All packed up

Okay, so this is a bit off topic, but … There are a series of questions I keep getting, “How do you stay connected while you travel?” “What is your recording set up?” “What books do you…?” “How do you…?” So, I’m going to (in a desperate attempt to force myself to blog better) work on launching “Monday Must Haves” posts centered on answering these questions.

I travel a lot. In 2009 it was over 100,000 miles (sadly not all on one airline), and in 2008 it was about 50,000 miles (also, not all on the the same airline). With my time split between short 2-day dashes somewhere random in America, and longer trips to more distant destinations, I’ve developed a survival schema that keeps me sane (or at least functional) when my brain is no longer sure where I am.

Luggage

I have gone through 4 sets of luggage in as many years. Most bags only made it a few trips before a wheel broke or worse. With many bad bags behind me, I now swear by SwissGear luggage (found at Target or on Amazon) When it comes to rock solid construction and ability to stand up in the face of cobblestone sidewalks, these bags take a licking and don’t spill your underwear on the sidewalk.

That said, their are trips when tiny matters. For those trips I turn to Travelon.

I own 2 bags from each of these companies, and here is how I use them.

The Quick Trip: For a trip of 4 days or less (if you pack like I do), a Travelon underseat bag can be your best friend. Pros: These little bags actually do fit under the seat! I was flying to Atlanta on a tiny American Eagle flight – I think I was on an ERJ-145 or similar – and all the standard wheelie bags were taken away from their owners and put under the aircraft while I got to keep my bag!  It did fit nicely under my seat! Cons: They don’t always fit in the overhead! Fully packed, they are a bit too potbellied. Here are the two I have and why I love each:

• Travelon Ladies Wheeled Carry-On: This bag is really easy to pack, is very stylish (in my nerd opinion), is curved and quilted in a way that makes it a great pillow when you spend the night in O’Hare, and it has a really comfortable handle for carrying it up and down stairs when public transit fails to have escalators and ramps. At the emotional level, its polka dots cloth lining just makes me happy. The only thing I hate about this bag is that it is more fragile than I’d like. An evil Italian on an air Iberia flight was able to tear off one side of one of the handles while forcing (with great force) his bag into the overhead bin beside mine.
• Boeing-branded under seat Carry-On: This is not a girly bag. It is not pretty. It is not stylish. It just behaves well in airports (unless you need it to be a pillow). It is designed with a built in cooler for food, with a pull out cup holder for a travel mug or water bottle, and the bag has an expandable pocket in the back perfect for shoving a wrap from Au bon Pain or that book you can’t be bothered to put away. One issue: The bag doesn’t open all the way up, so getting things in and out can be a pain.

A long(er) Trip: For anything requiring a more substantial bag I reach for my SwissGear. I have two bags again, this time picked for their sizes and nothing else. Both bags are part of the SwissGear Zurich series. The smaller of the two is a Carry-On, Rolling, 20″ laptop friendly bag. The second is a Carry-On, Rolling, 20″ laptop friendly bag The smaller bag is just (barely) big enough for a 1 week trip with an extra pair of shoes and formal and play attire. The smaller bag can fit inside the larger bag (for those times you are coming or going with more (or less) than you started with). While the 20″ has a laptop compartment as its bonus feature, the larger bag offers an area for suits on hangers on the inside flap. While I would never use hangers, this section keeps my suits perfectly protected and flat. As near as I can tell, you can do these bags no harm. I’ve overpacked them. I’ve let them get rained and snowed on. They have experienced cobblestone, and they have experienced Denver and Heathrow 5 luggage handling. They are still perfect.

Luggage Accessories for all trips
Let’s face it, there are some things that just make travel easier.

• Toiletry Containment:Once upon a time I thought it was sufficient to use the little bag for toiletries that comes comes with every bag I’ve ever bought, and once upon a time I simply purchased travel size this, that and the other thing. Then I started traveling so much that I was rotating between bags and never really unpacking. At a certain point, you just want to grab your toiletries and go, and at a certain point travel sized shampoos are no longer an option. To combat the little bottle blues, I bought a set of Humangear GoToob Silicon Travel Bottles. They come with rotating rings that can be used to high-light what is in the container, and they are easy to squeeze. No more shaking the bottle to get the shampoo out! I filled these bottles with my shampoo, conditioner, soap, and lotion, and tossed them in clear zipper bag from Walgreens. These bottles, a baby toothpaste, fancy face cream (that only comes tiny), toothbrush, and deodorant fit perfectly in this TSA sized bag.
• Makeup Containment: You’re on your own. I have fantasies of an all in one kit, like this one from Lancome, but in reality I throw 4 random small mismatched cosmetic containers into random places in my bag.
• Luggage Tags No One Else Has: All bags look alike. Really. No matter how unique you think your bag is, someone else has it too. So… I bought bright pink and red poppy luggage tags that I found on a bottom shelf of an eclectic little store that I won’t tell you where is. I recommend finding your own little place to purchase from. Then do something to your luggage. The next step for me was wrapping my luggage handle in a 2dollar polyester scarf of the bright (but pleasant) pink variety. Now, while I’m not exactly a pink kind of girl, I’ve never struggled to spot my luggage.
• Travelon Bag Bungee Black If you’re like me, you stack your carryon / computer bag on your roller bag while rolling from A to B. Sometimes you may try to add a jacket to this pile. Or shopping bags. Or maybe even the kitchen sink. After having a bad moment with an escaping winter jacket, I invested in a Travelon bag bungee, and life is much safer for me, my belongings, and anyone following too close on the jetway.

Computer friendly Carry-On Bags and Toys

Never one to only travel one way, I again have two options: netbook trips and notebook trips. In either case, I always carry my handy-dandy Verizon dongle for instant online access from (almost) anywhere.

Fossil probably didn't know they made a laptop bag

Traveling Tiny: There are times when the only thing I have to do on a trip is live blog and work on email. My back loves these trips. For these glorious moments I take my handy dandy ASUS Eee PC 1000HE, throw it in my Fossil Sutter Flap bag, and I’m ready to go. This tiny bag can hold my Eee PC, its power cord, a tiny camera, my iPhone, a thin book, my deflated travel pillow and mask, my passport, credit cards, and a few random things like chapstick and a pen. The best part is, it doesn’t look like I’m carrying a laptop! As someone more likely to be in a social situation with a computer than a, well, anything normal, its kind of nice to not always look as nerdy as I am. Pro: It is all so nice and tiny! Con: My international power adaptor doesn’t fit, nor does my travel power strip. (more on those below)

Traveling with my WHOLE office: I work with people all over the world, and when I settle in to work hard I don’t want to be without the comforts of home, so I’ve been known to take it all with me. Making this possible is my Timbuk2 medium-sized custom laptop bag. This is the second of these bags I’ve had, and the first one is still in perfect condition after being used almost daily for 4 years. I simply got sick of the bright colors (red, orange, and yellow – why did I do that?!?) and bought a second one that was a bit more mellow (see pcit above). Into this bag I toss my 15″ MacBook Pro along with:

• Belkin Mini Surge Protector Dual USB Charger: Charge everything at once, cords or USB, and let’s me be ready for the hotel room with only 1 outlet.
• Kensington All-in-One Travel Plug Adapter: This is an anything to anything adaptor that works anywhere in the world. Loan it to visiting foreign friends or keep yourself powered abroad.
• Random Bits: An 8MB USB stick, an 8MB SD card, an SD to USB adaptor, a tiny USB hub, and an iPhone cable
• Neoprene Cable Pouch: Filled with all the above! It fits, although the zipper hates me.
• A camera & charger (you’re on your own here). I have both a Casio Exilm and a Panasonic Lumix (two because I realized I left my camera at home while traveling in Europe). I’d like to get a Canon PowerShot SX20IS, but that camera is a bit bigger and a large bit more expensive than I can justify (when “want” meets “logic”, cool cameras stay in someone else’s camera bag.
• Goldtouch ergonomic keyboard and a Logitech Marble Mouse: I told you I sometimes take my whole office with me! I’m fighting RSI, and this is how I fight it. (Well, this and MacSpeech)
• Plantronics Folding Headset: These aren’t as nice as the Sennheiser HeadsetI live in at home, but they work with Skype and Dragon Naturally Speaking / MacSpeech.
• A small wristlet (because I’m a girl) that can fit a flip wallet and my passport along with some cash, my iPhone, and a pen. I admit it, I like Coach products. I can be a girlie girl. The wristlet is nice because it is easy to pull in and out of the bag, and when the bag does get locked in an office or a hotel room, I’m left with something small, and hard for a pick pocket to reach into because, well, it’s attached to my wrist.

Apps for Airports, Trains, & Travel

Travel (and other needed) Software

I am an iPhone user, and my iPhone makes my travel a little more sane. Here are the apps that keeping me going from gate to gate:

• Xpense Tracker: An easy way to log how much you actually spent while away. (In my case, it allows me to answer the age old question of how much did my Illinois State per diem not pay for). Best Feature: You can take photo’s of receipts. Photos won’t work for all accounting departments, but…
• Trip Deck: This travel software helps you find gates, baggage carrousels, check on delayed flights, and it even helps you find alternate flights so that when you look sadly at the gate keeper you can ask “Can you please rebook me on flight X” rather then simply asking “Can you get me there today?.” This software can be tied to a TripIt account (be my friend?) and allows you to input all your travel plans just by emailing your flight plans from your airline or online service to TripIt (works with flights, hotels, and rental cars). This software has saved me from digging through emails for confirmation numbers while standing in line, and that alone makes it worth it. (Don’t want to pay for TripDeck? Check out FlightTrack)
• Best Camera: Take pictures with your phone? Want to tweak them before you Twitter them? Best Camera does what you need. It links directly to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
• Stanza: I love real books, but sometimes they are impractical. (Like those trips when I’m already carrying my whole office with me and have lots of walking to do). For times when digital is my only option, I click on Stanza. Get both new titles for a cost, and thousands of older (or independent) books for free. (They have the Guttenburg Project books all online to download for free!) I also use the free Classics app, but it has limited titles.
• WordPress: Sometimes you just gotta blog while standing on a crowded train.
• Twitterific (for simple needs) and TweetDeck (for lists and tracking too many things at once): May the twitter be with you. There are many options. These are ones I use.

So this is how I live: All packaged up in products from Amazon (this is what happens when you travel too much to go to the mall. I’ve included links to all the products I live by, and if you decide to live by them too, can you use the links here? They are tied to an Amazon Associates account and all proceeds will help pay for this blogs webhosting and the occasional latte in an airport.

Safe Travels

Standard Disclaimer: I bought all of these purchasers after doing my own research. I’ve used them and no one has asked me for this review. I’m simply trying to save you the problem solving I’ve faced. The links above are Amazon links, and all proceeds for anything you buy will be used to offset the cost of airport food.

From Shanghai to Chicago on American

In case you somehow missed it, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. For me, that has translated into the International Year of Astronomy Travel. According to my American Advantage account, I’ve earned 71,616 qualifying miles for this year to date. Now admittedly, that included bonus miles, minimum mile increases, and two for one miles, so my actual miles traveled is somewhat less, but as I’ve visited Long Beach, Eastern Illinois, Oxford, Kansas City, New York, Ontario (California), Pasadena, Oxford (again), Minneapolis, Seattle, Shanghai, Cheju, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Rio de Janeiro, and Greenwich, well, let’s just say it’s time to buy a new suitcase. And the travel isn’t over! I have two more big trips this month, and then AAVSO and dotAstronomy in November and December.

Here be Dragons (and more)

Dragon*Con

Next weekend, Labor Day weekend, I’ll be at Dragon*Con, along with Phil Plait, George Hrab, and the SkepChicks.

A Full Moon for Cancer

While there won’t exactly be a fan meetup at Dragon*Con, I would like to extend a personal invitation to all of you to the “A Full Moon for Cancer” Star Party, in memory of the Blue Collar Scientist, Jeff Medkeff. Phil Plait and I will be hosting this event on Thursday September 3 at the Bradley Observatory at Agnes Scott College. All proceeds from the event will go to the American Cancer Society.

The Main (Dragon*Con) Event

Here is my current schedule:

• Title: Feminine Mystique: Women in Engineering & Science
  Time: Fri 02:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Women make their mark! These engineers & scientists explain how they got involved, what they do & how to get your sisters & daughters to do the same.
  Panel: G. Mauldin-Kinney, Dr. P. Gay, L. Burns, T. Ray, K. Steadman
• Title: Citizen Science
  Time: Sat 11:30 am Location: 202 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Science wouldn’t be where it is today without the contributions of everyday people like you. Learn how to take part in all of the fun.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: The Big Bang: How It All Got Started
  Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: It started atomically small & is still expanding. What was the Big Bang & how do we know it happened.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: The Astronomer, the Alien Hunter, and a UFO Skeptic
  Time: Sat 07:00 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Three of the worlds leading researchers, and skeptics, discuss the state of UFO and Alien paranoia here and around the world.
  Moderator / MC for panel: Pamela L. Gay
  Panel: Phil Plait, Seth Shostak, J. Nickell
• Title: Are We Alone: A Discussion
  Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: 207 / 206 / 205 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Seth Shostak discusses the current public outreach goals of SETI, and how using the skeptical mindset relates to the work at SETI as a whole.
  Panel: Drs. Phil Plait, Seth Shostak, and Pamela L. Gay
• Title: AstronomyCast LIVE!
  Time: Sun 02:30 pm Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Join Dr. Pamela Gay, the award winning host of “The Astronomy Cast” and her special guest, SETI’s Seth Shostak.
  Panel: Drs Pamela L. Gay and Seth Shostak
• Title: Galaxy Zoo
  Time: Sun 07:00 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Citizen science. Ordinary people helping to classify thousands of galaxies.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: Brazilianisms – Live!
  Time: Mon 10:00 am Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Kinsey Swartz brings his international podcast about an American living in Brazil, to Dragon*Con!
• Title: Backyard AstroPhysics – You Don’t Need a Ph.D to Do Astronomy
  Time: Mon 02:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Our glorious night sky. Love astronomy but fear ‘physics’? You can have the wonders of our universe with ease in your own backyard.
  Panel: Drs Bill Keel and Pamela L. Gay

I will also be sitting at the International Year of Astronomy table in the Hilton during these hours: Friday 10am-12pm &4pm-5pm; Saturday 10am-11am; Sunday 12pm-2pm; and Monday 12pm-2pm. Come by, say hi, and register for a chance to win a Galileoscope!

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific Meeting

And September 12-16, I’ll be at what may be the worst conference venue ever: The San Fransisco Airport Westin will host the 120th Annibersary meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. I love the work the ASP does, I just really wish this meeting wasn’t at the airport of one of the coolest cities in the US (then again – maybe this is how they keep us at the meeting). I will be arranging a fan meet up once I have my full schedule. I suspect I’m going to aim for Wednesday night somewhere other than the airport

Somewhere over Florida

And a final word on traveling…

So far, I have to admit, I’ve faired fairly well. I’ve spent the night only once in Chicago. While my luggage was lost twice in 2008, I managed to keep my luggage with me so far through 2009. I’ve managed to keep my personal loses to a minimum. In addition to misplacing the standard small flock of miniature bottles of toiletries and hair elastics (no big deal), I also shed a pair of favorite sun glasses, a travel pillow, and the two prong square bit that allows me to plug my Mac power brick into a US wall. All in all, not too bad. I think I also misplaced some of my sanity, which I do miss, but I’m hoping to find it again sometime in 2010.

We just had a brief potential moment of food and drink. People from countries derived from the UK politely attempted to line up (queue), while others, um, did not. A few lucky people got food (including cake!), wine or beer, and even juice or soda by the can. They other 1300 people looked sad. This has been a regular occurrence, with the food and beverages providing only being sufficient for a few hundred (or far far fewer!) people. This is a serious problem that I have thwarted only by being a member of the press. The press room has a constant supply of bottled water.

Anyway – On a more positive note, can I just say it is a blast seeing almost everyone in T-shirts and casual cloths? Kevin Marvel, Pres of the AAS, is in a Hawaiian style shirt. There are all sorts of geek shirts I’ve never seen everywhere. Must ask for websites

My only real, and not fixable unless I walk away from my keyboard, problem is not knowing what the other bloggers/twitters look like in real life! I saw Carolune yesterday, but I keep looking at name badges trying to spot OrbitingFrog, but have so far failed. Oh well, I guess I need to stand up and be social.

The image above comes from the last day of the meeting. A fan of Astronomy Cast who we’d corresponded with before offered to show me some of the city. It was a fabulous adventure.

On July 15th, I flew from St Louis, MO (38° 45′ N, 90° 23′ W) to Shanghai, China (31° 14′ N, 121° 29′ E), traveling 11 timezones and ~148 degrees around the globe. I was on my way to join the Eclipse of the Century tour group to board the Costa Allegra and chase what was the longest eclipse of this century, at just over 6 minutes. Along the way we would explore the South Korean island of Cheju (also spelled Jeju), and the Japanese cities of Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Kagoshima. After the last of these cities we headed down the eclipse path center line to 126°E, before heading back to Shanghai and flights home. This trip wasn’t pure astro-tourism for me. I was onboard as one of the two lecturers, along with fellow new media / Galaxy Zoo collaborator Chris Lintott.

For me, I have to admit that with the exception of Nagasaki, each day on land was dedicated to seeing a little bit of what was easily walkable and then finding really good food. Our nightly lectures were generally held right at as the boat prepared to leave port, and we couldn’t run the risk that a late return from sort of a tour would prevent us from being prepared. (Ok, so that’s mostly just a convenient truth – getting really good Asian food was one of my personal goals on this trip.) This post is dedicated to these silly days of food and site seeing.

Cheju

Mid-way through our first full day at sea we pulled into port at the volcanic island of Cheju. Over lunch, I remember seeing random volcanic bits sticking up out of the sea. A group of 6 of us took a pair of taxis to the Samseonghyeol (Caves of the Three Caves) Shrine where three of the Gods of the islands are said to have emerged from their underground caves. Among the trees we were mocked by magpies while enjoying rock gardens and shrines. From the shrine, we walked to one of the city’s non-tourist markets where we explored aisles of fish tanks, fresh fruits, spices, and meats. Some members of our group almost lost their lunch when they saw some tube worms (not pictured) writhing in a tray next to a little old women gutting fish, but I am proud to say I made it through okay, waiting to loose my stomach until a few days later. Heading back to the ship, we stopped for kimchi and and fish, buying some fruit wine and wishing we could get the magnificent cooking mushrooms through customs.

Fukuoka

Overnight the ship sailed smoothly to Fukuoka, Japan, arriving while we slept. Japenese immigration demanded our presence by 9:30am, something we hadn’t quite expected, and we found ourselves on shore with not too much of a plan. At the suggestion of our map, we went to explore the largest wooden Budda in Japan, along with a beautiful set of temples and Japanese Gardens. On our way back, we stopped at a random sushi place that advertised Fugu, and enjoyed a possibly suicidal lunch. It was a really fabulous experience but I do admit I learned I like my food more than a few minutes dead. We sat at a bar that wrapped around a large, divided fish tank that contained cuttle fish, eel, lobsters, shrimp, and many fish I couldn’t easily identify. Between us and the fish was a walking area just big enough for a friendly older woman to bring us our food, or for the sushi cook to come out and capture the next thing he prepared to cook. It was in watching him slaughter the next groups food that I learned a) cuttlefish do make noise while being killed, b) fish can flop in the most fantastic ways even after being slit open, and c) I would rather my food was dead enough that I don’t have this random fear that my Sashimi will flop. Nonetheless – I love sushi and that was one of my best meals ever.

Nagasaki
I’m going to write a separate post on this city later

Kagoshima

From Nagasaki we sailed through really choppy seas toward our final Japanese port of Kagoshima. It was that night that I learned the fullness of meaning behind the phrase “The British Stiff Upper Lip.” After dinner, Chris and I were holding a Cafe Scientifique while the boat wildly swayed. As time passed, I started counting the minutes as my stomach started flipping. Looking at Chris, he started looking a bit glazed over, and a few people started looking a bit less animated than normal. With 20 minutes to go, I realized I had a choice, leave before or after my stomach exploded. I fled. Chris managed to make it until the end of the lecture, but the next day, while I searched a Japanese pharmacy for motion sickness medicine, he related how he’d commented after I left that people looked a bit green and offered to end early. Everyone claimed to be fine, and while he just kept hold of his own stomach, he and the audience bullied on. I’ve since had numerous reports of people being motion sick, and I’ve decided it takes a special kind of courage to put the possibility of puking in public ahead of the embarrassment of leaving a public astronomy discussion early.

I am fine, and thanks to that pharmacy in Kagoshima, I stayed fine. In addition to shopping in the Pharmacy, I also hit a nik nak shop to do my tourist shopping, and along with Chris hunted free wi fi. (iPhones make it easy). We finally found it and perched in a mall to frantically download weather reports and check through our email. Along the way we also stopped at a Shinto Shrine where several of us got our fortunes. Two of them actually said the clouds would clear, making our trials worth it, and mine said a shadow would pass across the sun as my journeys were good ones. With our hopes raised (or at least amused), we headed for one final sushi lunch before going back to one final night on the boat before the eclipse of the century.

Let’s just say we woke to rain… Here is a taste of our experience. The full story will come in part 3 of this post series. Have you ever had the Sun and clouds so clearly smile down on you before? (image credit Morgan)

I’ve reached the point of “Wow – it’s not going to calm down, is it?” and I’m going to try and force myself to budget time to blog since it is clear that free time no longer exists (or at least free time not spent with the newest member of our household – my horse Skye)

In this first blog post (which will be followed in short order by at least two more posts on MS Faculty Summit and the upcoming Solar Eclipse I’m going to go see) I want to actually pause a moment to sing the praises of American Airlines.

This year I’m flying *a lot*. So far in 2009, I’ve been to Oxford twice, Long Beach, Pasadena, Ontario (CA), Seattle, Kansas City, Princeton, NEAF (outside of New York), Houston, and probably a few more places I’ve flown to and forgotten. Through it all I’ve faced my share of delays, spent one night stranded in Chicago, and ran across Dallas more than once. Through it all, I’ve flown American Airlines in a desperate attempt to at least get consistent frequent flier miles. American isn’t showy – food isn’t free on domestic, and there is no free wireless in any of the terminals I’ve encountered. Their aircraft aren’t splashy, the seats are small, but – they are affordable and in the face of all sorts of chaos they’ve never been rude, and they’ve always tried to help me. I’ve flown United before (but won’t again unless forced); they’ve misplaced my dog, verbally abused me, and generally been rude and offered all sorts of surprises of the not-so-nice variety with excuses instead of apologies. I’ve flown Southwestern, and have no complaints, but they don’t exactly go to Heathrow. American Airlines – they’re my carrier.

And I’m going to stay their client because of what they did Friday. I made a big air flight booking mistake. I’m currently at MS Faculty Summit in Seattle. This meeting ends Tuesday. I have to be in Shanghai Thursday afternoon. No big deal. Plenty of time. Um… No… Wrong. I let MS and the Eclipse tour both book me flights (on American Airlines) and didn’t pay too much attention until about a month ago when I had the horrible realization that I didn’t get back to St Louis until after my flight to Shanghai had already left Chicago! I called American and the person I got said she was very sorry, but to rebook everything would cost $2k. Yes, $2,000. So I got sad and booked a 1 way ticket on a different (cheaper) carrier that would allow me to leave Seattle early enough to catch my St Louis to Chicago to Shanghai chain of flights. I booked myself on a terrifying flight set actually – last flight to Denver followed by last flight to St Louis, landing after midnight with a 6am flight out of St Louis. If one flight failed, I missed my flight to Shanghai. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I have been massively angsting about this and was planning to actually play standby roulette to try and catch an earlier direct flight to St Louis.

Well, Friday that area of angst was over. A friendly lady from American called me and asked if I knew I had a physically impossible set of flights. I said yes, I explained I couldn’t afford the rebooking fee. I explained I had a flight on another carrier but was going to try and fly standby on American on a particular flight. She said “Flight ###?” and I said yes. 10 seconds later she had me confirmed on what is (this week only) the flight of my dreams. I will now get 8 hours at home between my two trips, get to swap suitcases (and laptops – I have my netbook with me in Seattle), and I am far less stressed about missing my Shanghai flight.

Thank you American for making my life
a little less stressful.

UPDATE: Today is my fated trips from hell. I’m so glad American rebooked me. I just got a call from the carrier – United/US Airways – on which I’d booked my overnight cheapo flight originally saying the flights were delayed and I was rebooked for tomorrow. I would have missed my flights to Shanghai.

My life, put simply, is lived as much through digital communications as it is through face to face interactions. Some days the virtual interactions are even the more important ones.

This simple truth is something that one of last night’s speakers made me think very hard about.

Thanks to a few emails from Chris, I was able to attend the Monday evening keynote for the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference. This session included talks by Philip Rosedale (Linden Labs), Baroness Susan Greenfield (Neuroscientist and Fullerian Professor of Physiology), and Elon Musk (Space X). All three addresses were wonderful, hitting different emotional cords as they plucked at the strings of potential virtual futures; of walking on Mars, and of how we think and how we learn. I have to admit (although you likely already know this), I have already drank the kool-aide of Second Life and I am strongly in favor of commercial manned space flight. The talk that offered me the most new content and new ideas was Baroness Greenfield’s talk on neuroscience.

She started by asking the question: What is it that makes human consciousness separate from machine thought, and she postulated that as we evolve into the future, man and machine may merge. She asked, “But what would we do with super human vision and enhanced strength?” Taking on aspects other then our own may not be good. That, however, is a question we don’t need to answer today. What is more presently relevant is the question of what is human interaction via the web – an enhancement we experience through new media – doing to the human mind and how we build relationships.

Consider Facebook. At the time of this writing I have 680 friends. The vast majority are other astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts who I’ve met professionally and through Astronomy Cast. There is also a largish chunk of people who I knew in high school or who I was friends with in college. Mixed in are a small handful of people who I am close friends with in “real life” (this group includes a few folks I see maybe once a year. All these people, within the construct of Facebook, are my friends. All of them can socially share ideas, invitations, photos, and comments back and forth. All these people have the potential to touch my life daily in the way an acquaintance I run into in line at the coffee shop can touch my life, but this isn’t to say they are all my dear friends.

And, due to the ease with which social networks grow, one has to wonder if our social network interactions are changing the nature of our more traditional interactions.

Looking at my own laptop, I know that my inboxes of emails from my work, blog, and Facebook accounts all have the ability to take over every waking moment of my life. I honestly am interested in knowing what happened to some of my old friends refound through Facebook. I honestly want to help the amateurs who contact me find new ways to get involved in astronomy. All these interactions with all these acquaintances, all of which are facilitated by the internet, are changing how I interact. Sometimes a letter gets replaced with links and “Let me know if these help you?” rather then my own thoughtful reactions. I find myself more willing to flash off small thoughts, random “Let me share” sound bites of my life to friends rather then to sit and have rich written correspondence like I used to have a few years ago with distant friends. Somehow I’ve learned to comfortably fit my life into 140 characters or less.

The human mind is a plastic thing, flexible, trainable, malleable. We each adapt in different ways to outside stimuli and the communications styles we use (as input and output) the most often.

For me, I like to hope that should I find someone interested in taking up long distance letter writing in this world of SMS and Skype, I will still have the skills needed to converse in that fondly remembered form of communications. In someways, I guess, the community dialogue of blogging has for me filled that communications niche.  We each can react and interact in long drawn out dialogues of interconnecting links. It is an open letter we write when we blog.

But perhaps through our openness we are also isolating ourselves. There are things I would once have shared in letters to friends that I would never dare blog. Look at Phil and the pseudonyms he uses for even his dog.

Beyond just letter writing, though, how are we being changed?

Baroness Greensfield, in her talk, asked us to consider the rapid fire world of today’s youth and the way in which human interactions are getting distilled in some cases to a punch and a quest after death. Here is where I admit I’m not an online (or even not online) computer gamer. I used to do D&D back in the day, but that was a detailed face to face interactions. Looking at my friends who play World of Warcraft, I see a certain mix of people transforming their spare time into nothing more then a quest for more more more status/gold/weapons/magic. At the same time I also see people who build close relationships with their gaming partners, getting to know them and trust them as work out puzzles, go into battle, and sometimes just stand and share and gossip. I’m not sure how this is different from life and the shallow pursuit of wealth waged side by side with the earnest pursuit of a life well lived.

In presenting a montage of rapid fire clips from online games, Baroness Greenfield asked us to consider what is happening to attention spans. She showed us an increase in the rate at which prescriptions for attention deficit drugs are being given out. She asked us to go with her and draw the conclusion that our rapid fire world of instant communications is leading us to become an attention deficit society hedonistically seeking instant gratification, as we live in the now with over indulgence of food, internet, and other things not safe for this blog. I’m not sure what to believe – I want to see statistics and cause and effect sociology research. Sadly, they only gave her 20 minutes.

She left us with the question, is the internet making us less empathetic as we confine our interactions to what she claims are less rich forms of content input. She argued that in moving away from reading books and to instead becoming a people of the “Screen” (where screen is a computer or television screen) we are losing our empathy and attention span.

I hate to disagree with a Baroness on a subject I can claim no professional training in, but I have to say that I’m going to agree with Linden Lab’s Philip Rosedale: as much as the internet has changed how (and with how many people) I communicate, it has in many cases caused me to lose myself into complicated tasks – designing interfaces, finding things in Second Life, writing blog posts, reading and commenting on (but not often enough) others’ blog posts, tweeting, skyping, and so much more. My attention span sometimes seems longer then the number hours I should be awake, and I find myself often captivated by the new puzzles of new technologies.

And my heart strings – my ability to feel empathy for others – my emotions are triggered through the rich writings that I can find on any of probably a million different places. Baroness Greensfield kept invoking the name of Jane Austin. Sometimes though, isn’t a random person writing on something they are personally passionate about just as powerful in their capacity to evoke emotions as Austin was in her novels?

And sometimes, as we skype across the miles, as my voice is carried from my computer to the computer of any one of several people who are dear to me, aren’t I able to share the emotionally meaningful moments that are necessary to build and maintain real friendships? I can look around the globe and map the people who matter, many of whom I see but rarely, but skype lets our friendships – our emotional connections – stay solid across the miles.

The human mind is a plastic thing. We do need to be careful of how we use the internet to replace our real world interactions. Somethings can’t be replaced – we all need that occasional 4am face-to-face conversation. But… But the internet is allowing us to live richer lives where our ability to find and interact with others is enhanced in ways that (once we learn to deal with the thru put of too many emails) really will be for the best.

That said, I want to end this on a cautionary note. Baroness Greenfield’s concern that we are learning to seek instant gratification I think is a real one. We are becoming too accustomed to instant gratification. Communications is instant. Food is instant. Purchases are overnight delivered, and relationships (according the the “wisdom” of Friends and Sex in the City) are founded on the three date rule. We are rushing through life without ever getting lost on the journey and enjoying the side paths. Sometimes the most interesting parts come during the breaks and intermissions.

In the musical Into the Woods, there is a line we all need to remember (sung by Little Red Riding Hood): “The prettier the flower, the farther from the path…” Sometimes we need to remember the fastest journey isn’t always the best. Sometimes we benefit from deviations down side roads and from getting our feet wet walking through the grass.

Use the internet to enrich, but remember to sometimes take the road less clicked.

I’ll write more when I get to the UK tomorrow night, and I hope to see you Sunday at Mabel’s Tavern in London.

Last Thursday I flew from St Louis to London where I spent a couple days recovering from jetlag somewhere that I (almost) speak the language, and then yesterday I flew on to Munich where I am now working with other International Year of Astronomy folks to build the Portal to the Universe.

While getting to London was more of an adventure then intended (my luggage was lost again), the too few hours I got to spend in the UK were wonderful. On Saturday I took a train out to the east side of England (Audley End) to meet some of the wonderful folks behind Galaxy Zoo, including Steven Bamford, whose journal articles on galaxy morphologies and galaxies in cluster environments I’ve been gleaning inspiration from for over a year. Sunday was another day of happy meetings involving trains and train stations. I was able to finally meet Astronomy Blog writer Stuart Lowe for the first time, as well as seeing Chris Lintott. The three of us met at St Pancreas / King’s Cross train station – I love public transit, and luckily so do they. We met, drank coffee, and then found some lunch as we discussed new media, astronomy, and just how different British English and American English really are.

For instance “pants.” After my luggage was lost (yes, again) I was promised by British Airways that I would get all my things, but probably 24 hours after I actually needed them. This led to me shopping. There is an amazingly cheap store called Primark that offered me almost everything I needed. Almost. As this store caters primarily to teenage girls (judging from the swarm of skinny 14 year olds that were flirting with mirrors), I was very lucky to find anything that fit (for better or worse, I am not shaped like a teenager). My luck ran out just shy of finding a pair of what I would call pants and what a Brit would call trousers. This probably wouldn’t have been a problem accept that “pants” in British English means underware, whereas the type of pants I referred to would have made up the publicly viewable lower half of Ms. Clinton’s ubiquitous pants suits. (I really need to find out what Brit’s call pants suits). Thus, my struggle to fund “pants” led folks to believe I was on a quest to find panties. You can see where this might lead…

But I survived and I think I’m going to try and start writing down all the random new words I keep encountering.

But London and the trains and train stations that allowed me to meet cool people are temporarily behind me (although I’ll be back and will meet any of you up for it at Mabel’s Tavern on Sunday November 23 from 2-5pm. With me will be Galaxy Zoo’s Chris Lintott). Instead of confusing British vocab words I’m now dealing with even more confusing German. It has been a good day and my two years of High School German have sufficed to allow me to kinda-sorta interact with shops and restaurants. Everyone at ESO / ESA (they share a building) speaks English at some level, so once I’m to work I’m fine, and I’ve been enjoying the adventure outside of that safe science center. It is good to know that knowledge sometimes sticks (and I actually looked up my old german teacher in Westford and emailed him a note of thanks).

I’ll put up pictures tomorrow (I forgot my camera today).

Working at ESO is fun. Space exploration is in the air and the walls are lined with pictures of space and of the ground-based and space-based instrumentation that allows us to explore the universe’s most distant corners. The group of people working on IYA are under the guidance of Lars Lindberg Christensen and Pedro Russo. Between them and their staff, well – this is where all the IYA magic is happening. I’m not sure how many of the international cornerstones are coming out of the offices here, but I know Mariana Barrosa, Lars Holm Nielsen, and Rachel Shida are all playing roles along with staffs of graphical artists and programmers too numerous to list but all deserving respect for the cool and global projects they are making a reality. Lars Holm Nielsen is one of the main programmers making Portal to the Universe, the IYA international website, and many other websites function, and he’s been patiant with me working on Portal to the Universe as I stumble jetlagged through our python and java code. (Thank God the coffee at ESO/ESA is free!) Hopefully in the next couple weeks we’re going to have something really great to show you.

For now though, I find that I sadly need to get some sleep. And just in case you haven’t heard me say it before, Go Register Your Organization, Your Astronomy Business / Department / Facility, Your Astronomy Blog / Podcast / Vodcast / Image of the Day Feed for Portal to the Universe! Go do it today!

Pictures coming …

There is a myth in America that off the grid means outside of society. Through mainstream media we’ve been exposed to stories of strange mountain men and members of the Republic of Texas and other rogue groups making their own way off the land via somewhat nefarious means. These law-breaking crazies have brought to us such freaks as the Unabomber and Oklahoma City bombers. The media’s tales tend to make one imagine that living off the grid means shotguns, no TV, no Internet, and maybe even no hot water.

Living off the grid does not require this level of living without modern comforts.

My friends Dan and Elaina have a truly inspirational life. The have built for themselves a home that has all the modern amenities – Satellite TV and Internet, a sauna, a dishwasher, washer and dryer units – without having a significant footprint.When the weather cooperates, they can responsibly use all their modern amenities without needing anything other than propane for the hot water.

The word “responsibly” is the key. They actually put their whole house to sleep at night, shutting off all electricity (they have battery powered alarm clocks). It is really quite shocking how much power is pulled by the standard DVD player while it’s sitting in standby. By turning everything off, they reduce their load of their house’s batteries, and reduce their load on the world in some ways. The only negative is the 12:00 blinking on everything that has a clock. But is that such a terrible thing to face? They are also careful about how they use electricity when their house is awake. I was scolded for leaving my laptop plugged in and running on the counter while my iPhone charged. “Running your laptop is not the responsible way to charge your phone,” I was reminded. And when the battery is charged and the machine is not in use, it should not be plugged in. The same goes for everything that might sit on a charger all day. One particular pager was found to pull 30 Watts fully charged when it sat silent in its base. Unplug; that was my lesson for the weekend.

Living off the grid isn’t entirely about power consumption however. It is also an attitude toward how we eat and live. While we’ve all heard about the concept of a carbon footprint (and I don’t think it’s possible for me to atone for all my sins of flight), carbon isn’t the only issue in environmental abuse. Elaina introduced me to the concept of a chemical footprint. Beyond trying to balance how much carbon we put into the atmosphere through emissions and put into the land through plants and other sequestering methods, we also have to consider the metals and toxins we give and take with the environment.

Our planet has a certain ability to break down toxins into harmless forms and to replenish certain chemicals. While we don’t generally think of it, somewhere in the soil oil is starting to be made to someday supply our descendents. Salts are being formed to replace the salt we mine. The Earth continues to work as its own little chemical factory. In considering how we impact the efficiency of this planetary processing plant, the questions to ask are twofold: Does humanity remove stuff from the planet faster than the planet can create it? Do we create toxins faster than the Earth can absorb them? As a species, the answers are hard ones to face. We are using oil faster than the planet is producing it; we will eventually run out (and we’re already running out of the easy to access supply). We are even running out of some forms of fish faster than the oceans are producing new ones! And toxins, well, while bleach readily breaks down in the Sun, the same is not true of pesticides and the drugs we add into the water systems through our sewage.

In taking stock of our individual lives, we need to ask if we as individuals are consuming in a way that reduces our chemical footprint and maybe even makes up for the impact of our neighbors. This way of thinking gave me an entirely new perspective on organic eating. I decided long ago that a few more chemicals in my diet aren’t going to affect my health any worse than the chemicals and radiation I encounter working in physics and astronomy facilities. This means that I tend to take the cheap option and just buy the non-organic carrots and apples. What I hadn’t thought about was the environmental impact my cheap food was having on the planet. When I decide I’m not worried about consuming pesticides (given what I inhale passing chemistry labs), I’m also deciding that I’m okay with harming the health of the critters living in the soil of the fields that produce my food, and the workers working in those fields. Organic food isn’t just about my health; it’s about the health of the food chain. (Image: Blue berries we picked and later canned, a Zucchini from the garden, and the wine we drank while canning).

With food prices going up though, taking the organic option at the local grocer isn’t always in my paycheck’s best interest. And here is where my friends’ gardening habits help them out. They have managed to move most of their grocery needs off the grid. And it doesn’t take a lot of acres. For instance, they have chickens. Only one of them is old enough to lay eggs, and they have learned that one chicken lays enough eggs to keep a family of 4 in eggs. Their one egg laying chicken is a family pet, and she was quite happy to follow me around on long walks. By having more than one chicken (and by knowing the local butcher), they can guarantee themselves a steady supply of eggs and an occasional supply of meat (this is what happens to chickens that opt to actually be roosters). They also have both a vegetable garden and an herb garden, both small enough that together they add up to maybe 30 by 30 feet. I know that I could grow everything they are growing in the flowerbeds of our half-acre lot if I wanted too. (Image credit: My husband enjoying the view while the chicken followed me around)

Admittedly, they spend a lot of time gardening. That said, I spend almost no time gardening and I think I can offer hope for the lazy person trying to be kind to the planet. My much smaller garden is generally ignored. It has been weeded once all season, and watered never. While my green beans failed miserably, I suspect my husband and I won’t need to buy herbs, tomatoes, peppers, or any of the things necessary for salad until November (and if I get around to canning, we won’t need to buy salsa or apple sauce all year). I do not have a green thumb. I do not have much/any free time. But I do have a small garden (planted all in one day) that gives me the vegetables I use most when I (or more likely my husband) cook, a few berry vines and grape vines because they are prettier than fences, and an apple tree that came with the house and terrifies me with the number of apples it is planning to produce this year. These plants and their food represent an investment of about $100 and two Saturdays of time, and a savings of gas (no shipping the food to the grocery or bringing it home from the grocery), chemicals (no pesticides or chemical fertilizers), and waste (no packaging). (Image: Garden Spider I saw while picking blue berries for pancakes.)

And one of the side effects of being careful about power and food and waste is that you notice the world around you with a new set of eyes.

The part of this trip that made it a vacation was the part that was spent wondering the woods. They have umpteen wild blue berry, raspberry, and black berry plants covering probably 30% of their property. We hiked, we grazed, we grazed, we hiked. The chicken followed. To quote Elaina, “I don’t think there is a free radical left in my body.” We ate just that many berries (even the wine was from past years berry production).

And, while off the grid, in the middle of the White Mountains, surrounded by berries, chickens, and friends, I still had internet.

Tomorrow I hop on a plane to Boston. On the plane I will grade exams, read Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson and work on some writing. Then for the weekend, I get to work hard with people I respect to shape the future of an organization I respect. While in Boston, I might be evil and spend too much money getting my hair dyed by someone I trust. And then Monday, I fly home, race to class, and it all starts over again.

The debris of this journey will most likely be less rich then the last. I’ll probably have some paperwork and dead pens, but nothing exciting. Perhaps, if I get to go to AAS in Hawaii this summer, I’ll have another empty bag sitting beside another fascinating pile of detritus.