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As I ambled up Concourse C this afternoon, I spotted someone who looked an awful lot like Dennis Kucinich coming the other way. I thought for a moment about stopping him for a bit of congratulatory chat—he’s pretty far to the left of even me, but I admire his staunch refusal to compromise his principles no matter how unpopular they may be—but he didn’t have a welcoming air about him. Maybe he was having an off day, or maybe he’s always like that, but I figured a politician would always be open to meeting “the public”. It seemed like something that would go with the career choice, but perhaps not.

About ten minutes after I saw him, there was an announcement over the public address system calling for Dennis Kucinich to return to gate C-24 for a lost item.

So I guess that even if he wasn’t having an off day when I saw him, he did later. Based on where I saw him and the timing of the announcement, he was very likely beyond the secure area when it was made. I’m not sure it’s possible to get through security on a used ticket; it seems like too much of a security risk to do so. Then again, how would we know?

I wonder what it was he left on the plane. (Let the political jokes take flight!)

P.S. “Search all bags for liquids etc. at the gate” has become “search the bags of occasional random passengers at the gate”, at least in Cleveland. So either the rules are already relaxing, or they’re still firming up. I kind of hope it’s the latter, though neither one really appeals.

Last night, I returned from a week in Ojai, CA. The rules for my return were just a touch different than when I left.

For a moment on Thursday, I was seriously concerned, because the news reports made it seem like no books, iPods, laptops, or other time-fillers would be allowed on any flights in the U.S., and I was facing a flight home of four or more hours. Even worse, that meant I’d have to send my laptop through the baggage handling system. I was frankly far more concerned at the potential for damage or loss there than I was over the possibility that someone might blow up my plane.

Fortunately, things settled down and the truth emerged: no gels, liquids, or creams. Everything else is still permitted.

Although this isn’t true if you’re flying from the U.K. to the U.S. I was planning to be in London this November, but faced with the prospect of eight hours in a metal tube with nothing but the in-flight movies to occupy my attention, I’m starting to reconsider. I mean, come on: for my flight out to LAX, the movie was direct-to-video Dr. Dolittle 3. In comparison, their showing She’s the Man on the return flight almost seemed like a blessing. At least it was based on Shakespeare.

So anyway, the new security rules do actually improve a couple of things. For one, getting through the security checkpoint at LAX (terminal 6) in the middle of a Friday afternoon was a breeze, because the most anyone had was a briefcase, so there was a lot less struggling with bags and such. Also, the sudden lack of competition for overhead luggage space meant that boarding was quite smooth, with few if any aisle backups.

The downside, though, is that there is a final complete search of travelers’ bags at the gate (at least in LAX), and that part needs a lot of work. Instead of feeding people through the screening by rows, the way planes are usually boarded, they just told everyone to line up for screening. But they weren’t actually ready to let anyone on the plane, so the screening area was immediately clogged with already-screened passengers (with no real tracking of who’d actually been screened), which brought everything to a halt. It was a good ten minutes before the plane was open for boarding and the process unclogged.

Don’t get me wrong: if you’re going to search everyone for gels and such, doing it at the gate makes a lot more sense than doing it at the main security checkpoint. All I’m saying is that it needs to be done with a little bit of thought. As it was, the screening process at my gate was marginally less organized than an Easter Egg hunt conducted by a crowd of severely ADHD pre-schoolers. It’d be nice to see that improved before I get back on a plane. (That would be tomorrow, as it happens, so I’m not terribly hopeful.)

All this leaves aside the basic lack of common sense the whole situation evinces. Even if there were no more airport security than existed on 10 September 2001, the odds of my dying on a plane, whether by accident or design, would be several orders of magnitude smaller than the chances I’ll be killed driving to the airport. (This was triply true in my case, as I had to drive from outside Los Angeles to LAX in the middle of the day.) With the security that existed before this past week, my survival odds on the plane were greater still. I’m not saying we should just take away all the security, but personally, since Thursday I thought of at least two ways to take down a plane that the current system would be highly unlikely to catch.

At least, I think that’s so. It’s hard to be sure, because airport security is like the ultimate closed-source application. I can’t just say, “Hey, here’s a way to get a bomb past airport security using a medium-size ball of twine and 17 Hello Kitty stickers; how can we address this?” because then maybe I’ve given an idea to the Bad Guys, as though the Bad Guys haven’t been thinking about this a lot longer and harder than I have. The black hats know all about the system’s weaknesses, but we common users have no way to check for bugs without being hauled off to jail—or, if we simply speculate aloud on possible weaknesses and ways to patch them, get accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, whatever the hell that means. (Oh, that’s right: it means doing anything the current administration doesn’t like, including criticism of their decisions and actions. Sorry, I just forgot for a moment.)

Anyway, ze frank and New Scientist said it better than I can, so I’ll just shut up now and let you check them out. Just make sure neither has any liquids or gels on them.

While in Chicago, we went for lunch at Navy Pier. What can I say? We were tourists. As we were lead to our table, one of the waiters stopped me and said, “I love your shirt!” It was my microformats icon shirt, and it turned out he had no idea what it was. He just liked it.

A couple of days later, as we were passing through security at the base of the Sears Tower— Carolyn’s pick for what to do that morning— one of the guards burst out laughing and, pointing to my shirt, said “That’s right on, man! I heard that!” The source of his mirth was my ALA “Please code responsibly” T-shirt, the one with the car-off-a-dock icon on the front.

It’s literally been years since I had a random stranger comment on a shirt I was wearing. Is there something about Chicagoans that they’re more conscious of other people’s shirts?

IceWeb 2006 wrapped up today (that is, Friday), and I’m deeply honored to have been a part of it. The attendees were just wonderful, there were great speakers all around, and I was as impressed as everyone else by Joe Clark’s Icelandic benediction at the beginning of his talk.

In general, it’s been an amazing trip. In some ways, though, the highlight came before I even set foot on Icelandic soil. On the way over, the Aurora Borealis was visible out my plane window. With a touch of desperate improvisation, I managed to coax some half-decent shots of the lights (and the wing of our plane) from my battered PowerShot S45. You can see them up on Flickr, along with a few of the better shots from our Wednesday trip through the Icelandic countryside (in the general photostream). The actual aurorae were nowhere near as green to the eye as what’s seen in the photos, but more of a silver-blue phosphorescence with maybe a little tiny hint of green. It was hard to judge, looking through a plastic airplane window while trying to block out cabin light enough to see them.

That’s not to minimize the beauty of this country, however. There is a bleak and wild character that’s hard for me to resist, even as I know I’d never survive the dark of deepest winter here. Much as I love landscapes, and Iceland has those in spades, the people are the best part: friendly and accepting in a way that’s still proud and reserved. It’s hard to explain. Moreover, they do know how to party.

My deepest thanks to all our hosts for letting me be a part of IceWeb, and I hope I get to return some time in the future. Takk!

So tomorrow I head out to SXSW along with most of the rest of the industry, just like everybody else. There are, as usual, about two dozen sessions I want to see, all of which conflict with each other. I’ll be on three panels, two Sunday and one Monday (as listed over at Complex Spiral), and will be doing book signings on Sunday around lunch time. There will be a bookstore there, but if you already have a book of mine, bring that too.

Only a few days after I return from SXSW, I’ll be shipping out again for MIX06 in Las Vegas. They’ve been running a “Remix MIX” design competition in the spirit of the CSS Zen Garden, and I’ve consented to be one of the judges. I’m actually looking forward to MIX for a whole bunch of reasons, but at the top of the heap has to be a chance to try out IE7 and talk to the team members in person. That’s three-quarters of the reason I’m going. Also, I’m curious about Microsoft’s “Atlas” framework for AJAX development, but that’s more of a bonus reason.

Besides, if you look deeply enough, you discover there are really only two “scenarios” (a.k.a. tracks) at the conference:

• Next Generation Browsing Experience
• Beyond the Browser

Yeah, I think I’d like to know what they’re thinking. So off to Vegas I go, once I’m back from Texas.

Yee haw.

Inspired by some recent conversations and a post by Dave Shea, I’m going to share with you my Sooper-Dooper No-Patent-Pending DIY Anti-Jet-Lag Technique. I used it in my trips to and from the UK, Japan, and Australia this past year, and I didn’t have jet lag going either direction for any one of those trips. The technique is so simple, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it first. Unless you did, in which case you can feel all smug.

Here it is: after getting your usual amount of nightly sleep, wake up at your normal time in the target time zone.

All right, maybe it doesn’t sound simple. What I mean is, figure out what time the day starts at your destination. Then modify your sleep schedule to synchronize with it before you get there. So if you always get up at sunrise, arrange things so you sleep your usual time and wake up at the same time the sun is rising at your destination.

I’ll use my trip to Australia for Web Essentials as an example. Going there, I flew across America to Los Angeles and then had nine hours before my flight across the Pacific. The United flight from LAX left at 11:15pm, and arrived in Sydney at approximately 7:00am Sydney time. Perfect: that’s about when I get up anyway. I need about six hours of sleep in a night, and the flight was 13.5 hours long. So I kept myself awake for the first half of the flight, and slept for the second. When we landed Tuesday, I was all ready to go. Sure, I was tired, but I was completely synched up with Sydney’s time zone.

Coming back was tougher, because we departed Sydney at 1:30pm and landed in Los Angeles at 11:15am the same day. Still, I knew what I had to do: wake up around 7:30am Los Angeles time (give or take an hour; I’m not overly picky about the time I wake up). So I slept only an hour or two the night before leaving, in order to intentionally shorten my waking time during the flight. Part way through the flight, I went to sleep, and woke up a few hours before landing. While I was exhausted all that day, I was in step with LA’s time zone.

As I say, I did the same going to and from Japan, and when I went over to London. Synching to the UK was actually pretty simple, because going there was a seven-hour direct flight that landed at 7:00am. I just made sure to sleep for as much of the flight as possible. The return flight was a special case, as it left in the late morning and landed in the early afternoon, Cleveland time. So I just kept myself awake until my usual bed time, and got a full night’s sleep. Ta-daaa! No jet lag.

It is no shame to support this technique with medication; I do it myself, in fact. Tylenol PM works well for me, as does Ambien. I do not, however, medicate myself into wakefulness upon arrival. No melatonin, which never has any effect on me anyway; and no caffeine, which I basically never consume in any form.

If you use this approach, odds are that you’ll be pretty tired on the day you arrive. Just keep going until whatever time you’d normally go to sleep, and then sleep until your normal wake time (or maybe an hour or two later, if you’re feeling indulgent). The next day, you’ll be back up to speed and still in synch with the local time.

Admittedly, this does require some forethought and planning, but it works for me every time.

Boy, Dave wasn’t kidding: available hotel rooms for SXSW are mighty few and far between. I ended up at the Radisson, just like Dave and a few other people I know, and that was only by calling the Radisson directly instead of going through the SXSW housing desk, which doesn’t have any more rooms available there. The direct booking was more expensive than the SXSW rate, but at least I’m on the north side of the river—oh, excuse me, the lake. Plus I got a king suite for only a few dollars more than the conference rate for a single room in the Hilton, and there’s free wifi in the lobby.

I called a number of other hotels directly, and most of them were booked up solid. Apparently, there’s a very large writers’ conference ending the day before SXSWi begins, and that’s thrown extra monkey wrenches into the gears.

So if you still haven’t booked your room, don’t wait any longer, and try calling places directly even if the SXSW site shows them as sold out. Otherwise, you’ll be a mile or more away, pay through the nose, or both. I’d have booked sooner, except I wasn’t even certain that I’d be going until a couple of weeks ago, and in the chaos of prepping for AEA and our annual holiday party, I didn’t get to booking until today. Hopefully, you’ve avoided my mistake, but if not, don’t compound it.

So… anyone else staying at the Radisson? We could all geek out in the lobby some night.

Sunday in Sydney was a day of truly beautiful weather, and after breakfast I accompanied Tantek, Amber, and Derek on a “makeshift Matrix” tour of Sydney. Amber had done some digging online and found out where a variety of scenes from The Matrix were filmed in Sydney.

Now, you have to understand that Tantek is a major Matrix fan—he’s one of the few people I know who actually liked the sequels, and having discussed it with him, I understand why he did. As anyone who knows Tantek will be unsurprised to learn, he liked them for some very deep philosophical and intellectual reasons; and yes, he has solid ground on which to base those reasons. Now consider that Tantek and I are both perfectionists, and that he had a 12″ Powerbook loaded up with his DVD of The Matrix along for the tour.

Yeah. We geeked out. Big time.

Thanks to Amber’s research and our obsessive analysis, we established fairly exact shooting locations and angles for:

• The “Adams Street Bridge” sequence, including exterior shots seen during the car ride after Neo gets picked up. It turns out that he tried to get out roughly seven feet further on from where he was picked up, despite having ridden in the car for a minute or so. See Tantek’s posts “Then go to the Adams Street bridge“, “Stop the car“, and You know that road” for pictures and more commentary.
• The fountain sequence, from the crossing of the street at the beginning of the sequence to the walk through the crowds and the side angles on Morpheus, Neo, and passers-by (including my finding a slice of the Sydney Harbor Bridge just barely visible over a series of green scrims); and, of course, the fountain itself, which is kind of hard to miss. We think someone should do a flash-mob recreation of the “freeze program” bit and document it. (Further, we acknowledge that convincing the pigeons to freeze will be a bit of a challenge.) See also Tantek’s post “Agent training program, part 1“.
• The exterior shots of the building where Morpheus was being interrogated. See also Tantek’s post “Agent Training Program part 2, Westin Sydney stairwell, Morpheus interrogation.

We also noted where the urban landscape had changed since shooting. For example, there’s an entire building missing from the background of the initial Adams Street Bridge shot, and we deduced that construction had just started when they filmed. You can see the construction fencing in the background, but no girders or walls. Similarly, the building across the street from the interrogation building has either changed or been replaced; also, none of the lobbies of the building look anything like the lobby where the shootout took place. I was able to identify the building visible through the window of the interrogation room, but we were unsure of the location of the room itself.

We also determined that it’s incredibly unlikely that the spiral staircase scene where Neo experiences déjà vu was shot in the Sydney Westin. Several web sites claim that it was, but while we found a number of staircases that had similar tile patterns (only rotated 45 degrees), none of them were even close to being a match with what appears on-screen. (See Tantek’s post Sydney Westin: Not the Matrix hotel” for more.) And we seriously plumbed the depths of the Westin, at one point getting onto a guest floor without having the required guest card and, at another, taking a service elevator to the kitchens. We also found an unlocked, unguarded Ethernet router with a number of open ports.

So that was fun. On the spot, I dubbed it “urban spelunking”, which is no doubt a completely unoriginal formulation but I was proud of it anyway.

It’s too bad that Google Maps has such low-resolution images for downtown Sydney, or else we could combine screen captures of the movie with some GMaps API magic to create an interactive virtual shooting tour. Oh well. Some day that problem will cease to exist.

After a very lovely and enjoyable dinner at Circular Quay, a short wandering tour of the Sydney Opera House, and a few hours’ sleep, it was off to the airport for the long, long flight back to the United States.

[Updated 10 January 2006 to include links to Tantek’s blog posts. Also: Hi, Kottke fans! Nice to have you drop by.]