I took a lot of pictures as usual. They’re all up on Flicrk, but here are a few I really liked:

Our hotel was right across the street from the Rhode Island State house. I forgot to fix my white balance before I shot it, but I kinda like the effect:

If all of the cars in front were as old as the one in the middle, I could have pretended it was an old slide

Here’s a more “accurate” shot:

We headed over to the local mall’s food court for lunch:

Lotsa folks in that one – Mike Giarlo, Rob Cassion, Ross Singer, Phil Cryer.

I really enjoyed spending a few days with our intrepid Esme:

(He lives in Florida, Mike.)

Here Dan Chudnov does his Bollywood routine in celebration of Slumdog Millionaire’s big Oscar wins:

Jodi Schneider was thrilled to see me, as always:

I finally met Ed Summers, in the middle. It’s good to see him inspiring others as he does me. Bess Sadler is enjoying the fracas as well:

Gabe Farrell, on the right, forgot he owed me $20. Never do that. It gives me WAY too much license…

Mike Park left me waiting to be picked up at the airport:

Well ok, he mailed me 3 weeks before the event asking if I needed a ride and I sent him an itinerary and said I’d confirm closer to the flight. Three hours before the flight takes off doesn’t really count! Mike drove me, Esme, Brad, and Dan all over the place, either because he’s a great dude, or I’m good at making people feel guilty. Either way, I win! Thanks Mike for being a great host.

Actually, I gotta say that the whole Brown Univ (or is that Univ of Providence?) crew kicked ass in prep and execution of this conference. BRAVO Birkin, Jean, Bonnie, and other names I can’t remember because I drink a lot.

I also take a lot of pictures, so I’ll inevitably get something cool like this:

Heehee! I love my Lensbaby!

Pizza is good!

Did you know the lead singer of Saliva is a librarian?

Ross pretends to laugh at something while trying to ignore the fat dude sticking a camera in his face:

Just looking at this costs me 14 points:

Brad, Dan, and I visited the inside of the RI State House before we ran to the airport, and decided that we should hold the next code4lib in the Senate chambers:

Never get on that end of a canon, especially when I am on the other end…

As usual, way too many pictures here:

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Awesome seeing you all again!

Great colors:

And library geeks playing games:

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I haven’t processed the content yet, but I did take a lot of pictures. What encapsulates a trip better than a grown man in an Anne of Green Gables hat and braids?:

Jim Tuttle is so silly… I wouldn’t be caught dead…

Dang digital cameras…

PEI is famous for its lobster, and there is good reason:

They are served almost everywhere. We had these on Monday night:

We also had a few tasty beverages. Here Grant and Jim listen politely to Mike tell a story. The politeness comes from not understanding a thing he was saying due to a very strong Boston accent:

or a lot of beer.

The University of PEI’s University Librarian, Mark Leggott, took us all on a walk to the red sand beach:

which he said was lovely. We had to take his word for it because there were no lights, the moon was covered in cloud, and we were all dizzy from blood loss to mosquitoes.

Thankfully, there was a bar at the end of the walk, so we could hide from insects and Chris could get a drink:

For lunch on Wednesday, we went to the local farmers market:

where three of the locals – Paul, Peter, and Alex demonstrated the East Coast Canadian habit of stopping and standing in the middle of a walk way. I’m not kidding, these people have getting in my way down to a science.

Then we walked the length of the island on a path:

Ok, not really, but the path does stretch from tip to tip. Maybe someday I’ll bring my bike up there.

The locals bath when the sewers back up and spew what can only be raw sewage 6 feet into the air:

Or it was a clever fountain.

This was a small petting zoo for crabs and lobsters. Notice no one putting their hands in:

Jim was then sent home for “disturbing” the local livestock:

Ok, so the water and boats and beautiful:

But what is prettier than a man sized potato?

I’m talking about the one in the back…

On Weds night, we were sitting at dinner and I got the Lensbaby out and got some nice shots:

Here’s Richard Green from Hull:

Peter Binkley from Canadia:

And Mark Leggott again:

The flowers really add to the scene…

On Thursday night, Grant and his daughter brought us down to see Victoria Bay:

Note the famous, ubiquitous red soil.

I got a little bit of the sunset:

Then the rain rolled in:

On Saturday, Jim and I got a car and drove from Charlottetown as far East as possible and looped back.

PEI has many lighthouses:

And pretty, red cliffs:

And pretty streams:

And more light houses:

That one is on East Point, the farthest we could go East.

Jim was too cool for all this:

And I was eaten alive by mosquitoes:

Then we went to see Pineapple Express. All in all, a pretty good day!

Here are a lot more pictures (Flickr link):

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I got to see one of my favorite geek librarians, and fellow photographer, Cindi Trainor:

She takes lots of portraits, I’m more of the candid shot guy:

Although, if the light is right, even I can’t resist a pose:

That’s Tombriarian on the left.

Another Harvard buddy I ran into is Kenley Neufeld:

He’s a hoot and gave me a Twitter fix on his iPhone when my Blackberry was giving me trouble.

Dan Suchy from UCSD also came up for a day:

He was in the “special librarians” seminars all day.

More pictures, lots of new librarian twitter friends met:

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Anaheim = Disney, don’tcha know?

All of the images from the class:

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Those first few images are of a mystery device that was installed over my hotel room door. Never did figure out what it was. I’m not interesting enough to surveil…

The class was a lot of fun, especially because it was small and the attendees got really involved in asking questions.

I’ve come over for 2 weeks, the first at a work conference called Open Repositories in Southampton. This week I’m on vacation in London, first in Watford, then heading over to Gillingham in Kent tomorrow. I have some cousins there that I haven’t seen in 10 years. Should be a hoot!

Robert, Chuck, Christian, and Effy joined me at my aunt’s place and just left for home this morning. Part of me would like to be heading home too, but part of me is excited to see the cousins again.

Some random thoughts on the experience so far:

I followed some advice and forced myself to stay up one sleep cycle and acclimate to the local time, arriving at 8:15a and going to bed at a normal 10p. I think that was 36 hours of straight awake time as I couldn’t fall asleep sitting up on the plane. There were some slight hallucinations toward the end of the night, and 5 or 6 blackouts at the pub during dinner, but I awoke the next day fairly rested and ready to take on the conference.

I’d given myself plenty of time to get showered, dressed, and fed, until I discovered that the Jury’s hotel had run out of hot water. BigD don’t roll with the cold shower, so, thankfully, I’d showered the night before in an attempt to stay awake. I was afraid that this was just a normal English thing, but no, a boiler had failed. They got it fixed and there was normal hot water afterward.

The room felt spartan compared to similarly priced American hotels. No real flourishes, just a clean couple of beds and a spare bathroom. Nothing wrong with it, but no charm.

A lot of the toilets here have 2 flushing modes, whoosh and WHOOSH! The flush button is split in two. It takes some experimentation to see which setting does what. I saw something like it in Portland.

Wifi sucks. Well, bad implementation of it sucks. We are SO spoiled at UCSD with the ubiquitous nature of the wifi and how well it is managed. Southampton’s implementation is just… FAIL. Very frustrating, especially when we’d only have about an hour of overlap time with people back home actually being awake while we were online.

Free wifi is findable around town. I could get on fairly reliably within a 15 minute walk from the hotel, which sucked a bit. It was usually at a pub, which didn’t suck so much. The hotel offered wifi in the lobby, or wired access in the rooms, but it was 5 pounds for 4 hours, or 20 pounds for a day.

Speaking of pounds, the exchange rate is murderous. We’re getting less than 2:1. I’m trying not to think about it. But a decent dinner is $50USD. OUCH! Can we get out of Iraq, pls? kthxbai

I’ve visited my aunt before who, by the way, is actually not in the country at the moment but off in India or something, and the feeling this time is different. I’ve been trying to articulate it to myself, hence this long post, but I’m having trouble. Maybe it’s because I’m older, or have traveled more, or I’m jaded, but in the past this place always seemed more otherworldly to me. What does that mean…? I’m not sure I am not as struck by the differences this time as I have been in the past. I still notice all the things that seem odd to me – driving on the wrong side, different ways of saying “common” things like “way out”, the different currency. They just don’t glare like they used to.

Maybe it’s the internet… I’m not feeling so isolated because I touch base with Elaine and other friends in IM and IRC in real time almost every day, if I can find wifi. Maybe this is bad? Maybe there’s some need to separate to be able to fully appreciate a place. With the internet so ubiquitous, it’s difficult to separate though. In fact, it’s quite difficult to operate off the net altogether. I’ve used it to check trains, find restaurants and pubs, and to send back up mails to people I couldn’t find online or with the phone.

Maybe it’s because I came here in a work mode. I find myself skimming work email because it’s easy to do when I’m checking my personal stuff. Heck, some people send personal stuff to my work address. Half of the places we visited in London had a Library focus They were still cool though. Yesterday I saw one of the original Magna Cartas and a Gutenberg Bible.

Today I’m just bumming around Bushey and Watford, enjoying the calm after the other four people headed out. They were a very pleasant crew, but that was a small place to jam 5 people into Not to mention the one shower and the bout of black plague hitting some of them. Thank goodness, I haven’t gotten sick (/me knocks wood). I’ve got some tidying up to do at my aunt’s, then getting packed up for the visit East tomorrow.

I know this is a bit more rambly than my regular stuff, but hey, it’s a blog! I think I’m supposed to ramble. Ok, here’s one nice picture from last night:

Here’s Mike Giarlo actually being chivalrous and holding open a door:

On the far left is Mark Phillips, quite a great photographer. On the right is a blurry Jonathan Brinley. On the far right is Kurt, one of Mark’s coworkers. In the middle is a shiny guy:

Jim Tuttle from NC was there, accompanied by his huge, misshapen head:

This is the position I saw Antonio Barrera in each time I saw him. All that changed was the content of the glass:

Devon Smith has the irc nickname that I would kill for “decasm”:

Here’s Anjanette Young from UW trying to ignore the dork with the camera:

I server on a Shibboleth committee with the guy on the left, Tod Olson from UChicago. On the right is Andrew Bullen from the Illinois State Library. He did an amazing presentation on scanned sheet music, an example of which was converted to MIDI and played as background during his talk:

This is Rob Casson from UMiama, OH. He’s got a lot to say about Drupal, and really needs a haircut:

Jodi Schneider from MA also looks thrilled with the photographer:

We all had some fantastic Indian food:

All the pictures from that evening:

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I blew this one out on purpose, and kinda liked it:

I also visited the University of Victoria’s campus for an all day hackfest. They have a rabbit issue:

Got some nice fall colors too:

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I flew home the next day and got a bunch of shots from the air:

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