This past Friday, I was invited to attend a special media boat cruise up Indian Arm aboard the 68′ ketch, the Island Odyssey. Yeah, I know it’s my second nautical themed event this week, life is rough sometimes.
The purpose of the event was to let the local community know more about Bluewater Adventures which was recently proclaimed “one of the Best Travel Companies on Earth” by National Geographic Adventure Magazine who rated them 93.6% overall and 100% in customer satisfaction.
Compared to the other event, this was a much more intimate affair. It was like a floating kitchen party.
Did I say kitchen? Of course there was food:
The sailing tours (or ‘adventures‘ as they call them) cover pretty much the entire West Coast from the Gulf Islands up to Alaska and most points in between including the Queen Charlotte Islands. These trips also focus on a number of ‘eco-actions‘ including the entire trip being carbon neutral.
After getting to experience an afternoon on the boat, I can see why this form of touring the West Coast is so appealing and was honestly something that I’d never considered doing myself. It’s a very relaxing way to travel with all the comforts of home onboard. Something else I wasn’t aware of was the fact that a biologist accompanies all tours to help answer any questions guests have about the environment.
One thing that really hit home this past week of boating is how freakin’ amazing BC really is. We really do take for granted the beauty that is right around us and people from all over the world come here to experience it. This whole ‘tourist in your own town’ thing is really under-rated.
I thought it might be fun to clamp a camera to the boat and make a little time lapse of our trip and it turned out pretty well:
You can view my entire photoset on Flickr – and all the photos are geotagged so you can see exactly where each one was taken along the trip up Indian Arm (click the ‘map’ link on each photo).
I’m back at home after a whirlwind weekend in San Francisco to attend WordCamp SF 2009. It’s a one day conference for users of WordPress which is what this site is built with.
I’ve talked about WordCamps before and even gave a talk at WordCamp Whistler earlier this year. Like Whistler, I was joined in San Francisco by John & Rebecca from Sixty4Media and Duane & Dale from BraveNewCode which I referred to more than a couple of times as Team Canada.
During Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ talk, it was cool to hear BraveNewCode’s plugins (WordTwit and WPTouch) getting mentioned as two (out of 3) of the most popular plugins for WordPress users based on a Twitter poll Matt ran before the event.
This year I was asked by Lloyd to help out in the Genius Bar – basically a bunch of passionate users/geeks helping others with any questions or problems they have about using/installing WordPress.
During my shift I only answered a handful of questions due to a ‘genius to customer’ ratio of about 10 to 1… admittedly it was towards the end of the day and smack in the middle of a couple of well attended sessions. We did manage to come up with a few terrible WordPress themed pickup lines.
After a day of geeking out at the conference, it was time to head to Automattic’s space at Pier 38 for the WordPress 6th birthday party featuring WordPress themed cupcakes and a whole lot of awesome food and drink:
If you’re interested in any of the topics covered at WordCamp SF, keep an eye on WordPress.tv as most, if not all, of the sessions were videotaped and should appear online as soon as they are edited together. Rebecca also covered a lot of the sessions with her excellent day blog.
Considering the amount of camera gear I brought down there with me, I didn’t take a lot of photos…mostly because there wasn’t a lot of time between trips to and from the airport. I think next time I do a quick weekend trip like this, I’ll scale back my gear a lot more. I didn’t even get any decent photos of Team Canada….of course I blame the tequila.
Earlier this month I went to Victoria for a conference and am just now getting around to posting some video from the trip. The floatplane flight from harbour to harbour was on a rainy and cold Sunday afternoon but I think the video turned out pretty decent despite the weather.
Shot with my Kodak Zi6 HD camera and edited using iMovie ‘09 which seems to have it’s quirks but I’m giving it a shot for awhile before I go back to Final Cut. iMovie is definitely faster to pull stuff together like this but you have much more control in Final Cut. I also thought I’d try out YouTube’s HD format. I didn’t have enough upload space on my Vimeo account for the full HD version, plus it would have taken a week to process. I’m really close to dropping the $60 for a Vimeo pro account. If you like rewatching movies, check out the 720×480 version over there.
Stay tuned for part two – the trip home which was fortunately on a much nicer day.
Once again, it’s time to start planning for SXSWi which is coming up pretty fast in just under two months. It’s the annual ‘geek summer camp’ held in Austin, Texas every March. Check out my previous posts about it to see why you might want to go.
Now is the time to start doing a few things to maximize your time in the Lone Star state. If you haven’t already booked a hotel room, expect to be spending a lot of time in cabs getting to and from your room out on the interstate and the Austin Convention Center….all the close hotels (walking distance) were booked up last summer.
If you haven’t already registered, you should do it soon since the price goes up the closer it gets. Peter and I booked our flights last weekend….airline prices are down thanks to the current economic situation…$100 less than last year.
If you want to use your iPhone (or any other phone not from the US at least), you’ll probably need to unlock it and acquire a US Sim card. Cheapest route I’ve found still is an AT&T Pay as you go phone which can found almost anywhere in the US (Target, Walmart, 7-11, etc.) for as little as $15 (with a $10 airtime credit). You then add the $19.99 Medianet data plan for unlimited data for a month while you’re in Austin.
When you activate your cheap phone, make sure you choose the option to pay $1 per day of use. It means that you’ll only pay $0.10/minute for most calls (plus $1 for each day you use it) and calls to other AT&T users (like say, anyone following these instructions) are completely free (aside from that initial $1/day). If you don’t use it on a certain day, you don’t pay. Text messages are still a rip off at $0.15 per (incoming or outgoing). Keep in mind you probably won’t be able to use a foreign credit card to top up these phones but plenty of places (including gas stations) sell top up cards.
Now is also a good time to order some Moo cards. I just ordered another batch and it came in less than 2 weeks….last year lots of people were upset because they ordered either too late or it took longer to deliver due to increased demand (not sure if it’s SXSW related but possibly).
I know a few people haven’t been happy with the quality of their moo cards but I’ve ordered at least 5 batches with no issues at all and have been very happy with their quality. I’ve got a few 20% off coupon codes if you’re placing a first time order so leave a comment if you want one.
Finally, now is a good time to start scoping out the activities. Sites like Upcoming already has a number of the parties listed so you can at least start RSVP’ing to those that interest you. Most things you can simply walk up to on the day while you’re there but some require being on a list of some kind in advance due to the huge crowds that get bigger every year. Hopefully Jeremy Kieth will update his fantastic Adactio Austin party list for 2009 soon too. My pals over at Raincity Studios have already booked the biggest party at Southby each year. I stumbled across an Austin Flickr meetup last year that turned out to be really special and it wasn’t on any SXSW agenda.
There is even BarCamp Austin to check out while you’re in town if you want to skip out on SXSW for awhile.
I’ll leave you with an awesome three-letter-word reason to go to SXSW:
and edited with iMovie ‘09.
