For some time  (100,000 years  in internet dog years), I’ve wanted to collect *all* the travel blogs in one spot and organize them by destination.    That’s not happening … yet …  but I’m very happy to see so many great folks online blogging travel now as well as many  lists of bloggers p

Wow, I sure had a remarkably difficult time getting my pictures from Flickr to a flash drive to a slide show on our high def TV using the PS3.     Seems like it should have been a snap, but here are some troubleshooting tips if you find yourself with the same challenge  (Why bother? [...]

Hardbat Classic Las Vegas – Eric Owens and Wally Green Originally uploaded by JoeDuck As a table tennis enthusiast I’m hoping Bud Light brings back the Big Money Hard Bat Classic Hard Bat Table Tennis Tournament they had last year across the country, with a great finale tournament in Las Vegas and then shown on

Another reminder (because I’ve needed this many times) that you must enable WordPresses “Remote Publishing” protocols if you want to blog photos directly from Flickr  (a fantastic feature – I wish more people could do this but it remains a little tricky to set up both at Flickr and at WP unless you

Ben’s Europe Set D Originally uploaded by JoeDuck Munich, Germany. The influence of US culture was remarkable in Europe, especially given how much Europeans tend to resent US cultural encroachments. McDonald’s, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken stores were fairly common, though many seemed to adjust to the

UPDATE:  Hypothesis appears DISproved.  After under an hour Google has correctly posted Technology-Report.com’s coverage of this issue “yahoo bing search” ahead of JoeDuck.com’s  at Google Blog  Search.  This is the RIGHT answer.   Good work Google! ——————

Rome Colosseum, Forum, Palatine Hill Originally uploaded by JoeDuck My son summed up the situation well about the Roma Pass, which probably isn’t worth the $25 Euros to most if they can avoid the Colosseum lines, which I think you can do if you buy that ticket as a combo ticket at the Palatine Hill [...]

When I hear Paul Krugman -brilliant nobel laureate economist – fret about the economy and global warming I’m always confused by what seem to me to be grossly overstated concerns about both the health of capitalism and the health of the planet in general.    Krugman’s views – to me – seem pois

First, note that I’m a big fan of the concept of “The Singularity” and of Ray Kurzweil, the brilliant technological evangelist who is creating a film to introduce the concept, The Singularity is Near. However I find it more than ironic that the film is delayed.    It’s not even clear from the websi

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. [...]

On the Europe trip we visited several places designated as “UNESCO World Heritage Sites” such as the Naeroyfjord region of Norway, The Jungfrau / Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, and the Cinque Terre in Italy,  but I was only vaguely familiar with how those designations come to be.     Here is the list of all

Vernazza in Cinque Terre Italy 310 Originally uploaded by JoeDuck Not sure if I already blogged this picture, but the place I can’t stop thinking about on our Europe trip is Vernazza and the Cinque Terre. It really was a beautiful combination of scenery, solitude, great food, and old world charm that is hard to [...]

I wish I’d blogged our Europe trip more here and I think I’ll start posting a play by play with pictures – maybe a post a day for each of the 19 days we were in Europe. In the meantime check out the blogging family European Adventure at Travel and History

Although we had a wonderful trip to Europe, with fewer problems and more great moments than I expected, it’s so great to be back in lovely Oregon USA.    Free water and free clean public bathrooms are only part of the charm and appeal.    Yesterday I headed down to our local grocery to pick [...]

Cinque Terre Italy 057 Originally uploaded by JoeDuck Vernazza’s reputation as one of the finest travel destinations on earth … is deserved. We had a fine stay and I wished we could have spent another several days in the Cinque Terre.

Most of the European health care systems provide about the same care as the US at about half the cost.   This is extraordinary when you think about it, especially because  we in the US pride ourselves on innovation and cost effectiveness.    What’s up with this?    Still not at all clear to me, [...]

One of the things that always strikes me during travel is how insulated we are in the USA from the rest of the world. Some of this is geographical – ie the USA is a huge country and folks don’t often move across national borders unless you are in the handful of cities that border [...]

Copenhagen Originally uploaded by JoeDuck Writing from Oslo, Norway: Four countries and three trains and two days from Venice we’ve made it up to Oslo and will fly back to PDX tomorrow. It’s been harder than I expected to keep up with the blogging so I’ll be doing a lot over the coming weeks to [...]

Copenhagen Originally uploaded by JoeDuck Writing from Oslo, Norway: Four countries and three trains and two days from Venice we’ve made it up to Oslo and will fly back to PDX tomorrow. It’s been harder than I expected to keep up with the blogging so I’ll be doing a lot over the coming weeks to [...]

The family and I are well into our Europe Rail blogging adventure and things are going fairly smoothly with only a few hundred exceptions, most in magnificent Italy where the spectacular history is a bit eclipsed by the confusion of getting around and getting good information. Read more about the trip at www.TravelandHistor

Rome Colosseum, Forum, Palatine Hill Originally uploaded by JoeDuck I’m posting the trip at www.TravelandHistory.com

I think I’ve blogged this problem before, but given how great it is to post Flickr photos to a blog (even those from others with credit automatically linked), I think I need to repeat this.    My problem after setting up a new blog was not to to this: In WordPress dashboard under Settings > [...]

This is an OLD video from Craig Venter speaking at the TED Conference.    Today he announced that his team has done it.   Amazing.

One of the most obvious things I assert is also the thing that bothers people the most.   It’s that most of us tend to fret or show  compassion over trivial or questionable things while we ignore the catastrophic circumstances that plague so many people around the world. A great recent example is the effort [...]

Another mini Facebook Firestorm has come from old messages that suggest Mark Zuckerberg really doesn’t care much about protecting user privacy.   For those of you who think there is much care about privacy in any online sector,  I have some online oceanfront property for you in Arizona.    Privacy is dead, but we

Something that always amazes me in the computer world is how poorly many “computer experts” understand how poorly most regular folks understand common computer tasks. Today’s tip is how to avoid that incredibly pesky tendency of Windows to open the WRONG PROGRAM when you click on a file.    This is calle

In a recent post we talked about Dr. Stephen Hawking’s concerns that we may encounter unfriendly aliens, and the idea that we don’t even want no stinking alien contact around our earth.     I disagreed and to my surprise cannot  find nearly enough support for what I think is an obvious notion – superint

Just thought i’d throw out a post from the Key of C Coffee shop in Ashland Oregon where I was visiting with pal Keith who always has great travel insights – in fact he has a great website for Tuvalu: Nanumea in Tuvalu and another for Italy:  http://wonderfulitaly.wordpress.com/ Ashland is home to an amazing n

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant physicist who brings so much insight to physics, cosmology, and the study of the universe in general, seems to have been spent a bit too much time watching “Independence Day” or ABC’s new TV show “V”  before filming a recent segment on his new Discover Channel se

You can feel the budget bucks blowing as unprecedented government spending continues to  1. Fix the immediate problems in the economy  and 2. threatens major future disruptions of the economy and standards of living. Unfortunately the polarization in politics has the most vocal folks in the camp either keeping quiet about