In August of 2013 the wonderful folks at Geeks Without Bounds held an unconference at the MIT Media Lab called Catalytic Converter. I was invited to both attend and present, and when I wasn't in session I wandered around Cambridge as well as the Media Lab. Cutting to the chase, here are the photographs I took during my visit. I saw some very impressive things there, and I wanted to share them with all of you in the hope that you'd partake of some of the wonder I felt.

Oh, there was also an active Byzantium mesh at MIT for …

People recording what is going on around them is a relatively new development in North American history. One supposes that you could trace it back to the beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in the year 1991, in which a bystander recorded the incident with a home video camera. Jump forward a dozen years; cellular phones and digital cameras now have the ability to do the same thing but are far smaller and record in much higher quality. With the proliferation of websites like Youtube and Facebook videos of every kind can be made …

Lyssa and I got up early (which is to say, we slept in for a change) last Tuesday to get our stuff packed and leave for our first vacation in a couple of years. Jason met us at our apartment and helped us load everything into the back of his SUV (we packed kind of heavy for a change, though most of it consisted of books that we were hoping to catch up on). After a quick lunch at our local deli and a sidetrip to pick up some essentials (like shampoo and asthma medication) we then hit the highway …