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As of 1pm Eastern time yesterday, we’re homeless. Having agreed the sale of our house in March and completed the process three weeks ago, yesterday we packed up, cleaned up, and drove away in a bright yellow van (not the one pictured). This is of course a chosen homelessness, and we have plenty of places to stay and support structures to rest on. This weekend we’re in Chicago with Kari’s family. Tomorrow we fly to California, and from there to New Zealand, Australia, and on into Asia. ...

The movers are downstairs, gradually emptying our house, and we can finally begin to emerge from the task-oriented tunnel vision that has been a necessary part of the past fortnight. As more and more people asked me whether I was excited about the trip that will fill our next two months, I’ve generally had to answer that I was trying not to think about it other than logistically. There was too much to do to allow such distractions. ...

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | US rejects German G8 climate goal “A top US climate official said the G8 should not dictate members’ policies, but President Bush said he still had a “strong desire” for a post-Kyoto plan.” – the double-speak is remarkable. The G8 is not an entity that can dictate to (tags: climatechange g8summit globalwarming kyoto)

Juan Cole: Libby Sentences to 30 Months “The same is true for Cheney himself and for Karl Rove, Bush’s political adviser. They are all traitors who betrayed an undercover US operative who was attempting to work against the ayatollahs in Tehran.” (tags: cheney juancole politics rove scooterlibby treason) Rice v. Cheney (Harper’s Magazine) It’s seemed for quite some time now that Dick Cheney was undermining Condoleeza Rice’s statements in the middle east, and here’s more evidence. Not that I support much of what Rice has to say, but I’d probably take it over Cheney’s PfNAC imperialism. ...

I’ve been resisting the temptating to chronicle every example of the combined inanity of the Bush administration and certain US media outlets, but in the midst of the busy-ness of this week a cheap shot just couldn’t be resisted. This headline appeared over the weekend in USA Today. I was really hoping for a follow-up the next day along the lines of “other leaders ask if invitation was lost in mail.” ...

cityofsound: Postopolis!: Matt Clark, Arup “Rethinking sustainability beyond LEED certification should involve calculating the total energy cost of the building. Every piece of steel used in construction comes out of a blast furnace, which uses a vast amount of energy. In stating that the gre (tags: greenbuilding leed postopolis sustainability) New Sufjan Stevens - “In The Words Of The Governor” (Stereogum Premiere) New Sufjan, by Sufjan (not yet another cover). And I doubt it’s what many of us were expecting. ...

One of the numerous side projects that’s been keeping me from blogging (alongside working full time and preparing for a round-the-world trip and an international move) made a quiet launch yesterday. You can find it over at shop.georgiamusicstore.com. The site is a component of a wider online presence for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, providing e-commerce facilities for their gift shop. It went through numerous iterations as they refined how they wanted to manage stock, and now takes stock updates uploaded from CSV files for easy integration with their other back-office systems. Payments are handled through the excellent Active Merchant which makes the payment side of e-commerce development a breeze. Search come from ferret, and a little reassurance is provided by the wonderful exception_notification. ...

UPDATE (June 13th ‘07): My plazes are back. Apparently it took a while for the data to migrate. Would have been nice if they’d warned/informed us… For some months now I’ve been running the plazer utility on my laptop, which provides a quick way to submit details of whichever network I find myself on to the plazes website. So far there’s been little benefit from it beyond seeing a nice log of places I’ve visited. Since I take my laptop everywhere I go, there’s a potential to build up a nice map of my travels, and since I’m about to set off round the world I was looking forward to seeing that map grow. There also seems to be a lot of other potential for locality-aware apps built around their API, but I’ve not had time to play with that. ...

cityofsound: Postopolis!: Robert Krulwich I’m sorry not to be able to be in New York for this event. Robert Krulwich’s talk on ‘framing’ of events, stories, etc. sounds particularly interesting. (tags: RobertKrulwich framing postopolis urbanism) WorldChanging: Strengthening Domestic Fair Trade Looking at a group who are trying to apply “fair trade” principles to domestic consumption. An interesting idea, but I hope the emphasis will be on encouraging a relational approach to food purchasing rather than simply another label. ...

BBC NEWS | Music site Last.fm bought by CBS That’s a whole lot of money. Let’s hope that CBS stay true to their promise to let the site keep its own identity and management. Congratulations to the last.fm team! (tags: acquisitions last.fm music web2.0) rodcorp: Twitter is all about Maslovian love/belonging (sleep, commuting, lunch, friends) Tools are beginning to become available to do some simple analysis of twitter messages. Could be interesting as it gets refined. ...