Posted by John Patrick on Jul 10, 2005 in
Hiking As of today there are 181,216 active geocaches in 215 countries.
In the last 7 days, there have been 138,512 new log entries written at geocaching.com by 24,318 participants in the global sport of geocaching. Two of those entries were from me — but it should have been three.
The Split Rock Mini Cache included a short mile and a half but very nice hike. The cache is not one meter to the right of the split rock as described. The cache is in bad shape — water-logged. Some caches are stored in Tupperware containers. They are somewhat effective but not nearly as good as military surplus "ammo" cans. The former ammunition containers have a tight seal and are inexpensive. I took a slightly corroded United Way pin from the Tupperware container and in it’s place left a travel bug. I look forward to following the bug’s travels.
Cache #2 for the weekend was not a pleasant experience. The twenty-mile ride on the trike to get to parking area was the highlight. Undaunted by the near 90 degree heat, high humidity and millions of gypsy moths, I followed the needle of the GPS into heavy brush. The "hint" on the cache web page said "Under a large rock near a pine tree". There were a *lot* of large rocks but I could not find a pine tree. After an hour or so I gave up. Perhaps I will try again in the fall.
Not wanting to go back to the lake house with no "finds" Using the Opera browser on the Sony Ericsson P910, I searched geocaching.com and got the latitude and longitude for another cache about five miles away. The trail head was on a small back road that I had never been on before and as I came around a sharp corner on the way, I jaw dropped open with what I saw. The cache, Decker Oxbow, was very nice even though it required getting a bit wet crossing a stream. There were many different plants, flowers, rocks, and natural scenes to enjoy. A large ammo can had kept the contents dry. I placed another travel bug and picked up the White Jeep Travel Bug "Morrisey". See flickr set of pictures from the two days of geocaching.
Other patrickWeb stories about hiking
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 8, 2005 in
Conferences 
There are a lot of good conferences — Supernova is one of the best. This year was the second time I have made the trip to San Francisco to attend. There were roughly 250 technologists, investors, business leaders and media who came together to network, share ideas, and explore the business impacts of many key innovations.
Supernova focuses on the decentralization of computing, communications, digital media, and business. (See the full agenda and the participants here). There are so many exciting things happening in these areas — distributed e-commerce, mobile applications, the power of the "long tail" in commerce and media, massively multi-player virtual worlds, business blogging, the video Internet, and voice over IP applications, just to name a few. It is hard to summarize. I will comment on the panel that I moderated and then highlight the four subject areas of the conference that I thought were most significant.
Something new at Supernova this year was the Wharton West Workshops and Technology Showcase — a day targeted at technologists and business professionals, and held at the state-of-the-art Wharton West facility. The panel I moderated was called "Connected Work" and the participants included
Tom Ngo & Cydni Tetro from NextPage and
Greg Lloyd from Traction Software. We had a far reaching discussion with the audience about how blogging and on-line information management can help users get a grip on managing structured and unstructured information, documents, and processes in order to make their jobs easier. A lot of the dialogue was about how blogging can become an effective enterprise communications tool.
There were many interesting people and topics at Supernova. I have summarized the four things I would say were most significant. (read more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 7, 2005 in
Motorcycles,
Travels 
Three years ago a motorcycling adventure made me appreciate the back roads, although the physical drain of the trip made me appreciate the efficiency of the Interstates (see Do We Need the Interstate Highway System in America?). This year was a re-confirmation. We left the lake house in Pennsylvania at 6:30 in the morning and by noon we had been in four states — breakfast at a fast food restaurant near Wappingers Falls, NY, a gas stop in Massachusetts, and lunch in Bennington, VT where we rendezvoused with my brother who had ridden from upstate New York. From there it was a long ride across route 9 into New Hampshire and then a lot of back roads to our destination at Lake Winnipesaukee where we stayed a couple of nights with friends. The weather was threatening throughout the entire 376 mile trip but the scenery was beautiful — lakes and streams, mountains and valleys, winding roads and covered bridges, quaint towns and villages. Elapsed time for the ride was 11+ hours.
The weather forecast for the day of our return trip was marginal once again and we decided to take a combination of interestates and state roads to shorten the trip. We started out on route 25 near Moultonborough, New Hampshire, picked up route 104 in Meredith and then used I-93 to get us to Concord where we rode route 9 again. Once in Bennington, VT, route 9 turns into route 7 and that took us to Troy, NY where we got on I-787 to Albany, then I-87 down to Newburgh, NY and then I-84 west back to Lake Wallenpaupack. Lake to lake was only 20 miles shorter in distance but two hours shorter in time.
Do we need the Interstate Highway System? As I reflected three years ago, it is clear we can not do without the interstates anymore than we can do without the train system or our airline system. Motorcycle adventures make me appreciate the back roads and small communities, but the long rides make me appreciate the efficiency of the alternative. It’s a good thing the nation’s commerce doesn’t depend on back roads and motorcycles.
Other patrickWeb stories about motorcycling
