In July I spent a month backpacking through England and Scotland. Unlike my trip a year and a half ago where I carried a camera and a netbook, this time I travelled with only my Android Nexus One phone running Froyo (2.2). Here are my observations on how that worked out.

Network

As soon as I landed in London I dropped into the first mobile store that I chanced across. Through a foggy jet-lagged haze I discussed my needs and ended up purchasing a one month pay-as-you-go plan from O2 for about $17. This included a sim card, $17 worth of talk time, 300 text messages and 500 megs of GPRS/Edge data. I could have added 3G coverage for another $17 but given where I would be travelling I figured the 3G coverage would be pretty spotty and that I could instead complement it with wifi which is what I'm used to doing here in Canada.

I've been playing around with various software and settings for transcoding video for the Nexus One. The bright, clear 800x480 screen of the Nexus One makes it great for watching videos. In order to have the smallest possible file size and to take advantage of the decoding hardware the video needs to be encoded using the H.264 codec.

Here is one way to store your stuff more securely in the Ubuntu One cloud.

0) If you mess up and need to start over again follow these directions to completely remove Ubuntu One and start again.

1) Install the file encryption program Cryptkeepter with sudo apt-get install cryptkeeper at the shell, or your favourite package manager. This uses an encrypted file system called EncFS for pass-through file encryption - essential for having your stuff be readable to you but gibberish to anyone else.

Here are some of the hilariously sarcastic comments posted in response to today's Vancouver Sun article on the arrests at the first day of the 2010 Olympics.

I hope they make you laugh as much as I did!

"I saw the protesters burn Celine Dion in effigy. It was very sad, it made a nearby group of children cry."

This is an conversation that I had with film-maker Velcrow Ripper. Our conversation started with an overview of his current and forthcoming films and ranged though contemporary ecoactivism, the anarchoprimitivism of Derrick Jensen and the forthcoming film END:CIV, the Integral movement, his spiritual practice, transhumanism and the singularity, and the numbers 11 and 9.

Recorded at the Dharmalab on September 23, 2009.

Last week I got to be part of OpenEd09 - a conference hosted (for the first time) here in Vancouver all about openness in information technology and the education system. I had been invited to be on an parallel panel about copyright and creative commons but when I checked out the schedule I wanted in!

Fortunately the organizers were pretty cool and let me sneak in for free so I ended catching some amazing presentations and discussions, all now available on UStream. In particular I recommend Gardner Campbell on "No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences", Jim Groom on "The Design of Openness", and John Maxwell on "Wiki as CMS/LMS".