Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Flying for gold: Seattle

Published on December 16, 2009 in satisfaction. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

NOTE: This entry is part of a series in which I fly over 40,000 miles in two years. Read the introduction here.

I would never have done this a few weeks before. After flying through six American states and touring Seattle in three days all I can say is that the experience was incredible.

Its amazing how travel can bring out so many emotions in a short span of time: fear, happiness, loneliness, excitement and everything in between. Living out of a backpack for a few days helps you look at life differently. I recommend that you try it.

Trip summary
  • Routing: BUF-CLT-PHX-SEA-SFO-PHL-BUF (plus driving YYZ-BUF and back)
  • Mileage and Cost: 6899 miles for $244 equals 3.54 cents per mile (target: less than 5 cpm)
  • Remaining: 33101 miles in 1 year and 279 days
  • Goofs: (1) Climbing onto an empty, unfinished train platform and getting stared at by a hundred people on the other side. (2) Dropping my transit ticket and having to give the guy who found it a dollar to get it back.
  • Travel tips: (1) Don’t forget to take the charging cable for your phone. (2) Pack much lighter than you think you need to. Your backpack will start hurting after a day or two. (3) If you get caught by a long flight delay ask the airline for an alternate route (I flew CLT-PHX-SEA instead of CLT-SFO-SEA and saved six hours).
  • Soundtrack: Bhangra
  • The great: Washington State Ferries, Museum of Flight, Pike place market (and the very first Starbucks)
  • The good: Seattle pub crawl tours, Laser dome (and the Space Needle), Central Library, US Airways and United Airlines.
  • The bad: The large number of homeless people on every block in downtown Seattle. They were harmless though.

Would I do it again? Well, I’m off to California in a few weeks! This time my stay will be longer and less comfortable.

To read detailed trip notes for this journey please click here to continue.

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Twitter: why and how

Published on December 2, 2009 in other. View Comments Tags: , , , .

There are over 350 million people using Facebook. That’s more than 5% of the Earth’s population on one website. Chances are that you’ve got an account there. I certainly do.

Why Twitter?

After using Twitter for a few months I recommend that you try it for one specific reason: Twitter is brilliant at helping you find and make friends with people you’ve never met before. Facebook on the other hand connects you with friends you already know.

Twitter kung fu

How to use Twitter

Twitter can be used in many ways depending on what you want to get out of it. The lack of guidelines confuses many people who give up on it too quickly.

Here are my tips on socializing with Twitter:

  • Set it up properly: Make sure you fill out everything on your profile page including your full name, location, bio and a picture.
  • Design your profile: Change your page colors and background image to your liking. If you know how to make an exceptional background do it! Update: try themeleon.
  • Search, follow, listen and talk: (1) Use the search box to find people talking about something that interests you. (2) Follow people if you like reading their tweets. (3) Listen to the existing flow of conversation. (4) Talk to people and get to know them.
  • Develop a Twitter policy: Once you’ve been using Twitter for a while you’ll need to make a few rules of your own regarding other Twitter users. This is important so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Here are mine: (1) I only follow people who have real conversations. This rules out internet marketers, spammers and others who won’t care about anything you have to say. (2) I always block any of the aforementioned marketers and spammers if they follow me as I like to keep my followers list clean. (3) I use the “lists” feature in Twitter to categorize people I follow and to filter conversations.

All of the above are simply recommendations. You will gradually figure out how to use Twitter in your own way. If you’re interested in making the most of Twitter you’ll also want to take a look at Twittercism and Twitip.

You can find me on Twitter at twitter.com/anopenscroll. I’d love to hear from you! One more thing:

Whether on Twitter on anywhere else, always be yourself.

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