week in Athens because Lea was at work at the Athens & Epidaurus festival where the Schaubühne staged two plays. I spent the week relaxing, working and taking in the Athens air.

During my visit to Copenhagen I tried to make use of the Copenhagen City Bike system. Although eventually successful, it turns out bicycle sharing systems without a digital component can lead to frustrations.

The train just had its stop in Bad Bentheim entering Germany. At that stop we usually get a short break, a new locomotive and the German border police checking the train. Border police? Didn’t the Schengen Agreement abolish checks at the signing countries’ borders?

Another week and another change at the office. One thing that does define the Open Coop is that everything is in a constant state of flux adding jitter so none of us remain stuck in a local optimum. The global optimum we are shooting for in and around our location in North is rather ridiculous but best not shared in public.

Another long form weeknote, history recapping brought by the fantastic Memolane service which aggregates my various media chronologically so I can quickly write this overview.

Two years after I harrangued the Dutch national railways on radio about their closed data policy and debunked all their arguments why they would not open up this data.

We spent last weekend having a veritable blast at the Cognitive Cities conference. It was a great spectacle of familiar faces, a nicely curated program and full frontal confrontations with the city of Berlin.

Stukjes schrijven zonder hyperlinks erin is gek, maar dat komt erbij kijken als het op krantenpapier gedrukt moet worden. In ieder geval is vandaag een stuk van mij gepubliceerd op de opinie-pagina van de nrc.next: “Dat moet toch beter kunnen? — Geef vervoersinformatie vrij.

By the time you’re reading this I will have flown off to the Levant to spend three weeks mainly in Damascus, Syria.

This week I had my yearly trip to the UK to attend the dConstruct conference in Brighton. Usually I add some time to visit London too and explore the things that need exploring.

From slide 47 on is the core of this presentation by Jan Chipchase:

Terwijl we aan de andere kant een strijd voeren voor vrij beschikbare openbaar vervoersinformatie is het openbaar vervoer zelf in een ‘wereldstad’ als Amsterdam nog een zooitje.

De grens tussen Turkije en Syrië is tegenwoordig compleet open en Turkije ‘groeit uit zijn voegen’ 1:

Jelle Brandt Corstius nailt het:

De OV-chipkaart is een groot succes in de Amsterdamse metro. Het aantal zwartrijders is afgenomen en navenant ook het aantal geweldsincidenten.

It’s that time of the year again, a modest list this time compared to some:

Ik schreef hier al eerder dat de ov-chipkaart kut 1 is. Het is nog steeds kut.

De vervoersmaatschappij van San Francisco geeft de voorspelde aankomsttijd van het volgende voertuig op een willekeurige halte vrij in een handig XML-formaat. Daarmee kun je leuke dingen bouwen, zoals bijvoorbeeld een horloge wat de volgende tram aangeeft.

Ik ben eenduidig voor de ov-chipkaart. De cognitieve moeite die het bespaart bij het reizen in het openbaar vervoer (temminste als je simpele routes gebruikt en niet overstapt op de trein) is geweldig.

Ik zou zeggen “duh!”, maar je kunt net zo goed zeggen dat dit een revolutie inluidt:

By the time you’re reading this I’ll be on a brief holiday to Morocco to surf and eat local cuisine. It’s been too long.

Jumping all over the randstad these past weeks. Some gems to be found:

I’ve recently used my first OV-fiets and it was a fantastic experience 1. It’s a great way to bridge the last couple of miles on your transit experience and I think an important addition to the public transportation system.

Ik denk niet dat ik binnenkort nog met de trein naar Londen ga.

Via Gerard het nieuws over het NDW dat geopend is door Minister Eurlings. Het eerste resultaat is een warrige site: Nationaaldatawarehouse.nl.

Last week I got Rebooted in Copenhagen again. Drove up with Peter and Iskander.

Dennis tipte me net deze video:

Ik vernam al dat de NS op de afgelopen Mobile Monday probeerde hun nieuwe reisplanner te pitchen. Dat was afgaand op de reacties via Twitter geen doorslaand succes.

Ik was gisteren dus op Radio Online 1 (audio) waar ik een kritiek mocht uiten tegen de strategie van de NS van het niet vrijgeven van de vervoersgegevens.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite things from SxSW:

Een redelijk zachte review van de nieuwe NS-applicatie op Marketingfacts (ook Tweakers).

Ik ben even een weekje naar Austin voor een woestijn-retraite met vakgenoten.

As per Kottke fished out of my iCal and my Dopplr, hat tip Mark:

Occasionally some very beautiful things here in Berlin between the grey and cold 1:

Last day in San Francisco we went up to Twin Peaks for this absolutely stunning view over the city:

Freshly one day back in from San Francisco some adjustments need to be made. The time difference has been reduced from 9 hours to 8 thanks to our splendidly European invention: DST. Along with the time difference there is also a slight difference in daylight and a large difference in temperature (15ź centigrade) and precipitation (nearly non-stop rain the past day).

My days in Berkeley/Oakland 1 used to be filled with:

I’ve always wanted to go there and tomorrow I’m finally going. Some vague plans, tads of serendipity and friends pushing me over the edge were enough to have me book the ticket, I think, only three weeks ago. Tomorrow Lufthansa will take me over an ocean for the first time of my life 1.