Category Archives: tourism

Big Ben, London, UK

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I was browsing some pix from my 2003 trip to England and France and thought this one was cool. We only spent a *single* day in London but made the best of our 11 hours there by hopping on and off tour busses and tearing around taking hundreds of pictures. Even though we spent about a week in Paris I think I remember more from the London visit partly because Paris was relaxed and London was intense and “goal oriented”. Can’t wait to go back and take more time to relax and visit the British Museum. I think my highlight of London was Westminster Abbey, that magnificent and fantastic bastion of modern English speaking culture and history.


Big Ben, London, UK

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

Here’s more about England Travel 

Canyon Creek Lakes, Trinity Alps, Northern California

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Above Lower Canyon Creek Lake looking South

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

We continued our labor day tradition of meeting our great friends in Weaverville, CA and then hiking in to the Trinity Alps Wilderness along the trail up to the Canyon Creek Lakes.    We camp about 4 miles in and then hike into the lakes the next day which is another 4 miles.    It’s a fantastic trip with the kind of scenery you find pretty much only in Northern California – sweeping mountain vistas, smooth granite outcrops and peaks, pristine mountain lakes, streams, and waterfalls.    Azure blues and deep greens and a star filled sky complete with the recent meteor shower.   It doesn’t get much better than that and the Trinity Alps are one of my favorite places in the whole world.

One really cool addition to the experience this year was looking at the hike through Google Earth, where by tilting the imagery you can really get a neat feel for the vistas along the actual hike.     We also found some photos of our first trip in to the Canyon Creek Lakes some 22 years ago. The scenery had not changed but … um … I think we have

Canyon Creek Contemplations

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This morning I woke up along Canyon Creek in Trinity Alps Wilderness of Northern California. This is a great hike we’ve done several times, and I’ll get the pix up tomorrow. We had some fun conversations at camp and around the fire as several meteors streaked across the magnificent night sky:

I think Chem trail conspiracy notions are silly, but they came up:
Chem Trails – nice description of the issues

Star and Moon motion
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970518.html

Mercury

Wow, and the $2000 EPA cleanup of broken flourescent bulb is really quite a story , and one very related to Mercury. In that story evil Fox news notes what appears to be a real environmental disconnect between advocacy for using compact flourescents and the dangers that will be caused by the ones that get broken and go to landfills. I remain confused about this. In fact I just broke one on the porch last week and had *no idea at all* about special cleanup needed, so I hope we all live.

Google Earth and Maps has some neat imagery of Canyon Creek Lakes area. If you don’t have Google earth it’s quite an amazing and free application to visualize cities and trails. Maps does not need download but Google Earth is a fanastic and free download.

Here’s the NYT article about life being a computer simulation

Here is Kurzweil’s AI site for updates on the singularity and conscious computing. It reads a bit sillier than it should based on his scientific and history “credentials” and the fact many AI folks think conscious computing is only 1-2 decades away.

Here’s my take on two neat AI projects

Chips and Human Neuron Salsa … and this related item just in from Israel IMHO the intersection of human brains and computing will initiate the most profound societal transformation in history.

And then again, maybe it’ll just let us watch TV in our heads, which would be pretty cool too.

Las Cruces New Mexico

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No, I’m not in Las Cruces NM right now, but I’m blogging about Las Cruces NM as part of the online NMOHWY experiment in white hat SEO for our travel related websites.

As part of that experiment, which I’ll explain later, I want to tell you more about Las Cruces and provide some links for better information than I can provide here but will eventually have at our New Mexico Travel website which is under major rennovation.

The area now occupied by the city of Las Cruces was part of Mexico until Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which included a conversion of the Mexican city of Doña Ana to the US city now called “Las Cruces”. The origin of the name is not clear but may refer to crosses in the area placed by Spanish priests.

Las Cruces has a population of about 78,000. Most air travel to and from the region is from the El Paso International Airport about an hour south of Las Cruces in Texas. Las Cruces is in the far south part of New Mexico.

And in what is almost certainly not a coincidence I have a strong personal connection to Las Cruces even though I’ve never been there.    My aunt, uncle, and cousin lived there on a ranch for many years.

The city of Las Cruces website is here
The Visitor Tourism website for Las Cruces is here

Some day the world’s best web page for Las Cruces New Mexico searches will be at the website here.

Oregon Travel

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I’m hoping to get my Oregon Travel blog going soon with tips and tricks about great vacation stuff here in Oregon. One of the things I *always* notice after travelling is how nice it is to come home to the great cultural and outdoor attractions within a few hours of my house here in lovely Talent Oregon

We’ve got some good basic detail about Oregon at the Online Highways Oregon Travel section but I’m hoping to do a more personalized version of this. Some will appear at the Online Highways travel blog but that travel blog will be focusing more on destinations around the globe and not digging into Oregon in great depth.

Oregon is home to several great regions. The state defines them like this but I’m going to be a little more precise at the Oregon Travel blog and try to focus in on more of a single city or destination basis.

I’ve already covered some Oregon Travel information in these Travel Highways and History posts but I have quite a bit of information, pictures, and adventures to share in the future. Oregon is one of the few places where you can enjoy skiing on peaks over 2 miles high, smashing surf and sea, and a round of golf all in the same day. (No, it would not be a relaxing day!)….

Downtowne Coffee Shop, Talent Oregon

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Here in lovely Talent, Oregon and in Southern Oregon in general we’ve got more than our share of great places for coffee but my favorite *by far* is the Downtowne Coffee Shop here in Talent, where the owners have created a cozy little coffee oasis right in the heart of our tiny town.     The coffee and specialty drinks are *always* first rate, food excellent, soups made right here, and the owners are almost always around.    WIFI is fast and reliable, outdoor patio, and really nice cozy indoor seating away from the separate room with the espresso machine.

If you are making your way up or down I-5 and need to check email or just grab a nice cup of java I’d recommend you drop in.  Downtowne Coffee Shop is only about a mile off the interstate and easy to find right in the heart of Talent.

(FYI this is an unsolicited review – I really love this place!)

Viva Las Vegas for Casino Profits

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This Hotel Interactive article offers some great data about the Las Vegas Casino scene in terms of economic impact. As you’d think it’s a staggering cash flow – some 2.1 billion profit on 24 billion in revenues from the 274 properties in Nevada reporting more than a million in profit for the year.

Here are some notable items from this report:

Gaming accounts for 49% percent of total revenue = $11.8 billion.
Rooms = 20% = $5 billion
Food = 14%
Average revenue per casino hotel resort was $88 million (!).
Casinos paid $928 million in state gambling tax and license fees (!).

Slot machines accounted for 67% of gaming revenue.
Poker accounts for only 1.4 percent of gaming revenue.

The Las Vegas Strip: $14.9 billion revenues and profits of $1.25 billion.
Downtown Las Vegas: $1.2 billion in revenue and a profit of $140.6 million.

Hey, here’s my brief Las Vegas History based on the PBS show about Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Blog

Got AI?

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If you are not familiar with the ideas of futurist Ray Kurzweil you should read some of his rather remarkable but reasonable notions of how artificial intelligence will pan out over the next few decades.   In short Kurzweil sees an explosion of artificial intellectual capability changing our culture in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

We were pondering the intersection of humans and technology during our 5 days of camping with friends on the Oregon Coast at Honeyman State Park.    It’s a simply beautiful park with huge dunes, 2 pretty lakes, and nice campsites.

OMG! are you my REAL friend or my Facebook Fair Weather Friend or?

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As Facebook continues to rock the digital personality and social networking landscape I’m starting to build up my Facebook friends list and planning to develop some travel based communities using Facebook at the social networking platform.

However I’m somewhat frustrated with what appear to be dramatically different definitions of the word “friend”. Facebook emails to “add friends” make it seem like you should have a real “relationship” with the person before you add them even though this approach seems to be breaking down quickly as Facebook use, abuse, and social networking explodes.

Robert Scoble to the rescue with a great definition of “friend” over at his blog – here was our exchange over there:

  1. Robert what’s the appropriate way to define “friend”. I have been confused about adding people to facebook thinking Facebook seems to want me to really “know them” to add them though I already have some folks on there I have not met. I’d say the more the merrier, but that will get out of hand quickly.

    What is your rule for adding friends?
    Comment by JoeDuck — July 25, 2007 @ 10:22 am

  2. Joe: in social networks a “friend” is someone you want in your network. No more, no less.

    If you try to limit it to “real friends” you’ll be missing a lot of the power of these things.

    I wish they’d stop calling these things “friends,” by the way. Twitter has done just that. People in Twitter are “followers” for people who watch you and “following” for people you are watching. Much better name for these things.

Thanks Robert – excellent!

I think Robert’s definition has several advantages, most notably it encourages people to have *more* people who they call friend.  I see this as practical, fun, and a small step towards the elusive goal of more global friendship.

Hey – did you just read this?   We’re friends so feel free to send me an add request to Facebook.    Do you blog travel or your local region?    PLEASE help build a network of regional blogging travel enthusiasts to rule the travel world!

Talent, Oregon = Home!

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As much as I enjoy travel, the more places I go the more happy I am living here in Talent, Oregon.    The pace back east is too fast and I think folks get so wrapped up in traffic and the hectic routines of daily city life that they have less time to enjoy just living, and perhaps even less time to do the innovative philosophical waxing that makes the west coast the capital of global innovation (trumpet fanfare here).    But maybe that’s a stretch.

I sure enjoyed the history at Philadelphia and Gettysburg and will be writing more on that as I process the many photos I took on the trip.   Pennsylvania Dutch Amish culture was fascinating and we had some neat drives through the back roads of Lancaster County, past verdant hillsides and historic farms with Amish folks driving around in horse drawn buggies and working the fields with horse teams.   Atlantic City and the Jersey Shores were the “low point” of the trip but I think part of that was the crazy NJ road system which seems to intentionally misdirect you at critical places.   I missed taking a picture of one intersection along the tollway where there were about 8 “stop” and “do not enter” signs, all within twenty feet of each in a tangle of instructions that could only have been approved by a transportation planner on LSD.