a very short history of me on the web

Although I had made a few attempts at a personal website before, my first effort began in 1996 when I registered skylarking.com as a domain, a reference to the XTC album of the same name. A few years later, I registered cricketmedia.com to serve as a website for my consulting business. Later, I killed skylarking.com and moved everything to cricketmedia.com, personal or otherwise. So, for one brief moment, things were unified. Then, over the next decade, I ended up with crap all over the place:

• Some stuff on cricketmedia.com, including a web zine I published, my half-assed (or possibly quarter-assed) attempt at a personal website, some of my writing, some of my photos in hand-edited pages, some photo galleries created with Aperture, and other miscellaneous crap
• Some stuff on one .Mac website, including some surprisingly popular Applescripts I wrote and some photo galleries created with .Mac Homepage
  
• Some stuff on another .Mac website that I created with iWeb, including a blog and yet more photo galleries
• And if that wasn't bad enough, yet more photo galleries on flickr

I made several aborted attempts to wire these up into something that resembled cohesiveness, but in the end it was a big mess. In most cases, there weren't even links hooking these incoherent sites together.

So, starting today, any traffic from any of these old sites is now redirected here (and, astonishingly, I still do get web traffic from my old sites, many of which have not been updated in years). For now, my web presence consists of this blog and all my digital photos are unified on flickr. And they actually link to each other. Welcome to 2008.

our rules for trips (new and improved!)

Before our recent trip, we created the following rules:

• No fast food
• No staying in hotels or motels
• Minimum overnight stay in one location of 3 days
• No pre-planning or scheduling unless absolutely necessary
• No more than 5 hours of travel between places we stay overnight

Happily, I declare the rules to have been a success:

• Avoiding fast food led to just generally feeling better and not having gastro-intestinal problems like we've sometimes had on other trips. I was so hungry at one point and nearly went into a Subway, but I resisted and found a great place that made a delicious crepe for me.
• We stayed only in homestays or cottages which was a great move, allowing us to meet some really nice people and get great advice on things to do.
• The minimum stay idea worked well, but I think I would increase that to 4 days for future trips. We always felt like we wanted at least one more day, even if it was just to relax and do nothing at all.
• We researched a lot of potential activities before the trip, but just took one day at a time and decided on the fly what to do and it worked out very well. 
• The problem with the 5 hours between destinations idea was that there was so much to see on the way that the traveling days were sometimes a bit exhausting. So perhaps I would change that to a less ambitious 3 hours.

And I'd add a couple new rules:

• Stick to within a one hour driving radius of each place we stay overnight. Some days we got too ambitious and drove way too much and then also ended up not getting to see as much cool stuff in the area closer to where we stayed.
• No chain stores or chain restaurants, where possible.

a kinder, gentler health care

The upside of catching a nasty flu bug on my last week in New Zealand was getting a genuine glimpse inside a health care system outside the USA for the first time. Without getting into the pros and cons of socialized medicine, the experience was profoundly more humane and comfortable than I'm used to:

• When I walked into the medical facility, they simply asked me if I would like to see a doctor and I said yes. There was no awkward, open-ended 'May I help you?' or anyone asking me to explain my medical condition in detail in front of a waiting room full of people.
• I was asked to fill out a form with my name, address, and phone number, along with a checkbox asking if I was a citizen or resident. That's it. There was no clipboard with 15 pages of forms, medical histories, privacy notices, and disclaimers for me to read and fill out. They didn't require any photo id or any personal identification numbers.
• The waiting room was quiet, with no TV blaring, and with comfortable seats. There was a seriously hard-core ventilation system to help keep the air fresh and to help keep everyone from catching everyone else's germs.
• When they were ready for me, the actual doctor walked out and called my name and I walked back with him to the examination room. Much preferred to someone else calling my name and stuffing me in a room where I'd wait, mostly naked except for a cheap paper gown, sitting on an uncomfortable examination table with a sheet of butcher paper on top of it.
• The examination room was very roomy and comfortable, with a desk for the doctor and his computer, a comfy chair for me, and an examination table off to the side. It was very warmly lit, rather than with harsh fluorescent lights.
• I saw two different doctors on my two visits and they were both very personable, methodical, patient, and very good listeners. I never felt rushed like I almost always do when visiting a doctor.
• Filling my prescriptions took less than 5 minutes. Why it always takes 20-30 minutes in the US has always baffled me, even if the pharmacy is not busy at all. Who wants to stand around in a pharmacy for a half hour when you feel like crap?

It was a completely stress-free experience, which is exactly what someone who doesn't feel well needs.