oh float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair

I realised we are off to listen to some music in the open air tomorrow. That season has come around again, so I was burrowing around in the garage looking for boots.

Yep, I suspect its going to be muddy this weekend, so the relevant boots and plastic bags will be needed.

I found my posh Hunter wellies, but I think I'll probably go Dunlop. The Hunters are supposed to be the bee's knees but I have always wondered if they have been made a little too insect like in the legs. A tell-tale hint was that when I found them they were still folded down, which is a sign that they'd been too oppressive the last time they were used. The idea is that they are stylishly sculpted to the legs, but a side effect of this is that they can create blisters, which my economically prices Dunlops don't do.

The Dunlops may not last quite as long, but at around 1/8 the price, they still do a perfectly good job of keeping out the splosh.

Olympic Tickets and 9 Zones of travel

It's still some way off, but I have already received some tickets. I suppose I will have to pay proper attention to the travel advisories now.

The 9 zone Travelcard is a thoughtful touch. To be honest I didn't realise there was a Zone 9. I sort of thought it stopped around 6. Maybe it's because I'm an Oyster card user.

statutory feet shot

Here's a regulation feet shot from just before we returned to the UK. It's the same water that laps the shores of the South Coast of England, except this is the warm bit looking out towards Havana. It might look slightly shallow though, and there's a reason.

A day of contrasts having breakfast on a Hot Tin Roof accompanied by those cooling ceiling fans, looking out to the Gulf of Mexico and then much later a British cuppa back at home.

We jumped into our blue convertible to drive from the Southern edge of America back along the Florida Keys to Miami, before heading for the airport.

A kind man offered us seat upgrades for $50 each, then it was a movie, a nap, breakfast and back ahead of schedule to Heathrow.

Then the contrast...It was almost laugh out loud weather, with grey skies and bucketing rain. The shallowness of the morning's Atlantic could be explained by the quantity of water currently in transit from the sky to the ground.

But you know what? I think I'll post the sunset instead.

apple talk

I see that Apple has announced a bunch of new things at their conference. Some were fairly predictable, but I think it's interesting in terms of the changes that will affect the ways we use computers over the next few years.

I'll ignore the speed and capacity increases on some of the laptops, but the new Macbook Pro is moving closer towards the MacBook Air form factor. A high resolution screen (2880 by 1800), solid state disk and no DVD. My Air (1.35kg) is about a year old, but if the new Pro (2kg) had been available it might have been a tough choice.

Then there's the addition of allegedly usable speech dictation. I've been pleasantly surprised with the speech on the iPad, although it beams the speech to the cloud where Nuance processes it, which makes it still a slightly disjointed operation. It's pretty accurate though, as you can see with this spoken blog entry.

The underpinning for the speech is Siri, which is already on iPhones and will go to Macs. It seems to be part of the integration of the messaging and notification environment too, one view everywhere, which already works pretty well.

It looks as if Siri will also be making its way into cars for sat-nav and similar. My car already has voice recognition for sat-nav and phone dialling in any case, but I can't ask it 'Are we nearly there yet?' which I suppose Siri will support (in fairness, my car already tells me this both in distance and time)
The interesting thing will be whether the new "Eyes Free" for cars is fully integrated or whether it will be a separate device plug in like the iPod/iPhone. I see that about half a dozen car makers (e.g. BMW, Mercedes, GM, Honda, Audi, Toyota) are adding a Siri button to the steering wheel. It's still important for the sat-nav console to not become a source of distraction so I guess Angry Birds is out of the question.

Another related concept is streamed traffic congestion data - which is an idea that has been around for years- and is where the sat-navs in cars can send in data from their GPS that provides communal road status updates. Nowadays it'll be called crowd sourcing or similar and presumably part of the new mapping offered by Apple.

I noticed my car in the USA was Microsoft Sync enabled, complete with a Setup and a rather ominous Reset button. I guess we'll also get the war of Google vs Apple vs Microsoft as part of the battle for mapping. There's a whole load of new 3D imaging and so on, but I must admit I usually revert to basic 'North Up 2D' mapping when I'm in the car, except if I want to show off 3D pictures of London buildings to passengers.

I guess its different on a computer and I sometimes replay bike routes that I've ridden and GPS'd using google maps. (My Garmin Edge 800 is great for that)

Then there's the new Mountain Lion OS/X and iOS 6 releases for Macs, iPads and iPhones which I'm sure I'll use. The iOS has a few features that I've already had on my Blackberry over the years like - 'Do Not Disturb' (i.e. in a meeting), 'Reply with Message' (i.e. I can't talk right now but here's a standard courtesy text) and similar.

We also see FaceTime over cellular although my corporate world still uses MS Lync for ad-hoc conference calls and sometimes Skype, so it will be interesting to see how pervasive this becomes.

There's also some catchup items for OS/X like TV screen mirroring (at last) and hooray finally Aperture and iPhoto get the same database for their photographs. There's plenty of other new detail features, but the basic way to drive the system remains the same so the new stuff is sort of optional for usage.

I suppose these changes are part of the definitions for the next generation of computers.

• Speech enabled
• Very high resolution screens
• Very lightweight form factor
• End of spinning hard drives for laptops
• Always connected - even when 'power napping'
• Cloud dependent for certain functions
• No more DVDs
• No more ethernet plugs
• Not announced, but they should have an option for non-reflective screens

I can't see this being the end for desktop machines though. There's still a different feeling sitting at a desktop system (e.g. iMac) compared with a laptop. But maybe the next iMac should also include a video in from a laptop?

my next destination

did i mention the sunset?

street life without rain

The cashier at the clothing store didn't say a word as a siren tears the night in half. Hot air melts shapes as blue flashes bathe the street, reflecting razor grins.

We hear laughter washed with beer and shots of jello. The cops are standing by the small white shape. Someone climbs out looking both ways at passers-by and then into the eyes of the cop on the left.

We move out of earshot knowing that in five minutes the whole thing will cool down to just a warning.

pelican crossing

Sometimes it's most unexpected moments that give one a chance to pause and reflect. Yesterday we were whizzing about on a boat through glittering seas and past others similarly engaged.

We'd decided to go to a particular reef which is about seven miles from the shore. In our speedy boat it still took about 45 minutes.

Even with the sunshine and sea the short journey gave a few minutes to pause and reflect. Maybe change down a gear and even idle a while. It's great to be busy whilst on holiday and to try to catch as many things as possible, but there also has to be spaces for those moments of calm.

Today I can still think of another 20 things to do but we've decided to chill for a while and watch the world go by. In front of me I can see other small boats skipping around, the nearby bar is busy and there's parasailing out towards the horizon.

I'm sipping a cool lemonade and there's a guy singing 'Southern Cross' and picking it out on a guitar nearby. A two foot bright green gecko slithers over for a look and then heads under a nearby rock. A pelican lazily flaps its wings as it crosses my view.

Bliss.

fast buck freddie's

Key West literally lives on the edge. It's also at a point of balance between its uniqueness and its need to thrive.

The imminent closure of Duval Street's large department store is an example. I believe it was founded back in the 1970s and has a slightly ramshackle history of location, expansion and recent demise.

Called Fast Buck Freddie's (after a Jefferson Starship track), it occupies a prime location but now looks quite sad as it sells off its fixture and fittings.

There's also a feisty set of descriptions of its history draped along the length of its windows. It exemplifies the difficult balance of progress in a once very free-thinking environment.

Other areas around Duval have already become more corporate and there's extensive manicuring in parts of the central area, where apparently up to 600 cruise ships now arrive per year. Tourism drives the Keys and Key West in particular. That business need also affects the balance between uniqueness and surviving without becoming over ticky-tacky.

As Grace Slick might have sung it:

Now it's hard to get serious when the joker 
Is laughing 
And by now the joker is wild 
It's hard to keep laughing when a rich man's 
Reflection 
Looks like a gun that's gonna smile 

What's going on,  I ask you 
What's going on,  can you see? 
What's going on, I ask you and 
Who's coming on, is it you or me? 

conch republic

They say a lot of places in one's memory can seem smaller if one returns, but I'm finding the opposite with Key West.

Take Duval Street, which runs from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. It's always done that but somehow it seems longer and with more restaurants and shops than I remember. It's also changed a gear or two in some parts.

There was a bohemian edge to most of the properties and not so many well-know chains.

Now there's a prominent Hard Rock Cafe and even a Starbucks, which suggests a certain adjustment. I can remember some of the other places still present, which were sort of 'one-offs' but the extra harborside area seems to have grown beyond my recognition.

Step a few feet from the beaten track and there's still plenty of people wearing sandals instead of trainers, if you know what I mean.

I guess that's part of the fun of Key West. It's the area of Florida that seceded to the US, where others failed and it proudly wears the message on its Conch Republic flag.
There's the whole story about how it declared war on the USA, fought the Naval Base with stale Cuban breadsticks and then surrendered requesting $2 billion reparations. Of course, what they really wanted (and got) was that the tourist route remained open and not subject to a US Border blockade. And all of that happened in the last thirty or so years - in fact they've just celebrated the anniversary.

Today I've been out to the reefs, looking at the stripy fish and the enchanting coral. It's a long, long way from the mainland.

cafecito jolts

The cockerel has crowed enough times today. He's a protected species around here and takes care of the scorpions. At 4am its a reminder of day and later becomes part of the soundtrack.

A shorter sound burst was two F21 Raptors above us in very close formation at low altitude. We had the roof down and there was no mistaking their proximity before they broke and looped away across the sea.

And now it's the US Coastguard checking out the Gulf of Mexico. We'll be out there on a boat tomorrow but tonight we'll be drinking Cuban coffee.

the iguana made a much better job of hiding in the car park

I know it's nearly Wednesday (it is already in the UK) and I still haven't unpacked, though I do plan to tomorrow.

Today has been meandering through a few more beaches and then eventually re-linking with the US1 and heading south towards the Keys.

I'm pretty used to driving on the wrong side of the road in Europe and America, but must admit that the bright blue car I'm using seems to attract unusual behaviours from some other road users.

Aside from that aspect, everything continues to go well and there was that magic phrase as we checked into a hotel right on Mallory Square in Key West, when they said,"We've upgraded you."

"Thank you very much" because our suite now has a view across the square, to the Gulf and the Atlantic, to the spot where the sun sets and across to where all the jugglers, fire eaters and musicians perform.

It made sense to have supper in the room this evening, sitting on the balcony and watching the sun set.

I'm liking this short break in Florida.