New Location- http://ianthere.wordpress.com/

I've moved this blog to Wordpress.com, and included links to more projects. New updates will go directly to:
http://ianthere.wordpress.com/

NYC

I find myself in New York City for the summer-- commuting, sailing, eating pizza etc. Here Hans and I are enjoying an early summer day in Central Park. Rest assured, I've gotten a haircut since this photo.

Put that in your pipe...

It may be time to fire up that long-forgotten Yahoo! account after all.

Yahoo's new service, Pipes, is turning heads, and with good reason.

Want a two-bedroom apartment near a Whole Foods? Need a studio across from a pub? Look no further. One of Yahoo's featured "pipes", Apartment Near Something, will find it for you. This particular pipe searches craigslist, identifies the location of apartments that match your search, and then examines which apartments are near whatever else you searched for. But that's not all you can do with a pipe.

Yahoo Pipes enables users to control, manipulate, and reuse internet content by creating customized searches. While it's usefulness to technophobes and internet newbies is questionable, it's ingenuity is not. If you've ever had that feeling that it's all been done before, but it all could have been done better, now may be your time to shine. From the Pipes website:

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.

If that seems unclear, it's because a 'pipe' can relate to practically anything you want. One pipe finds people's public photos (on Flikr) of things the NY Times has reported on recently. Another pipe searches Google and Yahoo simultaneously.

I was pleasantly surprised by the results of one pipe, entitled Picture Near Place which promised to find thing X, in setting Y, near Z. I entered 'tree' and 'park' in Madison, Wisconsin. The first result was a tree in a field (possibly in Madison), and the second was a picture of University of Wisconsin's main library with a tree squeezed in the corner. The third was a triple-whammy: trees, a park, and well-known Madison landmark. One of the pictures did look suspiciously like the Serengeti, but hey, it's still in beta.

And because Pipes is still in development, it is yet to be seen exactly how it will be used, and by whom. According to Yahoo, the nifty graphical interface means you can build your own pipe "without ever having to write a line of code." So you don't need to know HTML, but being slightly web-savvy will help. And while services like Blogger and Myspace provide a code-free template within which you can expound to your heart's content, by creating a Pipe, one is creating something entirely different: a web service. Additionally, you can 'clone' other people's pipes and edit them to make a new pipe.

This may signal a greater shift in the way information gets from one point to another over the internet. Bill Thompson, a contributor to the BBC said "this isn’t user-generated content, it’s user-controlled content." He also points out that while Pipes may not be the Post-Web 2.0 breakthrough everyone is waiting for, it is "a glimpse of the networked future, where the world’s information is not only at our fingertips, but available to be mixed, mashed and filtered on demand."

So go ahead, take somebody's pipe, rewire it, and make it your own. Or rather, make it everyone's. And inevitably, someone else will make it theirs.

No Bones!

New Zealand Fishermen were fishing for Patagonian Toothfish (aka: Chilean Seabass) when they caught a Colossal Squid last week. The specimen was a 10-meter long male and weighed just under 1000 pounds, which makes it the largest ever recorded. This is the first time scientists will be able to study an adult Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, as all previous squids were incomplete or juvenile.

Colossal squid are larger than the better-known Giant Squid, and females are probably significantly larger than males, as is common with invertebrates.

Strangely, this is skipper John Bennett's 2nd colossal squid, according to The Nelson Mail.

Steve O'Shea, of the Auckland University of Technology said if you made calamari out of it, you'd have rings as big as tractor tires.

News and pix

Haven't posted in a while, so here are some goodies:

Newspaper article about the recent 2007 Anguilla Optimist Regatta I helped organize

Photos of the race

Fotografian: A blog where I'll be posting of some of my photographs

Anguilla Youth Sailing Club

Check out a quick video on the Anguilla Youth Sailing Club-

http://homepage.mac.com/travistv/iMovieTheater6.html

It gives a little view into some of the work I've been doing here.

I hope you enjoy it!

St. Lucia Rainforest Hike

Rite and I on our hike through the Rainforest n St. Lucia. The trails were really well kept.

Nice trees. Yep.

Me and the big, big bamboo.

Pidgeon Island
Old ruins of the English forts have trees and creepers growing up through them.

Cannons!

Here's the view from the fort on top of Pidgeon island. The path leads up to a lookout point from which the English spyed on the French fleets on Martinique, which is visible to the north.

Look at that cannon!

St. Lucia Tour

PitonsHere we are with Arnold, and the twin Pitons behind us. Arnold showed us around a bit of St. Lucia on his day off, and we had a delightful time.

In this picture, Petit Piton is the closer, higher and pointier one. That's Gros Piton behind it, and the town of Soufriere (pronounced 'soo-fray') in the valley below.

Arnold and I on one of the main road's beautiful views. At alot of these spots there were peddlers with handicrafts, tales of history, 'tour' guides, and snake charmers.

Arnold's friend gives us the tour at the gardens in Soufriere where we saw all sorts of gorgeous plants and animals. There was even a chameleon eating cocoa beans.

Gorgeous flowers, very sensitive to the oil on your fingers. Don't touch.

Hot Springs
Rite gets spa advice from a nice rasta who's been at the volcanic hot springs collecting the mud for the afternoon. I put it all over my feet too, and it felt great!

My foot. My hand.



The mud dodged your fingers in a very stange fashion. It was on the bottom, but not settled by any means.

The Diamond Waterfall

The 'Diamond waterfall' was the gem of the gardens in Soufriere.

Arthur and Ansel.

St. Barths

There were a lot of buildings in St. Bartholemey that looked quite well-preserved, though a few were probably just faux-antique facades. The island was once part of Sweden, and strange small cultural relics here and there are reminders of such.

We spent a couple nights at 'Le Select,' the inspiration for Jimmy Buffet's song Cheeseburger in Paradise. He was also once the part-owner of this late-night burger patio. A very cute little place to hang out in the heart of Gustavia.

The balcony at Sunset hotel is perfect for reading and enjoying the view over their lovely breakfast. Due to their customer service and organization, however, I wouldn't recommend the place.

Josh and Michael visit

Here we are on Maunday's Bay, with St. Martin in the background. Joshie needs a tan.

Joshie wants to hang with the cool crowd, but his bodyguard says, "the area's not secure."