Tag: travel

• I read Going into Town (November 4, 2019)

  I took both delight and great comfort from Roz Chast's newcomer-oriented guide to New York City.

• Places to (not) use your laptop in Paris (September 10, 2019)

  Three places you can open a laptop in Paris without going against the city's spirit -- as well as reasons to maybe leave the thing at the hotel.

• Some observations about Paris (August 30, 2019)

  Three thoughts from three days.

• I visited Free Play Bar Arcade in Providence (August 12, 2018)

  With high curatorial taste and an excellent use of an unusual space, Free Play has quickly become my favorite modern arcade with a classic-games focus.

• Places to find me, June 2018 (June 8, 2018)

  I'm traveling all over the north-western hemisphere this month for a variety of interactive fiction meetups and technology summits.

• Two interesting confusions in Denmark (December 14, 2017)

  I visited Denmark last year as an inexperienced international traveler, and got quite confused in delightfully surprising ways.

• I saw a red thing under Aarhus (March 19, 2017)

  Last spring I visited Denmark. One day in Aarhus, I spent hours in the ARoS art museum, and in its basement I found and photographed a very strange red thing. I have shown this photograph to several people to whom I have subjected my Denmark vacation snaps, and every time I find myself utterly unable to properly describe or even explain this red thing. Let me see if I can do a better job in writing.

• When visiting Denmark, start with “Hello” (May 23, 2016)

  I felt nervous about my trip to Denmark, representing my first visit to a country outside of the Anglosphere, but I needn’t have worried. As in much of the world, English acts as a lingua franca throughout Scandinavia, and Danes especially have a reputation of both near-ubiquitous English fluency and a very relaxed attitude about speaking it with visitors.

• I attended YAPC: :NA 2015
  (June 28, 2015)

  Earlier this month I attended the 2015 edition of the North American Yet Another Perl Conference in Salt Lake City. This was the second YAPC I had ever attended (and, happily, the first I attended without dividing my attention to deal with emergencies unfolding elsewhere). I arrived early, and I have already written about the couple of days I spent eating and sightseeing before the conference started. Now I will write about the conference!

• I visited Salt Lake City (June 17, 2015)

  I last week visited Salt Lake City, Utah. I had a great time, even though I had to fly there. Allow me to describe what I saw of the city before the conference I’d come to attend started, which inevitably collapsed my perspective down to that of the hotel’s ballrooms and hallways.

• Three hints for my fellow aviophobes (June 6, 2015)

  For years, I’ve had the idea in the back of my head to write a book for my fellow nervous fliers. Since the start of this decade I’ve had reason to fly round-trip once or twice every year, and every time I take a few more notes towards this scheme. It’s been an achingly long time since I last wrote a book, and the idea of sinking myself into a major project that has nothing at core to do with my day job really appeals, sometimes. But then, inevitably, I get a great idea for something creative I can build with code, and the book idea goes back into the freezer for a while.

• On getting out of the house (February 14, 2015)

  Today, Newport feels frozen over. The island weather patterns that shrug off unpleasantness afflicting the mainland cannot fully shield my home from the continuing blizzard conditions that have pummeled southern New England for weeks. For the first time in nearly six months my passively maintained illusion that all my Boston friends remain merely a quick hop away feels strained. I look out my office window towards the Pell bridge, over houses half-abandoned during deepest winter, and I feel truly, achingly isolated.