Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

Conch Republic Passports

Key West, Fla.A- Dark red and blue "Conch Republic" passports could pass for real travel documents - and that’s part of the appeal.

"Alright Matt, we’re gonna get your passport picture," said Sir Peter Anderson, the so-called Secretary General of the Conch Republic by way of "prime ministerial appointment," as he picked up his digital camera.

I’m about to become a citizen of another country. Except I haven’t left the United States. I’m in Key West, also known as the Conch Republic - since their mock secession in 1982.

The Conch Republic is notAa real country, of course, but trying telling that to Anderson who makes his living off this mythical Margaritaville.

"Absolutely without question" this is a real country, said Anderson from his home office. "When the U.S. didn’t object to our sovereignty after 12 years by the most stringent international standards they lost any right to do so."

Sir Peter calls the Conch Republic the world’s "first fifth world nation." And for him, this nation is big business. He’s trademarked all sorts of slogans and bumper stickers. But most of Anderson’s money comes from selling real looking passports.

: Continue reading the article :

Security Theater in Japan

Apparently the conditions for shipping packages via air to the United States have now become so restrictive that the Japanese Post Office has announced that, effective Nov. 17, it will no longer accept any packages weighing over a pound for shipment to the US by any method that involves air transport (including EMS, airmail, and SAL). Except for large corporate mailers, everything over a pound must apparently now come by sea. Asahi Shimbun is reporting that the Japanese equivalents of FedEx and UPS have followed suit. I assume that airmail service remains in effect for the remaining 200 countries across the globe that have not lost their collective minds.

.:theatlantic.com->

Stephen Fry : What I’d Wish I’d Known When I Was 18

UPS Delivers at 11.22MB/s

It's interesting to see these real world figures, although not entirely surprising. Pingdom wrote a short post about how FedEx is still faster than the internet back in 2007, particularly for large data sets. High speed connectivity is expensive and of course there's always the speed of light limit. Hopefully that'll be solved by quantum networks sometime in the future!

.:blog.boxedice.com->

London to Helsinki : Dictaphone Parcel

Animated short film, Royal College of Art, London, 2009

Dictaphone Parcel is an animation based on a sound recorded with a dictaphone travelling secretly inside a parcel. As the hidden recorder travels through the global mail system, from London to Helsinki, it captures the unexpected. We hear a mixture of abstract sounds, various types of transport and even discussions between the mail workers. The animation visualizes this journey by creating an imaginary documentary.

Dictaphone Parcel was awarded the Passion Pictures Prize in London, in February 2010.

.:cargocollective.com->

Travel: Back to the Bricks

I am a regular user of sites like Wotif, Expedia and Rates to Go, typically believing that they deliver decent savings over turning up on the spot.

In recent years, when I have checked what the "walk-in" rate was, I have found that buying online has typically delivered savings of $10 to $20 and sometimes even more.

However, recent experience is giving me second thoughts.

.:zdnet.com.au->

Tourism Forecasting Competition

Tourism is one of the most rapidly growing global industries and tourism forecasting is becoming an increasingly important activity in planning and managing the industry. The time series in this competition have already been studied in detail in a paper by Athanasopoulos, Hyndman, Song and Wu (2010) (to be published in the International Journal of Forecasting). For part one of this contest, entrants must submit forecasts of the next four yearly observations. Forecasts will be tested against the actual future observations for each series.

The overall winner will collect $AUD500 and will be invited to contribute a discussion paper to the International Journal of Forecasting describing their methodology.

.:kaggle.com->

What’s New? : Brownbook

Brownbook aims to explore, reveal and introduce the Middle East as an emerging hub for expression, ideas and good looking products. Taking directives fromA designers, urban planners, architects, songsmiths and scientists, the magazine offers a vitalised vision of MENA (Middle East/North Africa) and a platform to connect our readers with these people.

.:brownbook.ae->

The Geotaggers' World Atlas

Pulling the location of thousands of Geotagged images from Flickr, Eric Fischer has assembled some beautiful images representing the most photographed spaces of our planets largest cities. The images peak and rise where you'd expect; all those tourist locations feature heavily. It's an interesting 'map' of tourist movement and interest and should feed anyone interested in tracking the nest location for that next restaurant.

.:ita-uk.com->