Once a year, for about a week, San Diego becomes home to thousands of geeks, nerds, technophiles, and other creative people who seek out each other to share, collaborate, network, eat, drink, and run around the Gaslamp District. No, I’m not referring to the San Diego Comic-Con, the most important event in pop culture geekery.…
The Chinese New Year began on Monday, February 8th, which was yesterday. Sorry; I should have posted an announcement on Sunday so people could have planned parties and what-not. This is the Year of the Monkey, but not just any monkey. No, this is the Year of the Fire Monkey. Chinese culture has it’s own…
I am a constant Twitter user. I began using Twitter in March 2009. My divorce was causing me to shed friends like glaciers calve icebergs and I needed a way to connect with people. Many people I run across don’t understand Twitter and I spend time trying to educate them about appropriate Twitter use. Twitter…
The Ragged Edge of the World, by Eugene Linden. Plume paperback. Penguin Books. © 2011. $16. An interesting travelogue by a frequent contributor to Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, and a few other magazines and publishers, Linden’s book seems dated. Most the experiences he relates are from two to three decades ago, some going back to the…
Winter Study, by Nevada Barr. Penguin Books. Paperback. 2008. $10. I’m easily impressed by authors who integrate real, local geography into their novels. The idea of being able to “go there” and walk in the footsteps of the protagonist is a romantic notion of mine, I suppose. James Lee Burke fuses southern Louisiana geography into…
Voodoo River. Robert Crais. Hyperion Paperback. Suspense. 1995. $8 I use a combination of tape flags and mechanical pencil to take notes in the margins when I read. I read crime/suspense novels for fun (and no profit, other than my own benefit), and to help people realize the geography they are being exposed to in…
Nemesis by Jo Nesbø. Harper Fiction. 2002. Translation 2008. Paperback. $8 “A man walks into an Oslo bank, puts a gun to a cashier’s head, and tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn’t get his money fast enough, he pulls the trigger. The young woman dies–and two million Norwegian kroner disappear without a…
What happens when a Mafia boss snitches on his own? I think most of us have a good idea, cement galoshes, getting a set of clubs, or swimming with fish come to mind. If a snitch is lucky, Witness Protection is an option, if the snitch can elude the Mafia and those in league with…
San Diego is as close to urban paradise as I can imagine. Specifically, the Gaslamp District is a fantastic downtown experience. I’m not a fan of traveling outside of San Diego, and I’ve not actually traveled outside San Diego, thus I cannot really be a fan of something I’ve no experience with. San Diego has…
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, by Paul Theroux. Mariner Press. 2008. Paperback. $16 My next door neighbors left for a two-week trip at the beginning of the summer. Their 40-ish daughter wanted to revisit the place of her birth. One can only imagine the thoughts crossing through one’s mind causing someone to want to…
Constant Geography 
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