Guaka! - United States

Back in A'dam

Guaka — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:49:04 +0000

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My unlimited MetroCard was still valid for a day and a half so I left it to the poor soul who was robbed from all of his belongings in Lower Manhattan - he was also staying at my host's place in Williamsburg. I had a good flight to Dublin, where I had a very pleasant stay with Dublin's superhost. The guy has been hosting more than 1000 people. Now I'm back in Amsterdam, and it feels good to be among friends. It was just a bit annoying to find out that a "1 zone" tram ride in Amsterdam costs 2,60 euro these days. I boycotted that and walked instead - with about 25 kg of extra weight. Then later on I found out I did have my NS kortingskaart on me that can double as an OV chip...

A beautiful day in Trashy Harlem

Guaka — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:29:00 +0000

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Last week I saw a table full of clothes in front of a church on 128th Street. The ladies babbling on the sidewalk were able to tell me that it's possible to drop off clothes. Today we went there to bring a first batch of clothes. On the way we found a pile of funny trash and I decided to keep the fancy furry jacket for a party next Saturday. In the evening I took Nadia and another guest out to our favorite supermarket chain in Upper East Side and we returned home with tons of amazing food.

Something new is possible for the first time in thousands of years

Guaka — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:22:59 +0000

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It always makes me happy to hear from Joe. He wrote something new: How mobile phones can replace a broken economy: The Mobile Manifesto:

When we talk about trouble with the economy, we’ve been overlooking an astounding opportunity. Something new is possible for the first time in thousands of years. If you care about the planet, if you care about your kids, if you care about other people, this is something to pay attention to.

While we continue to argue about capitalism and socialism, for the first time a third option is really possible. We can build a more sophisticated, dynamic, distributed approach to organizing labor and resources than has ever been attempted before.

It's bold and sensible. It has made sense for the past couple of years, when it became clear to me that the deeper ideas behind the sharing of free software and free information are applicable to the real world, the real economy. It was no wonder I met Joe 2 years ago at the CouchSurfing Collective in New Zealand; it was amazing experience to work with him. His analysis of modern life is razor sharp and combined with his desire for change we could start seeing "actual people, in vicinity to one another, thinking about each others’ needs, and helping each other, in person and on the ground".

Unlike existing networks based on short messaging (twitter, broadtexter, brightkite, etc), Groundcrew focuses on finding and coordinating like-minded strangers rather than friends. Groups form based on common beliefs, needs, and interests. Broad groups exist for those interested in good deeds, adventures, exchanges, and more. Another differentiating factor is that Groundcrew aggregates information about members’ immediate availability for action, together with agents’ passions and dreams. This is opposed to other services (twitter, facebook) which work more generally with status updates and feeds.

Montreal, Boston, NYC, Dublin, Treviso, Verona, Trento

Guaka — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:02:22 +0000

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We left Morgan a bit later than planned. I really didn't sleep well with the prospect of waking up at 5AM. We started of taking a bus out of Montreal, at 9:16. Hitching in Quebec is easy. We had a couple of short rides, and then a ride down to Burlington, a college town in Vermont (in the US, the State of Cheese). Like most college towns, it was easy to hitch out of there. But then we were in a shitty spot. We waited a long time, till we finally walked to a traffic light, where someone was so friendly to drive out of his way. amylin prefers "on-ramp hitching", that is waiting at on-ramps, but our luck with that had been mediocre in the US, so I decided to change strategy and be dropped at a rest area. The first guy we saw asked if we were hiking, and I said "well, we're hitchhiking", and we were treated to a long ride and an interesting life story. We made it to Boston that night where we had interesting conversations about Esperanto, veganism and (not for me) push-bikes with our hosts. The next day we met up with John and his wife. After fruitfully working together on CS and later BeWelcome, for almost one year, it was great to finally meet John. Later that day we took the Chinatown bus to NYC and went all the way to the upper point of Manhattan. The next day we walked a lot, saw some German thing at the Goethe Institut, with pictures and some dude who was going to go around the world with his motorcycle. The guy taking pictures was very interested in amylin and me. Rightly so, we were by far the most colorful people around. Friday I had to say bye to amylin :( and take a plane to Dublin. My flight arrived in the very early morning, and I basically had a stop-over of 23 hours. Fortunately, through BeWelcome I had found out that Matthew, who was my guest in Paris in 2004, was now living in Dublin. So I had a place to crash for a couple of hours. The check-in for my next flight (with another Irish low budget company) was at 4 in the morning. Since there's no nightly public transport, nor cheap taxis, I had to take my bus there at 23:00. I arrived at Treviso around 9AM. I slept a bit in the first train, changed to the other one, and then got to Verona, to find out that there was a train strike, and no trains going north until after 21:00. Shit! Well, just hitchhike, I thought. I saw a car in front of the station, and fortunately they took me to a better spot. But, not too great. So, from there I started walking, and walking. Into a bar, for a toilet, a pen (for my sign) and a cola. Then, more walking. Walking. Walking. And I walked more. I started to feel quite unhappy about all the Italians that were speeding by without stopping when someone finally stopped and took me for 15 km or so. From there, same story. Italians are wary of strangers! I ended up on a spot where I had found a ride straight to Trento the first time. But I wasn't so lucky this time. I was getting thirsty. I saw some black people in the backyard of a house and they were from Ghana and very nice. A guy gave me a big bottle of mineral water. After a while I decided to walk. And walk. Until there was a point in the road with construction work and a traffic light where all cars had to stop for a while. Finally I saw a small Fiat and got my ride. Until a couple of kilometers before Roveretto, where I was picked up after not too long. By a very friendly Albanian couple, who started explaining that Italians are bastards. They dropped me off at the station, where the trains still weren't going. So at 19:00 I finally took a bus to Trento, where I was treated to an excellent vegetarian meal. I woke up at 16:00 this afternoon...

Crashing at Morgan's in Montreal

Guaka — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:51:22 +0000

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amylin and I have been crashing at Morgan's (6 1/2) in Montreal since Thursday. We hitchhiked here from Northampshire, MA, where we stayed with Joe. We had left a bit later than planned so it was not easy to get to Montreal. There are hardly any cars driving from the US to Canada these days, not even Canadians, even though the CAN$ is almost exactly worth as much as the US$ these days. I booked progress in many projects, and it even looks as if Paolo and I might be able to finish our first paper next week. I also added some wiki integration to Morgan's Crash project. Tomorrow we'll be leaving for Boston again. Here's another picture, actually taken without my presence, but it's appropriate...

Guaka Mole in Trento

Guaka — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:28:25 +0000

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It's crazy how it's possible to be together most of the time for one year while traveling, but not when staying in one place. I hope that humanity will be able to get rid of borders some day, well, rather sooner than later. Anyway, I'm flying to New York next week, to see my love! Unfortunately I can't stay as long as I would like to. Paolo doesn't let me. I'm happy we booked a lot of progress with the TrustLet code. And today I even came up with the GuakaMole trust metric, which is the best trust metric of the ones we've tried so far on the Advogato dataset. I'll be coming back over Dublin, where I hope to stay with matthew75. He was one of my guests in Paris in 2004, and now he happens to be living in Dublin. I found him again on BeWelcome.org. It's amazing how small world networks work. Now I can't wait to see amylin, for a hand massage and delish vegan munchies! Tomorrow I'm taking a 15 euro train to Kufstein, which is right next to the German border, then I'll hitch to the Netherlands from there.

Dust dust dust... and spaghetti with mayonnaise

Guaka — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 03:43:11 +0000

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Some morning last week, Slashdot: prostoalex wrote "MSNBC points to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds. Recently, Tom Loftus notes, a virtual island in one of the MMORPGs sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable. ’One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world’s creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice. The first of its kind to center on virtual goods, the case was eventually dropped,’ MSNBC says." I hope stuff like this won’t be prevalent in the digitized third world that we’re helping to create here... I was told that my English is actually so totally not North-American at all. Fine. Well, yes. I’m here, mixed in two cultures. It seems that people have the tendency to ghetto-ize. French with French, Murcans with Murcans. I’m in a weird country with a weird culture, and I’m living with people with a totally different culture again. And honestly, I have to tell you: it’s fun! Last Saturday some of the most extreme ones on the one side offering me drinks... And the next day I had dinner with an African family. As I promised myself, I went to the market Saturday last week. Great fun. Ignoring irritating bastards. Well, I was doing that. Peter however walked along with some of them, so I was kind of forced to join the motley crew and look at very nice but overpriced Dogon fabric. Did you ever have spaghetti with mayonnaise? Honestly, I probably did, but then again, I’ve been a student for quite a while. So, at the egg-sandwich restaurant around the corner, where they put petrol on the counter to get rid of the flies, they not only serve egg-sandwich, they also eat spaghetti with mayonnaise there! Me I just had a plain egg-sandwich with some fries, but I did have tea with vinegar... Here’s a must-read for both geeks as well as the non-initiated, to grasp a bit more about why people are actually sharing knowledge without any monetary incentives, such as working on free software, sharing their music using peer-to-peer networks and writing a free encyclopedia: The economics of sharing, (This site delves a bit deeper into the matter.) I would like to add to it though, that people are starting some initiatives, allbeit still a bit tiny compared to the scale of say eMule or Wikipedia, using the given possibilities of IT to share goods and services beyond IT, such as Hospitality Club or online give-away shops, or even without using IT, such as the real-life give-away shops. Als ik in Nederland was zou ik vanavond naar een feest van mijn oom en tante gaan waar ik heel veel familieleden zou zien die ik al jaren niet meer heb gezien. ..snif.. :( Maja, hopelijk is er nog zo’n feestje over een half jaar of zo :) The dust, and a couple of cigarettes... they made me sick. I had a real sore throat last week. So I promised myself not to smoke any cigarettes anymore. I’ve done that before, but then I didn’t taste the dust every time I inhaled "clean air". (Would you call the air clean a 100 metres away from Europe’s busiest highway?) So again, I’m going to the market. Finding a guitar, or some other musical instrument, a more decent mosquitonet (yeah, these beasts, they’re eating me alive, even more so when I’m actually under the klamboe). But before I’ll join Laura to have lunch with her Malian family. If she hasn’t left already... bye bye!