Happy Birthday, CD
Some CD facts for you:
- Developed by Philips and Sony
- The first album on CD was Abba’s The Visitors
- The first CD Player was sold for $2,000
- The play length of CDs (74 min.) was developed to fit Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
The BBC has more. Image credit goes to Flickr user bitzi.
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Sleeping in Airports
If you are a regular reader of this blog you may have noticed a pretty drastic drop-off in posts this past couple of months. That, at least for my part, has been because I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. I have lots of things to say about the experience but for now, I’d just like to share this amusing website.
Sleeping in Airports is a site dedicated to the practice, of, well… isn’t it obvious? In the last 6 months I’ve slept in Venice – Marco Polo and London Stansted but I definitely plan on doing more of it. Most of all I want to visit all 20 of the best and worst airports. One thing I did learn that is not included in the sleeping tips section is to put a sign around your neck asking fellow passengers to wake you for a flight. That saved me a couple of years ago in DC.
A final tip: avoid the three receivers of the Poopy Bathroom Awards, Cairo, Addis Ababa, and Wichita, Kansas.
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Open-source travelling
One of the biggest drags about traveling is the sense of being something separate from the place you are visiting. Hotels, restaurants, tourist offices, it’s almost as if the whole experience is conspiring to keep you from getting to know the real thing. That’s why I think that this open-source traveling movement is so cool. Brokered by the internet, people all over the world are offering their spare rooms, couches and kitchens to travelers through sites like Globalfreeloaders.com and Couchsurfing.com.
Now I haven’t had much experience with either site yet, but I’m going to be doing a bit of traveling over the next couple of weeks and plan on using the services extensively. I’ll keep you posted. This could be the greatest revelation since the homemade Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
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A long bike journey
One of the biggest things that gets me going is the idea of an epic quest. Ewan McGregor’s The Long Way Round, 1,000 Days at Sea, and Noel Hidalgo’s Luck of 7 trip are all very exciting journeys. As epic as their scales are though, this trip might take the lot. Barcelona native Patrick Gaño is on a bicycle trip (no motor!) that he has scheduled over the course of two years, all the way to Alaska. He’s planning on passing through France, Italy Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Nepal, China and Japan. According to the website which is unfortunately really bad, he’s already made it through to Turkey and is almost into Iran. Talk about inspiring! The picture was taken on the coast of Croatia.
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An epic open-source journey
A Brooklyn-based technologist/activist/blogger by the name of Noel Hidalgo will be embarking on an epic voyage he is calling: “On the Luck of Seven; an open-source journey around the world documenting free culture, social innovators & global change.” The journey will last 7 months, span 7 continents, cover the 7 seas, and visit the 7 wonders of the world, all while researching 7 topics of freedom. The trip will start (duh) on 7/7/07, but only if 700 people pledge to give him $11.11. Follow the journey at LuckofSeven.com.
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