A random assortment of experiences at day two of this year?s reboot conference:

• Building spaces with pen, paper and curiosity

  was a fantastic workshop talk by Ole Qvist-Sørensen from Bigger Picture

  : participatory and revelatory. If you're looking for a novel take on helping groups work, look here.

• While I was fiddling with pen and paper, Mark Wubben was upstairs talking about ubicomp

  , and he included a slide about The Talking Bus

  . And I wasn't there to bask in the glory of the story.

• The Place to Work

  saw thirty people squeezed into a hallway talking about working in coworking spaces, shared offices and cafés. The most interesting part was the go-around-the-room where everyone said a little about their own working situation. I sat beside Mikkel Hippe Brun

  , who rolls with his own battery-operated telephone-network connected wireless router.

• David Sjunnesson, from 1scale1

  , who I've been meeting every morning on the train in from Malmö, was the one to get me over my Arduino

  inhibitions: I spent 80 minutes cramped into a room with 30 other eager geeks (including Catherine

  ) at the Full Body Arduino

  workshop. David and his crew were excellent tutors, and when I made my Mac make the Arduino blink its LED (to my surprise) I felt God-like.

• Bruce Sterling

  , who lost me at the LIFT conference several years ago, pulled me back in with a surgically-crafted poke in the eye with a stick as the closing talk. Throw away your socks with holes, get a new bed. Brilliant observations from a position hovering a mile above our enlightened self-involvement.

• The Baking Bread

  project never did see us bake bread, but we did make a fetching solar oven that, with some fine-tuning over yesterday, got up to 136 degrees C this afternoon and made Guy Dickinson

  a mildly-steaming-hot cup of strong tea. Thanks to Peter Madsen-Mygdal for the raw materials, the wrangling and the enthusiasm.

• I met several people who found my reboot by bicycle

  guide -- prepared a couple of years ago -- useful. That felt good.

• Spent a great dinner over great Thai food

  talking with Olle

  and Luisa

  and Christian Dalager

  about all sorts of crazy ideas ("social drawing-sharing website," "RSS feed of our bank transactions," "capture the flag with RFID," etc.) Christian's a kindred spirit and our ideas and projects overlap a lot, so I'm certain we'll end up working together.

• Ended the night in the meat-packing district

  at the after-party. More loungey than Vega (where previous years ended), and a nice feel to it (it was in parking lot, so I spent a good part of the evening leaning on a transport truck's tires). Had a good chat with João Santos

  , and many laughs and good-byes with many others.

• Finished at the top of the game, as my old basketball coach always advised, and caught the midnight train with the Malmö crew.

It's 2:02 a.m. as I finish this up; should be asleep, but there's a lot to process and this is one way that helps. This was reboot number five for me, and reboot number one for Catherine (more about that when I've talked to her more about it); it's a special place with special people and I'm thankful I somehow found my way here.

A random assortment of experiences at day one of this year's reboot

conference:

• Through Morgan

  , met the team from Novalis

  , that, among other things, make a Rails application that helps measure community happiness. Exchanged business cards with hopes that their work might somehow benefit QoIL

  .

• Had an good conversation with Luisa

  and Catherine

  and Jonas

  and Yann

  about community building, neighbourhoods and digital-physical crossovers like this

  .

• Got together with an interesting group of people to build

  a prototype of a solar bread oven

  using cardboard, aluminum foil, plastic and glue. We call it a "prototype" because it never got about 36 degrees C

  inside. But we're going back at it today.

• Took the Flickr Bike

  , helpfully lent by Mark

  , to the shop around the corner to buy an oven thermometer. Of course the bike took pictures of the journey

  .

• Injured my leg getting on the Flickr Bike: forgot there was a sharp solar panel on the back and put a minor gash into my femur. I will survive.
• Did more session-surfing than session-immersion. Lost heart mid-afternoon -- likely a combination of solar bread oven fatigue and dehydration -- but regained my moxie around supper time.
• Made a tiny contribution to Ton's Open Government Data

  by talking about the ClosedCorporations.org

  project.

• Met David Sjunnesson

  and decided to attend today's Full Body Arduino

  workshop.

• Sat across from Dave Weinberger

  at supper, wherein he (very pleasantly, and with much skill) tried to drive a wedge between Catherine

  on the "net culture vs. wool culture" issue. Followed by an informative conversation about the Google Book Search Settlement

  .

• Lamented the absence of a vegetarian option at supper: the food was local, well-prepared (over roaring fires outside on the patio), but very sheep-based.
• Put forward the Royalty Oaks Project

  for the Reboot Prize

  .

• Left early, by reboot terms, catching the 23h00 train to Malmö with the Malmövians; exhausted and somewhat mind-boggled, but otherwise happy.

Today, day two.

Today was my day to go exploring outside of the immediate neighbourhood of our apartment here in Malmö and south into so-called "integrated Malmö," which is to say "interesting Malmö," which is to say "the rich and diverse part Malmö that includes people from many cultures."

The dividing line between downtown touristic commercial Malmö and the other Malmö is quite stark: you walk past the Triangeln

shopping centre on Södra Förstadsgatan and all of a sudden H&M

gives way to Myrorna

, and the innumerable Espresso House

of downtown disappear, replaced with innumerable places to buy falafel.

Both sides of Malmö have their attractions, but this "other" Malmö certainly pulses with a more dynamic energy.

My immediate destination was Restaurang Nowroz

-- and I had a wonderful meal of grilled chicken and rice

there -- but I spent an hour or so wandering around the streets and alleys, eventually ending up in front of Carib Kreol

, our destination for tonight's pre-reboot supper

(as I picked the place, I felt the least I could do was to ensure it was actually there).

On the way back to our neighbourhood I came very close to buying, for 125 SEK, a fetching dark-green waist-length wool jacket at the aforementioned Myrorna

used clothing shop; I ultimately decided, despite its wonderfulness, that it was about a size too small for me (or I a size to large for it). If you're more L than XL and are in the market for a nice jacket, it's waiting there for you...

I walked back to our Västergatan apartment in time to meet up with Guy

, just arrived from Manchester. On the way I stopped at the Five o'clock tehandel

tea shop to pick up a small bag of 2009 first-flush Darjeeling, which sounds more impressive until I tell you I've no idea what that means and even less impressive once I managed to bungle its preparation and produced the evilest, foulest-tasting tea ever prepared. To his credit, Guy grimaced, but finished his cup. Nobody asked for more. Darjeeling needs a gentler touch than I can offer it, I fear.

After some time in our beautiful courtyard knocking around ideas with Guy, we were joined by Olle

and headed back into Other Malmö for supper with Luisa

, Morgan

and, later, M.C. Widerkrantz

(who introduced himself by saying "Deb Richardson

says to say hello," thus proving the Escher

-like nature of the hacker community that we think is vast but that actually only includes 112 people).

After supper (tasty, served with friendliness, but ultimately not life-changing) we stopped for a brief spot of coffee and Setúbal-sourced alcohol and then walked Guy back to retrieve his gear and set him off on the train over to Copenhagen (the other Other Malmö).

Tomorrow morning it's up before the dawn

to join Luisa at Signal Digital

for the day, where they've kindly offered me a temporary desk to set down and do a day of concerted paying work amidst all this merriment.

Today we joined a gaggle of Malmöians and drove up to the northern tip of Skåne to visit the occasionally putative independent country of Ladonia

. It was a beautiful day: sun shining, temperature around 18 degrees, no bugs, good company.

To get to Ladonia we headed to the Kullaberg Nature Reserve

, parked our car in the second of two parking lots, and then followed the unofficial wayfinding -- yellow Ns painted on trees -- through the forest and then down a steep slope to the boulder-strewn shore.

Once there we found the "village" of Nimis:

And, up the shore a little, the "village" of Arx:

Both are the product of the imagination, resolve and hard labour of artist Lars Vilks and are quite a site to behold (see a map of all my photos here

).

If you do go yourself beware that it's quite a strenuous hike at times, especially the steep parts as you head down to the shore from the main path. There are rocks and roots to trip over and mud to slip on. You need good shoes and good balance.

A silver lining at the beginning or end of your journey to Ladonia is Himmelstorpsgården, a pleasant little café with outdoor seating that serves coffee, cinnamon rolls, and nice pear-flavoured ice cream treats

.

Our choice of Finnair

as the airline to get us to Copenhagen was based entirely on price. Well, that and that it wasn't Air Canada.

Things started out well enough: quick check-in, on-time departure, seats together. Our seats were a little cramped, mind you -- more Japan Airlines-like than I would prefer -- and the presence of Gigantor and his partner in the seats in front of us, constantly moving their seats back and forth, switching positions, flailing their arm rests back at us and complaining about the indignity of it all, didn't help (recall that every social nuance, good and bad, is amplified 10 times in the low-oxygen environment 10km in the air). But we were making out okay.

And then the toilets filled up.

It seems that older planes such as ours are not, according to the flight attendant, equipped with advanced technologies that allow things like the filled-upness of the sewage tanks to be detected by anything other than faith. And so when the ground crew in Toronto forgot to empty them, the only way to detect this was when they filled up to the top over Greenland, 4 hours into the flight.

I'm not sure what the specific regulations governing this are, but apparently you're not allowed to fly 200 Clamato and Diet Coke-filled passengers for 3 more hours without a way to pee. So arrangements were made to divert us to Reykjavik for de-sewage and re-fuel. And this is how we came to be on the ground in Iceland at 3:30 a.m.

The turnaround was quick -- not surprising given the paucity of 3:30 a.m. air traffic at Keflavik Airport -- but with the delay itself and the additional flying miles required for the diversion we were 90 minutes late getting into Helsinki and our flight to Copenhagen had already left.

Fortunately Helsinki-Vantaa Airport sports free, fast public wifi and I was able to tweet our delay

, and this was quickly received and passed along

. And Finnair quickly threw together a new routing for us via Stockholm that would see us arriving in Copehnagen only four hours later than planned.

The rest of the journey, save, ironically, any free time to pee, went without problems; we even had special "premium economy" seats on the SAS flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen that entitled us to slightly more leg room and a tasty snack of smoked salmon on hearty dark bread. Much to our surprise our luggage made it with us, and we were on the train to Malmö at 15h16.

Olle

, bless his heart, was wandering around the outside of Central Station in Malmö canvassing for our arrival, and he picked us up in his hands and dropped us at our lovely downtown apartment, kindly rented to us by his coworker Isak, and before we knew it we were, despite significant jet lag, showered, dressed, and eating Indian food accompanied by Chinese beer and discussing the geopolitical.

It's good to be back.

Oliver has posted a brief video

of the wedding we were at last night to his blog. Yes, Oliver has a blog.

Back in the days when Highway #7 running from Peterborough to Ottawa was my corridor-of-choice, I recall a weekend where my friend Stephen Southall and I decided to stop at every restaurant between Peterborough and Tweed and have a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich. As you might expect, it was an exhausting but ultimately satisfying day.

More recently on the BLT front, BLT From Scratch Summertime Challenge!

from Michael Ruhlman:

A collective challenge for all of you who really love to cook: Make a BLT from scratch. No, this does not mean raising a piglet for the bacon or growing your own wheat to grind into flour. Yes, extra credit for either, but I want this to be a challenge that everyone can accept, whether you live in a Manhattan walk-up or rural North Carolina, Alaska or suburban splendor: make a BLT from scratch, photograph it and send the photo to me. If you blog, blog about it (and please link back to this post to encourage others to accept the challenge).

From scratch means: You grow your tomato, you grow your lettuce, you cure your own bacon or pancetta, you bake your own bread (wild yeast preferred and gets higher marks but is not required), you make your own mayo. All other embellishments, creative interpretations of the BLT welcome.

A great idea.

As I first noted in 2001

and as well-reviewed in the Spring 1986 issue of The Island

, the original owners of our house at 100 Prince Street

, the family of Henry Smith, set forth in the late fall of 1858 for New Zealand. By way of explaining what might draw Islanders into such a Herculean venture The Island suggests:

Reports on the favourable New Zealand climate could also have been an inducement to emigrate. The conditions and the terms of the Waste Lands Act as applying in the six provinces were set out by Charles Hursthouse in his book New Zealand, the 'Britain of the South', published in 1857. Its favourable reports on the colony's potential and careful instructions for would-be emigrants were believed at the time to have influenced the architects of the Prince Edward expedition, especially Robert Haszard, who was its principal organizer.

Thanks to Google, it's now possible to read New Zealand, or Zealandia, the Britain of the South

in its entirety (there's another edition as well

, although it's incomplete). It's a truly amazing work -- I wish there were contemporary versions available for all the countries of the world. Here's what it suggests is one of the attractions for those who might immigrate:

Families emigrating to New Zealand in 1861 will find a population sufficiently large to have subdued the roughness of the wilderness to have established society and social institutions to have founded several thriving Settlements and to have raised annual exports to the value of nearly a million sterling But they will not find a population sufficiently large as in the United States and in the older emigration fields of Canada and Australia to have taken the cream of the country by monopolizing town and village sites garden valleys water privileges and the crack agricultural estate creating lands.

All was not altruistic sweetness and light however:

The occurrence of the native disturbances described in the last chapter is much to be lamented. But we must remember that these affect only the north island and that in all human probability these ere long will effectually and for ever be put down. Indeed in a few months I trust we shall be able to liken these native disturbances to the thunder storm clearing the political atmosphere of the north and producing for the Auckland and New Plymouth emigrant of 1861 such welcome fruits as good land and plenty of it clear titles and good laws.

In other words, no so much unlike Canada.

Update: You can buy a re-print, New Zealand, Or, Zealandia, The Britain of the South, Volume I

, from Amazon.com.

Anyone who knows me knows that my usual habit when in a new and exciting city is to immediately start making plans to move there. And Paris was no exception: one bite of a chocolate croissant fresh out of the oven and I was apartment hunting in my mind.

While such dreams are mostly just thought experiments, integral to the experimental procedure is the vague possibility that the dream might come true, and having a job that I can perform anywhere and a partner who's open to crazy ideas makes that possible.

That is until I waited long enough for Oliver to put down roots. Damn.

When I broached the idea of up and moving to Paris with Oliver yesterday, the scent of chocolate croissant still on our lips, he shut down the whole experiment immediately.

I'll miss my friends! I'll miss the market! I'll miss Kennie and Winnie! My teacher! Prince Street School! Ann! Gary! Sydny! My room! Owl's Hollow! Music lessons!

Any window shopping in front of flat rental places was forbidden and all crazy talk shut down.

Two years ago we could have pulled this off and Oliver wouldn't have noticed. But then he had to up and develop his own identity. Kids.