Cheers from the PopTech conference. It’s off to a great start, with music legend Brian Eno sharing the stage with game genius Will Wright. Hearing the father of ambient music discuss the philosophy and practicality of emergence alongside the driving force behind simulation gaming – and the forthcoming game Spore – is an example of what PopTech is all about. To see all the speakers, check out the speaker list here and get the live stream and such here.

On another note, now that I’m on the road, I’m missing Keith Olbermann’s “special comment.” As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Olbermann is one of the few in the mainstream media who is really stepping up and saying what needs to be said. On that, see the latest one courtesy of the good folks at Crooks and Liars.

Over the past couple years, I’ve tended to opt for quality (while I understand that is debatable) over quantity when it came to posting. I’d stew for a couple weeks over what to post, and finally put something up that I judged “postworthy.” But, since the next couple months is going to be a lot of travel and random adventuring, it is likely that I’ll be posting shorter pieces of less consequence. Hope they are somewhat interesting – and please, if they aren’t already low enough, lower your expectations.

On Sunday, I went for a nice hike up western Maine’s Mount Cutler with my friend Ian. See the pictures here.

My draft itinerary for the next month or two – very rough and very loose – looks something like this:

Camden, Maine for PopTech -> London -> Brussels -> Amsterdam (for Hallowe’en, I hope!) -> Copenhagen -> Krakow, Poland -> Budapest, Hungary -> Ljubjana, Slovenia -> Vienna, Austria -> Paris (but I reserve the right to love any of them enough to skip subsequent places on the itinerary…)

Then I’m back to the US to commence a nice, slow, twisty drive across the country, roughly along these lines:

Boston -> New York -> Atlantic City -> Virginia Beach -> Nags Head / Kitty Hawk -> Nashville -> Saint Louis -> Omaha -> Denver / Boulder -> Cheyenne -> Billings -> Sandpoint, Idaho -> Vancouver, BC -> Seattle -> Portland (the other one) -> San Francisco -> Los Angeles.

Ideas? Pit stops? Must sees? Do tell.

Four years after arriving in Boston, I said good-bye yesterday.

Before I stepped out of my place and into the car, I meditated on how lucky I’d been to have had this experience, to have lived as I did, doing what I did, all the while learning a ton. I am better for it all, and inside that emotional envelope I found gratitude that dwarfed the speck of sadness.

Gorgeous skies and crisp autumn air wrapped it all as the city’s serpentine skyline shrank in my rearview. Paul Van Dyk’s “See You On The Other Side” harmonized with the growling thunder of my engine. With a smile that felt a mile deep, I opened the sunroof.

Onward. North, for now.

Hastert, trying to save a party destined for the electoral dustbin, held a bumbling and portentious press conference today in which he, y’know, announced a new “tip line” that people can “confidently call” – and then provided someone else’s toll-free fax number. These folks can’t even get their faux-apologies right.

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