You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian variety show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

Enjoy
John

This is the end, beautiful friend...

I didn't want to quote Jim Morrison's "The End" but when I read the title of 23rd thing I couldn't get the song out of my mind. But this is not the end. On the contrary, this exercise made a beginning for me by getting me to start this blog.

It is my hope that now I'm "out there" I can develop this blog and maybe a Wiki or two into a resource for Independent Travelers. My next step is to fill these sites with enough critical mass to attract others to contribute.

From the above you may deduce that the simple starting of this blog is the thing that I believe will most affect my pursuit of life long learning. My new online presence opens opportunities for learning. By using this blog and other blog and feed searches like technorati and Web 2.0 tools I will try to find other travel enthusiasts to share in this independent travel forum.

My only critique of the of the learning program is that some of the learning sections were too librarian centric. This is a mild criticism and I would enjoy completing other learning programs librarian centric or not.

John

Audiobooks and Other Downloadables

I visited SuffolkWave to see their offering of downloadables and very impressed with their selection.

One comment I'll make though is that it would be nice if they had a search parameter for only items that were in stock.

My mother likes mysteries and I was able to sort this list by author but it would have been nice to see only the authors in stock. As a consolation you can reserve but I'm not sure how the notification system works.

I did download an Italian language course that was interesting. "Learn in your car Italian complete" I've tried one chapter so far and found it helpful.

John

Podcasts

I had trouble recommending a podcast on traveling in Italy not because there wasn't alot to choose from but audio descriptions of Italy somehow seam lacking. I did try one that had nice descriptive sections on different tourist attractions in Florence, Venice and Rome.

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=93c93279bdd1299175e84cafe87a08e5

I will recommend one that I liked on learning Italian. It has a different take on learning. You learn through jokes. They tell typical Italian jokes and then translate. It's not for beginners in the language but if you have a background in Italian they can be fun.

There are 116 episodes so far and you can subscribe. This is one that I will add to my list of things to get done. I hope I find the time.

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=b1fab0f82e0c6427daa33591d3ed574e

John

You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian variety show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

Enjoy
John

You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian verity show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

You Tube Video

Enjoy
John

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I looked at a few Travel tools and thought Real Travel and Gusto were interesting.

On Real Travel http://realtravel.com/ you can search by travel destination to get reviews on hotels, restaurants itineraries etc. They have some paid travel information on hotels etc but they also have reviews and blogs by travelers.

I found it an easy way to search for blogs about destinations in Italy. There is also a nice feature that lists near by destinations. From there you can start new searches for blogs and ideas.

Gusto http://www.gusto.com/ was a similar site but set up more as a social network of travelers. I'll have to see if I can find some independent travelers there to network with. The few I looked at were more of the tour type travelers.

John

Independent travel summary

This is a word document on Zoho Writer. If you want to have access to use, add or modify this form please comment with you e-mail address and I will share it with you.

INDEPENDENT TRAVEL SUMMARY

This is a Template Document for a description of an INDEPENDENT TRAVEL EXPERIENCE

Please feel free to use this template or use your own format to describe your travel experiences. You may find many items on this form that apply to your travel experiences; please try to resond to all that apply. Even the simplest tip form your travel experiences could be what sets off a chain of events that brings fellow traveler to that sweet-spot of independent travel. We've all been there and travel to get there again.

This Template is only meant as a guide to help you describe the aspects of your trip that would be usefull to fellow independent travelers. It is my hope that over time the template will become more inclusive and refined as it is used by travelers of different tastes, backgrounds and experience levels. Please feel free to change, augment or refine anything you wish.

Independent Travel Summary

Writer's information

Date

Name

E-mail

Blog

Other Contact info

Travel Destination Info

Travel Date

Travel Companions/Group Size

Type of Travel (General purpose .ie Business, Historical, Art, Food, General Tourist .etc)

Country Visited

Regions Visited

Cities

City Districts

For each Region visited

What Cities did you visit

Any other destinations of note

How well do you understand the local language/customs

Over all how did you

Get in

Get around

Get out

Itineraries

For specific cities or towns

Get in

Get around

What did See/Do (Museums, Churches, Historical Monuments etc.)

Itineraries

Eat

Drink

Stay safe

Get out

PB Wiki

When I first looked at this web address I had no idea that the PB stood for peanut butter. After seeing the site it reminded me of the code word me and my friend Drew used on our first trip Europe.

We hitched-hiked from London to Rome and back and if during our travels either one of us felt funny about a ride or a situation we would say Peanut butter and if the other agreed they would say jelly. Then we would clap our hands like putting the sandwich together and split, leave, get the hell out of there!

It was a good system because you might be a little nervous for no good reason one time and you would miss out on a good time or a good ride. This way there had to be consensus that this was a "bad scene" before we bolted.

Needless to say but we didn't miss out on many good times and met and slept (with/in) a lot of interesting (people /places).

I found a wiki on travel. http://wikitravel.org/en/Mediterranean_Europe It has a good outline and a lot of information on Italy but only on the main attractions. I can't decide whether to help add to this site or develop my own. We'll see maybe I'll try filling in Padua for them and see how it goes.

Well, back to the PBWiki. I entered my blog on the wiki and made an entry to one of the pages. I hope I didn't step over any lines when I used %&#%!$* symbols in my post. I guess the saying can be loosely referred to as a literary device.

I thought that posting was easy but it was hard to figure out how the formatting buttons worked. I liked the preview button so you could try out different formatting codes and see what happened.


John

Wiki Wiki Wah?

I liked Princeton Public Library's "BookLoversWiki". I thought the page set up was clear, well laid out and the script was large and easy to read. (Don't you hate that 7.5 font size) I even found a book to read Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House.

I thought that mirroring this wiki might be a good application for our library. Their wiki is edited by the adult reading club at the PPL.

I know that it can be hard enough to get public participation in the reading part of the book club but if you can break this technology barrier with our patrons that might open up a another avenue of community involvement for the library.

You could give out extra prizes for participation and set up special computer for wiki entries with trained support staff near by to help walk new patrons through the process.

Sy Sims said it best.

An educated consumer is our best customer.

John

Library 2.0 - To Infinity and Beyond

I liked Dr. Wendy Schultz "Buzz Lightyear" approach to her article. http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/6.htm.

From commodity to product to service and then experience her progression is an enlighten look at the future of the library experience.

No matter how disconnected we become I believe that the person to person interaction is the key to our success as an entity, community, world and finally species.

I'll see you all at the Restaurant/Library at the end of the Universe. Don't forget your towel.
To infinity and beyond......

John

Technorati

I started to use this tool to find blogs about Italy and Independant Travel. The two I've found so far are:
http://italyinstructions.com/Welcome.html
and
http://bluegrassbaobabs.blogspot.com/2007/07/italia-arrivederci.html

The first looks like a professional site that's selling a guide book but they have some very good general information. The Planning your adventure pdf is helpful and has good information on how to use your cell phone in italy among other things.

The second site is more of a travelogue of one lady's trip around Italy.

I found the search bar using blogs the most helpful. Searching for Italy and Travel under posts had too many responses. Tags I found were even less helpful I guess everyone tags there posts with Italy (over 480K posts). The blog directory search came up with the same results as searching the blogs tab after a posts search. I also used a keyword search so I could take out all the hotel offer sites.

It was interesting to see what are the popular blogs and searches. I guess other than Ron Paul it's your mixture of internet sites and your ET crowd.

After this program I'll get around to claiming my blog.

John

Folksomonies for delicious Tagging

I've looking around at the del.icio.us site http://del.icio.us/ to see how I can make this internet tool work for me and the Independent Travel concept of this blog.

Just by looking around I found a bunch of websites to bookmark on ITI (Independent Travel Italy). Now I need to open an account and put together my list of sites by cherry-picking the favorites of others. It's a little cumbersome searching other people’s favorites because it's hard to tell what their focus is when they bookmark on del.icio.us.

I hope to have my own list up and will link this blog to the ITI tag so everyone can see what I have so far.
John

RollYo - Something I did in the 70s

This is a nice feature for those who do a lot of simular searches.
I set up a new account at RollYo and made a combined searchroll. The searchroll I created is about films. I combined the search feature of three web-sites I usually check on new movies.
I made my searchroll public. Here's a link to my searchroll.
http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?prevsid=298745&q=Search+for...&sid=298745
Here, check out your favorite films.
John

A Library Thing

Well a Library Thing is just too many things.

I could sit here all day and add books and I'm not a voracious reader. I tend to like fantasy. I like it when strange things happen to the characters in books I read. I've listed some of the old books I read more than 20 years ago. I'm not sure they still hold up but they bring back fond memories.

I read some of the discussions and added or changed the covers of the books in my library. Who knew there were so many covers for the same book. I tried to select the cover I remember reading if it was available. It's not always the best looking but I was going for a historical approach.

Well here it is. I doubt I'll update this further.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/johncox

John

Image Generators

Is it Hot!! in here? Because I'm on Fire!

I'm having fun with image generators. I found the image above at http://cooltext.com/Logo-Design?LogoID=91040008 . The flames are supposed to be moving but either the blog doesn't support that or I'm doing something wrong. I'm still asking around but if someone has any ideas please post a comment.

This next image came from Letter James. http://www.letterjames.com/start.php?d02KXCd0v98PTr5Olpb518YI29eBah

As you can see I have a fixation on me!

Finding Feeds

Finding feeds? Finding feeds...! Will I ever have the time to read the articles is the real operative. Finding feeds has been fun though.



I liked Topix.net for local news. There was a big accident on Sunrise Highway the other day and I used Topix to find news from blogs and RSS news feeds for Patchogue. From there I was able to find out about the accident and get my fix of local gossip. Who's driving under the influence etc. Look out new Patchogue residents (Kelly) we're watching.

I also found a new feed, Slashdot, on Syndic8. It was off their most viewed list . It's a collection of articles from science and technology. Their description is "News for nerds, stuff that matters".

I found this article on the Smart Car coming to America on Slashdot. If you don't know, that's a car about the size of sneaker that is popular in Europe and other parts of the world.




Lastly, so far, I used Technorati to find pictures. I liked this feature because you can search for blogs, videos, events and pictures all on the same site.

We used to say when I worked in a warehouse, Feed Me? Feed Me? You can't feed me fast enough! What that means, Chi sa.
John

Slow Food (Italy, Food and a way of life) RSS Feed

I have created a Bloglines reader at http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs and I just added a RSS Feed to this blog.

The feed is from Slow Food Gatherer. I believe this site is related to the Slow Food Movement. The feed is on the lower left.

Slow Food was first started in Italy 1989. Here is a description from their web site http://www.slowfood.com/ of what they are all about.

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Today, we have over 80,000 members all over the world.

When I travel in Italy I try to eat at restaurants that subscribe to this philosophy and taste the signature dish that has the Slow Food imprimatur. Every time I have done this the meal has not failed to be a memorable experience.

Check out the website, try the food and live the lifestyle.

John

Anything Technology Related-Watson can you hear me

It was hard for me to come up with a technology related topic. Like many of you, technology goes on in the background of my life, with out much notice from me. That is until it stops working!

One thing I did find interesting was an article in the Times about gene sequencing. They have just finished sequencing James D Watson's genome. If you don't know he is from the famous pair Watson and Crick, who cracked the secret to gene replication the double helix.

Now they are starting to map the genome of more and more people. The more information they have on people’s genome and what happens to them (genetic diseases they get) they will be able to predict what genes do. Then if you have your own genome sequenced you can take preventive steps to improve your health.

The sequencing was only just under a million dollars for Dr. Watson. So if you have a mill to spare.... Elementary my dear, Watson!
John

Just having some fun with Flickr mashups.

I found this one from a site that listed what they considered the top ten Flickr Mashups

http://www.webmonkey.com/06/08/index4a.html

I liked this mashup called captioner because who doesn't like putting words into other peoples mouths. For some reason I can't get the picture to load with the caption but I'm working on it.

http://shadydentist.com/captioner/

Can you think up a caption for this picture?

Horniman Portrait #4 Uploaded on 25 October 2006
By fotologic

How about

So what if my face is a little hairy and I'm into German curls...

I could do this all day!

Flickr and the Turkey Carcass

I have been looking at the flickr sight and discovering the different features that the sight provides, groups, sets, tags etc.. and decided to link to my almost brother-in-law Michael's site. (you see conviventi (Italian for shacking up) runs in the family) He has a great flickr site that shows all of these features.

Michael Cammer takes more pictures then anyone I know. Don't mention navel lint to him or he might start a whole new picture set and you can never know where that will lead.

All this activity has lead him to make an extensive flickr site that makes good use of tags and sets. Alot of his pictures are private but he has a large public area.

Be forewarned Michael is an artist and is not tied to what many would consider normal bounds of propriety.

Here's a link to a Thanksgiving Day 2006 picture. From there you can access the rest of his flickr site and see his use of sets and tags.

http://flickr.com/photos/mcammer/305435065/in/set-72157594519761572/

Bon Apppetit
John

Dual-use of this Blog

The original idea for this blog is to discuss independent travel in Italy. I will still try to stay on this topic as I add posts but I will also discuss my experiences with learning 2.0. As you see posts on travel you will also see posts on the different activities of Learning 2.0 and comments by myself and others on the experience.

Learning 2.0 is an independent learning experience on technology on the internet. This program was the kick in the pants that got this blog started and now hopefully I won't get to sore to keep it going.

John

What's the meaning of all this?

That may be a deeper question then this blog deserves or can reasonable accommodate.
But, if we take the simple and literal aspect of the question with respect to the blog title the answer would be: To create a space where independent travelers to Italy may discuss, advise, recommend and even "bitch" about their experiences while traveling in Italy.

This is my first attempt at blogging. As I become more familiar with the format and flesh out the ideas that I would like discussed; I will open the blog up for participation to all that are interested. It is my hope that this blog will become a valuable source of travel information for all lovers of independent travel in Italy

Benvenuti tutti,
John