Entries this day: AM_Ushuaia PM_Ushuaia ZZ_tired departure gmail_chat

AM Ushuaia

8:28am ART Saturday 18 February 2006

We've arrived in Ushuaia, the southernmost-ish city in South America, it seems. I haven't done any research on it, but there's a sign in the city visible from the port: [The end of the world, the beginning of everything.]

This is Patagonia land, where the hiking gear company gets its name.

I'm not yet sure what I'll be doing today, but I may tag along with Kellie on the train to the end of the world.

Parts of me are tempted to go out alone; that's what I told Petra I'd be doing. I wanted to cry after I said it, but her hug helped. When I think about how miserably cold it would be alone, I don't want to go. But I would like some meditative time today.

There's a really big ship next to ours. It's called Majestic Princess or something. It's pretty ugly for a cruise ship, but it has four interior decks that start at our top deck.

PM Ushuaia

3:25pm ART Saturday 18 February 2006

Kellie and I went to the end of the world, apparently, although I didn't see an edge, or even a particular boundary. Took a taxi to tren del fin del mundo station, but the train had just left. Continued our taxi trip to the other end of the line, with a few stops along the way for pics featuring Francois and various trees, mountains, lakes, and in one case an actual rabbit.

Met a woman named Jo from Adelaide who had a bear named Montgomery who, through personification, is enjoying a trip around the world. She's a teacher for 16 students at a school with 60 students.

ZZ tired

5:11pm ART Saturday 18 February 2006

I'm so so so tired. Working on pictures from between Capetown to just before this port, but not able to stay awake.. like I literally began to fall asleep at the comma after port.

I am glad I got journal entries uploaded, experienced the new chat in gmail, and got some pics named and described on my local computer.

Falling asleep again.

I think I'll nap for an hour, then eat dinner and watch departure, then sleep some more.

departure

12:17am ART Sunday 19 February 2006

gmail chat

12:27am ART Sunday 19 February 2006

Gmail jumped from a gig to 2 gigs on their first birthday. The gigs have been ticking upward so they're at 2.696 gigs now.

I wondered what they would do next.

What they did is absolutely, just, utterly...

fantastic.

gmail now has chat.

And it's not just chat.

1. It automatically saves chats with the date, the person's name (not their userid, but the name I use to remember them by), and the number of lines.

2. The chats become like gmail messages, fully searchable and instantly accessible.

3. Or it *doesn't* save the chats, depending on the users' preferences. (each pair of users decide together, and gmail remembers from then on)

4. It just works.

   1. The interface is simple.

   2. It requires no download.

   3. If one person writes two lines before the other responds, they are labeled only once.

   4. I can chat in a new window or in the same gmail browser window

   5. I can switch a chat back and forth between the same gmail window and a separate window.

      Without connecting to the internet.

5. The chat-enabled gmail interface cleanly checks for an internet connection at slower and slower intervals until it checks once every 3 minutes (with the option to 'Try now'). No more 404s when the page tries to refresh.

6. It cleanly handles disconnects (*)

(*) I'm offline now and tried to chat with Fred in the window that's still available. I wrote something like, "I'll be impressed but not actually surprised if this message is queued and sent later."

It didn't seen to queue the message for later, but did inform me in noticible red text that the message was not sent.

It wrote "Fred did not receive your chat." though his name is Fred Nugen on the title, it knew to just be casual and use his first name for the message.

Though I'm still not connected, I can still pop the window into and out of the main window, and it keeps track of the number of messages Fred didn't receive.

7. It's magic.

My god this makes me happy for the future of the internet.