Ottawa reminds me a lot of Houston. A city that is a microcosm of Canada’s diversity and vibrance.
When you visit Ottawa, I’d recommend checking out Aiana Restaurant Collective (powered by WordPress, natch!) and Stolen Goods Cocktail Bar to see craftspeople operating at the top of their game. Riviera was also nice.
Wifi is pretty much a given these days, I want to see a website about which airports have the best power outlets.
After just enough time to do my laundry and eat some BBQ, I’m heading back out to Toronto. My passport is packed! This time it’s for Canada’s Web 2.0 Mesh Conference, which looks to be pretty interesting (despite the Web 2.0 moniker). The folks I met last time were so great, I’ve really been looking forward to this trip. Update: An airline problem has me stranded in Philidelphia for the night, I’ll be arriving at the conference late tomorrow afternoon.
I’ve been pretty behind on my photolog, but I’ve updated it now with pictures from my last trip in December and a couple of days from this trip. More photos to come! The pictures from Blarney Castle this time should be an interesting contrast, as in December the sky and weather was pretty chilly but yesterday we had beautiful and sunny weather.
We’ve been driving all around the Dublin area, through Slane, Dunleek, Dowth, New Grange, and finally Drogheda and becoming accustomed to driving on the left has been an interesting experience. First in the rental car there are no fewer than 4 stickers throughout the driver area reminding you to be on the left, and there also seem to be signs to remind you about it around all the tourist areas. What I found difficult wasn’t driving on the left side, which was fairly easy to remember, but rather I found myself aligning myself as the driver with the part of the lane I would be in if I was driving on the right side. Needless to say, this can put you dangerously close to anything to the left of you. So my new mantra (oft-repeated by my sister) has become “Guide to the left.” Thank goodness for collapsible mirrors. On the bright side, left turns are easy.
I’m getting ready to hop the redeye to the lovely city of Toronto for the iSummit conference where I’ll be speaking about social media (whatever that is). Thursday night there’ll be a GTA blogger meetup which sounds like it’ll be a blast — I had no idea there were so many bloggers and WordPress users in Toronto. If you’ll be in Toronto any time before Saturday please drop me an email or try to come to the meetup Thursday night, I’d love to meet more folks out there.
I’m back in San Francisco. This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, except I left at the beginning of December. It has been an exciting month, and I had the pleasure of meeting WordPress users from all over the world in person. I also learned a ton about efficient traveling and getting work done on the road. All great fun, but I am so happy to be back in my own place.
There is a WordPress meetup in London today that I’ll be at. I imagine the topics will cover everything from WordPress 2.0 to the Codex and support. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the people that have been a part of the community for years now.
Paris has the most confusing airport, although I suppose any airport is confusing if you don’t speak the language. Franck was right. I ended up chickening out and taking a taxi, and I’m not checked in and settled. First order of business: find an adapter for these weird plugs. The weather seems to have cleared up so I’m going to venture out and explore a bit.
After reading about Andy’s adventures I decided I better Google up a French phrasebook for study on the flight. The first hit looks like it would get me in to a little more trouble than I’m looking for. 🙂
I’m heading down to San Diego / La Jolla for the day to install some load balancers for WordPress.com and also to buy “Mr Fancy CTO” Jason a celebratory taco for their Joyent thing. If you’re in the area drop me a note. Update: La Jolla is beautiful, but servers happen. Trying to do things over a serial console is so 1988. (As Jason said.)
After a near-miss and frantic rush this morning the American West flight to Las Vegas was great, the pilot did a small deteour after leaving SFO that took us around the coast of San Francisco and over Fisherman’s Wharf right as the sun was coming up, it was one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. San Francisco is just one of those magical places and I’m grateful for every day I spend there. Now I’m in Las Vegas and it’s surprisingly nippy, I might end up getting one of those awful tourist sweatshirts to stave away the chills. Wifi in McCarran airport is free and fast.
I just booked a flight to Vegas for the IP4IT conference, where I’m on a panel with Mr. Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, and the Orbitz waiting graphic popped up a talk bubble that said “Say hi to lady luck for me.” How nice! It’s little things like that which make me use Orbitz more and more, not to mention the prices it gives me are great. I’m not looking forward to booking a Thanksgiving ticket to Houston, though. (BTW, if there are any Vegas WP users drop me an email and we may be able to get together, though I’m only there for the day.)