Amy wrote about travel, phone, mobile, sim, & contact
USA mobile plans... It seems to be really complicated (or at least, phone provider websites are bad) to get a SIM-only, monthly rolling contract with minimal texts/minutes/data. Specifically on a network that will work with Fairphone (2G is fine, believe it or not). So I'm seriously considering not bothering. I started to worry about it being inconvenient/expensive for people with US numbers to call me, then had an epiphany. Making it more difficult for people to call me is a feature, not a bug.
I can call US numbers from Hangouts, and there are a million ways people can instant message me other than SMS. (FYI best results currently from Hangouts or Twitter, will probably make space for Viber again soon).
Today set out to be a quiet day of working/procrastinating from home, then a flurry of last minute plans and serendipity meant I got to meet people I previously only knew of online, and have some good conversations that will lead to future exciting work and travel related things. Sweet!
At short notice, my roommate Liz invited me sailing on the Charles. When we got there there were no boats available, but some friendly strangers had space in theirs and picked us up. One of those strangers happened to be Nate, whose Microsoft Research blog posts I'd read this summer and who had been twitter-introduced to me a couple of months ago by our mutual friend Doc. I'd been meaning to follow up and find time to meet up with him. After about 15 minutes of chatting with him and his friends in their boat, I realised who I was talking to. What are the odds?! Nate's research is relevant to mine, and he recommended a seminar group I should attend; bumping into him this way was an incredible stroke of luck!
Earlier today I learned that Shane is in town for a couple of days as part of a roadtrip around the US, so I met him and Morgan for dinner, and we talked indieweb, travel and vegan food for a few hours. And I might now have exciting and exotic christmas plans as a result.
I couldn't find 'world foods' in Wholefoods today; will broaden my search. UK-style baked beans are my childhood favourite food. Technically Brits eat Marmite, but I consider Vegemite far superior. Marmite will do in a pinch though.
Amy wrote about phd, life, work, notes, productivity, & etherpad
Starting to think actually I can use a self-hosted etherpad for everything and there's no need for any other communication or note-taking applications.
Of course, I will think this until my server goes down and I lose everything.
Amy wrote about travel, food, bread, life, vegan, & usa
PSA for the USA: Milk and sugar are not normal ingredients in bread. Stop. Please.
On a related note, can anyone recommend an actual bakery in Boston/Cambridge? I'm giving up on supermarkets. Even Wholefoods doesn't have sensible bread.
Amy added 'Andrej Karpathy Academic Website' to Bookmarks
Amy wrote about phd, social web, socialwg, resume, cv, w3c, standards, social api, specification, editors draft, & decentralized
I finally pieced together my thoughts on the Social API over the last couple of weeks, and yesterday it was accepted as an Editor's Draft for the W3C Social WG. Over the next month or so I'm hoping the group can work together to plug the gaps and reach consensus where there are various alternative ways of doing things so we can have a First Public Working Draft by our next face-to-face on the 1st of December.
