Category Archives: Travel

A Santa Barbara itinerary from ChatGPT

I asked ChatGPT for a three-day itinerary to give visitors to Santa Barbara. Here ya go: Day 1: Start the day with breakfast at the Shoreline Beach Cafe, which has a beautiful view of the ocean. After breakfast, head to … Continue reading

Posted in AI, Photography, Places, Travel | 2 Comments

From Hollywood Park Racetrack to SoFi Stadium

Hollywood Park Racetrack is gone. In its place is SoFi Stadium, the 77,000-seat home of Los Angeles’ two pro football teams and much else, including the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater. There’s also more to come in the surrounding vastness of Hollywood Park, … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Art, Aviation, Awesome, Business, california, data, infrastructure, Photography, Places, Technology, Travel | 4 Comments

Car design trends

On Quora, here’s my answer to What are the worst design trends in modern cars?—updated by our family’s experience with a new Toyota that features even more indicators than the bunch above:::: Based on driving lots of late-model rental cars, here’s a … Continue reading

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The eventual normal

One year ago exactly (at this minute), my wife and I were somewhere over Nebraska, headed from Newark to Santa Barbara by way of Denver, on the last flight we’ve ever taken. Prior to that we had put about four … Continue reading

Posted in Future, Travel | Leave a comment

Higher education adrift

In Your favorite cruise ship may never come back: 23 classic vessels that could be laid-up, sold or scrapped, Gene Sloan (aka @ThePointsGuy) named the Carnival Fantasy as one those that might be headed for the heap. Now, sure enough, there it is, in the … Continue reading

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Home is where one’s butt is

I don’t want to explain why we’re bivouac’d at a friend’s house in San Marino. What matters, for the purpose of this post, is that we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Covid-19 pandemic. But hey, it’s a … Continue reading

Posted in california, conferencing, Digital Life, Family, Friends, Social, Travel | Leave a comment

New York lights

I had a bunch of errands to run today, but also a lot of calls. And, when I finally got up from my desk around 4pm with plans to head out in the car, I found five inches of snow … Continue reading

Posted in infrastructure, Nature, new york, News, Travel | Tagged | Leave a comment

An evacuated view on the #ThomasFire

Here’s the latest satellite fire detection data, restricted to just the last twelve hours of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro:That’s labeled 1830 Mountain Standard Time (MST), or 5:30pm Pacific, about half an hour ago as I write … Continue reading

Posted in Broadcasting, data, Family, Geography, Life, Photography, problems, ThomasFire, Travel, tv, weather, wildfire | Leave a comment

#ThomasFire live

[Update: 7:22am Monday December 11] Two views of ThomasFire developments. First, MODIS fire detections, plotted on Google Earth Pro, current at 7am Pacific time: Second, a screenshot of the NCWG (National Wildfire Coordinating Group) map of the area, 7:18am Pacific … Continue reading

Posted in Geography, infrastructure, problems, Santa Barbara, Travel | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A miracle of flight

That was the view to the south from 31,000 feet above the center of Greenland a few hours ago: a late afternoon aurora over a blue dusk. According to my little hand-held GPS, we were around here: “11/10/17, 11:48:32 AM” “2.4 mi” … Continue reading

Posted in Aviation, Awesome, Travel | 4 Comments