Moved.

The Gone East weblog has moved. It's now located at http://www.jackhodgson.com/weblog/. Update your bookmarks.

For a little while, the older Gone East entries will remain here. But eventually they will move over to the new address too.

 Bears repeating

I've always said, January is the coldest month, and February is the longest.

 Snow.

The Inuit's 18 words for SNOW. Thanks to Halley for pointing to this.

 How Cold Is It?

By far, the lowest temp of the season so far. At 6:30 this morning it was minus 10 F here in NH.

I heard an interesting stat on the web today.It was warmer in Antarctica than New England today. 33F there, 16F here. OK, so I know that it's summer down there, but still, it's the SOUTH POLE!

It was WARMER AT THE SOUTH POLE!!!

 A roller coaster memory.

I haven't ridden many rollercoasters in my life. I've never really felt that it was fun to be scared.

One of the few times I did ride them was a day I spent at Great America theme park in California. I was there with a few friends, one of whom was Diana.

Diana and I had been friends for a few years at this point, and I had always had a huge crush on her. But she considered us 'just friends'.

Anyway, she loved the roller coasters -- they had like a half dozen of them at this place -- and she insisted that I ride all of them with her. So I did, cause I wanted to impress her, or maybe just not disappoint her.

It was OK, it didn't kill me, but I still don't care for them... and Diana and I are still 'just' good friends.

[This entry inspired by http://blogfodder.com/]

 Great White Whale

AvWeb: "The most voluminous air cargo carrier flying in the world today, Airbus's A300-600ST "Beluga," will make its first visit to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh this summer."

 Sometimes I've Felt This Way Too

Boulder, Colorado: Police reacted to reports of a man screaming and waving a gun in his apartment with evacuations and a SWAT team . Turns out he was pissed at his computer.

 Ashcroft's America

Here are two articles about the way the Bush government is using the terrorism crisis to take away our civil rights.

St. Petersburg Times
President seems unable to bear the sight or sound of dissent

Pittsburgh Post-Gaztte
Justice sends Bush camp a sign: Dissident corral not OK

 Huh?

I'm still here. I'll post something soon.

 A Fish Story

Here's a story I wrote last summer about a fishing tournament that was held on Pawtuckaway Lake.

 Some things never change.

I've never spent as much winter time at our family's home on Pawtuckaway Lake in NH as I have this season. So I've been seeing some things that I've never seen before.

One day last week I was looking out at the lake. The sun was glistening off the ice. The bright white snow was a contrast to the evergreen trees and the deep blue sky. It was very pretty.

It made me think that maybe the winter here is the prettier time of year. Summer may be nicer, but winter is prettier.

One of the greatest shortcomings of summer on the lake is that on weekends the power boating traffic is nearly overwhelming. The noise and crowding is a dramatic contrast to the relative quiet of the summer weekdays. Last week, while admiring the winter beauty, I also thought, "amd it's so peaceful and quiet seven days a week."

Then we got a big snow.

The past two days were the first weekend since we got any considerable snowfall. So the snowmobiles arrived.

While the snowmobilers are not as "in-your-face" as the power boats, there're definitely there. You can hear the roar of their engines across the ice in the woods of the park. Every few minutes one of the machines will appear on the shoreline trails, or out on the ice.

Also the pristine beauty of the snow on the ice has now been marred by a squiggly web of tracks.

So some things never change. Weekends are not so peaceful here, even in the winter. Today I'll learn whether things quiet down during the week. My brother says it does.

Anyway it's still pretty pretty.

 Tim O'Reilly on Piracy

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of the great computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates. He's written a very good article on the true effect of online "piracy": "Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

Thanks to Doc Searls for the pointer.

 DeepFUN

Bernie DeKoven has a series of articles about the process, act, nature, and community, of having fun. I think alot -- if not all -- of this is very relevant to the more general goal of creating satisfying "shared experiences", which is of great interest to me.

 BMac Meeting Visit Report

Here's the BMac Meeting Report that I promised a few days ago. Excerpt: "I went prepared to criticize... I thought I'd say, 'These kids don't know how to run a good user group. Why I remember the Golden Age...' But instead, I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good."

 Photo-Journalist

Catherine Leroy was a photo-journalist in Vietnam during the war. The LA Times has this feature about her.

 Hello.

I'm still here. I've just been a little distracted for the past few days. More soon. I promise.

While you're waiting, mull this over: Scifi.com reports that, "Matt Frewer told a chat on SCIFI.COM that he's trying to resurrect his most famous character: Max Headroom." Full Story (Thanks to Boingboing for the lead.)

 BMac

I went to the BMac user group meeting last night. It was good. Full report later.

 Going to the big-city

Later today I'm heading down to Boston for a few days. I'm going to visit with some friends, plus I have some business stuff to do. I'm kinda sorry to say that I've decided to expand my job search to Boston. I've been looking up here for about 6 months with no success and I'm thinking that it's time to bite the bullet. It's only an exploratory thing right now.

 Cold!

I'm such a wimp... But I really don't like this cold. It was 4 (four!) degrees when I woke up this morning.

Yesterday was actually very nice. It got up to around 40 degress. It's a sign of how cold it gets here, that 40 is considered "nice".

Here's a webpage I created that shows that temp over the past 24 hours.

 Game On!

Web 404 Error version of classic computer game BREAKOUT.

Stuff I'm involved with:
EAA Vintage Chapter 15
Prescott Park Arts Festival

Archives